Originally published 1 June 2010 | ||
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Similar In a Queer Time and Place: Tr, Autobiography of an androgyne, The Hoarders: Material, Queering the Underwor | ||
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.
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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,” an imaginary ‘in which the city represents a beacon of tolerance and gay community, the country a locus of persecution and gay absence."
In this sense, queer anti-urbanism may be best cast as critical opposition to the ideals of homonormative and metronormative ways of life.
Queer Metronormativity
Jack Halberstam articulates queer metronormativity in relation 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.” The narrative purports that the only means for queer community, happiness, or open existence is within the city. This narrative inherently devalues rural existence with urban stereotypes and myths of rural life. Rural people are commonly depicted in media and otherwise as un-intelligent, dirty, and intolerant. The stereotypes and myths persist largely on well publicized instances of rural hate-violence (Brandon Teena), which confirm stereotypes of rural people, generally, as violent bigots and rural queers as only victims. 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 lens of metronormativity. The effect of this invisibility is evident in the media, (most) academic, and judicial depictions of gay identity. Even on television shows, the representations of queer life show that rural queers are oppressed, while urban queers flourish. The cumulative effect of this narrative and rural invisibility is that queer-rural-urban-migration is socially constructed as compulsory.
Further, metronormativity not only deems urban migration compulsory, but also following the norms of metronormative/homonormative gay culture is constructed as compulsory. Herring asserts that these norms can be divided into four categories that encapsulate metronormativity, the categories being the narratological, the racial, the socioeconomic, and the aesthetic. In order to “properly” construct oneself as urban, even if already in an urban environment, one must dress the “right” way, make enough money to participate in gay male consumer culture, and effectively be white, or one fails at metronormativity. Failing at metronormativity seemingly confirms the myths and stereotypes of the rural which a metronormative worldview purports. Thus, the performance of metronormativelty perpetuates itself by encouraging rural queers to hide their origins and conform to metronormativity, further erasing rural queer life and visibility.
Metronormativity operates upon the false dichotomy of rural/urban queer existence. It assumes that while the two differ, there is no difference between queer lives in different urban areas and definitely not any difference between queer life in different rural areas (because it also presupposes that there is no queer life in rural areas).
Critical Rusticity
Queer Anti-Urbanism actualizes itself as argument and practice in a variety of ways, which Herring refers to as Critical Rusticity. In opposition to the white-male centric, upper-middle class, (metronormative) culture that dominates many ”gay” urban areas, many women formed rural, all female “Lesbian Separatist” communities. In these cases women consciously spurned “the city” for rural alternatives to the subjugated status they were forced to inhabit under metronormative white-male gay culture. This is opposite narrative to gay rural urban migration provides a narrative of Queer Anti-Urbanism in the sense that the values of metronormativity are defied and a rural, but very queer, new value system is put in its place. Similarly, Rural Fairie Digest and Country Women were publications which publicly eschewed Urban life in lieu of a distinctly rural queer life. These publications countered rural queer erasure, provided alternatives to gay consumer culture by providing ‘how to’s’ on DIY ‘country skills,’ and to some extent provided rural queer community, even for people who were geographically isolated. Also, rural people who simply live different lives and have queer identities or desires defy metronormativity by disrupting the expectation of what it means to be queer. Asserting queer identity in a rural place that does not happen to line up with what queer identity is “supposed to” look like in an urban setting is powerfully anti-urban, because it makes visible the opposite possibility of metronormativity: differences in rural queer life and urban queer life may not be accounted for by deficiency, but merely value neutral difference.