Queering Tourism

Examining the intersection of sexuality, space and tourism, and using empirical data gathered at gay pride parades, this important work considers how the queered spaces of these parades may prompt new understandings of power and tourism.

Gay Pride parades are annual arenas of queer public culture, where embodied notions of subjectivity are sold, enacted, transgressed and debated. From Sydney to Rome, Queering Tourism analyses the paradoxes of gay pride parades as tourist events, exploring how the public display of queer bodies - the way they look, what they do, who watches them, and under what regulations - is profoundly important in constructing sexualized subjectivities of bodies and cities. Drawing on extensive collections of interviews, visuals and written media accounts, photographs, advertisements, and her own participation in these parades, Lynda Johnston gives a vibrant account of ‘queer tourism’ in New Zealand, Australia, Scotland and Italy. For each place, she looks at how the relationship between the viewer and the viewed produces paradoxical concepts of bodily difference, and considers how the queered spaces of gay pride parades may prompt new understandings of power and tourism. Examining the intersection of sexuality, space and tourism, and using empirical data gathered at Gay pride parades such as the Sydney Mardi Gras, New Zealand HERO Parade and World Pride Roma 2000, this important work produces a deconstructive account of tourism and presents new ways of thinking through the powerful processes of subjectivity formation.

Sex work is a subject of significant contestation across academic disciplines, as well as within legal, medical, moral, feminist, political and socio-cultural discourses. A large body of research exists, but much of this focuses on the sale of sex by women to men and ignores other performances, practices, meanings and embodiments in the contemporary sex industry. A queer agenda is important in order to challenge hetero-centric gender norms and to develop new insights into how gender, sex, power, crime, work, migration, space/place, health and intimacy are understood in the context of commercial sexual encounters. Queer Sex Work explores what it might mean to ‘be’, ‘do’ and ‘think’ queer(ly) in the study and practice of commercial sex. It brings together a multiplicity of empirical case studies – including erotic dance venues, online sex working, pornography, grey sexual economies, and BSDM – and offers a variety of perspectives from academic scholars, policy practitioners, activists and sex workers themselves. In so doing, the book advances a queer politics of sex work that aims to disrupt heteronormative logics whilst also making space for different voices in academic and political debates about commercial sex. This unique and multidisciplinary volume will be indispensable for scholars and students of the global sex trade and of gender, sexuality, feminism and queer theory more broadly, as well as policymakers, activists and practitioners interested in the politics and practice of sex work in local, national and international contexts.

Queering the Redneck Riviera recovers the forgotten and erased history of gay men and lesbians in North Florida, a region often overlooked in the story of the LGBTQ experience in the United States. Jerry Watkins reveals both the challenges these men and women faced in the years following World War II and the essential role they played in making the Emerald Coast a major tourist destination. In a state dedicated to selling an image of itself as a “family-friendly” tropical paradise and in an era of increasing moral panic and repression, queer people were forced to negotiate their identities and their places in society. Watkins re-creates queer life during this period, drawing from sources including newspaper articles, advertising and public relations campaigns, oral history accounts, government documents, and interrogation transcripts from the state’s Johns Committee. He discovers that postwar improvements in transportation infrastructure made it easier for queer people to reach safe spaces to socialize. He uncovers stories of gay and lesbian beach parties, bars, and friendship networks that spanned the South. The book also includes rare photos from the Emma Jones Society, a Pensacola-based group that boldly hosted gatherings and conventions in public places. Illuminating a community that boosted Florida’s emerging tourist economy and helped establish a visible LGBTQ presence in the Sunshine State, Watkins offers new insights about the relationships between sexuality, capitalism, and conservative morality in the second half of the twentieth century.

Queer Methods and Methodologies provides the first systematic consideration of the implications of a queer perspective in the pursuit of social scientific research. This volume grapples with key contemporary questions regarding the methodological implications for social science research undertaken from diverse queer perspectives, and explores the limitations and potentials of queer engagements with social science research techniques and methodologies. With contributors based in the UK, USA, Canada, Sweden, New Zealand and Australia, this truly international volume will appeal to anyone pursuing research at the intersections between social scientific research and queer perspectives, as well as those engaging with methodological considerations in social science research more broadly.

This book examines the emerging and shifting issues in the field of gay tourism, how these relate to significant societal and technological changes and the implications of these changes for theory, policy and practice. It addresses the political and sociocultural discourses evident within gay tourism consumption and explores the conceptualisations of gay tourism within the contexts of tourist profiles and identities. While gay travel research has been dominated by Western perspectives and traditions, this book incorporates voices from non-Western perspectives and cultures. The volume investigates the value of gay tourism that facilitates our engagement with tourism experiences, leisure opportunities and pleasure. It will be a useful resource for students, lecturers and researchers in tourism, human geography, cultural studies and sociology.

The seventeen essays in this book examine the power of humour in framing social and political protest.

Over the last several decades, queer sexualities, tourism industry marketing, tourist practices, and consumption patterns have converged to produce burgeoning outlets for the mobility of queer subjects. In the first collection ever devoted to scholarly articles on queer tourism, this special double issue of GLQ highlights the connections between political economy and sexuality and contributes to an emgerging body of literature on queer sexualities and globalization. Essays explore a range of geographical areas and cover topics that include an autoethnographic account of a queer traveler in Cuba, the development of gay and lesbian tourism in Madrid and Mexico, and gay and lesbian tourist events such as World Pride 2001 in Rome. The collection also includes an essay focusing on lesbian tourism--a study of the history of lesbian tourism on Eresos, Lesvos. Contributors. Lionel Cantú, Gabriel Giorgi, Venetia Kantsa, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, Michael Luongo, Kevin Markwell, Jasbir Kaur Puar, Dereka Rushbrook