On geographical diversification of queer life in the US

[breathedout]

More and more LGBT people seem to be operating on a similar wavelength [to that of the author, a trans lesbian who prefers to live in a small "red state" city rather than a large coastal one]. I asked Gary J. Gates, the most widely cited demographer of the American LGBT community, what evidence he has seen of queer demographic shifts away from coastal big cities over the last decade.

He pointed me to his recent Williams Institute analysis of U.S. Census and Gallup polling data, which compared the concentration of same-sex couples in American cities in 1990 to the percentage of their LGBT population from 2012 to 2014. (It's an imperfect comparison, but given how hard it is to gather data on a small population like the LGBT community, it's one of the best available.) And the results are striking: Salt Lake City leapt up thirty-two spots in the overall rankings between 1990 and the 2012-2014 time period. Louisville, Kentucky, rose thirty slots over the same period. Norfolk, Virginia, and New Orleans, Louisiana both jumped more than twenty places. Meanwhile San Francisco remained static, Los Angeles fell two slots, and New York had a staggering eleven-place slump.

Gates believes that this discrepancy speaks to the social change happening in many red-state cities. As he wrote in the analysis: "Substantial increases in LGBT visibility in more socially conservative places like Salt Lake City, Louisville, and Norfolk likely mean that these areas are not as different from cities like San Francisco, Austin, and Seattle (all with long histories of fostering social climates where LGBT people felt more comfortable) in their acceptance of the LGBT community today than they were twenty years ago."

Indeed, an "important explanatory factor" for that data, as Gates acknowledged in the analysis, is the increased "willingness" [I, breathedout, would argue "ability"] of LGBT people in conservative areas to come out of the closet. In other words, although the analysis probably indicates some degree of population shift, [there is also an element of simply revealing that... ] LGBT people have been building beautiful lives away from the coasts for years. [...] But because the media overwhelmingly focus on the tragic things that happen to queer people in red states, that kind of community building often goes unnoticed by people on the coasts. As Jack Halberstam wrote in In a Queer Time and Place, "Too often minority history hinges on representative examples provided by the lives of extraordinary individuals"—among them LGBT people who have been murdered in conservative parts of America.

"[In] relation to the complicated matrix of rural queer lives, we tend to rely on the story of a Brandon Teena or a Matthew Shepard rather than finding out about the queer people who live quietly, if not comfortably, in isolated areas or small towns all across North America," Halberstam wrote.

—Samantha Allen, Real Queer America: LGBT Stories from Red States

The real strength of this book is in the individual stories of people Allen talks to on her trip across the country, from the queer Latinx youth organizers of Aquí Estamos in South Texas, to Temica Morton, the Black woman who spearheaded Jackson, Mississippi's first Pride Parade in 2016 as an add-on to a queer community bar-b-que she's been hosting for years, to Smoove G. and Nicci B., co-owners of the Back Door: Bloomington, Indiana's beloved queer bar and gathering-site. But those stories are—for reasons similar to those cited by Halberstam above in relation to the (inter)national news media!—difficult to excerpt out of context. I had my quibbles with the book overall, mostly relating to Allen's lack of acknowledgement that some people just genuinely love big cities as much as she loves small ones, but I am absolutely in agreement with the idea, as expressed here, that when it comes to queer narratives we desperately need to expand our geographical focus and tell stories about ordinary living-their-lives queer people who are from places other than New York City, and to a lesser extent San Francisco and LA (although I freely admit I adore SF and LA narratives, having personal connections to both those places.) The NYC and coastal-big-city stranglehold on US storytelling both fictional and non-fictional is REAL. And it is, as Allen points out here and as I'd echo despite having lived in big coastal cities my whole life and loving them dearly, doing us all a big disservice.

I was also interested in Gates's data on shifting queer demographics over time. Whether they come from a real population shift away from big coastal cities or whether they're more a result of increased quality of life/ability to come out for red-state queers, they do still indicate measurable change. Which is a big part of Allen's point: things are (slowly) shifting for LGBT people in red-state America, and there are a lot of fascinating and encouraging stories to be told about the activists and regular queer folks who call these places home.

Comments

[mina_harker]

Ooh, I'd love to see more data on shifting queer demographics -- as you said, a comparison to the general population shift away from big cities would be good, and also taking other factors in account, in addition increased ability to come out in red states, like maybe looking at the changes in cost of living in big coastal cities (which, tbh, would probably be reflected in the general population shift already, but might have an even stronger effect on marginalised communities?) might be interesting too.

[chestnut_pod]

I so agree - I'm also curious about the sort of inherently unprovable counterfactual of, "How many people who at one time would have left for CA and the Northeast stayed where they were instead?"

[breathedout]

I'd love to see more data on shifting queer demographics, too! Sadly there's not a huge amount more of that to be found in this particular book; its focus is much more anecdotal/qualitative than statistical/quantitative, and the way it handles the statistics it does use is honestly... not super satisfying. (For example, although the extremely high cost of living in big coastal cities is a major point of contention for Allen, she doesn't really dive into how extreme that shift has been statistically over the past 20+ years.) Although, as with this passage, what she does include is sometimes enough to spark interest in more.

[chestnut_pod]

Also makes me think about the classism one finds in so many stories of queer city life - just as the poorest urban members of the community are invisibilized, working class and poor members in rural areas are too, perhaps doubly so.

I so completely agree with everything they and you are saying about needing to expand our lenses to include the country as a whole. I also kind of want to yell my usual "attitudinal fallacy is only a fallacy if you consider rhetoric to not itself be action" bit at at Mr. Gates for the whole "if people aren't literally dying all the time rampant prejudice doesn't count as much" thing. "Quietly, if not comfortably" really doesn't sound paradisiacal to me. Both positive, strong community-building and restriction can coexist, and in fact, the latter can often strengthen the former. Not having read the book, I don't want to push back on all of this--I think they're probably right about it!-- but I wish the data interpretation in this passage was more rigorous and drew clearer lines between revelation of things that have existed all along and indication of change.

[chestnut_pod]

Also, amused that New Orleans and Norfolk don't count as "coastal." Such a silly euphemism.

[donut_donut]

Lol this, too.

[breathedout]

I, too, wish the data interpretation & distinctions were more rigorous; the degree to which Allen included statistical analysis in this book at all, served mostly to make me wish for another book where it were done more in-depth. Which is only sort of semi-fair of me, I think: this book is really more of an activist travelogue/memoir, and only uses stats to shed occasional light on problems and solutions that are primarily being observed anecdotally. Still! Kind of frustrating.

Allen goes on to argue (in the very next paragraph, but I had to cut my excerpt off somewhere, LOL) that Halberstam's "quietly, if not comfortably" construction considerably under-sells the quality of the lives a lot of red-state queers are living. Although, how convincingly she makes that argument really varies from state to state and individual to individual. For some of the places she talks about I was pretty much convinced; for others, I felt she was soft-pedaling the challenges her interviewees were facing in order to celebrate the positive change they were involved in making. (Hearing other people's opinions at my bookgroup really highlighted to me how difficult this line is to hit: the boundary between "depressing" and "uplifting" is very much a moving target, and we ended up having a conversation where a bunch of people were like "This book is so depressing!" and I was like "I... kind of think this book is not depressing enough??") But your point that positive, strong community-building can coexist with, and be strengthened by, oppression and restriction is probably the cornerstone argument of Allen's entire project, so fwiw that argument is far from absent.

[chestnut_pod]

That's reassuring on both counts! You've piqued my interest so much with your excerpts and analysis; I really think I will have to pick this up.

[donut_donut]

I'm a little confused by these excerpts, and I'm wondering if in context the distinction is clearer between different red state living situations. For example, the differences between a big city (like Louisville), a college town (like Bloomington), a small town with no college (like the one where I live), and truly rural existence, in like, farmland, where there is sometimes very little contact with anyone outside one's immediate family. I've experienced life as a queer person (granted, one in a straight-looking relationship) in a few of those situations, and to me they feel very different.

[breathedout]

I would say... yes and no. Allen's strengths are definitely more in the anecdotal/qualitative than the statistical/quantitative, and when she is, for example, visiting a given place, she does give a portrait of the specifics of what it's like (college town, mid-sized & gentrifying city, small town, etc.). That said, the places she chooses to profile could be a lot more diverse. She doesn't address truly rural life at all, only glances extremely fleetingly over suburban life, and basically tends to gravitate toward small and mid-sized "oasis" cities in red states. So that felt a bit disingenuous: it's not, by any means, a balanced look at queer life "in red states"; more a profile of specific people in the more liberal islands in those states. I still felt it was a worthwhile read, but I'd have liked more diversity on that count (among others).

[donut_donut]

Ah okay, thanks for the clarification. I think it's probably interesting and worthwhile for a book to focus on those "oases" - there's definitely a story there, particularly for coastal people who may not realize that there are a lot of liberal and progressive enclaves in the vast middle of our country.

But yeah, I'd also be interested in *another* book perhaps, that examined queer life outside of those enclaves. (Partly because that's where I am, so it's of interest to me.)

I mentioned the internet thing because I've been shocked at how it's changed things. My town is politically sort of purplish, with the adults coming across as fairly socially conservative (lots of intense Jesus people). But I see the local teenagers hang out at the public library, and they are, well... SUPER queer. Rainbows everywhere.

And I think it's like 90% Tumblr. Bookish teens fall into fandoms (Doctor who seems very popular, and Harry Potter), and obviously those online fandoms have a lot of queer content of one sort or another. More generally, it surprised me that even in this pretty conservative town, I overhear teens using the language of Tumblr to discuss social justice issues as if that's the standard rhetoric of their milieu.

[donut_donut]

Also, does the book talk about the huge difference the internet has made for queer people outside major queer communities? The internet has made life as a queer person SO much more manageable and less isolated for people in all kinds of places and situations.

[lazaefair]

Thiiiiiiiiis

Hell, I wouldn’t have been exposed to, much less have come to the slow realization about my bisexuality without the internet.

[mina_harker]

yes, this is a very important point!

[breathedout]

No, although—logically it really wouldn't, because the historical memory of this book is EXTREMELY short. I kept going back and forth with myself about whether this was a feature, a bug, or just a neutral reality: the "then" to which Allen is comparing "now" is only, at MOST, 10-15 years ago, when the internet was already enough of an established reality that it's not a significant point of contrast.

In a way it's kind of cool to be able to observe a cultural shift just over that relatively tiny amount of time. In another way it feels like a very limited perspective (especially for a history-minded person like me) when nothing that happened before about 2005 even comes up. In a third way, I can see how Allen or her editors may have felt that a more historical perspective was outside the scope of this project, which is more of an activism travelogue/personal memoir, and already feels like it perhaps tries to cover too many people and places to do them all justice.

[lazaefair]

Haha, The Backdoor! I spent many a Saturday night there, as it was pretty much the only decent dance floor around. The stamp they put on your hand is a sparkly unicorn.

I would also be interested in LGBTQ stories from people who grew up in the still largely white, conservative, Christian/evangelical suburbs of large cities. When I was a teenager in a suburb of DFW, our next-door neighbors were a lesbian couple. Looking back, I wonder what it must’ve been like for them, living in neighborhoods just saturated with Jesus fish and the like.

I mean, they were white, cisgender, and at high income levels, so their suffering was perhaps not sky-high, but it still must’ve been stressful in some way. As far as I know, everyone was friendly and no hate crimes were done against them - hell, my family was equally at risk as one of the few non-white families in the area - but still.

[breathedout]

LOL! A sparkly unicorn hand-stamp definitely seems in line with the picture Allen paints of the place.

There was a wee bit of discussion of suburbs in this book, but not a lot; and I really think the queer suburban experience deserves whole studies and novels where it's centered. I recently saw one academic study of suburban queerness specifically in Northern California (Clayton Howard's The Closet and the Cul-de-Sac), and there are some 1960s treatments (like Isherwood's A Single Man), but in general it seems like a drastically under-explored sector of queer lived reality, especially for suburbs in very conservative areas. I too would really like to know what it was like for your lesbian neighbors!

[nyctanthes]

I feel like I should read the book and the study instead of (or at least in addition to) commenting on them. That said...

It's interesting to think about how LGBT emergence in/migration to red states tracks with overall population flows. I believe about 14% of the U.S. population moves every year, and for at least a couple of decades now there's been movement away from the Northeast to the Southeast and the West/Southwest.

Also, since I'm babbling about demographics, what is the age distribution of the LGBT folks in the survey. How many are younger people looking for jobs or education? Older people who need to make their retirement dollars stretch and want to pay lower taxes? Etc. etc.

The NYC and coastal-big-city stranglehold on US storytelling both fictional and non-fictional is REAL.

For sure. For queer stories and others. Then when you add in the "we all have an MFA/we all went to the same writers' workshops/we publish in the same lit magazines..." It's why I read so much lit in translation.

[breathedout]

Ha, yes, Allen does go on to talk about how these numbers mirror the general demographic shifts over the past decade or so—actually in the paragraph represented by "[...]," which was my ill-fated attempt to make my excerpt more concise. That said, if you're after satisfying statistical discussion of demographics, I would maybe try reading the study rather than the book; that's definitely not where its strengths lie, and most of the uses of stats are similarly surface-y. :-/

I like the lit-in-translation (and English-language lit from other countries) solution as well; getting back to that was a big reading goal for me this year and so far I'm doing pretty well on it & finding it really rewarding. That said, I also wish it was easier to pick up a book from/about my own country and not have it be yet another story about New York! I had a couple years where I declared a full-on moratorium on NYC stories, because I was just so sick of hearing about it. But the problem is that such a preponderance of books are written (and movies and shows made) about it that just by strength of numbers some of the really excellent ones are going to be among their number. Blah.