Ambivalently post-lesbian: LBQ friendships in the rural Midwest

Abstract

Using data from friendship interviews with lesbian, bisexual, and queer women in a small Midwestern city, I argue that non-urban communities might be characterized as ambivalently post-lesbian, as participants explain that shared identities "don't matter" in their friendships, while continuing to insist on the relevance of lesbian identity in their community. This research highlights three sets of concerns about lesbian communities, identities, and friendships. First, given the theoretical purchase of the concept of "post-gay" communities, there is a parallel need to develop the concept of "post-lesbian" as uniquely ambivalent and distinct from post-gay discourses, as the case of LBQ friendship demonstrates. Second, the appearance of post-lesbian narratives beyond major cities suggests a need to reassess the presumably progressive post-gay narrative that gay identities are becoming less central to gay lives. Finally, a focus on close lesbian friendships highlights the central role such relationships continue to play in constituting, and perhaps dismantling, lesbian identities and communities.

Theory Making from the Middle: Researching LGBTQ Communities in Small Cities

“…), especially rural LGBTQ communities in the South (Gray ; Mattson ; Whitlock ; Woodell et al. ) and Midwest (Forstie ; Kazyak ; Schmitz and Woodell ), although, as Stone () notes, this research is far from common in sociological research on LGBTQ lives more generally. This research has consistently responded to the ongoing “metronormativity” (Halberstam ) of LGBTQ community research that reinforces a normative narrative of rural‐to‐urban migration (Myrdahl ; Weston ) while neglecting “middle”‐sized places like small cities almost entirely (Mattson ; Stone ).…”

“…These social networks matter in larger urban LGBTQ communities, too, especially as LGBTQ institutions are declining. The role they play in LGBTQ institutions (their formation, growth, stability, and dissolution) also remains understudied (Brown‐Saracino ; Forstie ), beyond a basic assumption that friends and chosen family constitute community. In small cities, these social networks can make or break an LGBTQ organization, business, or community space; these dynamics matter in gay enclaves in larger cities, where social networks affect the persistence of LGBTQ community spaces.…”

“…Early research on rural LGBTQ communities focused largely on the histories and lives of rural and small-town gay and lesbian people (Bell and Valentine 1995;Fellows 2001;Forsyth 1997;Johnson 2013;Kirkey and Forsyth 2001;McCarthy 2000;Weston 1995). Over the last decade or so, there has been a kind of explosion of research on rural LGBTQ communities (Gray et al 2016), especially rural LGBTQ communities in the South (Gray 2009;Mattson 2018;Whitlock 2009;Woodell et al 2015) and Midwest (Forstie 2018;Kazyak 2012;Schmitz and Woodell 2018), although, as Stone (2018) notes, this research is far from common in sociological research on LGBTQ lives more generally. This research has consistently responded to the ongoing "metronormativity" (Halberstam 2005) of LGBTQ community research that reinforces a normative narrative of rural-to-urban migration (Myrdahl 2013;Weston 1995) while neglecting "middle"-sized places like small cities almost entirely (Mattson 2018;Stone 2018).…”

Queer Pop–Ups: A Cultural Innovation in Urban Life

“…Pop‐ups challenge the assumption that all LGBTQ/2S individuals are assimilating “into the fashionable mainstream” (A. Collins :1802) and thus no longer require separate social spaces (Gorman‐Murray and Waitt ). New gay (Savin‐Williams ), post‐gay (Ghaziani ), postmodern homosexual (Nash ), post‐closeted (Dean ), post‐marriage equality (NeJaime ), and post‐lesbian (Forstie ) frameworks assume in common the declining centrality of sexual orientation in the lives of LGBTQ/2S people. These arguments are based on observations of fixed, stable, and relatively permanent urban, social, organizational, and institutional forms.…”

Aligning Our Maps: A Call to Reconcile Distinct Visions of Literatures on Sexualities, Space, and Place

“…Likewise, shortly before Manuel Castells insisted that lesbian territory does not exist (1983), Wolf documented lesbian feminists in Berkeley (Wolf ), and a decade and a half later Kristin Esterberg traced lesbian and bisexual identities in a small city (1997). I could go on (see Forstie ; Gieseking , ; Gorman‐Murray et al. ; Krieger ; Podmore ; Smith & Holt ).…”