Geographies of Hegemonic Gay Masculinity: Interplays of Trans and Racialized In/Exclusions in the Gay Village of Toronto

Abstract

Little geographical work has explored the role of hegemonic gay masculinity in constructing queer spaces and its impacts on multiply marginalized lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, Two-Spirit, and additional (LGBTQ2+) people. Building on interviews with LGBTQ2+ youth experiencing homelessness, and photographs taken by them, this article investigates how hegemonic gay masculinity materializes in visual representations of gendered bodies throughout Toronto’s gay village, and how this is reflected in feminine and trans or gender non-conforming (TGNC) youth’s social experiences of the neighborhood. Through a framework of hegemonic masculinity, gender and race are understood as co-constitutive and read simultaneously in the queer geographical productions of gendered inclusions and exclusions among LGBTQ2+ youth experiencing homelessness. This article analyzes how hegemonic gay masculinity links queer spaces to various structures of power through visual cultures, including whiteness, cisnormativity, nationalism, and able-bodiedness, and the implications of this in the everyday social relations of feminine and TGNC youth experiencing homelessness. Through this exploration, this article presents how visual representations of gendered bodies communicate hegemonic masculinity in built queer environments, instruct varying forms of gendered and racialized inclusions and exclusions, and (re)produce a sense of unbelonging for some of the most marginalized members of the LGBTQ2+ community. Key Words: gay village, hegemonic masculinity, queer geographies, race, trans geographies.

地理学很少研究同性恋阳刚气概在构建酷儿空间中的作用及其对边缘化LGBTQ2+人群(女同性恋、男同性恋、双性恋、跨性别者、酷儿、双灵和其他)的影响。根据对无家可归LGBTQ2+青年的采访及其拍摄的照片, 本文研究了在整个多伦多同性恋村, 同性恋阳刚气概如何体现于性别化身体的视觉表达中, 及其如何反映于阴柔的、跨性别和性别不一致(TGNC)青年对社区的社会经历中。通过阳刚气概框架, 我们认识到, 对于无家可归的LGBTQ2+青年, 性别和种族是相互构成的、并且同时存在于性别化包容和排斥的酷儿地理产物中。本文分析了同性恋阳刚气概如何通过视觉文化(白性、顺应性、民族主义和健美)将酷儿空间与各种权力结构联系起来, 分析了同性恋阳刚气概对阴柔的和TGNC无家可归青年的日常社会关系的意义。本文展示了性别化身体的视觉表达如何在酷儿环境中传递阳刚气概, 决定不同形式的性别化和种族化包容和排斥, 并(重新)导致对LGBTQ2+社区最边缘化成员的不认同感。

Escaso ha sido el trabajo geográfico con el que se ha explorado el papel de la masculinidad homosexual hegemónica para construir espacios queer y sus impactos para multiplicar la población marginada de lesbianas, gays, bisexuales, transgénero, queer, de dos espíritus y adicionales (LGBTQ2+). A partir de entrevistas a jóvenes LGBTQ2+ sin hogar, y fotografías tomadas por ellos mismos, este artículo investiga el modo como la masculinidad gay hegemónica se materializa en representaciones visuales de cuerpos de género en el barrio gay de Toronto, y cómo eso se refleja en las experiencias sociales de las jóvenes femeninas y trans o de género no conformista (TGNC) del vecindario. A través del marco de la masculinidad hegemónica, el género y la raza se entienden como co-constitutivos y se leen de manera simultánea en las producciones geográficas queer de inclusiones y exclusiones de género entre los jóvenes LGBTQ2+ que experimentan la falta de hogar. Este artículo analiza el modo como la masculinidad gay hegemónica vincula los espacios queer con varias estructuras de poder a través de las culturas visuales que incluyen la blancura, la cisnormatividad, el nacionalismo y la capacidad corpórea, lo mismo que las implicaciones de esto en las relaciones sociales cotidianas de la juventud femenina y TGNC afectada por la falta de hogar. Con esta exploración, el artículo presenta el modo como las representaciones visuales de cuerpos de género comunican la masculinidad hegemónica en los entornos queer construidos, instruyen diversas formas de inclusiones y exclusiones por género y raza, y (re)producen un sentido de no pertenencia para algunos de los miembros más marginados de la comunidad LGBTQ2+.

关键词:

• 同性恋村
• 阳刚气概
• 酷儿地理
• 种族
• 跨性别地理。

Palabras clave:

• aldea gay
• geografías queer
• geografías transgénero
• masculinidad hegemónica
• raza

Amidst the rainbow flags that adorn Toronto’s gay village (hereinafter village) are rich visual representations of gender that saturate the neighborhood with cultural, historical, and political meaning. As discursive tools that (re)produce racialized, sexualized, gendered, nationalist, ableist, and classed narratives within queer space, visual representations of gendered bodies in the village reflect experiences of exclusion and unbelonging for feminine and trans or gender non-conforming (TGNC) people. In this article, interviews of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, Two-Spirit, and additional (LGBTQ2+) youth experiencing homelessness are placed alongside an in-depth analysis of public murals and advertisements that depict gendered bodies, and were photographed by youth throughout Toronto’s village. Although imagery within queer public spaces can attempt to impress a sense of diversity and inclusion, hegemonic gay masculinity and homonationalism saturate gendered representations within the village and serve as an anchor for key aspects of hegemonic gay masculinity—notably whiteness, able-bodiedness, and cisnormativity—that simultaneously inform the social relations LGBTQ2+ youth experience in the village. By exploring the social experiences of feminine and TGNC youth alongside gendered representations in the village, this article constructs pathways to consider the links between gender, sexuality, race, and nationalism in queer urban geographical settings.

Critically analyzing the impact of hegemonic masculinity in queer visual cultures in the village illustrates how racialized, gendered, and other normative structures of power are maintained, rather than challenged, among LGBTQ2+ people, cultures, and spaces. This article interprets representations of gendered bodies as sites of political tension that wield a dynamic influence over the social relations that manifest in everyday life. Exploring gendered imagery alongside the social experiences of feminine and TGNC youth experiencing homelessness offers a means of interrogating the racialized and nationalized interlocutors that collaboratively instruct the social, cultural, and political charges of queer spaces. Furthermore, investigating how visual cultures reflect the everyday social experiences of feminine and TGNC youth experiencing homelessness fosters a deeper understanding of the interplays between representation, everyday social relations, and queer geographical forms of inclusion and exclusion faced by multiply marginalized LGBTQ2+ people.

By applying an analytical framework of hegemonic masculinity to queer geographical work, this article builds a nuanced understanding of how queer urban spaces operate within (and as) hegemonic structures of gender in ways that uphold white, cisnormative, and nationalist structures of power within LGBTQ + spaces. The use of hegemonic gay masculinity throughout this article serves as a theoretical framework for discussing structures of power, rather than as a means of specifically discussing gay cis men or what it means to be femme, cis, trans, nonbinary, and other gender identities. The theoretical application of hegemonic masculinity, as will be discussed shortly, enables gendered subjects to be read through the operatives of race, nationalism, able-bodiedness, and cisnormativity simultaneously. As such, hegemonic masculinity is not used in this article to reinstate the binary of trans and cis, trans and non-binary, feminine and masculine, or gender and race, nor as a mechanism to discuss cis gay masculinity.

This article turns to everyday social and cultural dynamics surrounding representations of gendered bodies as a means of illuminating how symbols and representations are informed by norms, values, and codes that become replicated and reinforced in space (Cohen 1985). As urban spaces are socially produced through networks of signs, ideologies, and structures of power, visual representations of gender are key contributors to discourses that produce hierarchized social structures within space. Focused attention to bodies and identities in public art can “enhance our vision of the webs of politics and power embedded within structures and aesthetics of the cityscape” (Morrison 2022, 434). Given that forms of visual culture are “crucial for feeling ‘in place’” (Catungal 2013, 265) and communicating who does and does not belong in a given space (Karlander 2018), the imagery of bodies and identities can play a powerful role in fostering a sense of belonging and unbelonging within particular places, including gay villages.

Queer geographies have attended to gay villages in many ways, applying frameworks to understand how spaces are co-constituted as racialized, sexualized, gendered, classed, and nationalized through normative discourses and structures of power. Some of this work, however, has flattened understandings of queerness and queer space through “uninterrogated binary readings both of space—as either heterosexist or queered—and gender—as either (lesbian) women or (gay) men” (Goh 2018, 466). As well, gay villages (and queer spaces more broadly) have been falsely impressed as white (Oswin 2008), although recent work is beginning to interrogate queer spaces as racialized, including the forms of erasure that produce a sense of unbelonging for LGBTQ2+ people of color (Irazábal and Huerta 2016; Eaves 2017; Rosenberg 2017, 2021a, 2021b; DasGupta and Dasgupta 2018; Boussalem 2021). Despite these developments, more robust and nuanced explorations are needed within queer geographic analyses, particularly to attend to the processes of racialization, settler-colonialism, and nationalism that construct queer spaces. Thus, this article understands gender within queer space as inherently racialized and more complex than feminine–masculine binaries. Race and gender are not discrete categories, but are mutually co-constitutive and constructive, and are treated as such in this article (Aizura et al. 2020; Bey 2022). As part of this exercise, this article focuses on youth’s experiences of the village as gendered and racialized subjects, rather than reading their spatial encounters through age and housing status. Such an approach aims to complicate scholarship about homelessness by considering how housing precarity manifests in the social and cultural geographies of a lived environment through gendered and racialized identities, which are fundamental aspects of how housing-precarious LGBTQ2+ youth experience their surrounding worlds. Such an exercise refuses to understand LGBTQ2+ youth experiencing homelessness as only housing precarious, but rather as people whose fluctuating housing status is inherently bound to their experiences as racialized and gendered subjects.

As a brief explanation of the terminology throughout this article, TGNC is used as an umbrella term describing those whose gender identities do not neatly correspond to the gender or sex they were assigned at birth, including non-binary people (although not all trans people identify as non-binary and not all non-binary people identify as trans). This article also employs different versions of the LGBTQ2+ acronym to signal current and historical inclusions and exclusions of Indigenous peoples within queer communities. Although this research involved those who identified as Two-Spirit, an Indigenous identity encompassing a range of gender and sexual identities, Indigenous peoples are frequently erased in queer scholarship and mainstream LGBTQ + communities. As such, I selectively employ LGBTQ + to reveal this exclusion and avoid superficial gestures of Indigenous inclusion.

Reading feminine and TGNC youth experiences together aims to acknowledge a wide range of gender expressions, however applying theories of hegemonic masculinity to non-binary gender identities is messy. Trans experiences and identities problematize how identities can be graphed onto the site of the body, which is generative (Brice 2020) but also risky in naturalizing and simplifying trans as an identity, concept, experience, discourse, and material form. Writing about gender is perhaps an inevitable problem for trans geographical work to play with, given the constraints of writing non-binary identities into theoretical frameworks rooted in binarized theories of gender, such as hegemonic masculinity. This article leans into the possibilities of this dilemma, though, by exercising how theories like hegemonic masculinity can be repurposed when subjects, representations, and social and cultural dynamics of gendered bodies are understood as mutable, shifting, and ever-enforced by additional power structures. Non-binary identities are necessary sources of geographical knowledge and provocation, in which—as Bey (2022, 13–14) astutely notes—their “rejection of gender as an organizing apparatus” for subjectivity itself productively disrupts geographical thinking of space and gender. Although it is an important exercise to agitate binarized ways of thinking about gender, it is also worth appreciating the limitations of linguistic and theoretical debates when writing with, and of, the lived experiences of TGNC people. Foregrounding feminine and TGNC people within theories of hegemonic masculinity does not necessarily neatly contest binary frameworks of gender; however, doing so also destabilizes the centrality of gay masculinity as an analytical point of reference, and singular approaches to understanding gender, in queer geographical (and related) scholarship. This albeit messy exercise disrupts fixed and normative categories within queer scholarship, and offers entry into reading gender simultaneously through whiteness, cisnormativity, and racialization.

Hegemonic Architectures of Gay Masculinity

The concept of hegemonic masculinity describes a structure of power in which certain masculine ideals are communicated, created, and maintained to privilege particular masculinities. In the process, feminine and gender-diverse people, women, and expressions of femininity are subordinated through material, economic, social, and cultural means. Drawing from Connell’s (2005) theorization, hegemonic masculinity is understood as an “ideal type of masculinity that imposes upon all other masculinities (and femininities) coherence and meaning about what their own identities and positions within the gender order should be” (Howson 2005, 3). Masculinity is driven by the need for approval from other masculine subjects, and as such the gendered ideals of hegemonic masculinity are impressed through social and affective relations between subjects, cultural schema, and environments (Kimmel 1994; Allan 2018; Maqueda 2020). This approval can be affirmed, partial, and denied through these various relations; and importantly, the potential dissolution of masculinity—or failed masculinity—hinges on the production of fear and shame around non-idealized or failed masculine subjects (Hoskin 2020).

It is crucial to note that the dynamics cultivating hegemonic masculine ideals are always interwoven with additional structures of power such as race, class, ethnicity, (dis)ability, national origin, sexual orientation, and many others (Connell 2005). Hegemonic masculinity impresses that “manhood is only possible for a distinct minority, and the definition has been constructed to prevent others from achieving it” (Kimmel 1994, 216–17), including men of color; men with disabilities; gay, bisexual, or queer men, women, and masculine people who are intersex or assigned female at birth (Miller 2015; Schippers 2007). Frequently, people of color and those whose gender or sex is unintelligible are assigned to the “effeminate realm” (Hoskin 2020, 2333), especially individuals who are assigned male at birth. Hegemonic masculinity thus attaches femininity to a range of bodies, expressions, and identities, enabling generative conversations about intersecting categories such as race, class, sexuality, and non-binary gender identities.

As hegemonic masculinity allows us to explore the complexity of gender across various subjectivities and embodiments, we can trace how hierarchies of masculinity shift and evolve to accommodate different masculinities. Hierarchical transformations grant certain formerly failed masculinities, like gay masculinity, partial integration into hegemonic masculinity (Demetriou 2001). These hybrid masculinities maintain the ability to both reinforce and challenge structures of hegemonic masculinity (Bridges 2014; Maqueda 2020). In the case of gay masculinity, hybridity enables gay men “to distance themselves from specific configurations of hegemonic masculinity, but not necessarily the associated privileges” (Bridges 2014, 78) that are granted through hegemonic masculinity. In other words, gay masculinity can attach to certain signifiers of subordination and create distance from hegemonic masculinity, while also maintaining proximity to its associated benefits by reproducing particular hegemonic ideals (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005; Brewis and Jack 2010). These reproductions of hegemonic masculinity distance gay masculine subjects from a culturally feminized sexual subjectivity and, in many ways, counter the stigma of feminization produced by hegemonic masculinity and homophobia (Kimmel 1994).

Hegemonic masculinity among gay men is often expressed through forms of femmephobia, (trans)misogyny, and racism, particularly through celebrations and reproductions of idealized masculine imagery across different gay men’s communities and (sub)cultures (Childs 2016). As by-products of cisnormativity and patriarchy, femmephobia and transmisogyny undermine and target feminine-spectrum gender identities and expressions, particularly trans women and trans feminine people, whereas masculine-spectrum gender identities and expressions enable LGBTQ2+ people to “acquire validation and in-group acceptance, as well as … a certain level of safety in the public realm” (Hoskin 2020, 2330). Within gay masculinity, adopting hegemonic masculine traits can counter the process of being marked as feminine (Campbell 2004; Kimmel and Mahalik 2005). For example, whereas some leather and bear communities¹ are inclusive of diverse gender expressions, many encourage the expression of hegemonic masculine traits such as muscularity, athleticism, body hair, aggression, confidence, rurality, whiteness, nationalism, and individuality (Miller 2015; Childs 2016; Hunt et al. 2016; McGlynn 2021). To speak of hegemonic gay masculinity, then, is not to speak of gay cis men, but rather a wider array of gendered identities and subjectivities that are affected by the gendered hierarchies impressed through hegemonic gay masculine ideals. Crucially, hegemonic gay masculinity is also white; this has been heavily noted in gay men’s social media platforms for dating and sex through the hierarchizing of desirability through whiteness (Miller 2015; Davies 2020). Racialized gay masculine subjects are more heavily policed, appropriated, erased, and fetishized within gay and queer spaces, further illustrating the inextricable links between race and hegemonic gay masculinity (Alexander 2006; Bailey 2013; Bailey and Shabazz 2014).

The privileging of hegemonic masculine characteristics occurs in gay men’s physical and digital social spaces, enabling hegemonic masculinity to accumulate social and cultural capital within a range of geographical settings (Childs 2016; Hunt et al. 2016; Davies 2020). Whereas some gay spaces can disrupt heteronormative hegemonic masculine orders, many are found to reproduce the objectification and marginalization of feminine, gender non-conforming, and racialized people. Such dynamics can draw homonationalism—an assemblage of processes in which certain LGBTQ + subjects are granted state legibility—into queer spaces. Homonationalism relies on a normative white masculine figure to distinguish LGBTQ + subjects who are worthy of, and palatable for, state incorporation and narratives of Western liberal progress (Puar 2013). Strategies of homonationalism, such as pinkwashing, wield white gay masculinity to reinforce racialized cultural ideologies that uphold state power—such as war, forms of genocide, and settler-colonialism—as well as nationalist discourses and political imperatives that often target Black and Brown, low-income, Muslim, and Global South populations as threats to the state (Puar 2007). By associating white gay masculinity with LGBTQ + progress narratives through public discourses of patriotism and settler-colonialism, white gay masculinity becomes codified as the normative queer figure that earns state recognition at the expense of racialized and differently gendered subjects (Puar 2007, 2013). In a hegemonic masculine framework, incorporating homonationalism can further intensify expressions of masculinity and whiteness in a reciprocal and mutually reinforcing dynamic of power.

As the success of hybrid masculinity relies on receiving broader social approval through an outward projection of hegemonic masculinity, hegemonic gay masculine traits are more fervently projected and communicated in highly visible and public spaces for queer men (Maqueda 2020). Queer men’s spaces that are especially public and visible can therefore experience intensified projections of hegemonic gay masculine ideals. This is especially relevant for contemporary North American gay villages, which are often highly visible public spaces rooted in gay men’s communities (Knopp 1997). Many North American gay villages have developed through social, cultural, and material networks of gay men, and the role of patriarchy has been traced in the production and maintenance of many gay villages. Uneven access to capital due to gendered wage gaps has led to white gay men’s disproportionate ability to own businesses, renovate and rent properties, and afford higher costs of living (Binnie 2004; Podmore 2006; Kanai and Kenttamaa-Squires 2015). These gendered disparities are reflected at the neighborhood scale, as queer women have had difficulty establishing and maintaining material spaces within gay villages, and instead have often manifested urban spatial networks through alternative economies and social geographies rooted outside of capital and property (Gieseking 2013; Browne and Ferreira 2015; Podmore and Chamberland 2015). Like queer women, certain gay villages can offer networks of support for TGNC youth (Reck 2009) or foster a sense of safety and connection with other LGBTQ2+ people in comparison to heteronormative spaces (Doan 2007). Hegemonic gay masculinity, however, can create dynamics of exclusion for TGNC people within gay villages, particularly those who are feminine and racialized, including through informal and formal policing and discriminatory behaviors and attitudes in clubs and bars (Hanhardt 2013; Misgav and Johnston 2014; Rosenberg 2017). Thus, although gender diversity—and TGNC people—might experience more social and cultural visibility in gay villages, the circulation and reinforcement of hegemonic gay masculinity in these neighborhoods can cultivate hostile queer environments for feminine, TGNC, and racialized people.

Experiencing Toronto’s Village

Toronto’s village is one of many sites across the city in which a variety of “symbols and discourses … contribute to the expression of local masculinities” (Moffatt 2011, 6). The village emerged predominantly through gay men’s social and political networking and is experienced as dominated by white gay masculinity among LGBTQ + Torontonians (Nash 2013). Over the past decade the village has become increasingly visible as a marker of Canadian diversity through its role as the site for Toronto’s large-scale Pride events, including World Pride in 2014. As a highly visible queer site rooted in social and cultural networks of gay masculinity, Toronto’s village is ripe for analyzing gendered representations and how they construct differing power relations among LGBTQ2+ people.

This article draws on data from research conducted with LGBTQ2+ youth experiencing homelessness in Toronto from 2016 to 2017. A total of twenty-nine youth were interviewed, and the research focused on youth’s relationships to the city’s village rather than their broader experiences of homelessness. Flyers advertising the research were posted in different LGBTQ2+ and youth organizations and city services located in and around the village. Given this style of recruitment, youth participants were relatively well-connected to support networks and spent more time in the village—some because their various forms of shelter were in and around the neighborhood, and others who were accessing the local organizations and services. Participants represented a range of racial and gender identities, and although age and housing status are important means of understanding their experiences of the village, visible markers of difference such as race, Indigeneity, and gender more heavily informed our discussions. Of the twenty-nine youth who participated in initial interviews, thirteen self-identified as people of color, six as Indigenous, and sixteen as TGNC (specifically four trans women, five trans men, and seven along a non-binary spectrum). Participants who were racialized, Indigenous, feminine, TGNC, or some combination thereof spent disproportionately less time in the village compared to youth who were white cis men, but due to the neighborhood’s proximity to social services they were familiar with the area and visited the village intermittently.

Youth were first interviewed in group or individual settings in which they discussed their broader experiences of homelessness and the village, including through a mental mapping exercise. This initial interview encouraged youth to discuss how their experiences of the village related to their racialized, gendered, sexualized, classed, and various other subjectivities and lived realities. I identified myself as a trans person at the beginning of every interview as a way of explaining my interests in participants’ experiences, clarifying that I was a safer person with whom they could discuss LGBTQ2+-related topics, and exercising vulnerability as a researcher before participants became vulnerable with me. I also hoped that sharing my identities would signal a sense of mutual understanding and trust with TGNC participants.

Following the initial interviews, fifteen youth participated in a second unstructured photographic walking interview (PWI), which involved meeting at their location of choice in the village and walking while they photographed anything that held meaning for them in the neighborhood. Of the fifteen participants in PWIs, five identified as feminine TGNC, three as masculine TGNC, and nine as Indigenous or people of color. Walking interviews emphasize multisensory, place-based experiences that might otherwise not emerge in a stationary interview, and incorporating photography further encourages introspective connection to the environment during walking interviews (Evans and Jones 2011; Macpherson 2016). Incorporating photography in walking interviews stresses the significance of place in the interview process (Anderson 2004), allowing for further exploration of topics from initial interviews and encouraging emotions, memories, stories, and experiences to inform the research process. Capturing photographs during our walking interviews helped to encourage agency among youth participants, destabilize researcher–participant power dynamics, and provide an additional form of data to corroborate and add nuance to interviews.

During our PWIs, participants were given a used smartphone with no data connection and asked to photograph anything that stood out to them as characteristic of the village or significant to their experiences of the neighborhood. Youth were not prompted to take any specific photographs during our PWIs; rather, the interview was unstructured and based on what youth were photographing, which I would relate to topics of conversation from our initial interviews. A variety of visual depictions of LGBTQ2+ people, cultures, histories, and politics were captured by youth during our PWIs, during which youth took an average of twenty-nine photographs. Most of the visual imagery in the village consists of rainbows and murals, and youth photographed these as well as specific buildings, businesses and organizations, and parks. Specifically, thirteen youth photographed at least one artistic depiction, like murals, and fourteen photographed visual queer imagery such as flyers, billboards, and rainbow decorations on buildings and streets (e.g., flags and window stickers). Some youth reflected on the photographs they were taking but others did not, and youth did not conduct a visual analysis with me. In what follows, the images taken by youth are placed in conversation with their interviews and used to construct an analysis of hegemonic gay masculinity in Toronto’s village.

Gendered Representations and Experiences in Toronto’s Village

A total of nine pieces of public art adorn the walls of buildings in the village, some of which have been solicited by businesses, organizations, or the neighborhood’s Business Improvement Area (BIA), and others made by unknown artists. Almost all are well-maintained and highly visible throughout the village, with only one obscured and in a state of disrepair, as discussed shortly. Of these artistic pieces, four depict gendered bodies with varying detail, including two that are not discussed in this article, as youth did not comment on the images they captured of these murals—one on the front of the club Crews and Tangos, and one on the north-facing side of the 519 Community Centre (the 519), an LGBTQ + organization in the village. The pieces that are analyzed in this article were photographed by seven youth, and include one large vinyl banner hanging vertically on the south-facing side of the 519, in the direction of the main intersection of the village (Figure 1). Although this banner is strikingly visible against the building’s dark gray exterior, it was only photographed by five youth, two of whom are TGNC.

Figure 1. Banner on the south-facing wall of the 519, artist and year unknown. Photo by Tony (2017).

The artwork depicts three people: The foregrounded figure stands with their face covered by a hat, decorated with perhaps a red boxing glove and the colors of the Anishinaabe medicine wheel—although the colors are not depicted in the traditional order. This person has no visible hair on their head or body and they are wearing athletic tape around their hands. Their hips are wider than their chest, which is bound, indicating that they are likely a TGNC person assigned female at birth. The second figure behind them has shoulder-length dark brown hair and skin, breasts, and appears to be using a pink wheelchair. There is a visible tattoo of a labrys, a lesbian feminist symbol, on their upper arm, the Canadian flag on their shirt, and red-and-white attire on their lower body reflecting the colors of the Canadian flag. The third figure, in the background, is large, muscular, white, and has a light brown beard that fades into short silver hair. They have visible body hair on their forearms, shoulders, armpits, and chest, reflecting physically masculinized characteristics, and their ears are pierced with studded earrings. In addition, they are clad in a black leather chest harness, wrist cuffs, belt, and hat, and are holding an undecipherable object²—signaling a leather daddy figure.

Of the five youth who photographed this banner, two briefly reflected on its connection to the 519; Tony, a Brown, masculine, gay cis youth seeking refugee status in Canada, explained that the 519 helps connect refugees to his immigration lawyer. Another participant, Rhys,³ a mixed-race trans man, reaffirmed his earlier comments about the 519 when taking his photograph, that the 519 is focused on “the LGB and not the T” despite the trans imagery in this art. Two other youth provided brief commentary on the banner itself, including Tyrell, an Indigenous gay cis/Two-Spirit man, who commented, “Oh I like that one picture on the side of [the 519],” without further elaborating on what he liked specifically. Jordan, a Black, masculine, gay cis youth, remarked that this is “what straight people see when [they] go through the village,” impressing a sense that this imagery—although projecting diverse gendered and racialized identities—is more impactful for cis, heterosexual viewers than those whose identities it represents.

The second piece of public art that was photographed by youth resides in an alley obscured from the wider public (Figure 2). It vibrantly depicts a festive scene at the Manatee, a Toronto gay men’s dance club from the 1970s, with highly styled outfits and varying postures and interactions between figures. The figures are looking out toward the viewer and interacting with each other and the club environment, which can be discerned from the stage, bar, lights, and name of the bar. Many people are feminine presenting, with long hair, makeup, no visible body hair, and wearing colorful and stylish outfits adorned with large feathers, high heels, and jewelry. Masculine-presenting figures are positioned in the background and mostly appear smaller than those in the foreground, some of whom are painted in more muted colors and less extravagant outfits. Although not overtly sexualized, the mural projects a playful and flirtatious energy through the body language of those at the Manatee, some with their heads tilted to the side, bare legs and backs visible, necks turned upward, or legs open, all among a range of gender expressions, skin tones, and body types. The image also signals a spatial claim with a sign in the background reading “This area is for party people/crew and performers/and village royalty only,” impressing a sense that this club, and those in it, asserted a queer space for LGBTQ + performers. Only two youth photographed and commented on this mural: Rhys, who claimed this was his favorite mural, and Darien, a Black, masculine, non-binary youth, who shared that this image reminded them of the celebratory feeling of Pride. Rhys interpreted the feminine-presenting figures in the mural as TGNC and appreciated its depiction of trans women as central to Toronto’s LGBTQ2+ history, when so much of the current village, in his opinion, excluded trans women. This mural includes the most feminine representation of all visible art in the village, but Rhys noted its obscured location and declining condition, with chipped paint and graffiti that had not been removed.

Figure 2. Mural in alley, artist and year unknown. Photo by Darien (2017).

The figures in these two murals contrast with most other visual representations of gendered bodies in the village, many of which were advertisements for local venues (Figure 3). The bodies depicted in these visual representations are semi-nude, muscular, white men and drag queens (who also appear to be mostly white, and two of whom in the upper poster are sporting beards). The first two images from the left are for events at Flash, a gay strip club, with the first advertising “Jock Night Thursday” and the second two drag-related events at Flash. The third image, on the far right, features flyers for Pride events taking place in the village, including at Flash and Black Eagle, a gay leather bar, where the most visible bodies reflect those in the other two photographs, including some drag queens and people who mostly appear white. The two flyers featuring one half-nude, muscular man also include a red maple leaf, projecting the symbolism of the Canadian flag. Of the youth who participated in PWIs, seven photographed Flash and none photographed Black Eagle. When taking the image on the far left, Justin, a white, masculine, gay cis man, shared, “Every single Pride I normally find naked jocks out here dancing in front of the sign. … They have, like, a g-string and top off … I’m just like, okay [Laughing]!” Justin continued explaining that he enjoys this open sexuality, particularly how these attractive men take up space in the streets during Pride. Darien reflected positively on their experiences of performing at Flash to pay for their undergraduate degree, and Jordan jokingly asked Mikey, a feminine, Black, non-binary youth, to pose on the pole outside of the front entrance (which Mikey refused while laughing).

Figure 3. Event advertisements throughout the village. Photos by [left to right] Justin (2017), Skylar (2017), and Tyrell (2017).

Whereas these youth playfully responded to the sexualized, white masculine atmosphere and imagery associated with Flash, TGNC youth shared negative feelings about the club and other similar venues in the village. Sidney, a white trans woman, recalled that Flash was a good place to find clients as a sex worker before, but not after, coming out as trans. Skylar, a Brown trans man, photographed flyers for Flash (the central image in Figure 3) while sharing that he has only attended Flash once and did not have an opinion about the club. Billy, a white trans man, commented, “I literally do not care about [the bars] because cis gay men are everywhere.” More overt commentary was provided about the association of these spaces with white gay masculinity, like by Chocolate Baby Daddy (CBD), a Black masculine TGNC youth, who explained, “I can’t go to the Flash, do a drag king performance. … I just can’t see it happening here.” When pressed further, CBD explained that their presence as a Black, masculine TGNC person assigned female at birth would not be received well or sought after in a club for gay cis men. Gabriel, a Brown, feminine, non-binary youth, furthered the sense of whiteness impressed by CBD, stating that in the village, “It’s always about white guys … there’s a lot of value around white people.” An Asian trans man, Max, shared a similar feeling, noting that the neighborhood is “a white man’s gay village.”

The centering of gay cis men in the village clubs cultivated a sense of being unwanted or unwelcome among TGNC youth of varying gender identities. Jennifer, an Indigenous and Latina trans woman, summarized that in the village, trans people are “ignored with … a possible judgey stare … like, ‘why you’re taking up space on the sidewalk’ type deal.” Masculine TGNC youth described distinctions they feel among gay cis men; for example, Billy felt “a lot less safe in cis gay spaces, and there’s a lot of … Church Street gay culture that I’m not into that’s really transphobic.” Billy continued that if he is not perceived as a gay cis man in the village, he feels visible “as a trans person who is burden[some] on their community and … a lot of work to please, and has a lot of issues, and, like, [is] ‘separate from us.’” Seth and Bailey, both white, masculine TGNC youth, felt that they do not belong in the village because they are not gay cis men. CBD stated, “It’s hard in [the village] because cis gay men don’t want to hang out with me. … That’s just the reality.”

Despite the sense of rejection and exclusion felt by masculine TGNC youth (both people of color and white), participants expressed that masculine TGNC people still benefit from the privileging of masculinity in the village. As Sidney, Billy, and Rhys explained, masculine TGNC people can more easily access clubs like Flash because their masculinity is less visibly different than femininity in a gay cis masculine context—although as CBD and Max emphasized, masculine TGNC inclusion is mediated through race, and racialized masculine TGNC youth might not experience a similar sense of ease in gay cis men’s spaces in contrast to their white counterparts. Although some white masculine TGNC youth had a means of entry in gay cis spaces through the privileging of masculinity, feminine TGNC youth did not. Mikey emphasized,

to be dressed as a girl in a gay club, or like anything femme, is so unwelcomed in the village … . Almost anywhere in the village you can’t really dress femme unless you’re one of the drag queens or you’re a superstar.

Jennifer echoed this notion that drag enables certain forms of femininity to exist within clubs, which can be seen in the representation of drag queens in Figure 3. This can exaggerate trans feminine youth’s experiences of gendered otherness, however; for example, Jennifer shared,

Practically everybody just thinks I’m a drag queen or a gay guy that’s cross dressing. … I can just be wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt and I would somehow be called a drag queen.

Such misgendering by gay cis men creates an environment that Jennifer avoids, as her feminine identity becomes illegible within this gay masculine space. In addition to the relations that produced a socially exclusive environment for feminine TGNC youth, Flash operated at times with a policy in which only people perceived to be men were allowed to enter—an experience that Tyrell recalled of recently trying to attend Flash with a woman and being told by the bouncer that “no females, only males” were allowed entry.

Similar experiences were shared as youth photographed Steamworks, a gay men’s bathhouse in the village that held largely negative associations with substance use for youth who were familiar with the venue. Eight youth captured either its inconspicuous signage or front door, but Tyrell photographed a large billboard advertisement during Pride month, one block south of the main intersection in the village (Figure 4).

Figure 4. Steamworks billboard advertisement. Photo by Tyrell (2017).

In this image, muscular nude men are looking toward the viewer while most of their bodies are positioned in intimate proximity and direction toward each other. Although it is difficult to definitively mark these models through race and ethnicity, many have lighter skin tones, and most have visible body hair, facial hair, and short hair styles. Their facial expressions vary between flirtatious smirks and more serious stares, and the name of the bathhouse is positioned on a black banner that is suggestively placed over the men’s groins, covering where their genitals would otherwise appear. While reflecting on the image in Figure 4, Sidney commented that Steamworks was “sleazy,” and Rhys explained:

Unless you’ve had your name, gender and surgery done, you’re not welcome there as a trans man. [It’s] not trans friendly … [and] trans women can’t go there.

Mikey shared similar feelings about Steamworks, insisting to a trans woman in their group interview that it

[is] not femme friendly, it’s not femme friendly. Trust me, you don’t want to go there, honey.

These sentiments reflect on the distinct experiences feminine TGNC youth have in sexualized masculine queer spaces. Gabriel explained that they are either oversexualized or discarded as a sexual or romantic partner when in a sexualized queer masculine environment. They elaborated:

I’ve gotten comments where, like … “I want a man,” or, “I don’t want someone who looks like a woman,” or whatever. “I want someone that looks like a man.” Stuff like that.

Similarly, Sidney expressed that it is more challenging to form relationships in the village than it was before she came out as trans. Although not TGNC, Tyrell immediately reflected on the discrimination and fetishization he has experienced in the village due to his weight and femininity after taking the photograph shown in Figure 4.

The predominance of hypermasculine bodies in the advertisements featured in Figures 3 and 4 speak to youth’s general commentary about the village as a space for gay cis men, and no other members of the LGBTQ2+ community—as Billy communicated through the title of his mental map, “The Village AKA Cis Gay Men Land.” This sentiment was summarized by Jacob, a white gay cis man, as he expressed while walking through the village that,

gay men [are] very upfront in this neighborhood. I don’t see anything else. Like, I don’t see anything that represents other groups of people in the village in general. … When I think [of] anywhere in the village, I think of gay men.

These reflections on the gendered dominance of masculinity signal the complex interplay between visual representations of hegemonic gay masculinity and the sociocultural relations that LGBTQ2+ youth experiencing homelessness negotiate in Toronto’s village. Youth’s experiences impress how visual cultures reflect social relations with a given space and convey a vast sense of unbelonging and exclusion—one that is not only gendered, but also racialized—within the hegemonic gay masculinity that so powerfully manifests in this queer urban space.

Regulated Proximity to Gendered Difference

The imagery and social relations discussed by youth reveal multiple and complex implications of how hegemonic gay masculinity informs exclusionary social and cultural geographies of the village.⁴ Visual depictions of hegemonic masculinity saturate the village, signaled through the many masculine bodies in Figures 1, 3, and 4 that impress an assertive and assured gay masculinity in the highly visible spaces they occupy. Among these three figures, masculinized bodies are predominantly white and presented as able-bodied and cisnormative through visual signifiers such as large muscles, narrow hips and broad shoulders, large penises, and body hair—all qualities found to be sought after and idealized by hegemonic gay masculinity, as noted earlier. A lack of visible scars or tools for mobility assistance further imply cisnormative and able-bodied masculinity. This imagery stands in contrast to that in Figure 2, which portrays a sense of intimacy and flirtatious energy among feminized bodies but exists in isolation and decay in a relatively invisible alley. Portraying hegemonic illustrations of masculinity—in these examples, hypermasculine, cis, white, and able-bodied—in public visual imagery exemplifies how bodily signifiers in queer spaces can project a refusal of femininity and conformity to hegemonic masculine ideals. Such a representational deluge of hegemonic masculine archetypes enables gay masculinity to “cast off the parts of [itself] deemed feminine in order to claim group membership … or even subjecthood” (Hoskin 2020, 2336) within the hegemonic masculine order. In the process of reasserting hegemonic masculinity, representations of gay masculinity that mirror hegemonic masculine ideals are rendered intelligible and overemphasized at the expense of non-idealized gendered bodies, identities, and expressions among the LGBTQ2+ community.

This dynamic is discernable in youth’s responses to the imagery of gendered bodies throughout the village. As described earlier, youth who identified as masculine gay cis men responded to sexualized representations of hypermasculinity more positively than others, like Justin and Jordan, who amusingly recalled sexually evocative encounters outside of Flash. These two responses to the sexualized imagery outside of Flash impressed a sense of self-recognition and legibility by masculine youth who were assigned male at birth through the connection and familiarity they displayed to the activities that occur inside the club, which are communicated out to the broader village through advertisements. In comparison, TGNC youth responded to the sexualized imagery in Figures 3 and 4 with criticism, recalling the experiences and feelings of rejection, exclusion, invisibility, and misrecognition they associate with gay cis men’s spaces in the village—despite the visual inclusion of drag queens. The hybridity of hegemonic gay masculinity enables the development of new orientations toward gendered difference that controls its association with feminizing signifiers and, thus, its potential deterioration or failure.

Thus, although the visual representation of drag queens in the advertisements might appear to impress a sense of gender inclusion, these feminine representations perform an important function of gay masculinity’s hybridity within hegemonic masculine structures. Specifically, gay masculinity reaffirms hegemonic masculine ideals while preserving an aesthetic of feminized difference through drag. Critically, the inclusion of feminized difference through drag queens maintains key signifiers of hegemonic masculine ideals—whiteness and the presence of beards on two of the drag queens. These visual traits maintain crucial aspects of hegemonic masculine ideals, encouraging the hybrid function of gay masculinity to stretch and incorporate some forms of gendered difference. In doing so, gay masculinity creates a discursive distance from the privileges offered by hegemonic masculinity without undermining the overarching structure of hegemonic masculinity (Bridges 2014; Maqueda 2020). Importantly, drag queen representation did not appear to stand out as a signal of gendered inclusion for feminine and TGNC youth, and for Jennifer it only further reminded her of the transmisogyny she experienced within gay spaces.

This visual depiction of femininity is contrasted with Figure 2, which presents a history without leather daddies or hypermasculine bodies, and instead with feminine-presenting people, and more people of color, who are central and vital figures to the lively scene. None of the masculine figures in this mural are nude or muscular, have visible body hair, or take up as much visual space as in the other images, and as such this mural does not reproduce the forms of hegemonic masculinity found in other murals throughout the village. Many of the subjects in Figure 2 appear to be people of color, further challenging the erasure and minimization of LGBTQ2+ people of color that are often reproduced in mainstream retellings of Toronto’s queer history (Nolan 2017). In comparison, the older white leather daddy in Figure 1 is positioned in the background of the two younger people of color, impressing a generational story of the white leather daddy as an originating queer figure, oriented toward a queer future with more gendered and racialized difference. Although visually imagining a more inclusive queer future in Figure 1 is not in itself problematic, it reinforces pathways of understanding queer history that fix the cis, white, able-bodied, hypermasculine gay man as the originary figure of queer liberation, and the reason for current LGBTQ2+ rights and freedoms. Such a cultural expression of queer history maintains whiteness, cis-centrism, and hegemonic masculinity in normative positions of cultural and political significance, especially within gay villages. It also recenters whiteness, cis-centrism, and hegemonic masculinity as the nucleus of present and future conditions of queerness, while invisibilizing people of color and feminine TGNC individuals who were historically integral to queer liberation movements.

Whiteness and masculinity are also further fixed through the homonationalist imagery present in the visual representations throughout the village, specifically the Canadian flag that is overlayed onto bodies. The village is an important public site where homonationalist imagery can be displayed, especially with its popular reputation as an LGBTQ + tourist destination and national signifier of Canada’s purported diversity. As a highly public site, portraying homonationalist imagery throughout the village can reinforce a successful gay masculinity that is recognized through the state and is far from failing despite its proximity to diverse representations of gender or race. In the far right image of Figure 3, white masculine figures are coded with Canadian symbolism, reflecting homonationalist discourses of white gay cis men as representative of Western progressive liberalism and Canadian diversity. Placing patriotic iconography onto white gay cis men in event advertisements throughout the village reaffirms a homonationalist discourse of hegemonic gay masculinity belonging within the national fold, and reinforces spatial links between the village—and the clubs being advertised—to the state. Thus although the presentation of ostensibly diverse representation in the village fosters a superficial atmosphere of inclusivity, it does not disrupt or destabilize discourses of Canadian patriotism and its links to whiteness and settler-colonialism.

In observing the nationalist imagery attached to the disabled Brown/Black feminine person in Figure 1, racialized femininity is carefully made legible through a lens of Canadian nationalism. Coding racialized bodies through nationalist imagery, symbols, or both reaffirms the multicultural aim of resolving racial difference to leave networks of power undisturbed. In the context of this large, highly visible image facing the main intersection of the village, a Black/Brown body bearing multiple markers of femininity is projected through the nation, absorbing disabled Black/Brown femininity into the state as a representative of Canadian multiculturalism. As such, the figure’s gendered and racialized difference does not threaten, but rather reaffirms, the stability of homonationalist discourses as a means of neutralizing the proximity of racialized femininity to hegemonic gay masculinity. The nationalist mediation of this figure’s difference grants visibility that other forms of racialized femininity are not, like those in Figure 2 who project no semblance of nationalism and are left safely distant, frequently unseen in an unpopulated alley. A homonationalist orientation enables the representation of gendered and racialized difference to be celebrated as a demonstration of the Canadian nation, and permits closer proximity of femininity without destabilizing hegemonic gay masculinity in the village.

Canadian multiculturalism fixes whiteness as the archetype of Canadian national identity by erasing Indigenous peoples and the country’s colonial history, and diluting the capacity of racialized difference to operate as a political experience, identity, or category (Hage 2000; Haque 2012; Rosenberg 2021b). Canadian multicultural desires are furthered through Figure 1’s vague Indigenous representation. Although attention to LGBTQ2+ Indigeneity is somewhat signaled by placing a gender-diverse Indigenous person in the foreground, the Indigenous symbolism of the Anishinaabe medicine wheel is so subtle that it is difficult to convincingly interpret if this person is Indigenous, particularly as the colors on their hat are not presented in the traditional order of the medicine wheel. This person is also wearing “Western” attire, reducing traditional Indigenous representation in a way that disconnects Indigenous Two-Spirit histories from iterations of Indigenous presents and futures. The figure’s position in front of the forward-facing gazes of the people behind them further visually reproduces Canadian settler-colonial politics, specifically the ways in which white nationalism and Canadian multiculturalism have overseen, and continue to instruct, gender-diverse Indigenous representation. When considered alongside the homonationalist imagery in Figures 1 and 3, this treatment of Indigeneity in Figure 1 communicates the limited terms through which Indigenous peoples can be included in Toronto’s mainstream LGBTQ + community and representations within queer space—through a homonationalist framework that carefully leaves settler-colonialism undisturbed.

The foregrounded person in Figure 1 also depicts TGNC masculinity in relation to the hegemonic gay masculinity signaled behind them, reflecting a person in the process of binding their chest, an intimate act that is displayed onto a landscape that, as Jordan critiqued, is oriented toward a cis, heterosexual audience. This illustrated act draws viewers’ gazes toward their body, as this person’s face is the only one not visible or outward facing, and is instead looking down at their chest. The viewers’ eyes follow this figure’s introspective posture, as well as the activity of their hands, toward their chest, directing attention to the feminized secondary sex characteristics present on the person’s torso. Bodily gendered difference is often a source of emotional and psychological pain and discomfort for TGNC people, and a focus of fetishization that TGNC people experience by cis people, discourses, and cultures. Although transmisogyny often directs the brunt of fetishization toward trans feminine people in everyday (and often violent) social and cultural encounters (Serano 2007), masculine TGNC people also experience anxiety of their identities and bodies being fetishized and objectified by cis people (Lindley, Anzani, and Galupo 2020). The discernible markers of bodily distinction of this masculine TGNC person reflect the experiences shared by many masculine TGNC youth of feeling that their masculinity is othered and does not belong within gay cis men’s spaces.

The gendered representation in Figure 1 projects a white, cisnormative gendered distinction of racialized, masculine TGNC bodies from the hypermasculine white cis bodies that visually saturate the village. This discursive distance from racialized TGNC masculinity fulfills a strategy of hegemonic masculinity of “overdetermining the nature of men” (Moffatt 2011, 7) by reinforcing white cis masculinity as normative to the village through the prevalence of visible sameness among the commonly depicted hegemonic masculine figures. The representation of racialized TGNC masculinity in Figure 1 reinforces a white cis-oriented depiction of gender diversity that fetishizes Indigeneity and trans corporeal difference while fixing white cis masculinity as the prototype of gay masculinity, carrying the potential to further alienate TGNC and racialized people within the village. Much like the nationalist-oriented inclusion of racialized femininity, this carefully designed depiction of racialized TGNC masculinity in a large, public display maintains an effort to discursively distance gendered difference—albeit still masculine—as a potential source of gay masculinity’s failure.

The deliberate displays of gendered difference within the village illuminate the pervasive nature of hegemonic masculinity within queer spaces, and how hegemonic masculinity operates beyond feminine–masculine binaries through its reinforcement of racialized, cisnormative, able-bodied, and settler-colonial logics. Hegemonic gay masculine imagery throughout the village both maintains a strong visual presence of hegemonic masculine ideals and dilutes the inclusion of gendered difference through homonationalism. Homonationalism supports the operatives of hegemonic masculinity by further legitimating the masculine subjects depicted throughout the village, and also by shaping representations of gendered and racialized difference to carefully reinforce normative white, masculine, and cis structures of power. Doing so abates the potential failure of hegemonic gay masculinity when proximate to gendered difference, especially in visual representations throughout visible public spaces in the village.

The superficiality of gendered and racialized inclusion is reflected in the social dynamics youth recounted while walking through the village. Feminine TGNC participants experienced routine misgendering, and both subtle and overt forms of rejection, when encountering cis gay masculinity within the village. As well, racialized masculine TGNC youth also noted a feeling of not belonging socially within the village, implying that their expressions of masculinity do not fit within gay cis men’s cultures, and that the whiteness of these social spaces are unwelcoming for people of color. Mediating gendered and racialized difference through hegemonic gay masculinity, especially with the aid of homonationalism, does not produce meaningful change in the everyday social encounters of feminine and TGNC youth in the village, particularly those who are Indigenous or people of color. Displays of gendered difference in the village can superficially present a hopeful story of increased racialized and TGNC inclusion. However, a deeper analysis into this imagery and the social spaces they exist within reveals hegemonic gay masculinity’s hold over queer environments, cultures, and everyday social relations, as well as the continued role of the state in dictating the limitations of gendered and racialized legibility.

Illuminating the Geographies of Hegemonic Gay Masculinity

Visual representations of gendered bodies throughout Toronto’s village illustrate the multiple structures of power that construct the everyday social and cultural geographies of a queer urban space for feminine and TGNC youth experiencing homelessness. The dynamic interplay between depictions of hegemonic gay masculinity and the social relations experienced by feminine and TGNC youth in the village make visible the scalar collisions of white, masculine, cis, and settler-colonial dominance across bodies, urban neighborhoods, and the state, notably through the ways in which Canadian homonationalism is incorporated into the visual cultures of the village. As evident through the visual analysis of public art and advertisements, gendered representations in the village culturally maintain structures of hegemonic masculinity in queer space, as hegemonic masculine ideals like muscularity, hairiness, whiteness, able-bodiedness, and cisnormativity are reinforced as the normative symbols of queer legibility. Gender operates in queer space not only as a means of describing, categorizing, and affecting bodies coded along spectra of feminine, masculine, and other gendered identities and expressions, but also as a tool through which racialized and settler-colonial structures of power are reinscribed onto queer bodies and within queer cultural expressions.

Visual imagery communicates what, and how, forms of gendered difference are tolerable in proximity to hegemonic gay masculinity within the village. In highly public queer spaces, gendered difference requires a homonationalist lens to defend the stability of hegemonic gay masculinity. Figure 1 presents a hypervisible representation of gendered and racialized difference through homonationalism, alongside imagery of a hegemonic masculine body, while the gendered and racialized difference in Figure 2 remains obscured in an unpopulated alley, decaying with a lack of upkeep. Hegemonic gay masculinity in the village is visually crafted through what it is not—racialized, disabled, Indigenous, TGNC, and feminine—unless these forms of difference are framed through the Canadian state. Hegemonic gay masculinity remains centralized in the public imaginary of the village, fixed as the normative queer subject through the assistance of homonationalist imagery.

In reflecting on the research participants, few who identified as gay cis men responded positively to representations of hegemonic gay masculinity, other than Justin and Jordan’s responses to imagery in Figures 3 and 4, and Tyrell and Tony’s to Figure 1. It is possible that regardless of the nationalist or superficial frameworks, displays of racialized LGBTQ2+ people offer forms of self-recognition for cis gay youth of color, like three of the four participants noted earlier, in an otherwise white-dominated space. This is difficult to infer, though, given that neither Jordan, Tyrell, or Tony commented explicitly on the racial representation within the images they reacted to, and that Jordan’s only comment was a critique of Figure 1’s orientation toward heterosexual and cis people visiting the village. Most feminine and TGNC youth also did not comment on or appear to notice the representation of Figure 1, despite its high visibility and depiction of gendered and racialized difference. The relative silence of racialized and gender-diverse youth participants on these highly visible representations of gender-diverse bodies further questions if, and how successfully, such imagery can foster a sense of belonging for feminine and TGNC youth without more substantial and systematic efforts to counter femmephobia, transmisogyny, and transphobia within queer spaces.

The responses of feminine and TGNC youth to visual representations of gendered bodies in the village signifies the ways in which hegemonic gay masculinity instructs and abets femmephobic, transmisogynist, and transphobic social geographies within queer space, and crucially their inseparable relationship to racism, settler-colonialism, and homonationalism. Feminine and TGNC youth responded to representations of hegemonic masculinity by reflecting on their experiences of vulnerability, fetishization, and exclusion, impressing the isolation and exclusion that emerges from their relations with hegemonic gay masculinity in the village. Masculine TGNC youth also expressed a sense of being unwanted and not belonging among gay cis men. These experiences of social exclusion are further compounded by race, as indicated through the reflections of racialized and Indigenous feminine and TGNC youth that the white masculinity of the village cultivates a queer space that is not meant for them. Racism, transmisogyny, and transphobia within queer cultures, social relations, and spaces emphasize the dilemma of hybrid masculinities to “challenge and/or perpetuate systems of inequality” (Bridges 2014, 60), particularly when visual signifiers of subordination are used as a means of concealing coveted access to masculine, white, and able-bodied privilege. Hegemonic gay masculinity in the village signals particular gendered and racialized inclusions and exclusions that maintain signifiers of its subordination—like drag queens and same-gender intimacy among hypermasculine racialized men. However, cultural depictions of hegemonic masculine ideals simultaneously reflect exclusionary social dynamics within the village. The combined visual cultures and exclusionary social relations of hegemonic gay masculinity thus illuminate the ways in which queer spaces continue to be hostile and unwelcoming environments for multiply marginalized LGBTQ2+ people.

In analyzing visual gendered representations alongside the accounts of Toronto’s village by LGBTQ2+ youth experiencing homelessness, this article has presented how queer geographies of exclusion unfold for feminine and TGNC youth in queer urban space. Gendered difference within hegemonic gay masculine orders, and the ways they unfold within queer spaces, are inherently racialized, as are the experiences of exclusion they produce. To access these experiences of exclusion is to already have the potential for inclusion through whiteness and masculinity, however deviant that masculinity might be. In other words, the whiteness of hegemonic gay masculinity renders little to no possibilities of inclusion for racialized LGBTQ2+ youth. Masculinity through a hegemonic gay masculine order is not achievable for participants of color. As such, to be racialized is also to be marked as a gendered other that threatens the stability of hegemonic gay masculinity. Considering queer spatial dynamics of unbelonging and their inseparable relationship to whiteness therefore raises the question of how, and if, social justice and political change in support of racialized, Indigenous, feminine, disabled, TGNC, young, and housing-precarious LGBTQ2+ people can occur in a queer environment so powerfully rooted in hegemonic gay masculinity. Feminine and TGNC youth cannot be adequately supported and cared for without dismantling hegemonic gay masculinity’s grip on the social and cultural dynamics within queer spaces. Until the structures of hegemonic gay masculinity that remain anchored in mainstream queer environments are comprehensively uprooted, queer geographies of white supremacy, settler-colonialism, ableism, cisnormativity, and homonationalism will continue to evolve and birth new ways of neutralizing and rejecting LGBTQ2+ gendered and racialized difference.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to the anonymous reviewers and editors of this journal, especially Dr. Kendra Strauss, for their flexibility, feedback, and generosity throughout the revisions process. My deepest gratitude extends to the research participants and my colleagues Dr. Hannah Awcock and Dr. Ale Boussalem for their thoughts on previous drafts of this article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rae D. Rosenberg

RAE D. ROSENBERG is a Lecturer in the School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9XP, UK. E-mail: [email protected]. His interests include forms of resistance, contestations, and experiences of (un)belonging among multiply marginalized LGBTQ2+ people.

Notes

1 Forms of gender inclusion also exist within gay men’s communities (Childs 2016; McGlynn 2021).

2 Multiple attempts to identify the artist of this banner were unsuccessful, including contacting several people at the 519 and the Village BIA, and I was unable to determine what object this person is holding. No participants appeared to know what this object was.

3 Some statements by Rhys are summarized, as he requested for some quotes to be removed from his transcript.

4 Although beyond the scope of this article, the imagery being analyzed might also have a distinct impact on the social relations of LGBTQ2+ youth experiencing homelessness within the village due to their unique relationships with public space.