In this article, I use research on the lesbian fans of US women's professional basketball (WNBA) to outline how a set of exclusive cultural politics (re)produces a curious form of self-regulation amongst target consumers. I link leisure geographies and geographies of sexuality through an analysis of lesbian visibility to examine the ways that identity performance is shaped by the implicit cultural politics at work in WNBA arenas. I use Kenji Yoshino's adoption of Erving Goffman's term 'covering' to discuss the ways that normative ideologies are reinforced by management-driven practices and by the self-circumscribing practices of some lesbian fans. I show that covering is noteworthy as both an effect of marginalisation and as a mandate that encourages lesbian fans to reproduce the dominant discourse at work in WNBA arenas. I argue that act of covering illustrates the material effects of normative power relations and the ways that these effects are understood to be a natural outcome of an apolitical economic logic instead of the result of the decidedly political process of spatial production. I contend that attempts to cover give lesbian fans a false sense of power to regulate the reception of their bodies and their enactments of normativity.
Gendered space refers to the myriad ways in which space in all its forms – material, discursive, metaphorical, emotional, and the like – is produced by and productive of gender norms and relations. Like other social relations, gender is a sociospatial phenomenon that becomes material through enactments which reinforce and/or challenge dominant norms and relations. Because the meaning of gender changes over time and space, understanding the spatial manifestations of gender provides a powerful window into how categories of gender are defined, embodied, and imbued with specific characteristics and significance. The gendering of space has specific, material consequences for people's daily lives, their mobility, and their sense of identity.
In 2016, the Vancouver City Council passed the Supporting Trans* Equality and an Inclusive Vancouver policy, a motion that prompted the development of a strategy aimed at ensuring the safety and accessibility of municipal programs, services, and physical spaces for Two-Spirit, trans, and gender-diverse (TGD2S) users, including residents, City staff, and visitors. Binary gender is a taken-for-granted assumption of most urban forms and functions: It is encoded in all municipal data collection forms, building codes, signage, and communication strategies. At its root, then, addressing trans inclusion requires the municipal government to attend to and redesign the gendered models of service, programs, and space upon which the city is built. This article tells the story of the Supporting Trans* Equality and an Inclusive Vancouver policy and is driven by two goals. First, I document this policy as a contribution to the urban policy and planning literature, where attention to gender diversity is due. Second, using the trans inclusion strategy, I show how a municipal equity policy aimed at addressing the safety and inclusion of TGD2S people can have significant impacts beyond its immediate scope. To develop this idea, I consider how equity-driven innovation can substantially reshape institutional practices.
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