“It's About Time You Came Out”: Sexualities, Mobility and Home

Abstract

Helping redress the dominance of metropolitan narratives upon which much literature on sexuality is framed, this article interprets the narrative told by a "white" 16-year-old man living in regional Australia. Our aim is to investigate the intersections of migration and homemaking in sexual subject formation. Finding a place to call "home" can be a complex process for young men born in regional Australia and not conforming to the social formations of a "normal guy". This young man's narrative expressively reveals the fluidity and spatiality inherent in processes of negotiating sexual subjectivities. His story provides telling insights into how migration and mobility change his understandings of home and of self by making possible a third-space configured by neither the gender norms of his hometown nor the "gay scene" in Sydney.

Human–animal relations and the celebration of place‐identity: A case study of the Scone Racing Carnival, New South Wales

“…The findings from this research support arguments that there are often multiple forms of identity performed during non‐metropolitan festivals (Gibson and Davidson, ; Waitt and Gorman‐Murray, ). This is also the case with racing carnivals held in rural locations.…”

‘The big ole gay express’: sexual minority stigma, mobility and health in the small city

“…In addition to these epidemiological studies, some qualitative research has begun to explore how men experience these geographical variations in stigma (Bianchi et al 2007; Bruce and Harper 2011; Egan et al 2011; Frye et al 2014; Kobrak, Ponce, and Zielony 2015; Lewis 2014; Valentine and Skelton 2003; Waitt and Gorman-Murray 2011; Weston 1995). In particular, research describes migration to well-established gay enclaves as a quest for identity affirming communities, visible gay spaces, opportunities for socialising and sexualising, and greater anonymity (Bruce and Harper 2011; Egan et al 2011; Gorman-Murray 2007; Kobrak, Ponce, and Zielony 2015; Valentine and Skelton 2003).…”

“…This existing literature raises questions about other forms of mobility, which may also be relevant to the health of gay and bisexual men. In particular, with a few exceptions (Lewis 2014; Waitt and Gorman-Murray 2011), much less is known about movement to and from smaller cities.…”

The geographies of cultural geography III

“…Responses to these representations and their connected material exclusions, have fuelled a need in published research, for challenging the politics of delimiting places for 'races', and other human identities (see Yamanouchi, 2010), including heteronormative accounts of sexual identity and their sites of belonging (Gorman-Murray, 2011;Waitt and Gorman-Murray, 2011;Singham, 2011).…”