Where No One Knows Your Name: Situational Barriers to Fostering Community in Urban Gay Bars

• In Event: 4261 - Queer Spaces/Queer Places

Abstract

This article problematizes the ease of enacting a marked social identity in marked identity spaces. While scholars have debated whether gay bars in particular are safe or oppressive spaces for non-heterosexual populations, less work focuses on situational factors that shape whether gay bars foster interaction and comfort among its patrons. Through ethnographic fieldwork in Philadelphia gay bars and supplemental interviews with young gay club-goers, I find that while young men expressed that gay bars were “safe spaces” to enact public gay identities, observations and interviews revealed that men felt it was difficult to socialize with gay others in the bars. Drawing on theories of interaction and identity, I argue that several interrelated factors inhibited men from easily interacting with gay others and feeling a sense of community in the bars: (1) As sexualized spaces, gays bars promote face-saving behaviors to stave off embarrassment, and men’s gendered self-presentations to appear attractive encouraged men to appear standoffish and unfriendly; (2) Gay bars host multiple functions and roadmaps of action, which creates ambiguous situations that may amplify a patron’s embarrassment if he misreads a situation as sexual or platonic; (3) Patrons lack a roadmap for how best to interact with gay others with whom they interact online through hookup mobile applications––an ambiguous relation between stranger and weak-tie that I refer to here as acquainted strangers. Broadly, these findings underscore how interactional processes in marked space may constrain, rather than liberate, ingroup members.

Author

• Tyler G. Baldor, University of Pennsylvania