Queer anti-urbanism

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.

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.

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.

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