Sexual Deserts and Oases: How Urban Structures Create and Perpetuate Sexual Inequality

• In Event: 2167 - Analyses of Urban and Rural Spaces, and Racialized Sexual and Gender Identities

Abstract

Since the 1970s, urban gay neighborhoods have experienced significant growth coming to epitomize gay life, culture, and commerce in American cities. Despite the growth of these neighborhoods, many gay individuals remain excluded from these communities, either by force or by choice, and locate their gay participation outside of these neighborhoods. I argue that the rise of the gay neighborhood coupled with other patterns of urban stratification have contributed to a growing urban sexual inequality, specifically through the creation of sexual oases and sexual deserts. Focusing on this search process, I draw attention to how structural considerations— such as neighborhood quality, types of sexual venues, and transportation—impact individual sexual expectations and interactional sexual achievements through the creation of differential costs and benefits in the pursuit of sexual partners and acts. Drawing on a combination of qualitative data, I show that sexual inequality in types of partners, types of venues, and types of acts is structural, as much as individual or interactional. Given that sexual inequality is structural, I illustrate how online technologies, which were regarded as solutions to thin markets or geographic constraints, actually reify extant inequality. In sum, the structural inequalities created by the development of the gay neighborhood and the inability of online technologies to provide gay men equal access to partners have contributed to a double sexual bind for the most vulnerable members of the urban gay community.

Author

• Morgan Robert Purrier, University of Michigan