Cross-posted at Social (In)Queery
This post is part of a series of posts I’ve written on sexuality and space, specifically addressing issues of where LGBT populations live and why. See “Can Living in the City Make you Gay?” and “Why More Lesbians (Might) Live in Rural Communities than Gay Men” for the first two in the series.
The gayborhood is a relatively new cultural phenomenon. While groups of gay men and lesbians have sought living spaces organized around sexual identity for a long time, neighborhoods actively recognized as “gayborhoods” by others is something arguably more recent. Indeed, as Amin Ghaziani writes, “It’s quixotic to think that gay neighborhoods have always been around and will never change” (here). Sociological research on gayborhoods asks a few different kinds of questions: How and why do gay neighborhoods emerge? What kinds of factors shape their growth and endurance? What kinds of processes and forces threaten their existence?
A variety of social forces account for the emergence of gayborhoods. Ghaziani discusses the pivotal role that World War II played in their emergence. As men and women came home–some after being dishonorably discharged from service (as a result of their sexuality)–they settled in port cities like San Francisco. But, gayborhoods were also emerging prior to WWII as well. Yet, these early, largely urban, gay enclaves were distinguished by their unpublicized nature. They were spaces to which people with same-sex desires could go to locate one another. Ghaziani remarks, however, that the post-WWII U.S. was marked by a shift toward the development of increasingly formalized urban gay districts in some of the larger U.S. cities.
Inequality by (Interior) Design 