Homophobia as Moral Geography
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.v4i2.187Keywords:
homophobia, agency, geography, gay languageAbstract
Gay men’s stories about homophobic violence will, at times, disguise reference to the persons who initiate harassment and injury. Instead, these stories emphasize the details of location or allow the victim of narrated violence to confirm the status of narrative hero. Each approach to story-telling has noticeable effects on the connections between sexual sameness and violence as displayed within the narrative. This paper examines these approaches to story-telling and their effects on homophobic formation (Leap, introduction, this volume), and traces the broader implications of these narrative styles within contemporary politics of gay visibility, assimilation and whiteness.
References
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Agger, inger (1994) The Blue Room. london: Zed books.
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Arrington, monsello with berkeley, skytrinia, gonzalez, luz clara, hickey, darby, Kirby, J., langston, barrett, saunders, penelope, smith, erika and Turner, Zee (2008) Move Along: Policing Sex Work in Washington, D.C. washington dc: different avenues.
Bek-pedersen, Katherine and montgomery, edith (2006) narratives of the past and present: young refugees’ construction of a family identity in exile. Journal of Refugee Studies 19(1): 94–112.
Bondi, liz and damaris, rose (2003) constructing gender, constructing the urban: a review of anglo-american feminist urban geography. Gender, Place and Culture 10(3): 229–245.
Bonomi, amy e., allen, david g. and holt, Victoria l. (2006) conversational silence, coercion, equality: The role of language in influencing who gets identified as abused. Social Science and Medicine 62: 2258–2266.
Bryant, Karl and Vidal-ortiz, salvador (2008) introduction to retheorizing homophobias. in Karl bryant and salvador Vidal-ortiz (eds) Retheorizing Homophobias. Sexualities 11: 387–396.
Bryant, Karl and Vidal-ortiz, salvador (eds) (2008) Retheorizing Homophobias. Sexualities 11: 387–512.
Bucholtz, mary (1999) purchasing power. in mary bucholtz, a.c. liang and laurel a. sutton (eds) Reinventing Identities: The Gendered Self in Discourse 348–368. new york: oxford university press.
Butler, Judith (1997) introduction: on linguistic vulnerability. in Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative 1–42. new york: routledge.
Cameron, deborah (2000) styling the worker: gender and the commodification of language in the globalized service economy. Journal of Sociolinguistics 4(3): 323–347.
Campbell, Joseph (1949) The Hero of a Thousand Faces. princeton, nJ: princeton university press.
Carnes, michelle (2009) do it for your sistas: black same-sex desiring women’s erotic performance parties in washington dc. unpublished doctoral dissertation, american university, department of anthropology, washington dc.
Cramer, elizabeth p. (ed.) (2002) Addressing Homophobia and Heterosexism on College Campuses. binghamton, ny: harrington park press.
Cupples, Julie and Thompson, lee (2010) heterotextuality and digital foreplay. Feminist Media Studies 10: 1–17.
Davis, amy m. (2006) Good Girls and Wicked Witches: Women in Disney’s Feature Animation. bloomington, in: indiana university press.
Di leonardo, micaela (2008) introduction: new global and american landscapes of inequality. in Jane l. collins, micaela di leonardo, and brett williams (eds) New Landscapes of Inequality: Neoliberalism and the Erosion of Democracy in America 3–20. santa Fe: school for advanced research.
Do rozario, rebecca-anne c. (2004) ‘The princess and the magic kingdom’: beyond nostalgia, the function of the disney princess. Women’s Studies in Communication 27: 34–59.
Donner, Jonathan (2008) The rules of beeping: exchanging messages via ‘missed calls’ on mobile phones. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13: 1–22.
Duggan, lisa (2003) equality, inc. in The Twilight of Equality: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics and the Attack on Democracy 43–66. boston: beacon.
Edelman, elijah adiv (2009) The power of stealth: (in)visible sites of femaleto-male transsexual resistance. in ellen lewin and william l. leap (eds.) Out in Public: Reinventing Lesbian/Gay Anthropology in a Globalizing World 164–179. malden, ma: wiley-blackwell.
Elwood, sarah a. (2000) lesbian living spaces: multiple meanings of home. in gill Valentine (ed.) From Nowhere to Everywhere: Lesbian Geographies 11–28. binghamton: harrington park press.
Ehrlich, susan (2001) Representing Rape: Language and Sexual Consent. london: routledge.
Franck, Kevin c. (2002) rethinking homophobia: interrogating heteronormativity in an urban school. Theory and Research in Social Education 30(2): 274–286.
Frank, arthur w. (1995) The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness and Ethics. chicago: university of chicago press.
Gifford, sandra m., bakopanos, christine, Kaplan, ida and correa-Velez, ignacio (2007) meaning or measurement? researching the social contexts of health and settlement among newly-arrived refugee youth in melbourne, australia. Journal of Refugee Studies 29(3): 414–440.
Gilgun, Jane F. (1995) we shared something special: The moral discourse of incest perpetrators. Journal of Marriage and the Family 57(2): 265–281.
Harvey, david (1989) The Condition of Postmodernity cambridge: blackwell.
Harvey, david (2005) a Brief History of Neoliberalism oxford: oxford university press.
Harvey, mary r., mischler, elliot g., Koenen, Karestan and harney, patricia a. (2000) The aftermath of sexual abuse: making and remaking meaning in narratives of trauma and recovery. Narrative Inquiry 19(2): 291–311.
Herek, gregory m. (2004) ‘beyond homophobia’: Thinking about sexual prejudice and stigma in the twenty-first century. Sexuality Research and Social Policy: Journal of NRSC 1(2): 6–24.
Hersker, alan (2002) The landscape from within: locale and the construction of place in dupont circle. unpublished doctoral dissertation, american university, department of anthropology, washington dc.
Hersker, alan and leap, william l. (1996) representation, subjectivity and ethics in urban gay ethnography. City and Society 8: 142–147.
Hesford, wendy (1999) reading rape stories: material rhetoric and the trauma of representation. College English 62(2): 192–221.
Hollander, Jocelyn a. (2001) Vulnerability and dangerousness: The construction of gender through conversation about violence. Gender and Society 15(1): 83–109.
Irvine, Judith and gal, susan (2000) language ideology and linguistic differentiation. in paul V. Kroskrity (ed.) Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Politics, and Identities 35–84. santa Fe: school of american research press.
James, david (2000) The town with no plaza: memory and monuments in berisso’s centro civico. in Dona Maria’s Story: Life, History, Memory and Political Identity 1–28. durham, nc: duke university press.
Joinson, adam n. (2001) self-disclosure in computer-mediated communication: The role of self-awareness and visual anonymity. European Journal of Social Psychology 31: 177–192.
Katz, James e. (2006) mobile communication and the transformation of daily life: The next phase of research on mobiles. Knowledge, Technology and Policy 19: 62–71.
Kiesling, scott Fabius (2005) homosocial desire in men’s talk: balancing and re-creating cultural discourses of masculinity. Language and Society 34: 695–726.
Kleinman, arthur (1988) The personal and social meanings of illness. in The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing and the Human Condition 31–55. new york: basic books.
Koskela, hille (1999) gendered exclusions: women’s fear of violence and changing relations to space. Geografiska Annaler 81: b(2): 111–124.
Larrabee, mary Jeanne, weine, stevan and woollcott, phillip (2003) ‘The wordless nothing’: narratives of trauma and extremity. Human Studies 26: 353–382.
Laub, dori (1992) bearing witness: or the vicissitudes of testimony. in shoshana Feldman and dori laub (eds) Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History 7– 92. new york: routledge.
Leap, william l. (1999) sex in private places: gender, erotics and detachment in two urban locales. in william l. leap (ed) Public Sex, / Gay Space 115–40. new york: columbia university press.
Leap, william l. (2002) not entirely in support of a queer linguistics. in Kathryn campbell-Kibler, r.J. podesva, sarah J. roberts and andrew wong (eds) Language and Sexuality: Contesting Meaning in Theory and Practice 45–64. stanford, ca: center for the study of language and information.
Leap, william l. (2009) professional baseball, urban restructuring, and (changing) gay geographies in washington, d.c. in ellen lewin and william l. leap (eds) Out in Public: Reinventing Lesbian/Gay Anthropology in a Globalizing World 202–221. new york city: blackwell.
Leitner, helga, sheppard, eric s., sziarto, Kristin and maringanti, anant (2007) contesting urban futures: decentering neoliberalism. in helga leitner, Jamie peck and eric s. sheppard (eds) Contesting Neoliberalism: Urban Frontiers 1–26. new york: guilford press.
Linde, charlotte (1993) Life Stories: The Creation of Coherence. new york city: oxford university press.
Low, setha (2003) unlocking the gated community. in Behind the Gates: Life, Security and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America 7–26. new york: routledge.
Malkii, lisa (1996) speechless emissaries: refugees, humanitarianism and dehistoricization. Cultural Anthropology 11(3): 377–404.
Mason, gail (2001) body maps: envisioning homophobia, violence and safety. Social and Legal Studies 10(1): 23–44.
Michels, melinda relayne (2003) where the girls were: The geographies of lesbian experience in washington dc during the late 1960s and 1970s. unpublished doctoral dissertation, american university, department of anthropology, washington dc.
Modan, gabriella gahlia (2007) Turf Wars: Discourse, Diversity and the Politics of Place. malden, ma: blackwell.
Myslik, wayne (1996) renegotiating the social/sexual identities of places: gay communities as safe haven or sites of resistance? in nancy duncan (ed.) Body Space 156–169. london: routledge.
Nutkiewicz, michael (2003) shame, guilt and anguish in holocaust survivor testimony. The Oral History Review 30(1): 1–22.
Ong, aihwa (1999) The pacific shuttle: Family, citizenship and capital circuits. in Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality 110–138. durham: duke university press.
Ong, aihwa (2006) neoliberalism as exception, exception to neoliberalism. in Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty 1–29. durham: duke university press.
Pascoe, c.J. (2007) Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School. berkeley: university of california press.
Pellegrini, ann (1992) s(h)ifting the terms of hetero/sexism: gender, power, homophobias. in warren blumfield (ed) Homophobia: How We All Pay The Price 39–56. boston: beacon press.
Pharr, suzanne (1998). Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism. inverness: chardon press.
Portelli, alessandro (1991) The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral Narrative. albany: state university of new york press.
Ramanathapillai, rajmothan (2006) The politicizing of trauma: a case study of sri lanka. Journal of Peace Psychology 12(1): 1–18.
Reiter, andrea (2000) Narrating the Holocaust. Trans. patrick camiller. london: continuum.
Schmitt, Frederika e. and martin, patricia y. (1999) unobtrusive mobilization by an institutionalized rape crisis center: ‘all we do comes from victims’. Gender and Society 13(3): 364–384.
Stone, Kay (2008) Some Day Your Witch Will Come. detroit, mi: wayne state university press.
Thurlow, crispin and Jaworski, aaron (2006) The alchemy of the upwardly mobile: symbolic capital and the stylization of elites in frequent flyer programs. Discourse in Society 17:99--135.
Viteri, maria amelia (2008a) out of place: Translation of ‘race’, ethnicity, sexuality and citizenship in washington d.c. and san salvador, el salvador. in adi Kuntsman and esperanza miyake (eds) Out of Place: Interrogating Silences in Queerness/Raciality 241–264. york, england: raw nerve books.
Viteri, maria amelia (2008b) seeking a relevant Queerness: sexual, racial and nationalist negotiations of identity amongst the latino immigrant community in washington dc. unpublished doctoral dissertation, american university, department of anthropology, washington dc.
Wood, Julia (2001) The normalization of violence in heterosexual romantic relationships: women’s narratives of love and violence. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 18(2): 2399–261.
Williams, brett (2009) a river runs through us. American Anthropologist 103: 409–431.
Zharkov, dubravka (2007) The Body of War. durham: duke university press.
Agger, inger (1994) The Blue Room. london: Zed books.
Althusser, louis (1971) ideology and ideological state apparatuses (notes toward an investigation). in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays 127–186. new york: monthly review press.
Arrington, monsello with berkeley, skytrinia, gonzalez, luz clara, hickey, darby, Kirby, J., langston, barrett, saunders, penelope, smith, erika and Turner, Zee (2008) Move Along: Policing Sex Work in Washington, D.C. washington dc: different avenues.
Bek-pedersen, Katherine and montgomery, edith (2006) narratives of the past and present: young refugees’ construction of a family identity in exile. Journal of Refugee Studies 19(1): 94–112.
Bondi, liz and damaris, rose (2003) constructing gender, constructing the urban: a review of anglo-american feminist urban geography. Gender, Place and Culture 10(3): 229–245.
Bonomi, amy e., allen, david g. and holt, Victoria l. (2006) conversational silence, coercion, equality: The role of language in influencing who gets identified as abused. Social Science and Medicine 62: 2258–2266.
Bryant, Karl and Vidal-ortiz, salvador (2008) introduction to retheorizing homophobias. in Karl bryant and salvador Vidal-ortiz (eds) Retheorizing Homophobias. Sexualities 11: 387–396.
Bryant, Karl and Vidal-ortiz, salvador (eds) (2008) Retheorizing Homophobias. Sexualities 11: 387–512.
Bucholtz, mary (1999) purchasing power. in mary bucholtz, a.c. liang and laurel a. sutton (eds) Reinventing Identities: The Gendered Self in Discourse 348–368. new york: oxford university press.
Butler, Judith (1997) introduction: on linguistic vulnerability. in Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative 1–42. new york: routledge.
Cameron, deborah (2000) styling the worker: gender and the commodification of language in the globalized service economy. Journal of Sociolinguistics 4(3): 323–347.
Campbell, Joseph (1949) The Hero of a Thousand Faces. princeton, nJ: princeton university press.
Carnes, michelle (2009) do it for your sistas: black same-sex desiring women’s erotic performance parties in washington dc. unpublished doctoral dissertation, american university, department of anthropology, washington dc.
Cramer, elizabeth p. (ed.) (2002) Addressing Homophobia and Heterosexism on College Campuses. binghamton, ny: harrington park press.
Cupples, Julie and Thompson, lee (2010) heterotextuality and digital foreplay. Feminist Media Studies 10: 1–17.
Davis, amy m. (2006) Good Girls and Wicked Witches: Women in Disney’s Feature Animation. bloomington, in: indiana university press.
Di leonardo, micaela (2008) introduction: new global and american landscapes of inequality. in Jane l. collins, micaela di leonardo, and brett williams (eds) New Landscapes of Inequality: Neoliberalism and the Erosion of Democracy in America 3–20. santa Fe: school for advanced research.
Do rozario, rebecca-anne c. (2004) ‘The princess and the magic kingdom’: beyond nostalgia, the function of the disney princess. Women’s Studies in Communication 27: 34–59.
Donner, Jonathan (2008) The rules of beeping: exchanging messages via ‘missed calls’ on mobile phones. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13: 1–22.
Duggan, lisa (2003) equality, inc. in The Twilight of Equality: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics and the Attack on Democracy 43–66. boston: beacon.
Edelman, elijah adiv (2009) The power of stealth: (in)visible sites of femaleto-male transsexual resistance. in ellen lewin and william l. leap (eds.) Out in Public: Reinventing Lesbian/Gay Anthropology in a Globalizing World 164–179. malden, ma: wiley-blackwell.
Elwood, sarah a. (2000) lesbian living spaces: multiple meanings of home. in gill Valentine (ed.) From Nowhere to Everywhere: Lesbian Geographies 11–28. binghamton: harrington park press.
Ehrlich, susan (2001) Representing Rape: Language and Sexual Consent. london: routledge.
Franck, Kevin c. (2002) rethinking homophobia: interrogating heteronormativity in an urban school. Theory and Research in Social Education 30(2): 274–286.
Frank, arthur w. (1995) The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness and Ethics. chicago: university of chicago press.
Gifford, sandra m., bakopanos, christine, Kaplan, ida and correa-Velez, ignacio (2007) meaning or measurement? researching the social contexts of health and settlement among newly-arrived refugee youth in melbourne, australia. Journal of Refugee Studies 29(3): 414–440.
Gilgun, Jane F. (1995) we shared something special: The moral discourse of incest perpetrators. Journal of Marriage and the Family 57(2): 265–281.
Harvey, david (1989) The Condition of Postmodernity cambridge: blackwell.
Harvey, david (2005) a Brief History of Neoliberalism oxford: oxford university press.
Harvey, mary r., mischler, elliot g., Koenen, Karestan and harney, patricia a. (2000) The aftermath of sexual abuse: making and remaking meaning in narratives of trauma and recovery. Narrative Inquiry 19(2): 291–311.
Herek, gregory m. (2004) ‘beyond homophobia’: Thinking about sexual prejudice and stigma in the twenty-first century. Sexuality Research and Social Policy: Journal of NRSC 1(2): 6–24.
Hersker, alan (2002) The landscape from within: locale and the construction of place in dupont circle. unpublished doctoral dissertation, american university, department of anthropology, washington dc.
Hersker, alan and leap, william l. (1996) representation, subjectivity and ethics in urban gay ethnography. City and Society 8: 142–147.
Hesford, wendy (1999) reading rape stories: material rhetoric and the trauma of representation. College English 62(2): 192–221.
Hollander, Jocelyn a. (2001) Vulnerability and dangerousness: The construction of gender through conversation about violence. Gender and Society 15(1): 83–109.
Irvine, Judith and gal, susan (2000) language ideology and linguistic differentiation. in paul V. Kroskrity (ed.) Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Politics, and Identities 35–84. santa Fe: school of american research press.
James, david (2000) The town with no plaza: memory and monuments in berisso’s centro civico. in Dona Maria’s Story: Life, History, Memory and Political Identity 1–28. durham, nc: duke university press.
Joinson, adam n. (2001) self-disclosure in computer-mediated communication: The role of self-awareness and visual anonymity. European Journal of Social Psychology 31: 177–192.
Katz, James e. (2006) mobile communication and the transformation of daily life: The next phase of research on mobiles. Knowledge, Technology and Policy 19: 62–71.
Kiesling, scott Fabius (2005) homosocial desire in men’s talk: balancing and re-creating cultural discourses of masculinity. Language and Society 34: 695–726.
Kleinman, arthur (1988) The personal and social meanings of illness. in The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing and the Human Condition 31–55. new york: basic books.
Koskela, hille (1999) gendered exclusions: women’s fear of violence and changing relations to space. Geografiska Annaler 81: b(2): 111–124.
Larrabee, mary Jeanne, weine, stevan and woollcott, phillip (2003) ‘The wordless nothing’: narratives of trauma and extremity. Human Studies 26: 353–382.
Laub, dori (1992) bearing witness: or the vicissitudes of testimony. in shoshana Feldman and dori laub (eds) Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History 7– 92. new york: routledge.
Leap, william l. (1999) sex in private places: gender, erotics and detachment in two urban locales. in william l. leap (ed) Public Sex, / Gay Space 115–40. new york: columbia university press.
Leap, william l. (2002) not entirely in support of a queer linguistics. in Kathryn campbell-Kibler, r.J. podesva, sarah J. roberts and andrew wong (eds) Language and Sexuality: Contesting Meaning in Theory and Practice 45–64. stanford, ca: center for the study of language and information.
Leap, william l. (2009) professional baseball, urban restructuring, and (changing) gay geographies in washington, d.c. in ellen lewin and william l. leap (eds) Out in Public: Reinventing Lesbian/Gay Anthropology in a Globalizing World 202–221. new york city: blackwell.
Leitner, helga, sheppard, eric s., sziarto, Kristin and maringanti, anant (2007) contesting urban futures: decentering neoliberalism. in helga leitner, Jamie peck and eric s. sheppard (eds) Contesting Neoliberalism: Urban Frontiers 1–26. new york: guilford press.
Linde, charlotte (1993) Life Stories: The Creation of Coherence. new york city: oxford university press.
Low, setha (2003) unlocking the gated community. in Behind the Gates: Life, Security and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America 7–26. new york: routledge.
Malkii, lisa (1996) speechless emissaries: refugees, humanitarianism and dehistoricization. Cultural Anthropology 11(3): 377–404.
Mason, gail (2001) body maps: envisioning homophobia, violence and safety. Social and Legal Studies 10(1): 23–44.
Michels, melinda relayne (2003) where the girls were: The geographies of lesbian experience in washington dc during the late 1960s and 1970s. unpublished doctoral dissertation, american university, department of anthropology, washington dc.
Modan, gabriella gahlia (2007) Turf Wars: Discourse, Diversity and the Politics of Place. malden, ma: blackwell.
Myslik, wayne (1996) renegotiating the social/sexual identities of places: gay communities as safe haven or sites of resistance? in nancy duncan (ed.) Body Space 156–169. london: routledge.
Nutkiewicz, michael (2003) shame, guilt and anguish in holocaust survivor testimony. The Oral History Review 30(1): 1–22.
Ong, aihwa (1999) The pacific shuttle: Family, citizenship and capital circuits. in Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality 110–138. durham: duke university press.
Ong, aihwa (2006) neoliberalism as exception, exception to neoliberalism. in Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty 1–29. durham: duke university press.
Pascoe, c.J. (2007) Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School. berkeley: university of california press.
Pellegrini, ann (1992) s(h)ifting the terms of hetero/sexism: gender, power, homophobias. in warren blumfield (ed) Homophobia: How We All Pay The Price 39–56. boston: beacon press.
Pharr, suzanne (1998). Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism. inverness: chardon press.
Portelli, alessandro (1991) The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral Narrative. albany: state university of new york press.
Ramanathapillai, rajmothan (2006) The politicizing of trauma: a case study of sri lanka. Journal of Peace Psychology 12(1): 1–18.
Reiter, andrea (2000) Narrating the Holocaust. Trans. patrick camiller. london: continuum.
Schmitt, Frederika e. and martin, patricia y. (1999) unobtrusive mobilization by an institutionalized rape crisis center: ‘all we do comes from victims’. Gender and Society 13(3): 364–384.
Stone, Kay (2008) Some Day Your Witch Will Come. detroit, mi: wayne state university press.
Thurlow, crispin and Jaworski, aaron (2006) The alchemy of the upwardly mobile: symbolic capital and the stylization of elites in frequent flyer programs. Discourse in Society 17:99--135.
Viteri, maria amelia (2008a) out of place: Translation of ‘race’, ethnicity, sexuality and citizenship in washington d.c. and san salvador, el salvador. in adi Kuntsman and esperanza miyake (eds) Out of Place: Interrogating Silences in Queerness/Raciality 241–264. york, england: raw nerve books.
Viteri, maria amelia (2008b) seeking a relevant Queerness: sexual, racial and nationalist negotiations of identity amongst the latino immigrant community in washington dc. unpublished doctoral dissertation, american university, department of anthropology, washington dc.
Wood, Julia (2001) The normalization of violence in heterosexual romantic relationships: women’s narratives of love and violence. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 18(2): 2399–261.
Williams, brett (2009) a river runs through us. American Anthropologist 103: 409–431.
Zharkov, dubravka (2007) The Body of War. durham: duke university press.
Published
2011-07-20
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Leap, W. L. (2011). Homophobia as Moral Geography. Gender and Language, 4(2), 187-220. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.v4i2.187
