Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America

Intersections: Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Genders and Sexualities

by Mary L. Gray

Winner of the 2009 Ruth Benedict Prize for Outstanding Monograph from the Society of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists

Winner of the 2010 Distinguished Book Award from the American Sociological Association, Sociology of Sexualities Section

Winner of the 2010 Congress Inaugural Qualitative Inquiry Book Award Honorable Mention

From Wal-Mart drag parties to renegade Homemaker's Clubs, Out in the Country offers an unprecedented contemporary account of the lives of today's rural queer youth. Mary L. Gray maps out the experiences of young people living in small towns across rural Kentucky and along its desolate Appalachian borders, providing a fascinating and often surprising look at the contours of gay life beyond the big city. Gray illustrates that, against a backdrop of an increasingly impoverished and privatized rural America, LGBT youth and their allies visibly--and often vibrantly--work the boundaries of the public spaces available to them, whether in their high schools, public libraries, town hall meetings, churches, or through websites. This important book shows that, in addition to the spaces of Main Street, rural LGBT youth explore and carve out online spaces to fashion their emerging queer identities. Their triumphs and travails defy clear distinctions often drawn between online and offline experiences of identity, fundamentally redefining our understanding of the term 'queer visibility' and its political stakes. Gray combines ethnographic insight with incisive cultural critique, engaging with some of the biggest issues facing both queer studies and media scholarship. Out in the Country is a timely and groundbreaking study of sexuality and gender, new media, youth culture, and the meaning of identity and social movements in a digital age.

Genres: Nonfiction, Queer, LGBT, Ethnography, Sociology, History, Sexuality

293 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Mary L. Gray is a Professor of Communication and Culture at the University of Indiana.

Reviews

[Elevate Difference · Rating 4 out of 5]

The town I grew up in—Athens, Georgia (pop. 100,266)—is generally known for two things: indie music (a la REM, Elephant 6, and Kindercore) and the University of Georgia, both of which play a major role in maintaining the town's liberal leanings. However, Athens doesn't lean too far. It's still a place where college football dominates from Labor Day to Christmas, and if you're not in church on Sunday morning, you are assumed to be riddled with sin.

Coming up in an environment rife with contradiction, I learned a lot about peaceful co-existence through plausible deniability. (He's not gay; he's just eccentric.) Sure, we had an annual human rights festival where the young and old listened to people like UGA law professor Eugene Wilkes speak about the need for student activism to combat the world's ills, but mostly they were there for the music. One can only ask so much from a small town in the South, and once my identity as a radical queer feminist began to set in, Athens began to feel stifling. So as soon as I was able to, I did as gay rights icon Harvey Milk instructed, and fled to the nearest city.

The city, however, was not the activist paradise I'd imagined it would be. I did find a lot of feminists and socialists and anti-racists and queers with whom I could link arms and "fight the good fight," but I lost that sense of community I'd always known at home. What good was knowing someone would show up at a protest if you couldn't count on them to show up when your car dies and you need to get to work? What good were late night conversations about Spivak when you couldn't tell someone you were late with the rent (again)? I knew I'd lost something in the transition from small to large, and while I was happy with what I'd gained, I still questioned whether it was enough. I wondered if it were possible to reconcile being in a place where no one is a stranger with the benefits one gains when one is able to be anonymous.

Enter Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America. I recently interviewed Mary Gray for WireTap Magazine after reading her groundbreaking new book about the myths and mysteries of being queer in small town America. The book resonated with me deeply, as Gray (herself a former queer rural youth) explains how the current gay rights movement excludes rural LGBTQ issues and constructs a queer identity that increases rural queer invisibility. She provides strategies for altering the course to address their needs without requiring re-location (a luxury that is not always attainable or desired) or conformity to a falsely homogeneous queer standard.

Out in the Country was like a breath of fresh country air—just what this Georgia girl needed.

Review by Mandy Van Deven

[Monica Crawford]

A better book to read ab Appalachia in light of current events.

[laaaaames · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love THE CONCEPT of this book a lot. But honestly the book spent more time telling why things were significant than just covering significant things. Also Gray seemed to be really happy twisting our expectations, but at times this seemed to bias her findings - or at least SEEMED to. Probably there IS plenty in rural America that's exactly what you'd expect out of it.

We spent time with such a limited number of people, and there didn't seem to be a lot of DEPTH in that time spent, except perhaps with Mary Bird, who is clearly awesome and doing a world of good.

Also, I get WHY Kentucky was chosen, but I don't believe rural=rural=rural. Would have really loved to see more places.

Really, this book seemed like the good outline or presentation to a book I'd like to read. Just wanted soooo much more out of it.

(read: 26)

[Reese San Diego]

read part of this for a research project I did in a class and decided to pick it up and read the rest! Such an interesting important topic that is largely unexplored!

notes:
- overall a really important project + intervention! as the book discusses rural queer identities are just so heavily invisibilized, the fact that this book exists is significant in and of itself (but as the book also mentions, recognition is not enough in the grand scheme of things - certainly an important first step but what else can we tangibly to to improve the lives of queer youth in rural areas?)
- REALLYY gelled on one of the concepts from the book: rural space is kind of predicated on familiarity, queer identities (often mapped on to urban space) are often imagined as predicated on expressing difference, so what are the implications for queer youth in rural space? SOOOOO interesting and really made a lot of sense to me. Also just super engaging and illuminating as a queer person who grew up in a small town - a lot of this book was really affirming and helped me make sense of my own experiences, which I suppose is part of the project's goal! :)
- I wasn't that moved by the individual anecdotes, I felt more compelled by the ideas and concepts than the examples provided. I also felt like we didn't get to know the individuals well enough - I've read some other ethnographic monographs for my gender studies classes that I was really moved by (e.g. Martin Manalansan's "Global Divas" which was actually mentioned a couple of times in this book, and also Sealing Chung's "On the Move for Love"). I've really grown fond of ethnographic research and the ways researchers really get to know the participants, and it feels like a deep, meaningful reflection of people's lives, which is part of what drew me to this book. While these examples were certainly relevant and connected to the book's argument, I think it could've been interesting to explore fewer examples in more depth as opposed to several examples on a more surface level.
- Gray acknowledges this in the appendix, but of course a major limitation to this research is the sample (primarily white and male). My research project was actually focused on the experiences of queer Asian Americans in rural areas, and what really interests me is the intersection of a POC and queer identity in rural space, given that rural places are often seen as inconducive to both of these identities. So another level to this research, or perhaps further work to be done is to explore how POC experience discrimination and isolation in rural places affects identity development as a queer person (Gray also alludes to this in the media contextualization chapter, like acknowledging how external factors like race, class, geographic location, etc. affect identity development but I would like to see more explicit acknowledgment of POC experiences and have it be a primary focus rather than something that's just gestured to). As I said, I'm sure Gray is aware of this and there's only so much you can do when it comes to finding participants, but it is a major gap - and an important one!

[Lenks · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author supposedly spent years in rural Kentucky to write this, but honestly it would be hard to know that from the content of the book. It relies so much on theory, and contextualizing the research in the existing literature, that it feels like something is missing. I would argue that that something is, well, the actual experience out in the country, conversations with the queer youth, and a sense of place. The parts that were grounded in reality, in those conversations, were interesting and engaging; the theory — not so much. I would guess this was the author’s PhD dissertation or something like that, as it certainly reads like it. Too bad, I think it’s such an important topic!

[Phia Prichard · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of my most aggressive speed-reads of all time. completed this in like 4 hours no joke

[Puffin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely more of a journalistic take on an ethnography - but not uninteresting

[A Meneses · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was very well researched and has a lot of resources.

[Dara · Rating 1 out of 5]

Interesting topic that I wanted to learn more about but the writing was so slow it was hard to get through. Was hoping for more stories and personal experiences. Don't try to read the introduction, you'll never get past it.

[Sally Kenney · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little dense, and some concepts are not fully developed, but Out in the Country is nonetheless an important theoretical intervention. Gray decenters the politics of visibility, gay marriage, and urban areas for the LGBT movement. She smashes stereotypes about both queer youth and the passivity of media use. Her methods section should be a call to arms against IRB.

[Marissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit dense and not a quick read, but the author raises & explores a lot of important points and has a good youth-positive perspective. Definitely recommend, especially if you tend to have an urban-centric view of culture.

[Lakulin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though my expectations ran much higher based on the pre- and reviews by leading American Media Scholars, I do have to concede that this an important study, long overdue and hopefully triggering further research.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for anyone interested in rurality, youth culture, gender and sexuality, or ethnography

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid but perhaps overly academic, not an easy read.

[Mills College Library]

306.76608 G7812 2009

[Alyx · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the most important book I'll read this year.