SEX AND THE CITY: OBSERVATIONS ON HOMOSEXUAL MEN’S CRUISING SPACE IN A PUBLIC PARK OF DELHI
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.29121/shodhkosh.v3.i1.2022.5222Keywords:
Cruising, Delhi, Queer Men, Public ParkAbstract [English]
In recent years, cruising sites have increasingly become deserted owing to factors such as the popularization of Internet-based dating and urban redevelopment projects, among others. The paper focuses on male homosexual cruising in a public park of Delhi. It aims to throw light on a once popular cruising site- now closed, focusing on the performative aspects of cruising and the ways in which men produced a queer space against the dominant spatial coding of the city. Using ethnographic methods of participant observation and conversational interviews with 18 men the study notes that the space of the park was central to the realisation of queer men’s lifeworlds. Men used various tactics to attract attention of other men and find sexual companionship, even as they tactically navigated the park space in reaction to the hostile heteronormative world around.
References
Bech, H. (1997). When Men Meet: Homosexuality and Modernity. University of Chicago Press.
Bell. D., and Valentine, G. (Eds.). (1995). Mapping Desire: Geographies of sexualities. Routledge.
Bhairannavar, K. (2016). ‘More-than-closet’ Geographies: Exploring Queered Spaces through Sexual Lives of Men in Delhi, National University of Singapore.
Bhairannavar, K. (2021). Ethics in Geographical Research: Studying Male Homosexual Cruising Sites. International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences, 6(2), 142-46. DOI: https://doi.org/10.22161/ijels.62.21
Brickell, C. (2007). ‘Parallel Worlds?: Queered Spaces and the Art of Camouflage’. In Queer Space: Centres and Peripheries, Proceedings of Conference 2007. http://www.dab.uts.edu.au/conferences/queer_space/proceedings/index.html
Brown, M. P. (2000). Closet Space: Geographies of metaphor from the body to the globe, Routledge.
Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge.
Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that Matter: On discursive Limits of “Sex”. Routledge.
Castells, M., & Murphy, K. (1982). Cultural Identity and Urban Structure: The spatial organization of San Fransisco’s Gay community. In N. Feinstein and s. Feinstein (Eds.) Urban Policy under Capitalism, Beverly Hills (pp. 237-259). Sage.
Chauncey, G. (1994). Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture and the making of the Gay male World, 1890-1994. Basic Books.
Foucault, M. (1988). Technologies of the Self. In L. h. Martin, H. Gutman, & P.H. Hutton (Eds.) Technologies of the Self: A seminar with Michel Foucault (pp 16-14). Cambridge, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.
Hollister J. (1999). A Highway Rest Area as a socially reproducible Site. In W.L. Leap (Ed.), Gay Space/ Public Space (pp 55-70). Columbia University Press.
Hubbard, P. (1999). Sex and the City: Geographies of Prostitution in urban West, Ashgate.
Hubbard, P. (2012). Cities and Sexualities, Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203861493
Kitchin, R., and Lysaght, K. (2002). Queering Belfast: Some Thoughts on Sexing Space (Working paper series No. 19). NIRSA. https://mural.maynoothuniversity.ie/id/eprint/1175/
Knopp, L. (1995). Sexuality and Urban space: a framework for analysis. In D.Bell and G.Valentine (Eds.), Mapping Desire: Geographies of Sexualities (pp 149-161). Routledge.
Leap W. L. (Ed.). (1999). Public Sex/gay space. Columbia University Press.
Lefebvre, H. (1991). The Production of Space (D. Nicholson-Smith, Trans.). Blackwell. (Original work published 1974).
Scott, J. (1990) Domination and the Arts of Resistance. Yale University Press.
Seabrook, J. (1999) Love in a different Climate: Men who have Sex with Men in India. Verso.
Shahani, P. (2008). Gay Bombay: Globalisation, Love and Belonging in Contemporary India. Sage. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4135/9788132100140
Valentine, G. (2001). Social Geographies: Space and Society. Pearson Education Limited.
Weston, K. (1995). Get thee to a big city: Sexual imaginary and the great gay migration. GLQ: A journal of lesbian and gay studies, 2(3). 253-277. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-2-3-253
Whittle, S. (Ed.). (1994). The Margins of the City: Gay Men’s Urban Lives. Arena.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Kiran Bhairannavar
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
With the licence CC-BY, authors retain the copyright, allowing anyone to download, reuse, re-print, modify, distribute, and/or copy their contribution. The work must be properly attributed to its author.
It is not necessary to ask for further permission from the author or journal board.
This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.
