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