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]

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.

[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.

[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]

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.

[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.