heterosexuality is in fact an enormously diverse
set of practices and relations that can even
include (seemingly contradictorily) same-sex
activity (for example, ‘male rape’ and other
forms of sexual engagement by heterosexually
identified men with other men), not to mention
eroticized interactions of dizzying varieties.
While it would be impossible to provide an
exhaustive agenda for geographers interested in
heterosexualities here, a starting point might be
consideration of the processes producing spaces,
places and environments that are strongly coded
as heterosexual. For example, while suburban-
ization has been analyzed in terms of capitalism,
racism and patriarchy, it is clearly also a product
of heterosexism (see Knopp, 1990a, for a brief
acknowledgement of this). Those interested in
capitalist land markets, housing policies and
racist/patriarchal social relations cannot ignore
the heterosexual dimensions to these phenomena.
Spaces and places designed specifically to facili-
tate heterosexual sex, courtship and marriage
might also be examined from a queer perspec-
tive. What of ‘straight’ porn shops and cinemas
where heterosexually identified men, consuming
heterosexually oriented pornography, have sex
(ironically, at times, with each other)? Or debu-
tante balls, prom dances, ‘lovers’ lanes’, ‘singles
bars’ and weddings where men and women learn
the rituals of dating, courting and having sex?
Alternatively, one might consider many of the
issues we raised above (communication, colo-
nialism/postcolonialism, trade, transportation
closets) from a distinctly heterosexual (but still
queer) perspective.
Given the rise in geography of perspectives
like political ecology and nature–society studies,
we think it important that queer perspectives on
nature and environment be on cultural geogra-
phers’ agendas as well. Queer epistemological
critiques generally, as well as the consideration
of queer sexualities, could surely inform
approaches to nature–society debates, just as fem-
inistcritiques and perspectives on gender have
done in defining fields like feminist political
ecology(Rocheleau et al., 1996). The key would
be to look at the links between cultural/political
systems as a whole (but from a perspective that
foregrounds especially issues of sexuality and
associated ways of knowing), social construc-
tions of ‘nature’, and biological systems. One
might ask, for example, how heterosexism is
related to masculinist and patriarchal approaches
to environmental management, and how it is
inscribed in landscapes and physical systems that
have been transformed by ‘man’. More generally,
how might the closeting of queer desire in
western societies discipline men’s andwomen’sconstructions and uses of ‘nature’? In the context
of ‘non-western’ cultures, we might ask why it is
that so many people who in the west might be
considered ‘queer’ are ascribed special status as
spiritual naturists (for example, the berdacheof
some native North American cultures). These
questions (and many others like them) would
seem to be particularly rich avenues for inquiry
by new generations of broadly trained cultural
geographers interested in sexuality and queer
theory.
Finally, we would call for a continuation and
deepening of self-reflexivity in queer geogra-
phies of the future. Incumbent in any postmodern
scholarship, queer perspectives cannot just chal-
lenge and critique others; they must also self-
critique as well. After all, queer theory insists
that no position is completely innocent or
unproblematic. Kim England’s (1994) now-classic
essay on her ‘failed’ research attempt as a
straight woman investigating lesbian networks in
Toronto shows the power and truths such auto-
critiques can generate. Furthermore, they lead to
a mutually supportive and constructive engage-
ment with each other’s work that draws on the
affinities of queer theory and feminist politics by
challenging the masculinist academic politics of
trenchant critique and backbiting. Cultivating
such an academic culture seems especially
important in a small but geometrically growing
field like queer geography.CONCLUSIONAs this volume’s perspective is to see cultural
geography as less a cogent scholarly object and
more a critical way of approaching a wide vari-
ety of spaces and places, this chapter has focused
on how topics deriving from the consideration of
sexuality shape that view. We have offered a
brief history of how issues of and debates
surrounding sexuality have affected human
geography generally, from simple mapping and
decloseting linked to nascent gay-rights move-
ments to a more critical and anti-positivist
scholarship informed by Marxist and feminist
perspectives. The postmodern turn in the disci-
pline has augmented and broadened queer geo-
graphy, linking scholarship on a wide variety of
issues with more thoroughly critical and decon-
structive questions of representation, epistemology
and ontology. These developments have, admit-
tedly, precipitated their own tensions and debates
(for example, around the (im)possibility of a
clear and committed politics within a thoroughly
deconstructivist project of queering: see ourQUEER CULTURAL GEOGRAPHIES 3213029-ch16.qxd 03-10-02 10:55 AM Page 321