Queer anti-urbanism

Queer anti-urbanism is a term used within the field of queer studies to describe theoretical viewpoints which challenge the validity of the assertion that queer identity/practice(s) is inseparable from the urban.[1]

As described by Scott Herring, who largely popularized the term, queer anti-urbanism is “a means to critically negotiate the relentless urbanisms that often characterize any United States based 'gay imaginary'... in which the city represents a beacon of tolerance and gay community, the country a locus of persecution and gay absence."[1] In this sense, queer anti-urbanism can be thought of as critical opposition to homonormative and metronormative ways of life.[2]

Queer metronormativity

Jack Halberstam relates queer metronormativity to the dominant "story of migration from 'country' to 'town'... a spatial narrative within which the subject moves to a place of tolerance after enduring life in a place of suspicion, persecution, and secrecy.”[3] This narrative purports that the only means of achieving queer community, happiness, and open existence is via an urban lifestyle, inherently devaluing rural existence by way of stereotypes concerning urban and rural ways of life.[4]

Rural people are commonly depicted in media and otherwise as un-intelligent, dirty, and intolerant; these stereotypes and myths persist largely through well-publicized rural hate crimes (i.e. Brandon Teena's assault and murder) that seemingly support stereotypes of rural people as violent bigots and of rural queers as mere victims.[4] The propagation and persistence of these myths lend themselves to the assumption that rural queer people do not and cannot exist; queer people who live happily in rural areas are thus denied existence under the dominant view of metronormativity.[4] This invisibility is evident in many media, academic, and judicial depictions of gay identity: for example, a television show may depict rural queers living under oppression while urban queers flourish.[4]

The cumulative effect of the metronormative narrative and the subsequent rural invisibility is that queer rural-urban migration becomes a socially-constructed compulsory act, as does adherence to the norms of metronormative/homonormative gay culture.[2] Herring divides these norms into four categories – the narratological, the socioeconomic, the aesthetic, and the racial.[2] In order to “properly” conform to urban society, one must accept the metronormative narrative, make enough money to participate in gay male consumer culture, dress the “right” way, and effectively "be white."[2] Failing to do so seemingly confirms the myths and stereotypes that underlie a metronormative worldview; metronormativity thus perpetuates itself by encouraging rural queers to hide their origins and conform, thereby further erasing rural queer life and visibility.[4]

Metronormativity operates upon the false dichotomy of rural vs. urban queer existence. It assumes that while the two existences differ from each other, there is no difference between queer life in different urban areas, nor any difference between queer life in different rural areas – since, according to metronormative queer society, rural queer life does not exist.[5]

Critical rusticity

Queer anti-urbanism manifests in practice in a variety of ways, which Herring refers to under the umbrella term of "critical rusticity."[1][2] Some examples include the rural, all-female “Lesbian Separatist” communities that consciously spurned “the city” in favor of rural alternatives to a subjugated status under metronormative, white-male-centric, upper-middle-class gay culture.[2] Such communities contradicted the gay rural-urban migration narrative, defying the values of metronormativity and replacing them with a new value system that was simultaneously rural and queer.[2] Publications such as Rural Fairie Digest and Country Women countered rural queer erasure, provided alternatives to gay consumer culture through ‘how to’s’ on DIY ‘country skills,’ and to some extent provided a sense of rural queer community even for those who were geographically isolated.[2] Even without associating with a larger movement, queer individuals who live rural lifestyles can defy metronormativity and challenge the definition of "queerness" simply through their existence. Asserting rural queer identity in opposition to what queer identity is “supposed to” be (i.e. urban) promotes an alternative to metronormativity, where differences in rural queer life and urban queer life are viewed not as deficiencies, but rather as value-neutral differences.[5]

See also

References
  1. Herring, Scott (2010). Another Country. ; Queer Anti-Urbanism ([Online-Ausg.]. ed.). New York: New York University Press. p. 13. ISBN 9780814737194.
  2. Herring, Scott (June 2007). "Out of the Closets, Into the Woods: RFD, Country Women, and the Post-Stonewall Emergence of Queer Anti-urbanism". American Quarterly. 59 (2): 341–372. doi:10.1353/aq.2007.0043. Retrieved 9 December 2014.
  3. Halberstam, Judith (2005). In a queer time and place transgender bodies, subcultural lives. New York: New York Univ. Press. ISBN 9780814735855.
  4. Jerke, Bud (2011). "Queer Ruralism". Harvard Journal of Law and Gender. 34.
  5. Stapel, Christopher (14 August 2010). Reclaiming Rural Ruralities: (Anti)Metronormative (De)Colinization of Rural Space and Place (doc). American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, Hilton Atlanta and Atlanta Marriott Marquis. Atlanta GA. Retrieved 8 December 2014.
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