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Gay neighborhoods are disappearing-or so the conventional story goes. In this narrative, political gains and mainstream social acceptance, combined with the popularity of dating apps like Grindr, have reduced the need for LGBTQ+ people to seek refuges or build expressly queer places. Yet even though residential patterns have shifted, traditionally gay neighborhoods remain centers of queer public life.
Exploring "gayborhoods" in Washington, DC, Theodore Greene investigates how neighborhoods retain their cultural identities even as their inhabitants change. He argues that the success and survival of gay neighborhoods have always depended on participation from nonresidents in the life of the community, which he terms "vicarious citizenship." Vicarious citizens are diverse self-identified community members, sometimes former or displaced locals, who make symbolic claims to the neighborhood. They defend their vision of community by temporarily reviving the traditions and cultures associated with the gay neighborhood and challenging the presence of straight families and other newcomers, the displacement of local institutions, or the taming of sexual culture. Greene pays careful attention to the significance of race and racism, highlighting the important role of Black LGBTQ+ culture in shaping gay neighborhoods past and present. Examining the diverse placemaking strategies that queer people deploy to foster and preserve LGBTQ+ geographies, Not in My Gayborhood illuminates different ways of imagining urban neighborhoods and communities.
Author: Theodore Greene
Paperback Published July 2024 320 pages
Not in My Gayborhood provides a new perspective on iconic gay neighborhoods. Greene's book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the gayborhood, attending not only to its limits and problems (especially for racial and gender minorities) but also its continued symbolic and practical significance. I wholeheartedly recommend the book to anyone interested in queer settlements and, more generally, to those who wish to learn more about how any neighborhood includes and excludes.--Japonica Brown-Saracino, author of How Places Make Us and A Neighborhood That Never Changes
Going beyond conventional understandings of gayborhoods, Greene examines how LGBTQ people develop a sense of place in the city. The sustained engagement of his research in Washington, DC, is a model for ethnographers everywhere.--Amy L. Stone, author of Queer Carnival: Festivals and Mardi Gras in the South