Sex in placemaking activism: lesbians’ and queer women’s sex-based sociality in Sydney, Australia

Abstract

Following calls to engage more directly with the materiality of sex in geographies of sexualities, we draw on our overlapping research to explore how sexual desire and social intimacy were entangled in the emergence and consolidation of lesbians’ and queer women’s social spaces from the 1980s onwards in Sydney, Australia. Though largely applied in the context of understanding the formation of gay male communities, the concept of sex-based sociality offers a unique framework for examining the intersections between the practice of sex and the social formation of identities that are critical to placemaking activism. Yet, lesbians and queer women lacked the commercial infrastructure available to gay men that facilitated sex in social spaces, such as bars, bathhouses and nightclubs. Instead, women’s pursuit of sex took place within more mobile, ephemeral geographies but in which the production of social pleasure and sexual wellbeing were equally emphasised. Following sex within and across these mobile sites – and indeed, across our own research trajectories – we reveal how lesbians and queer women were attuned to the possibilities of sex-based sociality in such provisional geographies. Moreover, by tracing these mobilities and attunements over time, we offer a counterpoint to histories of sexual politics that have focussed on gay men’s experiences, and in doing so, provide critical correctives to the tendency to overlook women’s sexual experiences within placemaking activism.

Keywords:

• Geographies of sexualities
• lesbians
• placemaking activism
• queer women
• sex
• sex-based sociality

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the invitation by guest editors, Cesare Di Feliciantonio and Valerie De Craene, to submit this hybrid research/viewpoint paper for this important special issue, and funding from the ECAN Research Support Scheme – Rapid Funding Round 2021, UNSW Sydney that facilitated its writing. We also thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback on earlier versions and the journal editors for shepherding us through this process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kerryn Drysdale

Dr Kerryn Drysdale is a Research Fellow at UNSW Sydney. She conducts research at the intersection of social inquiry and public health, particularly in the experiences and expressions of health and wellbeing among marginalised communities. Kerryn has a particular interest in social configurations for lesbian and queer women, with a specific focus on scene-making in precarious urban infrastructure. Her first monograph, Intimate Investments in Drag King Cultures: The Rise and Fall of a Lesbian Social Scene, was published by Palgrave in 2019.

Sophie Robinson

Dr Sophie Robinson is a historian of Australian lesbian activism and communities and teaches History and Gender Studies at the University of NSW. In 2020 Sophie was the State Library of NSW Nancy Keesing Fellow, researching the history of ‘Lesbian Sydney’ during the 1990s. She is on the committee Pride History Group which collects the oral histories of Sydney’s LGBTQI + communities, and a proud member of lesbian football club, the Flying Bats FC and basketball team Hoops-a-Daisy. Her latest publication is a chapter in the forthcoming New Directions in Queer Oral History: Archives of Disruption, to be published by Routledge in 2022.

Andrew Gorman-Murray

Andrew Gorman-Murray is Professor of Geography at Western Sydney University, Australia. One of his key research interests is gender, sexuality and space. He has examined LGBTIQ geographies across a range of sites and processes, including homes, neighbourhoods, country towns, the nation state, migration and mobility, and disasters. His recent work, with David Bissell and Libby Straughan, has focused on how mobile work and the digital revolution are transforming Australian homes. His recent books include Queering the Interior (2018, with Matt Cook) and The Geographies of Digital Sexuality (2019, with Catherine J. Nash).