I would not normally blog about an appendix in a text, but when it comes to Mary L Gray's text Out in the Country, I think it important to consider what Gray has to say.

In this appendix, Gray discusses several aspects of her research methods, including why there were few females in the study.  First, Gray discusses how this type of research is next to impossible to conduct due to the difficulty of gaining IRB approval when wanting to talk to youth under 18 without their parents consent.  She notes that until these conversations can be brought into the school systems, it will continue to be difficult.

Gray also comments on the fact that her research pool was limited due to starting out with youth already involved in some type of LGBT organization.  She states that "this agency-driven approach, however, has significant drawbacks . . . .  The most critical shortcoming of relying on agencies: most rural communities do not have formal infrastructures of not-for-profit social services beyond faith-based organizations" (3670-3686).   She tapped into the pools of friends of those she did meet in organizations, and this was how she found her research participants. 

She believes that the lack of females is, in part, due to the fact that "young rural women were often too busy between work, family, and school commitments to meet with [Gray]" (3717-3733).  Rural young women often have the responsibility of caring for siblings while parents are at work or for caring for older adults for the same reasons (3717-3733).  Therefore, females had less social time to become involved in this type of project. 

Generally speaking, Gray's book brings to light the complexities involved for rural LGBT youth who are trying to negotiate issues of identity and how these youth find ways to be visible while still maintaining a sense of the familial.  It is also enlightening to see how the use of media helps these youths find realness in their queerness.  Truth be told though, I am happy to be done with the book.

Mary L Gray's Epilogue to her book Out in the Country discusses two things: the vote on Amendment 2 in 2004 to Kentucky's ban on same-sex marriage and what happened to the youth she worked with during her research.

She makes a valid point when she discusses the amendment that passed and banned same-sex marriages in Kentucky, as it has in many states.  Often, exit surveys show that voting yes to this amendment has little, if anything, to do with people "hating" or disliking gays or lesbians and more to do with money (surprise, surprise)!  Rural citizens in particular often have no access to the most basic of social or medical services, like health care.  So when people begin to discuss same-sex marriages that would offer benefits that are normally only available to married people, rural folk, and others, begin to get defensive.  As Gray notes, "rural voters who reject recognition of LGBT rights telegraph their own feelings of economic vulnerability, lack of access to social-welfare benefits, and reliance on the material more than symbolic preciousness of marriage to span the gaps in a woefully threadbare social safety net" (3559-3576).  When looked at in this light, it begins to make sense as to why these amendments are continually voted into states' constitutions. 

The rural youth that Gray spoke with concerning marriage noted that they wanted to have the chance to get married, but they did not seem to care whether or not these marriages would be seen as legal.  I would attribute this attitude to their youth, but Gray does not comment on it.

As for what happened to those Gray followed in her research, most have moved on.  The Boyd County High Gay-Straight Alliance became defunct once those who began it graduated.  The one responsible, in large part, for the Highland Pride Alliance also moved on, and when I attempted a google search, no website was found by that name.  Again, I would think that all of these changes are just a product of youth growing and investing their time and energy into different things. 

Gray ends her text with many questions for where this research might go from here, such as "what place will young women and trans rural youth find in this field of identity?" (3624-3639).  But the story does not end here, and there will be one more post before we call this book quits.

In Mary L Gray's conclusion to Out in the Country, she summarizes the points that she makes throughout the book.  But what I find particularly interesting are her arguments about how rural youth do visibility.  Gray argues that "rural queer youth rework their disorientation from self, in places that prioritize familiarity through codes of sameness, discourage claims to difference, and have relatively few local 'others' to turn to for queer recognition" (3331-3347).  So rather then claim an identity of "otherness", they cling to an identity of familiarity to garner as much local support as they can.

As I've made reference too many times, I grew up in a rural area, and I can't imagine what it would have been like for me to try to claim a lesbian identity during those years.  I knew I was different, but I had no way of knowing what that difference was or how to label it.  I wouldn't have even thought it was sexual at the time.  Unlike many of the youth in Gray's text, I had no way of searching for "what was wrong with me" because of course I knew there had to be something!!!  Gray's investigation of how media in general and new media in particular help rural youth work out their identity and find realness in being a rural LGBT youth is critical for helping researchers understand how these youth negotiate this terrain.

For me, it wasn't until I went away to college that things began to make sense to me.  However, I was still in a very small town, with no family and only a few close friends, and certainly no internet.  Life, for any rural youth in my day who questioned their sexuality or gender, were pretty much doomed for a life of misery until they got it figured out; if they did. 

Gray's research is interesting, and there are some things to note in her Epilogue which I will get to in the next post.

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!

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!!