Ask and Tell: Gay Veterans, Identity, and Oral History on a Civil Rights Frontier

In 1993 the "don't ask, don't tell" policy legislated the silenceof gay and lesbian soldiers on active duty and in the reserves.This silence about gays in the military has led to a collectiveamnesia about the patriotic service and courageous sacrificesof homosexual troops. If we forget that gay and lesbian Americanshave served their country, then we as a nation are much lesslikely to view them as full citizens, deserving of civil rightsand equal protection of the law. Oral history provides one wayto break this silence, to "ask and tell" about the militarycareers of gay and lesbian soldiers and to allow these veteransto speak for themselves about the current military policy. Basedon more than fifty interviews with gay and lesbian veterans,this article chronicles the evolution of military policy regardinghomosexuality since World War II, and it explores the intersectionof veterans' identities based on race, sexuality, and militaryservice. As these interviews illustrate, gays and lesbians haveserved honorably in the military during times of war and peace.Far from undermining unit cohesion or morale, these troops havestrengthened America's armed forces. Interviews with gay andlesbian veterans provide an opportunity to explore several themesunderlying the debate about homosexuality and military service:1) the relationship between racism and homophobia in the military;2) varying attitudes about military service within gay communities;3) contrasting experiences of gay men and lesbians in the military;and 4) the evolving nature of gay veterans' identities.     

Virtual youth: non-heterosexual young people's use of the internet to negotiate their identities and socio-sexual relations

This article explores the ways that non-heterosexual young people are negotiating their identities and socio-sexual relations on the internet in the UK. Drawing on the key concepts of embodiment and performativity, and based on in-depth qualitative research with non-heterosexual youth and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth workers, this article investigates the use of social networking websites which have been specifically designed for LGBT users, and the connections between virtual and material spaces in young people's everyday lives. This research reveals that although the internet is an important medium through which new and existing socio-sexual trajectories are being negotiated, there is also a more complex and multi-dimensional relationship between young people's online and offline realities.     

‘The greatest loss was a loss of our history’: natural disasters,marginalised identities and sites of memory

This paper examines intersections between space, materiality, memory and identity in relation to lesbian and gay experiences of recent disasters in Australia. Drawing on interviews with lesbians and gay men in two disaster sites, the paper argues that disaster impacts may include the loss of sites of memory that inform and underpin the formation and maintenance of marginalised identities. We explore the ways in which social marginality is experienced by sexual minorities during disasters as a result of threats to sites of lesbian and gay memory. The paper contributes to scholarship in geographies of memory by investigating the impacts of disasters on how memory is spatially located and experienced.     

Gay and lesbian emotional geographies of clubbing: reflections from Paris and Turin

Urban nighttime entertainment spaces, including bars, pubs, and clubs, are a crucial space for the performance of gendered social relations and the experience of sexual identities. This article investigates the emotional spaces of commercial gay and lesbian recreation in two different settings: lesbian nights in Paris, France, and gay clubs in Turin, Italy. This research was carried out through direct observation and auto-ethnographic fieldwork. Drawing on the literature from emotional geographies, the article proposes an alternative take on the geography of gay and lesbian clubbing by applying the metaphors of the island and the archipelago from cultural geography to the gay and lesbian scene. The island and archipelago are presented as metaphors that imply emotions, performance, materiality, spatiality, strategy, and imagination in the performance of the gay and lesbian playscape. The article argues that the club, intended as a type of gay and lesbian island, does not necessarily imply a condition of insulation. Rather, the island implies both metaphor and materiality, and movement may also be considered an emotional strategy for gays and lesbians in the heteronormative urban space.     

IDENTITIES AND URBAN SOCIAL SPACES IN LITTLE TOKYO,LOS ANGELES: JAPANESE AMERICANS IN TWO ETHNO‐SPIRITUAL COMMUNITIES

Ethnic identities are expressed and articulated in particular places. These mutable identities are crucial sources of meaning in the lives of social actors. This article seeks to elucidate just how the contexts of specific institutions in an urban enclave will impact upon patterns of conflict and cooperation among different subgroups practising two religious traditions. Historical discourses of ethnic community and ‘race’, shifts in migration patterns and the changing nature of the Little Tokyo enclave provide the formative patterns of social spaces, in which ethnic actors seek to create lives of spiritual and material meaning and security. Barth's concept of the social organization of cultural difference encourages analysis of ethnic identities as a dynamic and mutable enterprise. Because the maintenance of boundaries is crucial to identities, the manner in which a group seeks to maintain difference is intermeshed with the social terrain of particular places. Through qualitative methods of semi‐structured and informal interviews and participant observations, this project engages Japanese American identities within the context of two religious communities in an urban enclave. Fieldwork was conducted in two institutions, a Protestant church and a Buddhist temple, with the aim of exploring how Japanese American identities are expressed and (re)negotiated within different ethno‐spiritual communities. Such communities are fundamental to the expression of ethnic identities, and to the emotional lives of worshippers, particularly seniors and new immigrants.     

Intimate mobilities: emotional embodiment and queer migration

This paper offers theoretically-informed empirical insights into queer migration in the contemporary West. Understanding the rationales, patterns and outcomes of migration is important for scholars researching the life experiences of gay men, lesbians and other non-heterosexuals. This paper advances knowledge of queer migration by interpreting interview data from thirty-seven gay and lesbian Australians. The analysis is prompted by a qualitative and narrative turn in migration studies, and the urgings of new mobility studies to account for the embodied and emotional dimensions of migration. Interrogating gay and lesbian Australians' migration narratives over the life course, I scrutinise the emotionally embodied nature of queer migration. I focus on the body as a vector of displacement, and explore how emotions, desires and intimate attachments shape queer mobilities. Respondents particularly emphasised the roles of ‘comfort’ and ‘love’ in relocation decisions. I found that these feelings interleaved with three patterns of emotionally embodied queer migration in the data—coming out, gravitational and relationship migrations. The embodied affects of comfort played a key role in coming out and gravitational migrations, while the exigencies of love underpinned relationship migration.     

Migration motives of gay men in the new acceptance era: a cohort study from Malmö, Sweden

Greater diversity in life courses has become both possible and real in the twenty-first century, affecting the relocation behaviours of individuals. Therefore, it is logical that the relocation patterns of minorities have been receiving increasing attention. In particular, the migration patterns of gay men have been studied, with a focus on the embodied reasons for mobility. This downsized analysis has shown the importance of identity building and identity search. However, this article argues that analysis of migration among gay men also needs to be upsized. This study aims to show how both context and embodiment has affected the mobility of gay men. Through a case study within the context of a strong welfare state (Sweden) that adopted sexual equality early, gay men’s motives for migration are studied. The results suggest that the migration patterns of gay men are becoming more similar to those of the general population. This finding shows that current conceptualisations of the migration patterns of gay men can be advanced by acknowledging contextual effects. The integration of a downsized and an upsized understanding also offers the possibility of moving beyond the identity specifics showing that populations are becoming increasingly diverse and homogeneous simultaneously.     

Towards transnational gender identity. A case study of Polish children growing up in Norway

This article focuses on migration experiences of Polish children living in one of the most gender-equal countries in the world – in Norway. Empirically, the article is based on 30 semi-structured interviews with children aged 6–13 who were born in Poland and migrated with their parents to Norway after Poland’s accession to the European Union. Observation of their rooms during the interview also contributed to the study. We discuss ways in which gender roles, practices and identities are shaped by mobility in the Polish-Norwegian context and how ideas about girls/women and boys/men are affected by the migration experience. The article seeks to explore children’s experiences in the two highly contrasting and differentiated contexts: one where the children were socialized and the other where they then moved, the former being highly traditional in terms of gender, the latter emphasizing gender equality. We argue that the Polish home is the most important site for the formation of the traditional gender identity, while the Norwegian school and peer group are the most important sites for the formation of the modern gender identity. This situation causes tension and ambivalence with regard to children’s gender identities across a number of different spaces and spheres of their lives.     

PLACE ELASTICITY: EXPLORING A NEW CONCEPTUALIZATION OF MOBILITY AND PLACE ATTACHMENT IN RURAL AMERICA

Migration and place attachment are often coupled within the migration decision‐making literature with the underlying assumption that individuals with strong place attachments are less likely to migrate than individuals with weaker ties to place. As communication technologies have improved, however, new forms of place attachment and connections between individuals and places are evolving. We introduce the concept of place elasticity as a new conceptualization of place attachment made possible by innovations in communication and transportation technologies. Place elasticity allows individuals to live in distant locales while maintaining close interaction with a particular place. We explore this concept with questionnaires and interviews from a sample of individuals from rural Appalachian counties in eastern Kentucky. Rural residents of this region have been noted for their strong place attachments and connections to their home county. Based on our questionnaires and interviews from family reunions we propose that place elasticity has three distinct characteristics: portability, strong place bonds, and permanence and that these traits allow individuals to remain connected to home counties and family, thereby allowing migration and settlement in distant locations with minimal loss of connectedness.     

Contesting Identity: Politics of gays and lesbians in Toronto in the 1970s: Identidad en Conflicto: políticas de gays y lesbianas en Toronto en los años 1970

This article explores a particular moment in the history of Toronto's gay movement politics when the movements' ideological perspectives on the nature of gay and lesbian identities and associated spaces shifted dramatically from the so-called liberationist stance of the mid-1970s to the so-called ethnic minority approach of the late 1970s. This occurred within the context of a particular series of events that prompted gay activists to rework their conceptualization of gay and lesbian identity in order to be recognized as legitimate participants in certain pivotal, public proceedings. Far from being a well-thought-out and deliberate shift in political strategy, the ‘minority’ argument was, in many ways, a reflexive and unexamined response to unanticipated circumstances. Toronto's gay activists, in representing gays and lesbians as a minority fundamentally altered meanings associated with both gay and lesbian identities and with the spaces dominated or controlled by gay and lesbian interests.

Este artículo explora un momento particular en la historia de las políticas del movimiento de los gays de Toronto cuando sus perspectivas ideológicas sobre la naturaleza de identidades gay y lesbiana y sus espacios respectivos cambiaron dramáticamente, desde la llamada ‘perceptiva liberacionista’ de los mediados de los años setenta hasta la llamada ‘perspectiva de las minorías étnica’ de los últimos años de los setentas. Esta cambio ocurrió dentro del contexto de una serie particular de eventos que incitaron a los activistas gay a revisar sus conceptualizaciónes sobre su identidad gay y lesbiana con el fin de ser reconocidos como participantes legítimos en ciertos procesos públicos. Lejos de ser un cambio bien planeado y deliberado en la estrategia política, el argumento de la ‘minoría’ consistía, de varios maneras, en una repuesta no reflexiva no examinada a circunstancias inesperadas. Los activistas gay de Toronto, al representar a los gays y lesbianas como minorías, alteraron de manera fundamental los significados asociados tanto a las identidades de gays y lesbianas como los espacios dominados o controlados por intereses de gays y lesbianas.     

Trans experiences in lesbian and queer space

This article explores how individuals who identify as transgendered and transsexual men experience the internal possibilities, limitations, and resistances found in spaces identified as ‘lesbian’ or as ‘queer’ in the City of Toronto. The article draws on interview data transcribing the experiences of 12 transgender and transsexual individuals in LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer) spaces. These interviews empirically illustrate how fluid and unfixed gendered and sexualized practices can transform spaces and their occupants. Further, this article considers the ways spaces may be ‘queered’ and the implications of these processes on the constitution of LGBTQ spaces. The experiences of transmen in lesbian and queer spaces bring into sharp relief the complex ways that material spaces, even those arising out of resistive impulses, incorporate disciplining expectations and new opportunities. Those who research or utilize these places must be attentive to these processes, if there is to be a serious commitment to the creation of libratory, inclusive spaces.     

Locating Lesbian Parent Families: Everyday negotiations of lesbian motherhood in Britain

Although there is some research on lesbian sexuality and space I contend that such analyses do not account for the ways in which lesbian parent families' actions and subjectivities are structured through the time–space nexus. The particularities of mothers' management of their maternal–sexual identities remain uncharted. In this article I interrogate how lesbian parent families negotiate everyday places, such as the street and schools and how they inhabit and produce space. I address their dis-location within academic studies, situating the home as critical in lesbian parents' consolidation of self. Home represents one of the few places where the sexual and maternal identities of lesbian parents may be reconciled. I suggest that the multiple identifications and subject positions of lesbian mothers and their families need to be acknowledged so that they may be included within the queer cartography of lesbian and gay space. The data cited in this article come from in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 18 lesbian mothers and 13 of their children, who live across the Yorkshire region in the United Kingdom.

Mientras hay algún estudios del espacio y la sexualidad de lesbianas, contiendo que estos exámenes no dan razón de las maneras en que las acciones y subjetividades de padres lesbianas son estructurados por el nexos del espacio y tiempo. Las particularidades del manejo de los identidades materna y sexualidad de madres todavía quedan no examinado. En este articulo interrogo como las padres lesbianas negocian lugares cotidianos, tal como las calles y la escuela, y como ellas habitan y producen espacios. Exploro sus dis-localización dentro de los estudios académicos, situando el hogar como critica en la consolidación de sus mismos de padres lesbianas. El hogar representa uno de los lugares en donde las identidades de sexualidad y materna de padres lesbianas pueden ser reconciliados. Sugiero que las identificaciones y los posiciones sujetos múltiples de madres lesbianas y sus familias tienen que ser reconocidos así que puedan incluidos en la cartografía queer del espacio gay y lesbianas. Los datos en este artículo son de entrevistas semi-estructurados y profundos con 18 madres lesbianas y 13 de sus hijos, los cuales viven en el región Yorkshire del Inglaterra.     

Confusing the grid: spatiotemporalities,queer imaginaries,and movement

Mediating between queer theory's privileging of time as actor and geographic emphases on material spaces and identities, this article engages feminist geographies and the work of Deleuze and Guattari to understand the implications of time and space as imagined, or actors' spatiotemporal imaginaries. We draw on Massumi's metaphor of the ‘grid,’ which sediments ways of seeing self and other and logics for action and interaction. The grid incites imaginaries of time as active and space as passive, which evoke past, present, and future, offering coordinates for locating identities. Focusing on spatiotemporality, we conduct a discourse analysis of interviews with two Chilean lesbian-feminist activists, focusing on (1) overtly spatial and temporal dimensions (nation, region, history), (2) the constitution of lesbian space and identity (identity, visibility, consciousness, and community), and (3) oppositional entities that stabilize lesbian identity and space (men, gay men, feminists, universities, and queer). We demonstrate how the activists' imagining of Chile as a space with a linear history with a fixed past and present directs their actions to a particular future of pre-given positions. Nonetheless, we point to moments of disidentificatory movement that returns analytic attention to process, creation, and the open potentiality of movement. The politics of spatiotemporal imaginaries offers activists, geographers, and queer theorists ways of narrating sexualized subjects and politics that are not repetitive of identitarian debates, history as necessary sequence, or spaces as material.     

BEFORE THE DELUGE: CANADIANS ON FOREIGN OWNERSHIP, 1920–1955

More Americans now reside in Canada than at any time since the Vietnam War. This article documents and analyzes the migration, settlement, and identity of US-born residents in three Canadian cities. My work helps fill the gap in the scholarly literature on issues related to international migration at the Canadian–US borderlands. The article's overarching goal is to illustrate that transnationality, as exhibited by US immigrants in Canada, is far more complex than prior studies of transnational identity have indicated. Findings from this study indicate that transnational linkages and identities are geographically and temporally contingent and are, as such, a reflection of both time and place. My comparison of the shifting identities of American migrants who reside in three different metropolitan areas in Canada allows a more critical analysis of the ever-shifting terrain of transnational identities as they are expressed in different contexts. Data analyzed for this study were compiled from the Canadian census for the years 1961 through 2006, survey questionnaires, unstructured and structured interviews, and on-site field work.     

大型购物中心与幼童母亲的多重身份建构——女性主义、家庭化、公共与私人空间的超越

大型购物中心成为研究现代都市女性身份与社会、空间关系的三棱镜。本文聚焦于"幼童母亲"这一群体,探究其身份认同与购物中心的相互建构过程。通过南京市虹悦城购物中心的研究发现,幼童母亲在购物中心内建立起了多种身份认同,并在身份认同驱使下形成多重实践。这一过程使得幼童母亲在购物空间中突破了传统的公共空间与私人空间的二元划分,借助私密空间的综合性和社会化实现了女性自我个性的释放,实现了社会性别空间的重新定义,同时也重新定义和建构了大型购物中心这一现代都市消费空间。     

Heroes and Invaders: Gay and Lesbian pride parades and the public/private distinction in New Zealand media accounts

Public space is constructed as heterosexual space in at least two senses. First, heterosexuality in public is regarded as unproblematic, whereas lesbian and gay identities are policed by subtle or overt means. Second, heterosexuality is not obviously marked in public. In this article these positions are used as a starting point to investigate the complexities of the relationships between heterosexuality, homosexuality and the public and private spheres. Much of the discussion takes as its basis the media coverage of New Zealand's lesbian and gay pride parades. Recent heterosexist discourse in New Zealand implies that gay men and lesbians are leaving the private sphere and are forcing a politicisation of both the public sphere and the metaphorical space of the private, heterosexual mind. A discursive inversion occurs whereby the homosexual subject becomes powerful and tyrannous, and the heterosexual is coerced and oppressed. Crucial to such discourse is a mobilisation of the conservative tendencies of liberalism, and an attendant denial of the privileged position granted to heterosexuality .     

Visions of visibility: LGBT communities in Turin

Recent anti-discrimination campaigns by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual (LGBT) activists in Italy have increased the visibility of these communities and individuals, but have not resulted in the desired improvements to legislation. In light of this situation, this article analyses modalities of ‘visibility’ as defined and desired by the active LGBT community in Turin, host city for National Pride 2006. The Pride committee scheduled an unprecedentedly ‘visible’ year-long programme of consciousness-raising and cultural events that went far beyond the more usual one-day march. Drawing on a series of interviews with members of the committee and of the lesbian community conducted in Turin in March and June 2006, the discussion explores social, cultural and political visibility in this LGBT community as it hosted National Pride.

I think people live in a state of non-visibility, lacking self-acceptance; there are gay men and lesbians in Italy who are in hiding. (Andrea Benedino)1 1.?Interview conducted by the author, 31 March 2006.      

身份认同与具身体验内在响应研究——以中国“同志”赴泰旅游为例

同性恋旅游正在成为一个全新的旅游细分市场,而身份认同作为中国“同志”在旅游过程中的自我认同和身份的确认,在旅游体验的获得上具有较为紧密的关联。身份认同与旅游具身体验的响应研究以中国“同志”赴泰旅游为例,通过16位中国“同志”旅游者五天四夜的赴泰旅游日记的撰写,并结合后续通过3位日记撰写受访者和6位赴泰旅游的受访者的深度访谈逐字稿进行访谈,探讨中国“同志”赴泰的身份认同与具身体验响应的内在关联研究。研究表明,中国“同志”赴泰旅游体验是实现身份认同和自我认同的具身性实践和反思,也是叙事性内容建构的过程,进而得出身份认同与旅游具身体验内在关联的叙事过程性空间模型。本研究将补足深化和拓宽亚洲“同志”的身份认同与具身体验的研究较少的现状,做了进一步的细分旅行者行为和心理的研究。     

Turbulent Lives: Exploring the Cultural Meaning of Regional Youth Migration

Migration is an important part of the lives of many young adults. In numerous areas around the world, and particularly in regional and remote areas, cultures have emerged where the migration of young adults is normalised and expected. While the impact of the migration of young adults on the areas they have left and have moved to has received considerable attention in both political and academic arenas, there is a need for more research that addresses the cultural meaning of migration and the importance of the migration process for young people themselves. The paper is based on two large research projects undertaken between 2000 and 2005, which focused on the experiences of migration of young adults in Tasmania, and includes data sourced from interviews and focus groups with young migrants as well as an analysis of media and policy documents. We discuss the ‘turbulent lives’ of young people in Tasmania, including the expectations and aspirations of young adults growing up in a culture in which migration is normalised and their experiences of leaving, and returning to, their childhood homes. These issues are considered in the context of recent theoretical debates surrounding the impact of mobility and attachment to place on the identities of migrants.