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(Un)holy Toledo: Intersectionality, Interdependence, and Neighborhood (Trans)formation in Toledo, Ohio
No full textResearch article by Christopher G. Shroeder about Toledo, Ohio's LGBTQ+ community in the 1950s through the 1970s. The article explores themes such as intersectionality, interdependence, and gentrification in the formation of a gay-friendly neighborhood in Toledo's Old West End. The article was published in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Volume 104, Issue 1, in 2014.(Un)holy Toledo: Intersectionality,
Interdependence, and Neighborhood
(Trans)formation in Toledo, Ohio
Christopher G. Schroeder
Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
Research on largemetropolitan areas dominates understandings of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT)
urban lives. Investigating cities further down the urban hierarchy can nuance accounting of LGBT and queer
place-making, neighborhood formation, and cultural politics. Comparative analysis can further illuminate the
local foundations of place-based logics. Through the conceptual lenses of intersectionality and interdependence,
this article looks at the appropriation and formation of Toledo’s LGBT neighborhood, the Old West End,
and its relation to another central-city neighborhood, Vistula; the development of the local LGBT and queer
community more broadly; and the interrelation of these gay and queer neighborhoods with other social sites
and spaces. This qualitative study involving oral histories and archival research demonstrates that community
organizing and neighborhood (trans)formation depend on a host of socio-spatial conditions. Although LGBT
neighborhood transformation is often conflated with gentrification, my findings suggest that intersectionality and
interdependence play a large role in LGBT neighborhood transformation. The critical quality for development
of the neighborhoods I investigated was an emerging arena for local lesbian and gay cultural politics, which
relied heavily on an intersectionality and interdependence between and among religion, sexuality, and class.
Key Words: interdependence, intersectionality, neighborhood transformation, religion, sexuality.
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La investigaci´on que se realiza sobre grandes ´areas metropolitanas concede notable importancia al tema de las
vidas urbanas de lesbianas, gays, bisexuales y transexuales (LGBT). Al investigar en las ciudades de arriba abajo
en la jerarqu´ıa urbana es posible establecer conexiones de LGBT con la aparici´on de lugares raros, formaci´on
de vecindarios y pol´ıticas culturales. El an´alisis comparativo puede ayudar a iluminar los fundamentos locales
de la l´ogica basada en lugar. A trav´es de los lentes conceptuales de la inteseccionalidad y la inderdependencia,
este art´ıculo concentr´o sus observaciones sobre la siguientes cosas: la apropiaci´on y formaci´on del vecindario
LGBT de Toledo, el antiguo West End, y su relaci´on con el V´ıstula, otro barrio del centro urbano; el desarrollo
de la LGBT local y de la comunidad homosexual en t´erminos m´as generales; y la interrelaci´on entre estos
vecindarios gay y homosexuales con otros sitios y espacios sociales. El estudio cualitativo, que involucra historias
orales e investigaci´on de archivos, demuestra que el proceso de organizar comunidad y la (trans)formaci´on de un
vecindario depende de una multitud de condiciones socio-espaciales. Aunque la transformaci´on de un vecindario
LGBT a menudo se asocia con aburguesamiento, mis descubrimientos sugieren que la interseccionalidad y la
interdependencia juegan un papel importante en la transformaci´on de un barrio LGBT. La calidad cr´ıtica para el
desarrollo de los barrios que investigu´e era un escenario emergente de las pol´ıticas culturales locales de lesbianas
y gays, que se apoyaba fuertemente en la interseccionalidad e interdependencia entre religi´on, sexualidad y clase.
Palabras clave: interdependencia, interseccionalidad, transformaci´on de vecindarios, religi´on, sexualidad.
Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 104(1) 2014, pp. 166–181 C
2014 by Association of American Geographers
Initial submission, July 2012; revised submissions, May and August 2013; final acceptance, August 2013
Published by Taylor & Francis, LLC.
Intersectionality, Interdependence, and Neighborhood Transformation in Toledo, Ohio 167
Research on urban gay neighborhoods lacks a
strong emphasis on intersectionality and in-terdependence
of individuals—and individuals
working within and across groups—constructing those
places. Through a case study of early neighborhood
transformation in Toledo, a medium-sized city in the
U.S. Midwest, this article investigates socio-spatial
interconnectivity through the conceptual lens of in-tersectionality
and interdependence. Although social
categories intersect in myriad permutations,my primary
interest settles on the intersections of sexuality with
class and religion, because, as McCall (2005) noted,
“it becomes necessary to limit other dimensions of the
analysis . . . for the sake of comprehension” (1786). Fur-thermore,
the intersection of these social categories has
received far less attention in intersectionality research
(M. Brown 2011). By coupling intersectionality with
interdependence (J. Smith, Clark, and Yusoff 2007; G.
Brown 2009), I further focus on interactions whereby
groups and individuals, seemingly at odds, come to-gether
in meaningful ways, most notably in mutual co-operation
to resist oppression and inequality and in how
these relationships construct space and place.
Because urban gay neighborhoods have long been
conflated with gentrification, this article also addresses
interrelated gaps in the gentrification and sexualities
literatures. Similar to gentrification scholars’ calls for
looking at cities “down the urban hierarchy,” scholars
of sexualities have called for investigations of cities out-side
the core of major metropolises in the Global North
to provide broader perspective on the local specifici-ties
of processes of neighborhood formation (G. Brown
2008, 2009). This article expands the temporal and
spatial dimensions (D. P. Smith 2002; Phillips 2004;
Dutton 2005) of gentrification and sexuality research
by exploring neighborhood transformation in Toledo’s
central city from the mid-1950s to the late 1970s. In
addition to its economistic viewpoints, the literature
on gentrification provides rich accounts of the social
dynamics of neighborhood transformation.
Geographies of Gentrification
and Neighborhood Transformation
This article focuses on gentrification from the per-spective
of Warde’s “collective action” as differentiated
from the largely economic perspectives on production
and consumption, which are most commonly associ-ated
with the work of N. Smith (1986, 1996) and Ley
(1986, 1994). Others have sought to bridge the pro-duction
and consumption divide (Galster 2001), and
still others have attended to the social geographies of
gentrification (Butler and Robson 2001; Butler 2007).
The work of Caulfield (1989) and Butler and Robson
(2001) illustrates that the processes of gentrification
are nearly as diverse as the cities that experience it.
Butler and Robson’s (2001) comparison of three Lon-don
neighborhoods, in particular, exemplifies signifi-cant
differences among locales of gentrification as well
as gentrifiers’ socioeconomic backgrounds. Noting this
diversity of gentrification, Lees (2000) has argued for a
quasi-discipline devoted to the geography of gentrifica-tion,
much of which focuses on supergentrification in
global or world cities. Consequently, the study of gen-trification
and its gentrifiers in cities further down the
urban hierarchy or at other points in time is likely to be
neglected in this new geography of gentrification.
Likewise, research on the largest cities of the global
north dominates sexuality research, in which scholars
have mapped various gay enclaves, paying close
attention to the ways in which sexual minorities ap-propriate,
create, or identify with their neighborhoods.
Geographers and other scholars of sexuality continue
to explore the ways in which sexuality organizes urban
space, and many explicitly address the role of sexuality
in processes of gentrification. Initially, the work by
Levine (1979) or Castells and Murphy (1982) sought
to locate and investigate the underpinnings of concen-trations
of gay men in certain urban neighborhoods.
Additionally, Knopp (1997; see also Lauria and Knopp
1985) has further investigated the role gay men play in
urban neighborhoods.While contributing to gentrifica-tion,
this territorialization provided an important base
for political, cultural, economic, and social formation.
Researchers have paid less attention to lesbians’ en-gagement
with urban space, more or less conceding to
Castells’ presupposition that lesbians are more private
or home-centered and, therefore, less involved in
processes of gentrification (Castells and Murphy 1982).
Rothenberg’s (1995) study of Park Slope illustrates
lesbians’ involvement in gentrification and how the
neighborhood provides an important site for social for-mation
and subsequent visibility. In West Hollywood,
Forest (1995) investigated how gay men used media
to further a strategy based on an “ethnicity model” to
cohere a place-based gay image. Nash (2005) identified
a similar minority strategy employed to conceptualize
gay and lesbian identity, which activists linked
politically and symbolically to Toronto’s gay ghetto.
Few studies have investigated wider modes of
interdependence and intersectionality in the formation
of urban neighborhoods. The lack of intersectionality
reflected in most studies would indicate that sexual
168 Schroeder
minorities live in discrete nodes and only rarely inter-act
or intersect with other social categories, although
Podmore (2006) suggested that gay and lesbian neigh-borhoods
are more dynamic or fluid and less isolated
from other communities than other neighborhoods.
This is especially so in light of current shifts in gay and
lesbian visibility and status (G. Brown 2004), tenuous
as these shifts might be.
Gorman-Murray and Waitt (2009) illustrated one
of the shifts in the character of queer neighborhoods,
that of the “queer-friendly neighborhood.”Most impor-tant,
they analyzed the ways in which social cohesion
between heterosexual and same-sex attracted persons
was fostered and sustained. Social cohesion is not lim-ited
to queer-friendly neighborhoods (Butler 2007), but
social cohesion in queer-friendly neighborhoods indi-cates
little, if any, social conflict. Focusing on issues of
homonormative modes of consumption in gay neigh-borhoods,
G. Brown (2009) linked the economic and
social lives of gay men and lesbians while illustrating
the levels of interdependence between and among gay
men, lesbians, and others.
These studies illustrate an emergence of research on
interdependence and intersectionality, and they further
suggest the importance of such inquiry to understanding
the significance of collective action in shaping neigh-borhood
spaces. The dominant foci on queer consump-tion
and domesticity, however, occlude the role that
various institutions, especially religious institutions,
play in the formation of queer neighborhoods. Earlier
research by Paris and Anderson (2001) provides an ex-ception
through their case study of a Washington, DC,
neighborhood. Although they attended to the intersec-tions
of religion, sexuality, and neighborhood, they con-clude
that the presence of a Metropolitan Community
Church, largely composed of sexual minorities, threat-ens
to negatively impact the neighborhood at large. Al-though
they acknowledge the importance of a spiritual
space for those whom most mainstream religions have
marginalized, ultimately their concern is how this con-gregation
induces gentrification. Consequently, the au-thors
render the neighborhood as not socially cohesive,
not queer friendly. Because the authors obfuscate ho-mophobia,
one assumes perhaps that it is the queers who
are unfriendly. At any rate, the study also illustrates in-directly
the difficulty of decoupling marginal gentrifiers,
or first-phase gentrifiers with moderate incomes (Rose
1984; Caulfield 1989), from processes of gentrification
(Smith 1987), especially when marginal groups com-pete
against each other for space. Although not named
outright, intersectionality weaves throughout these
examples of neighborhood transformation. The works
suggest scholars must be more attuned to the ways
individuals and groups, inhabiting differing so-cial
categories, intersect and how this constructs
neighborhoods. Locating modes of interdependence,
furthermore, can help explicate how some individuals
and groups (trans)form neighborhoods through mutual
cooperation, even in the face of opposition or tensions.
Intersectionality and Interdependence:
Sexuality, Religion, and Class
In this section, I bring together two concepts,
intersectionality and interdependence, to examine
how individuals and groups claiming various identities
cooperate meaningfully at the neighborhood scale.
Geographers and other social scientists attend to the
intricacies of various modes of interconnectivity, but
geographers have focused less on intersectionality
(Valentine 2007) and interdependence (J. Smith,
Clark, and Yusoff 2007). Feminist scholars first de-ployed
both terms, the former originating in critical
race studies with a focus on the complexities of gender
and race (Crenshaw 1991). The latter emanated
from psychological development theories, focusing on
differences between women and men in relation to
ethics, morality, and care (Gilligan [1982] 2003).
Building on Crenshaw’s initial work, McCall (2005)
outlines three frameworks for investigating intersec-tionality:
anticategorical, intracategorical, and inter-categorical.
An “interest in relationships among groups
underlies” (McCall 2005, 1785) all three approaches.
All three approaches also recognize that categories
are fluid, not fixed. Intercategorical “begins with the
observation that there are relationships of inequality
among already constituted social groups” (McCall 2005,
1784–85) and “focuses on the complexity of relation-ships
among social groups within and across analytical
categories” (1786). To concentrate on the complexi-ties
of intercategorical intersections, this framework is
less concerned with the dynamics within a single group
but nonetheless acknowledges the relationship between
individual and social groups insofar as it requires clas-sifying
individuals into analytic categories. The inter-categorical
approach to intersectionality attends to the
simultaneity of advantage and disadvantage. As such,
this perspective can address Valentine’s (2007) con-cern
that researchers have not fully investigated inter-sectionality
in relation to “how privileged or powerful
identities are ‘done’ and ‘undone’ ” (14).
Intersectionality, Interdependence, and Neighborhood Transformation in Toledo, Ohio 169
Geographers have only recently begun to em-ploy
theories of intersectionality (Valentine 2007;
Valentine and Waite 2011). Like most other scholars
researching intersectionality, they have relied on the
intracategorical perspectives, examining ways in which
social identities and categories intersect on the body
and how individuals produce their lived experiences
or “identities of the self” (Fernandes 1997, 309). In a
recent special issue of Sexualities, geographers and other
scholars of sexualities examined the intersections of
sexuality and class (Taylor 2011) while acknowledging
the relative neglect of such intersections. S. Jackson
(2011) highlighted the need for research on sexuality
and class to explore classed identities among sexual
minorities and how heterosexuality intersects with
class and (uneven) class privilege. Theorizing inter-sectionality
contributes to understanding the processes
through which social categories are produced, although
it “has paid scant attention to the significance of space
in processes of subject formation” (Valentine 2007, 14).
That attention, moreover, has focused on the sites in
which intersecting subjectivity is lived or experienced
by the individual and less on how intersecting identities
and categories construct space—and even less on how
groups and individuals representing different social
categories and subjectivities intersect to construct
space. In one recent exception, Binnie and Skeggs
(2004) examined how consumption patterns inManch-ester’s
gay commercial scene exclude on the basis of
class.
Recently, geographers have explored the intersec-tion
of sexuality and religion, primarily in what McCall
(2005) might call specific points of intersection within
a single group—emphasizing individuals’ religious and
spiritual practices. For example, Vanderbeck and col-leagues
(2011) focused on lesbian and gay Anglicans’
activism over their status within their religion, and
Rouhani (2007) has looked at queer Muslim religious
activism. Queer Spiritual Spaces (Browne, Munt, and
Yip 2010) showcases the ways in which LGBT and
queer individuals navigate and negotiate the shifting
contours of diverse religions, emphasizing aspects of
faith and spirituality more so than direct activism.
Although social scientists have given considerable
attention to the Christian Right in the United States
and its engagements with the state (Sharp 1999; Fetner
2008), Sziarto (2008) pointed out that scholars have
paid less attention to more progressive religious orga-nizations
and that they often share “progressive stances
on issues of gender, sexuality, and economic justice”
(410). She examines how religion and associated
modes of spirituality intersect and lend legitimacy to
labor movements. Conversely, Valentine and Waite
(2011) investigated how competing interests within
the “equality strands” are managed and negotiated,
namely, between religion and sexuality, including het-erosexuality.
Importantly, their research demonstrates
how individuals from potentially competing groups
intersect and navigate everyday spaces to avoid conflict.
Valentine and Waite (2011) examined “banal en-counters,”
but interdependence offers a lens through
which to explore further the ways in which already-constituted
social groups, and individuals constituting
such groups, interact and intersect. Interdependence
involves interactions that rely on mutual care, go-ing
beyond everyday friendliness. The term originated
in feminist psychological scholarship to identify the
“growing comprehension of the dynamic of social in-teractions”
(Gilligan [1982] 2003, 74), namely, with
concerns about care, ethics, and morality. As Gilligan
([1982] 2003) stated, “This ethics, which reflects a cu-mulative
knowledge of human relationships, evolves
around a central insight, that self and other are inter-dependent”
(74). This framing is particularly apt for in-vestigations
of religion and sexuality, as many religious
institutions continue to grapple with ethics of caring for
sexualminorities and aspects ofmorality therein (Moon
2004).
Lately, some geographers have deployed the term
interdependence as a way of thinking about social,
cultural, and ecological interactions (J. Smith, Clark,
and Yusoff 2007). G. Brown (2009) used the term to
examine gay men’s alternative economic practices and
performances in relation to their spaces of consumption
and domesticity. “In mobilizing the term ‘interdepen-dence,’
” he furthers an understanding of “unexpected
social relationships” and interconnections “that
engender hope and nurturing” (G. Brown 2009, 1500).
Although Blokland (2003) evokes the term in relation
to social interactions at the scale of the neighborhood,
her examples limit interdependence to quotidian in-teractions
between and among neighbors, which does
not convey the high level of mutual care demonstrated
in Gilligan’s conceptualization of interdependence.
Interdependence differs from other terminology re-searchers
use to harness various forms of social and spa-tial
interconnectivity, such as social/cultural cohesion,
social mixing, and social preservation. Governmental
agencies in the developed world have promoted social
mixing with a goal of social cohesion particularly among
differing income groups in a neighborhood, thereby
theoretically ameliorating so-called ills associated with
170 Schroeder
concentrated poverty (Forrest and Kearns 1999; Lees
2008). Many scholars have critiqued social mixing as
merely state-sanctioned gentrification (Lees 2008).
Through her empirical research on social mixing, Rose
(2004) offers ambiguous findings, echoing Butler and
Robson’s (2001) findings that social mixing does not
inevitably result in integration or even significant in-teraction.
Butler and Lees (2006) suggested that actual
social mixing might be more pronounced among early,
or pioneer, gentrifiers, whereas Rose provided a typol-ogy
of gentrifiers’ (un)willingness to socially mix: “the
ignorant/indifferents,” the “Nimbies,” the “tolerants,”
and the “egalitarians” (Rose 2004). The latter two share
a propinquity to Brown-Saracino’s (2009) conceptual-ization
of social preservationists. Brown-Saracino does
not ignore the destructive forces of gentrification; in-stead,
she analyzes the lived experience of both old and
new residents as they seek to preserve a perceived au-thenticity
threatened by neighborhood transformation.
Even when social mixing induces social co
Making space for queer youth: adolescent and adult interactions in Toledo, Ohio
No full textResearch article by Christopher G. Shroeder about the impact of adult leadership on LGBTQ+ youth programs in Toledo, Ohio. Schoeder's research was conducted in Toledo from 2007-2010. The article was published in Gender, Place and Culture: a Journal of Feminist Geography, Volume 19, Issue 5, in 2012.Making space for queer youth: adolescent and adult interactions in
Toledo, Ohio
Christopher G. Schroeder*
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee – Geography, 2731 Robinwood Ave, Toledo, OH 43610, USA
Queer youths and queer youth-related issues are under-researched in geography.
I contribute to the existing literature by investigating how adultist practices can both
constrain and empower queer youth within the context of schools. Issues involving
adolescence and sexuality are complex, and these nuances become more pronounced
with regard to nonnormative sexual identities and expressions. Using interviews with
adult queer youth advocates in Toledo, Ohio, I look at the ways in which adults
construct uncertain, anxious and contradictory ‘safe spaces’ that can work to
constrain/restrict queer youth but also to empower and/or facilitate queer youths’
negotiation and navigation of other, predominantly heterosexist social spaces.
Keywords: sexuality; queer youth; adultist practices; schools; heteronormativity
Introduction
While queer youth have largely been neglected in geography, the subdisciplines of
children’s geographies and geographies of sexualities have grown in prominence in the
last 20 years or so (Holloway and Valentine 2000; Browne, Lim, and Brown 2007; Ansell
2009; Johnston and Longhurst 2010). These subdisciplinary orientations offer a starting
point for the discussion of queer youth lives and the adults who constrain, control,
regulate, empower and/or work with them – in other words, the socio-spatial relations
between (queer) adults and queer youth. Here, I seek to contribute to both children’s and
sexuality geographies by paying attention to the geographies of queer youths’ lives,
emphasizing the ways in which adults, namely teachers, administrators and volunteers,
inhibit or facilitate the making of space for queer youth as well as how youth and adults
interact within space. Through an empirical case study of Toledo, Ohio, I first look at the
discursive and material spaces of the school and adults’ role in the (re)production of
homophobia, heterosexism and heteronormativity. Then, I draw on interview data to
analyze the formation and operation of three adult-led initiatives intended to create ‘safe
space’ for queer youth: Rainbow Area Youth (RAY), a regional queer youth group; the
Safe Schools Project (SSP), a political activist organization; and local gay-straight
alliances (GSAs), which operate in schools. Adults and youth interact in each of these
spaces. In order to situate my own work, I begin, however, with an overview of the
literature from children’s and sexualities geographies, as well as a brief discussion of the
school as a crucial socio-spatial site.
ISSN 0966-369X print/ISSN 1360-0524 online
q 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2011.625078
http://www.tandfonline.com
*Email: [email protected]
Gender, Place and Culture
Vol. 19, No. 5, October 2012, 635–651
Making room for queer youth in geographies of children and sexualities
Adults control public and private spaces such as the home, the school and religious spaces,
making childhood a complex socio-spatial relationship between child(ren) and adult(s).
Much of the geographic scholarship on adolescents focuses on their constraints,
restrictions and marginalization by adults, their practices and their regulations (Thomas
2004). Some contend that all children are oppressed by adultist practices (Matthews et al.
2000). However, focusing attention on children or adolescents as oppressed by default
obscures not only their agency but also other intersecting modes of oppression, such as
race, ethnicity, nationality, class, disability, gender and sexuality. Nonetheless,
geographies of childhood maintain that all children and adolescents are figured as
adults-in-waiting (Matthews and Limb 1999). This informs how youths are studied,
focusing less on their eventual entrance to adulthood and more on how youths’ everyday
lives are impacted in the here and now (Caputo 1995). This becomes especially salient
when discussing adolescent sexual lives since a dominant assumption associates sexuality
with adulthood (Thomas 2004).
Focusing on adults, geographies of sexualities have paid particular attention to the
complicities of exclusion that variably arise from intersecting categories of subjectivity.
Valentine, Skelton, and Butler (2003) and Andrew Gorman-Murray (2008) have
investigated aspects of gays and lesbians coming out in the family home. Valentine et al.
focused on young adults’ more negative consequences while still living in their family
home. Gorman-Murray, on the other hand, draws attention to positive experiences of
coming out to immediate family members, relying on lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender (LGBT) adults’ written narratives of their memories of coming out as youths.
Nonetheless, both emphasize the spatiality of coming out to family as young LGBT adults’
negotiate their level of disclosure, navigating the home and the closet (among other
spaces). Indeed, navigating the closet has long been a defining element of LGBT
experiences and struggles (Sedgwick 1990; M. Brown 2000, 2006).
Children’s geographies, moreover, has largely focused on the everyday lives of children
and adolescents at the local scale or the microgeographies of the home, mall or classroom.
Some children’s geographers have, however, begun to critique this focus. Nicola Ansell
(2009), for example, urges for more focus on the ways in which macrogeographic processes
directly and indirectly affect children and, thereby, shape their everyday lives. Many areas
exist where children are not invited or able to attend, such as local school boards; local,
regional or national governments or international policy institutes. Children’s geographers
have not ignored such contexts. Yet, a paucity of research directly investigates adults’ roles
in interpreting and serving the needs of adolescents.
To varying extents, geographers of childhood and sexualities have explored the ways in
which neoliberalism has restructured childhood and sexual subjectivities, respectively.
Geographers of sexualities have contributed, for example, to queer theorist Lisa Duggan’s
(2002) conceptualization of the neoliberal sexual subject and the emergence of
homonormativity – or what amounts to ‘a neoliberal politics of normalization’ (Richardson
2005) in the metropolises of the Global North (G. Brown 2008, 2009). In the process, sexual
and gender identity risk becoming fixed (Duggan 2002), while issues of race, racism and
patriarchy are sidelined (Nast 2002). In geography, issues of (hyper)consumption have
focused on the affluent, white, gay male – who must also be adult. In these spaces of
consumption, exclusions based on age and lookism also arise (Casey 2007), but the focus is
the obsession and commodification of youthfulness rather than the valuing of or advocacy
for queer youth. Queer geographers’ emphasis on adult gay men and lesbians’ spaces of
636 C.G. Schroeder
domesticity and consumption within select cities, ‘place[s] several important limits on the
scope of geographies of sexualities’ (G. Brown 2008, 1216), therefore making it difficult to
make room for the study of queer youth.
Outside of geography much of the research specifically on queer youth emphasizes their
roles as victims and at risk, focusing on low self-esteem, depression, drug abuse, sexual
promiscuity and suicide (Russell and Joyner 2001; Russell, Driscoll, and Truong 2002;
Walls, Kane, and Wisneski 2009). A growing body of scholarship focuses on the ways in
which queer youth exercise their agency (Raymond 1994; Friend 1998; Filax 2007) while
critiquing representations of queer youth solely as victims (Rasmussen 2004; Rasmussen,
Rofes, and Talburt 2004; Filax 2006; Driver 2008). Research on queer youth agency
emphasizes its radical possibilities and may leave one wondering if queer youths can only
exercise their agency through highly stylized or avant-garde transgressions: lesbian/queer
punk groups (Halberstam 2005; Wilson 2008), anarchist engagements (Ritchie 2008) or
identities that are ‘fluid as fuck’ (Regales 2008). Moreover, Halberstam (2005) expresses
her suspicions of queer youth groups and even goes so far as to render them pernicious.
Drawing on queer theory’s spirit of ‘indefatigable critique’ (M. Brown 2007), she and other
queer theorists fear that queer youth groups encourage homonormativity.
However, in the edited volume by Rasmussen, Rofes, and Talburt (2004), the authors
take a more balanced look at the ways queer youths are constrained by both conservative
discourses rooted in religious fundamentalism and liberalizing discourses that seek to
speak for queer youth. The authors present a sort of quandary insofar as they lament queer
youths’ being separated from their straight peers into so-called ‘safe’ spaces while they
also set forth ‘a cautionary stance on the part of those who would endeavor to support
queer youth’ (Rasmussen, Rofes, and Talburt 2004, 4). They fear that in the quest for
‘begging for inclusion,’ queer youths will have to assimilate to codes of normalcy that
desexualize, rigidly fix gender and sexual identities, and exclude those who will not or
cannot conform.
Notwithstanding these dividing practices, other research points to the positive impacts
of having GSAs in schools, alleviating for queer youth some of the pressures of having to
‘negotiate their everyday lives in heteronormative and homophobic schools and society’
(Filax 2007, 213). These benefits are received both by direct membership and by the mere
presence of a GSA in a school (Fetner and Kush 2008; Valenti and Campbell 2009; Walls,
Kane, and Wisneski 2009). The presence of a GSA indicates a level of tolerance and/or
acceptance among at least some of the faculty, staff and students. However, the start-up of
such organizations within schools can be met with varying levels of support or
consternation that vary across space. Fetner and Kush (2008) contend that in the US
suburban areas closely followed by urban areas are more likely to have GSAs than rural
areas and small towns, and GSAs are more prevalent in the West and Northeast. They
attribute these trends to higher levels of financial resources in suburban areas, a higher
level of general diversity in urban areas, and the relative lower rate of religious
fundamentalism in the West and Northeast (Fetner and Kush 2008). The nuances of local
and subregional cultures are largely left unexplored.
A major factor of how GSAs and other queer youth groups fail and thrive in myriad
places is the balance of youth initiative and adult support (Valenti and Campbell 2009).
This is emblematic of the power of adults to either constrain/erase or empower/encourage
children’s and adolescents’ agency (Ansell 2009). Within this line of inquiry it is
necessary, then, to explore further the ways adults perceive, interpret, provide and work
for young people, especially in regard to more complex and controversial issues such as
young people’s sexual lives.
Gender, Place and Culture 637
School space
While pedagogy is assumed to be the school’s major, if not sole, function, schools
comprise, inter alia, academics, athletics, informal and formal social formations and
groups, along with ideological and regulatory trainings. Like so many institutions created
for the needs of young people, adults dominate the creation and maintenance of the school.
In this section, I want to suggest how poststructural theorizations of the school, its
pedagogy and its disciplining, and especially the work of Foucault and Bourdieu, are
helpful in understanding the institutional contours within which queer youth and their
adult advocates operate.
Whether public or private, the school is a state apparatus mandated and constituted by
a set of laws and sanctions. Relying upon a public bureaucracy for funding, maintenance
and legitimacy, schools are a social institution upon whose space a host of social relations
converge (Bourdieu and Passeron 1990; Foucault 1995). Notwithstanding the putatively
held notion of the secular public school, public and private educational systems within the
USA are heavily influenced by Christian ideology, if not outright by Christian dogma and
doctrine. Here, the school as an institution of knowledge and power emanates from
Victorian bourgeois mores of the nineteenth century, and as Foucault states, we are still
under this regime that regulates sexuality while repressing it through a paradoxical
discursive obsession (Weeks 1989, 1999; Foucault 1990, 1995).
As Bourdieu and Passeron (1990) point out, the school operates with relative
autonomy although it is firmly allied with the state apparatus and with discourses that
enable its primary task of inculcating and maintaining the social order. Notwithstanding its
relative autonomy, schools ‘serve the classes or groups from whom it derives its authority,
even when it seems so utterly to fail the demands inherent in the performance of its
essential function of inculcation’ (Bourdieu and Passeron 1990, 114). One function of this
inculcation is to reproduce dominant heteronormative behaviors and values that include a
strict gender binary (Gagen 2000). However, the gender binary is so strict, the school
routinely fails – for both male and female and gay and straight (Butler 1991). The result is
an implicit hierarchy of normative behaviors that intertwine sexuality and gender. While
any nonnormative sexual expressions (i.e. non-coital, non-penile-vaginal heterosexual
intercourse) may be discouraged, nonconforming gender expressions, including same-sex
sexual expression, are relegated to the bottom of hierarchy, excluded or outright maligned
(Bay-Cheng 2003).
As Foucault (1972) points out, the power structure (the school in this case) is not
controlled by merely one powerful agent. Instead, power and the inculcation or exclusion
of certain knowledge, ideas or experiences are constituted through a web of control that
consists of more obvious forms of exclusion and, more often and less perceptible, little
acts of exclusion and suppression (Sibley 1995). In the case of the school in the USA, we
can see a general exclusion in the curricula of the experiences and cultural contributions of
LGBT peoples (Filax 2007). This is evidenced in the recent situation in California where
the state legislature attempted to include LGBT experiences within the general curriculum,
but the bill was vetoed by ex-Governor Schwarzenegger (Marshall 2006). As such,
fundamentalist Christians lauded the governor of California in his decision to veto the
‘pro-homosexuality bill’ (Foust 2008), using his power to exclude those experiences and
contributions made by LGBT peoples.
While this exclusion is present in all areas of the curriculum, it may be most
pronounced in the area of sex education. As Bay-Cheng (2003) points out, sex education
in junior and senior high schools consistently excludes information on nonnormative
638 C.G. Schroeder
sexual practices. Sex education increasingly focuses on issues of abstinence, but with a
perfunctory acknowledgement of reproductive, heterosexual sex – along with the
expectation that this information is for use after marriage. This is doubly problematic for
queer youth since same-sex marriage is not allowed in much of the USA (Fisher 2009).
In addressing homophobia and heterosexism, LGBT/queer adult activists and their
straight allies have often served as a voice for queer youth, providing varying levels of
support and resources. These adults work at various scales: confronting individuals in the
actual classroom, working to change a school’s climate, providing citywide safe spaces
and/or working with local, state or federal governments. Andrucki and Elder (2007) have
looked at the ways in which LGBT activist and organizations are tied to the state insofar as
they fill in gaps from the erosion or omission of state resources and services that result
from concomitant neoliberal restructuring and neoconservative discourses. While queer
youth groups and the adults who organize them can be seen as an extension of the state,
their ability to access the state and its apparatuses is nonetheless constrained. These
constraints arise from homophobia and heterosexism in the school and in society at large.
In the following section, I examine how queer youth and well-intentioned adults in Toledo,
Ohio, navigate and negotiate these constraints in the schools and through the creation of
sites outside of it.
Researching queer youth geographies in Toledo, Ohio
Part of a larger research project on queer cultural politics in Toledo, Ohio, this article
draws on semi-structured, in-depth interviews I conducted, from mid-2007 to late-2008,
with 15 queer youths and 12 adults who work for or with them. In the fall of 2008, I also
conducted a focus group interview with 12 queer youth, six of whom had been previously
interviewed. Focus group questions centered on issues they faced in school, home and
public spaces. From September 2008 to August 2010, I served as an adult volunteer for the
only out-of-school queer youth group in Toledo, RAY, in the first year of which I collected
my primary participant observations.
Here, I look specifically at the geographies of queer youth, and in particular how
adultist practices can both constrain and empower queer youth within the context of
schools. My interviews with adults include past and present adult volunteers for RAY,
school teachers, administrators and LGBT activists. These roles were not mutually
exclusive. I asked all youth and adults to self-identify socioeconomic characteristics.
Youth participants were interviewed privately in a room adjacent to RAY’s meeting space.
The length of interviews depended on the respondent, but most lasted one to two hours.
I asked questions about their experiences in various spaces and about their interactions
with family, friends, teachers and so on. Interviews with adults took place in a number of
settings, including homes, coffeehouses and the room adjacent to RAY’s meeting space.
I asked adults questions about their involvement with queer youth as well as their
perception of queer youth needs. I also asked them about their own experiences in various
spaces. I taped all interviews while taking detailed notes. Anonymity was assured to the
extent possible and I gave pseudonyms to all respondents. Collectively, these interviews
help illuminate the scope and work of, first, RAY, established in 1994; second, the SSP,
which seeks to provide queer youths with a safe school space through the use of state law
and legislature; and third, in-school GSAs. The first was established in 2005 and now a
small number operate in select high schools primarily within the city limits of Toledo.
In many ways, Toledo is a typical, primarily blue-collar, medium-sized city in the
Midwest of the USA. Unemployment among the 300,000 residents (with three times the
Gender, Place and Culture 639
number in its metropolitan area1) is high as automotive and glass manufacturing declines.
Central city poverty, however, contrasts with suburban middle-class affluence. Religion
plays a significant role in the city as well as within LGBT cultural political organizing.
Catholics dominate the urbanized area while the more rural areas are marked by more
fundamentalist Christian denominations. However, a number of LGBT-affirming
Christian churches are located within the city: these are mostly clustered in one
neighborhood, the Old West End. Straight leaders and congregants of these churches have
long been integral to LGBT cultural political organizing, including issues involving queer
youth. By no means a majority, gays and lesbians also comprise a visible population in this
central city neighborhood (Schroeder 2010).
Heterosexism dominates all areas of school curricula, including sex education.
Currently in Ohio, state law mandates that schools stress abstinence until marriage but also
teach about the existence of sexually transmitted diseases. Schools are not required,
however, to teach about HIV or safe(r) sex. Broader sex education curricula including
contraception and safe sex are possible but depend on local school boards. In Toledo and
the state, the extent of sex education has been a long and volatile debate. As early as 1988,
the Toledo school district approved a more comprehensive sex education curriculum
(Sewell 1988) only to restrict it again in 1996 (Toledo School District to begin Teaching
Sex Education that Stresses Abstinence 1996). More recently, the state of Ohio has
attempted to standardize sex education (Beyond abstinence-only 2007), and in 2007 the
governor turned down nearly two million dollars in federal abstinence-only sex education
grants (de Boer 2007). Teenage pregnancy, at the center of the debate, does indeed affect
queer youth, as RAY youth members have had children. Yet, the debate neglects and/or
disparages other nonnormative sexual expressions.
The exclusion and suppression of queer experiences, ideas or contributions does not
rest solely in school curricula but includes the everyday interactions between and among
pupils and teachers/administrators. In my interviews, one high school guidance counselor
shared his experiences of trying to be an openly ‘proud’ gay man:
Other staff members who know I’m gay and are supportive and accepting want to keep the
secret for me. They think the kids shouldn’t be told. But, I don’t care
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"The 'fightin'est' Canadian general:" Brigadier Christopher Vokes and his approach to military command, June 1942 -- August 1943
No full textThis thesis evaluates the manner in which Brigadier Christopher Yokes dealt with the technical and human aspects of command while commanding the 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade from 25 June 1942 until the end of the Sicilian campaign in August 1943. It seeks to promote a greater understanding of brigade-level command and to rehabilitate Vokes's reputation as a commander, which has largely been based on certain negative personality traits. The author argues that Yokes was a successful commander because he maintained a good balance between technical skills such as planning and directing operations and his ability to understand, motivate, and lead soldiers, and because his actions were guided by a sound philosophy of command based on personal leadership and teamwork. These elements allowed Christopher Yokes to train and lead a highly effective and cohesive fighting force that defeated some of Germany's best troops in the physically demanding environment of the Sicilian battlefield
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No full textThis thesis evaluates the manner in which Brigadier Christopher Yokes dealt with the technical and human aspects of command while commanding the 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade from 25 June 1942 until the end of the Sicilian campaign in August 1943. It seeks to promote a greater understanding of brigade-level command and to rehabilitate Vokes's reputation as a commander, which has largely been based on certain negative personality traits. The author argues that Yokes was a successful commander because he maintained a good balance between technical skills such as planning and directing operations and his ability to understand, motivate, and lead soldiers, and because his actions were guided by a sound philosophy of command based on personal leadership and teamwork. These elements allowed Christopher Yokes to train and lead a highly effective and cohesive fighting force that defeated some of Germany's best troops in the physically demanding environment of the Sicilian battlefield
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Pannexin-1 and P2X7-Receptor Are Required for Apoptotic Osteocytes in Fatigued Bone to Trigger RANKL Production in Neighboring Bystander Osteocytes
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