‘Riding the Rural Love Train’: Heterosexuality and the Rural Community

Abstract

I n this paper I examine the relationship between sexual identity and the social construction of rurality. Specifically, I discuss the centrality of particular embodiments of heterosexuality to rural masculinities and femininities and to gender relations within the rural community. In so doing I wish to build on existing work on gender and rurality and, in particular, to use theoretical discussions concerning the performance of sexual identity and its relationship with gender identity to inform the understanding of social relations within the rural community. The importance of the relationship between space and sexual identity has been argued at length by it has been shown that space may be coded in sexual terms with sexual identities being manifest in different ways in different landscapes. In the paper I argue that the rural provides a valuable context for the discussion of heterosexuality, reflecting and incorporating, as it does, highly traditional attitudes and expectations about the notions of masculinity and femininity and broader ideas of the family and gender relations.Over the past 20 years work on gender by rural social scientists has drawn attention to the importance of the nuclear family and to the acceptance of stereotypical gender roles within both the rural household and rural economy. Work has identified the durability of notions of rural 'womanhood' with their support for women's domestic and nurturing roles (see Hughes 1997) and shown how the social relations within the rural community have been founded on a set of hegemonic gender relations in which women's position at the centre of both the rural family and community is unquestioned. From early work on gender roles (particularly the gender division of labour on the farm) to more recent research on rural identity, emphasis has been on the identification of a set of patriarchal power relations which, while slowly changing, continue to promote the nuclear family as the dominant (and often exclusive) model of social and community organisation in rural areas.Despite emphasising the importance of the family and women's roles as mothers to rural gender relations, there has been little discussion within existing writing on the relationship between gender and sexual identity. What limited work has

‘You're Not a Man at All!’: Masculinity, Responsibility, and Staying on the Land in Contemporary Ireland

“…As Little (2003) shows in her research in rural Britain, the ideal of a normative heterosexuality based on traditional masculine and feminine identities and on the nuclear family is central to notions of continuity in family farming. This is particularly significant in Ireland, where farm viability continues to be defined in terms of the demographic viability of the farm family, in other words the presence of a nuclear family with a relatively young age structure (O'Hara, 1997).…”

Naturen som rekreasjon og heteroseksuell romantikk: - En studie av russiske kvinnelige migranters poetiske fortellinger om natur og kjønn

“…Med inspirasjon fra nyere kjønnsforskning vil vi saerlig undersøke (re)konstruksjoner av heteroseksualitet i en naturkontekst. I arbeidet med denne artikkelen har vi saerlig latt oss inspirere av Hanne Haavinds teori om kjønn som makt og splittelse (1994,2008), nyere litteratur om natur (Broch 2004, 2014, L'orange Fürst 2004, Ween and Flikke 2009, samt studier om hvordan natur/sted, kultur og kjønn gjensidig konstituerer hverandre (Forsberg 2001, Little 2003, Little and Panelli 2007, Pedersen 2003, McDowell 1999, Simonsen 2001a, Gerrard 2011. Artikkelen bidrar til den antropologiske forståelsen av natur og kjønn gjennom å vise hvordan naturen i vår studie fremstår som en arena som (gjen)skaper heteroseksualitet, ikke minst gjennom relasjonen (russisk kvinnelig) novise og (norsk mannlig) ekspert.…”

Sexuality, Space and Intersectionality: The Case of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Equalities Initiatives in UK Local Government

“…The experiences of LGB people living in particular localities are key to understanding local government initiatives, given the commitment to community engagement that is part of local government modernisation, following the Local Government Act (2000). As I have noted above, the paper refers to developments in geographies of sexuality, including research concerning rural and small town sexualities (Bell and Valentine (1995), and Little, (2003)). The paper also speaks to the 'undesirable others' discussed by Casey (2007) in his examination of an urban commercial gay scene; Casey found that processes of exclusion of lesbians and gay men who are older, disabled, female, poor, or supposedly unattractive operate to construct the boundaries of urban gay spaces.…”