Privileged Locations? Sexuality, Class and Geography

Abstract

The negotiation of everyday space is often difficult for lesbian and gay parents across the class spectrum, also complicated by complex child-care arrangements and legalities, negotiated across household, regional and even international borders. The difficulties in being a parent are multiplied manifold by the addition of a sexual-spatial dimension. However, these difficulties are not always cross class constants with many middle-class interviewees frequently attributing homophobia to working-class others, apparently separating out such structuring features in individualising these to a certain sector of society (Moran, 2000; Taylor, 2004). A more complex tale depicted the variously classed forms of homophobia, from a subtle silence to a strident scream, complicated in the geographic structuring of inter and intra rural/urban divides, where more cosmopolitan places were thought of as ‘streets ahead’ in their diverse ‘tolerance’ — such places were both protective and privileged locales, structured through classed inclusions and exclusions. Sex and the city would seem to be more than just escapism, representing instead the belief in the importance of geography: it’s not what you do, it’s the place that you do it (and the group you belong to whilst doing it).