"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!

"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