Tales of the Gayborhood: Mediating Philadelphia's Gay Urban Spaces

Abstract

Philadelphia, like other major North American cities, has neighborhoods that are informally known as gay neighborhoods. This project examines how Philadelphia's Gayborhood is mediated, and how representations and markings of the Gayborhood are shaped by different discourses, namely tourism and urban development. Marking Philadelphia's Gayborhood justifies the presence of LGBT individuals in the city by linking LGBT lives to economic activity and "positive" urban change. This dissertation reads media texts about Philadelphia's Gayborhood against participant observations of everyday life and events in the Gayborhood, with particular emphasis on the activities of the Philadelphia Gay Tourism Caucus (PGTC). Starting in 2002, the PGTC formed and produced specific tourism materials targeting the LGBT community, including print and television advertising campaigns, the rainbow street signs, and a dedicated map of the Gayborhood. These products highlight the Gayborhood as evidence of Philadelphia's gay-friendliness. Philadelphia's attractiveness for LGBT travelers is rooted in the visible presence of the city's LGBT community; Philadelphia's established LGBT everyday life allows LGBT travelers to come and already belong in the city. To support this message, the PGTC and the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation market the city to both visitors and locals. New media platforms, namely social media, help promote events, both supporting local organizations, as well as creating visible LGBT everyday life to attract visitors. The meanings of the Gayborhood are then explored through its physical markings and LGBT events that emphasize its location. First, Philadelphia's Gayborhood is placed in the context of visibly and symbolically marking a "gay" city. While visual markers may provide indication of LGBT presence, certain symbols become stereotypical and caricatured, limiting the possible meanings of being LGBT-identified in public. Events such as the Pride Parade also serve to define the boundaries of belonging in the LGBT community. A central tension is the distinction between belonging and access, which are often conflated by an emphasis on legal, anti-discrimination discourses. LGBT history is also a central theme of Philadelphia's LGBT tourism promotion. By examining LGBT history walking tours, this project argues that not only do historical projects highlight stories that might otherwise be unseen, they also produce visibility of absences in contemporary discourse. The Gayborhood also functions as an archive exhibit, ultimately supporting a liberal project of belonging through economic and political activities. Parts of the archive are currently present, but access to the LGBT archive requires further inquiry or participation. By considering the Gayborhood as an exhibit of the LGBT archive, we also can consider aspects of the archive as restricted from the public, or still impossible to articulate intelligibly to the public. This project ends with a reconsideration of what it means to articulate and communicate ideas about LGBT identity in space. Current representations and understandings of the Gayborhood still serve a homonormative and homonationalist project that privileges the activities and everyday lives of wealthy, white, gay men. Returning to thinking about gay men's cruising and public sex, this project closes with an examination of how mobile communication technologies and methods allow for public sex to occur in new ways. Marked LGBT neighborhood spaces still have the potential to change how we understand the relationship between sexual lives and public space.