I am coming to the end of Mary L Gray's Out in the Country, and as usual, I am looking forward to the concluding chapter tomorrow.  That is the problem with doing "whole" books; I reach a point where I'm no longer sure if the meanings I find are the meanings that are intended.  This chapter, "To Be Real: Transidentification on the Discovery Channel," deals primarily with the meanings two rural trans youth make out of the Documentary "What Sex Am I?" that aired on the Discovery Channel.

What it seems to boil down to, after all of the theorizing and quoting, is that we cannot, or should not, rely on textual analysis of any one piece to determine its usefulness.  As Gray argues, "these narratives of queer realness are compelling not as particular grouping of cinematic, televisual, or digital texts but as situated, discursive practices that mark the local boundaries of LGBT identities" (2811-2827). 

She proves her point by describing the realness that the documentary "What Sex Am I?" has on the two youths mentioned: one an MTF and one a FTM.  The show had a profound effect on the FTM.  He even recorded it so that he could sit down with his mom and watch it.  The point being, the FTM has a supportive family, lives within two hours of medical treatment for the transition, and was allowed to leave school and pursue his GED online to avoid the harassment from classmates.  When his family makes the two hour trip for medical treatment, they also go see the friends that he has made via his internet connections.  Within this context, the documentary opened up an entire new world for this FTM and set him on a path to his true identity.

The other youth, the MTF, has a much different story.  When she caught the show on the Discovery Channel, she watched in constant fear that her parents would return any moment and make her turn the channel.  She lives in an area where the closest medical treatment would be 4 hours away, she is constantly fearful that her parents will discover what she is searching for on the internet on the computer in the family room (and in fact they did find emails on this topic and took away her internet privileges), and she is still in public school where she worries that others will discover her secret.  While the documentary helped make real her feelings, it did little to change her world.

Gray set out to determine "how does it [media] come to matter or to occupy a place of importance in a rural young person's negotiation of queerness" (2845-2860).  It becomes apparent that media has to be considered within the context the viewing, not just the media itself.

"What we call 'the closet' springs from the idea that identities are waiting to be discovered and unfold from the inside out.  Authenticity hinges on erasing the traces of others from our work to become who we 'really' are.  To leave the traces of social interaction visible is to compromise our claims to authenticity and self-determination" (Gray 2780-2796).

Chapter 5, "Online Profiles: Remediating the Coming-Out Story," of Gray's Out in the Country speaks to how media, particularly the internet, plays a role in LGBT identity.  The above quote, for me, pretty much sums up the chapter.  Identities don't just suddenly unfold from the inside out.  Identities are socially constructed.   Rural LGBT youth are aware of their sexual desires but finding "realness" for these identities and desires can be difficult. 

Therefore, many turn to the internet and to sites like Gay.com to read real coming out stories and to give voice and meaning to their desires and feelings.  They often do not know the terminologies used to express what they are feeling until they search the internet for sources to help them understand.  So rather than the internet being a place that "turns them" or puts ideas into their heads, it is a place that helps them understand and come to terms with who they are.  It is a social place that helps  make it all real.

I've often wondered if having a resource like the internet would have helped me come to terms with and embrace my identity much sooner than I did.  I fought against my own feelings for years and refused to knowingly place myself in social circumstances that would bring those feelings to the forefront.  Perhaps if I would have had the internet, a place where I could have researched and learned in private, things would have been different.

Bottom line is that media is a positive resource for many rural LGBT youth, helping them to learn and understand who they are, making their identities real!

"If rural LGBT-identifying youth are at times hard to see, it is as much because researchers rarely look for them as they have so few places to be seen.  They must also be strategic about how they use their communities for queer recognition if they are not to wear out their welcome as locals" (Gray 1867-1883).  And this is what chapter 4 of Mary L Gray's Out in the Country deals with: the spaces that rural LGBT folks occupy to become both visible and to work on identity. 

Gray makes a good argument for the visibility of LGBT youth in rural communities.  But we don't drive down main street, rural town, USA, or the town square and say to our friends, "oh look, there's Billy Bob or Sally Sue at the gay bookstore.  I never knew they identified that way!!"  And why is that?  Well, unlike in the cities, it'd be kinda hard for Billy Bob and Sally Sue to support a gay bookstore in rural town, USA!!  And yes, there are probably more than two queer identifying folks in rural town, USA, but it's likely that Billy Bob and Sally Sue are the only two of the dozen or so that do exists that have the couple of extra bucks that they could spend on such luxuries. 

So what visibility can rural LGBT possibly have in rural town, USA?  Gray describes what she calls boundary publics.  Places that are not typically seen as queer spaces can become that when LGBT identifying individuals choose to meet there.  Gray argues that "boundary publics therefore should not be seen so much as places but as moments in which we glimpse a complex web of relations that is always playing out the politics and negotiations of identity" (1900-1916).  Gray goes on to note that "rural young people make space for themselves through acts of occupation" (1980-1996).  Examples she list include doing drag at the local Wal-Mart Superstore, attending a church skate park punk rock concert, and through new media such as websites and blogs. 

The point is this: rural LGBT youth, and adults too for that matter, make the space for themselves to be visible.  It's not like the locals don't know who is LGBT!  Seems that people in my home town knew I was a Lesbian long before I even knew what the word meant.  And the fact of the matter is that those who are gay, lesbian, bi, or trans in rural communities are not hiding any big secret.  Sure, they don't go around flaunting it because that could do more harm than good, but as one rural youth told Gray "I think everyone knows about me [being gay].  I don't really have to say it" (2090-2106).  So if a group of queer identifying people are seen in one place, that place becomes, for the moment, a place for them to be visible as LGBT.

The concept of boundary publics and spaces such as the local coffee shop becoming a place of identity work are new to me.  Gray discusses several theorists who deal with the traditional notion of the public sphere and how her boundary publics fit into these theories.  Since I am unfamiliar with these theories and theorists, it is hard for me to wrap my mind around all of this on one read, but I believe I have the basics of the concepts: public spaces are plastic enough to stretch and become something they are typically not.

Rather than to split the chapter's up and blog nightly, I have decided to combine the two post together and do them every other night, allowing me to keep the chapters together.  No internet in Philly last weekend and illness this week have me slightly behind.  That being said, it's time to move on to chapter 3 in Mary L Gray's Out in the Country. 

This chapter, entitled "School Fight!", basically chronicles the attempt of students at Boyd County High School to establish a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) club at the school.  They were turned down numerous times for technical reasons but finally managed to get it approved by involving the ACLU.  It wasn't long, approximately two weeks, however, before the school board voted to do away with all clubs at the school.  This was seen for what it was: a ploy to do away with the GSA via the backdoor while the other clubs continued to meet.

It wasn't until there was a Unity Rally held that things finally came together.  I liken it to the way my family feels about things. . . I can bad-mouth anyone in my family I want too, but let someone else try bad-mouthin 'em and it's likely they will have a fight on their hands.  I've learned that this is also the way rural communities work.  We can fight amongst ourselves and bad-mouth each other all day long, but don't let no outsider come in and try to spread hate and discontent.  This is what happened in this small community as well.  During the Unity Rally, while they never exactly embraced the concept of the GSA, it "proved more solidifying than anyone anticipated, thanks in no small part to notorious Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church minister Fred Phelps" (1668-1685).  As one participant stated, "I thought it was important to show these folks from Kansas that a message of hate and intolerance is not something that people in Eastern Kentucky believe" (1685-1703).

Eventually, the ACLU did have to become involved in the situation and they sued the school board, who did not even have the power to decide about clubs in the schools.  The case was won and the GSA was once again established in Boyd County High School. 

Gray notes that "the situation called attention to the complicated intersection of racial and class tensions that structure rural life" (1721-1737).  In areas where people are struggling to find jobs and keep their families fed, clothed, and housed, the thought of any group getting special treatment is threatening.  Rural communities are also threatened when groups such as the ACLU become involved.  They feel that these urban influences sweep into these rural communities, disrupt everything, then rush back out leaving a mess in their wake.  And often, they have a point.  But as this example clearly shows, if faced with embracing the queerness that is family or allowing those from Kansas to spread hate among their community, they chose to embrace their own.

Jessica Fields "raises the critical question of whether 'looking like everyone else' is an accomplishment or a derailment for progressive LGBT social movement and identities and, ultimately, decides it is a setback" (Gray 1068-1084).  As I suggested last night, Gray argues, however, that "the conversation in rural communities hinges not on whether LGBT youth look like everyone else as much as do they live here at all" (1068-1084). 

The second half of this chapter is a continuation of one rural communities struggles to educate their community on LBGT youth.  One woman's (Mary's) efforts to hold an educational meeting, sponsored by the Homemakers Club, was fraught with problems.  The room they had reserved for the event in the court house suddenly got canceled by the clerk , who claimed that Mary had booked the room under false pretenses.  The newspapers scheduled to cover the event were getting threatening emails and phone calls, and Mary also received threats. 

Mary feared that the event would be poorly attended due to the change in venue and the problems they were encountering, but the night of the event found "an overflow crowd piled into the . . . Library's Children's Reading Room for more than two hours of discussion" (1162-1177).  There were 43 people there that night, and most were eager to hear what the panelist had to say.  There were a hand full of those that tried to change the tone of the meeting, but they were unsuccessful.

After the meeting, Mary resigned her position in the Homemaker's Club, telling Gray that she would "not spend the rest of [her] life with a bunch of people with such closed minds" and that she would "write all of the UK [University of Kentucky] Advisors and let them know about the word 'discrimination' and how [they were] treated from the top of the Kentucky Extension Homemakers Association . . . from the logos to nonsupport from agents" (1225-1240).  Even a successful meeting took its toil on the people who were trying to give the LGBT youth in the community visibility. 

So while 'looking like everyone else' may seem like a cop out to some in the LGBT community, for these youth it means at least being acknowledged, of being seen as an individual, which is something that Napier was unwilling to even admit.  Again, walk before we run.

"Son, I'm sorry, because I know you don't agree with me on this.  But I don't believe in supporting gay people's rights, because it's bad for families" (qtd. in Gray 819-835).  Yes, you read that right!  That was Kentucky Representative Napier's response to a 17 year old college student who had presented him with 400 signatures on index cards of LGBT individuals to prove that they did exist in his district.  And this was in 2002.

It's always amazed me that there are those that believe being gay or lesbian is somehow detrimental to family live.  I have a family . . . I have a partner, a brother, a niece, two great-nieces, a mother, a father, and probably some assorted cousins.  Is that not a family?  My partner and I could have had kids, could have adopted, could have done foster children . . ., God knows there are plenty of unwanted kids in this country. 

The first part of this chapter in Mary L. Gray's Out in the Country discusses one attempt of making LGBT youth more visible in one rural area of KY.  Gray argues that "family is the primary category through which rural community members assert their right to be respected and prioritized by power brokers like Lonnie Napier" (835-851).  By invoking the "we are the same as everyone else" they hope to become visible within their own communities.  They can do this by claiming familial ties to the community in which they live.

This, of course, is a throw back to the argument that we, as LGBT, are the same as everyone else and capable of upholding the social norms of society.  I've read a lot about the different arguments that exist for LGBT communities in the last year, and I would argue that perhaps people in rural areas have to be accepted as "normal" before they can become anything else.  One has to be visible before they can begin to push the boundaries further.  Perhaps there is more meaning than I thought in the old saying that you have to walk before you can run!!

"Far from being the reflection of an inner drive, [Gray] argue[s] that youth identities are cultural assemblages that work with the materials on hand" (551-567).  So Mary L. Gray, in her book Out in the Country, does not see identity as an individual thing, but as a cultural, social construction as posed by theorists like Barbara Ponse and Anselm Strauss.  Gray posits that she investigates "rural queer-youth identities as performative, socially mediated moments of being . . . ." (584-601).

In light of these statements, then, I would like to look at one particular statement she makes later in this chapter.  Gray notes, sadly, that there were in her study only "small numbers of young women and youth of color of different gender available and/or able to participate . . . ." (665-682).  The lack of racial diversity, she believes, "superficially reflects the ethnic makeup and distribution typical of rural communities in these regions" (665-682).  The regions she mentions here are the rural areas of Kentucky and it's bordering states: what is known as the Central Appalachian Region (or my stomping grounds). 

So why, out of 34 participants, did only 11 identity as women?  The answer to this is pretty obvious to me but still interesting.  As Gray states, "the rural young women [she] met were 'highly aware that a lot was at stake for them because of their desire'" (665-698).  Not only are these women identifying as lesbians, but they are actually admitting to having sexual desires.... period!!  A no-no in our culture.  Women are not suppose to have sexual desires for the opposite sex, much less the same sex.  Gray comments that "several young women [she] met were willing to talk about their experiences but were unwilling to document them or consent to have them included in this research for fear of 'blowing their cover' as more that a few young people put it" (682-698).

Here is what is sad.  I still feel this way when I am at home in the Blue Ridge mountains.  I struggled long and hard on whether or not to "facebook friend" people I knew in HS because I knew I would be outted.  I would be blowing my cover and possibly subjecting my family to.... well, I'm not sure what they might be subjected too.  Maybe it was just an excuse for me, but in the end, I decided that if these HS friends wanted to "reconnect" with me, they would just have to learn who I really am.  Let 'em "unfriend" me if they can't deal with it!!

This concludes the first chapter where Gray has set up the theories that she uses in her case studies and the methods she incorporates.  I look forward to the rest of Gray's text and seeing how rural youth see themselves as members of an LGBT community.

"In order for someone to be visible, to 'come out,' there must always be a closet someplace where others clamor or struggle to get out.  The rural United States, as [Gray] will argue . . . operates as America's perennial, tacitly taken-for-granted closet" (230-246).  I find this to be a powerful quote from Mary L. Gray's text Out in the Country. 

She spends a good deal in the first half of this chapter discussing how the urban scene has always been viewed as the place gays and lesbians must flock to to "come out."  To have a life as an GLBT person, one must go to the city.  She discusses that part of this comes from the feeling you have when raised in the country that you've never met a stranger.  She goes on to argue, then, that "without a question rural youth negotiate queer desires and embodiments under different logistical realities" (246-263).  She also looks at the fact that nearly all researches have left out any type of investigation into rural GLBTs. 

From this discussion, Gray moves on to talk about how media plays a role in our everyday lives, but particularly how we are constantly worrying about the role media plays for our youth.  Is it harming them in some way?  Gray argues, though, that "new media are part of mass culture--the stories they circulate remediate the stories already out there" (433-450).  Reminds me of the old adage that everything old is new again.

I am of the opinion, and always have been, that society (politicians in particular) want to blame anything new, which means technology in today's world, for the failures of society when it comes to their youth.  We've seen it over and over again.  Let's blame the movies they watch, the games they play, the music they listen too, the web pages they visit, the social networks they are on..... and the list goes on.  One huge concern is always predators on the internet.  Funny thing is, I can name a handful of people that I know that were molested by family members (the devil they knew), but I can't name one that I know who was attacked by an internet predator (the devil they didn't know).

Bottom line for tonight's post is that I've just made it halfway through the introduction, and I know that Gray is doing a lot of setting up her argument before she moves into the actual proof.  So it's a little difficult to get a handle on any one thing, but I think this is going to be a very interesting read.

I've decided to move away from Second Life for a while and back into the queer side of things, so today I started Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America by Mary L. Gray.   

Once again, I pick a text that immediately hits too close to home, as Gray was raised in the country like myself.  I think she has the advantage over me though in that she apparently knew she was queer by the time she was 18 where I did not.  Gray comments that "while the few lesbian couples with kids at my school showed me I could pursue a domestic life with another woman if I did so quietly, I wasn't really sure what else there was to do locally beyond struggle to raise children and make ends meet" (110-127) (NOTE: All numbers used for quotes are Kindle numbers).  All I knew when I was 18 was that if I stayed in my small hometown, I too would likely end up married (unhappily), trying to raise children and make ends meet.  I knew no gays or lesbians, although it was rumored that the gym teacher was a "queer."  Words such as gay and lesbian were not even part of my vocabulary.  While I didn't KNOW I was a lesbian, I knew I was different and college, much like Gray, was my way out.

Gray states that "as a media scholar, [she] set out to gather the details of rural young people's everyday negotiations of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender identities  and engagements with mass and new media, through informal conversations, extensive interviews, and tagging along to see what [she] might see out in the country" (158-169).  I know things have changed a LOT since I was a kid growing up in the country, and I look forward to learning what Gray discovered on her quest

This article, "Future Directions for Learning in Virtual Worlds" by Mats Deutschmann and Judith Molka-Danielsen, concludes the book Learning and Teaching in the Virtual World of Second Life and predicts that "by the beginning of 2009 Second Life will be one of the most prominent virtual worlds in education" (187). 

Of course that prediction was made before the former CEO of Linden Lab decided to give 30 percent of the personnel their walking papers in June of this year, and that percentage included every single employee at Linden Lab that was connected to the educational aspect of SL.  Of course, it was a mere 18 days later that the CEO was stepping down and Phillip Rosedale, founder and creator of SL, was taking the helm once more.  What this means for the future of Second Life in general and education specifically is anyone's guess, but many hope it means a return to some core values: one of those would be education.

In the meantime, I am still a firm believer in SL's potential for learning and education.  I also agree with Jane Vella (quoted in this article) when she says, concerning learning, that "we respect life experience and their unique context and offer the task [learning task] as an open question, inviting their reflective response.  Some learning takes place in the mind (cognitive), some in the heart (affective), and some in the muscles (psychomotor)" (qtd. in Deutschmann and Molka-Danielsen 185-86).  The fact is we can do so much more in SL than we can in a brick-and-mortar classroom.  The learning can take place in the mind, the heart, and the muscles when SL is utilized effectively.