Gay Neighborhoods and the Rights of the Vicarious Citizen

Abstract

Drawing on a combination of qualitative methods using data collected from gay neighborhoods in Chicago and Washington, DC, this article develops the notion of vicarious citizenship—the exercise of rights and claims‐making by nonresidential stakeholders who personally identify politically, economically, or socio‐culturally with a local community. Vicarious citizens include a diversity of self‐identified community members, some of whom were former or displaced residents of the neighborhood, who draw on a variety of socio‐territorial practices to mobilize against perceived normative and political threats to their visions of authentic community. At times, vicarious citizens may hold differing and even conflicting perspectives on the functions of community, challenging the claims of local residents and those with more material stakes in the local area. I argue the notion of vicarious citizenship can expand our understanding of how gay neighborhoods remain relevant among certain LGBT populations who, for a variety of reasons, select into neighborhoods outside established gay areas. Vicarious citizenship can also be found in other nonresident communities.

Queer Pop–Ups: A Cultural Innovation in Urban Life

“…Community‐need parties construct queerness as a critique of stable gay and lesbian areas in Vancouver, which many organizers experience as culturally white, expensive, and masculine spaces. Such critiques allow for the exercise of what Greene () calls “vicarious citizenship,” or nonresidential forms of claims‐ and placemaking among the most marginalized subsets of queer communities.…”

“…They suggest that placemaking efforts are not limited to gay districts or gay bars. Greene () details nonresidential forms of citizenship whereby gays and lesbians who live outside the gayborhood still make claims to its current cultural composition and its place in the future of the city. Vicarious citizens exercise “socio‐territorial practices to mobilize against perceived normative and political threats to their visions of authentic community” (p. 99).…”

“…Pop‐ups expand our geographic imagination (Harvey ) beyond the placemaking efforts that scholars have documented in fixed areas like the gayborhood (Greene , 2018) and in stable institutions like gay bars (Mattson ). Pop‐ups provide a temporary third space (Oldenburg ; Putnam ) for queer people who construct them in contrast to existing spaces, many of which they perceive as inaccessible, unaffordable, exclusive, and sometimes discriminatory.…”

Queer Cultural Archipelagos are New to Us

“…When you go there, there are straight people there, but they are clearly the visitors. I can kiss my husband on the streets without fear, because that space is ours.” The symbolic ownership William claims over Dupont Circle despite living in Shaw reflects a practice I call vicarious citizenship — the exercise of rights and entitlements by nonresidential actors who identify politically, economically, and/or socio‐culturally with a neighborhood or locality (Greene ). Vicarious citizens may have a passing or fleeting relationship with their communities of interest; nevertheless, they combine a shared sense of identity with their participation in the life of the community to situate themselves as local stakeholders, at times challenging the visions of community held by those with more material ties.…”

Aligning Our Maps: A Call to Reconcile Distinct Visions of Literatures on Sexualities, Space, and Place

“…In the same 2008 essay, I also noted a dearth of scholarship on smaller places, which has since begun to be filled (Barton ; Kazyak , , 2012; McFarland Bruce ). I also called for scholarship on those with limited access to gayborhood institutions, which researchers have also addressed (see Greene ; Han et al. ; Hunter ).…”