'Staying Bush' – a Study of Gay Men Living in Rural Areas

‘STAYING BUSH’ – A STUDY OF GAY MEN LIVING IN RURAL AREAS

EDWARD JOHN GREEN

A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

University of New South Wales

2006 PLEASE TYPE THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES Thesis/Dissertation Sheet

Surname or Family name: Green

First name: Edward Other name/s: John

Abbreviation for degree as given in the University calendar: PhD

School: Social Work Faculty: Arts and Social Sciences

Title: ‘Staying Bush’ – A Study of Gay Men Living in Rural Areas

Abstract 350 words maximum: (PLEASE TYPE)

This study explored the experience of what it is to be a gay man and to live in a rural community. It sought to understand why gay men would want to live in places that are said to have a reputation for hostility towards them. The empirical data from the semi-structured interviews with twenty-one gay men living in fifteen small-town locations across New South Wales, Australia, was analysed using a qualitative method derived from phenomenology, ethnography and modified grounded theory.

The distinctive findings of this thesis centre on these men’s desire and determination to stay in the bush. They chose to stay in rural locations and effectively employed a diverse range of strategies to both combat the difficulties of rural life and enhance its advantages. The bush was the place in which these men could find themselves, be themselves and also find others like themselves. The space and the isolation of the bush gave them the latitude and the scope to live gay lives. This is why they stayed. By staying, they were also able to live out both the homosexual and rural components of their personal and social identity.

Building on a brief look at the Australian rural past, the conceptual framework utilises notions of ‘the stranger’ and draws on resilience, agency and resistance theory to understand these men’s ability to live in an unwelcoming place. Resilience allowed these men to cope and deal with the difficulties they faced. Human agency, the individual's capacity to exert autonomy over his life, is used to restore prominence to resistance theory. Agency is the catalyst to resistance and resistance fuels an individual’s, and sometimes a collective, opposition to the dominant social forces that inhibits one’s agency. These men’s desire to live in a rural place can be understood through theoretical considerations of place, the freedom of place and queer theory. Their satisfaction with life can be theorised through the application of a concept new to theory in gay literature - thriving.

This thesis documents a largely unreported aptitude and proficiency by rural gay men to live in the bush. It suggests that their close affinity with place gives them a sense of belonging that, when combined with their concept of a gay lifestyle, effectively queers the places in which they live. That gay men can live fulfilled lives in the very places they are said to have fled evokes an innovative perspective together with an appreciation of what it is to be gay in the bush.

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DEDICATION

To the 21 gay men in the bush who made this thesis possible

and

to Aldi who makes everything worthwhile.

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and to the best of my knowledge it contains no materials previously published or written by another person, nor material which to a substantial extent has been accepted for the award of any degree or diploma at UNSW or any other educational institution, except where due acknowledgment is made in the thesis. Any contribution made to the research by others with whom I have worked at UNSW, or elsewhere, is explicitly acknowledged in the thesis.

I also declare that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work, except to the extent that assistance from others in the project’s design and conception or in style, presentation and linguistic expression is acknowledged.

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Acknowledgements

The research presented in this thesis would not have been possible were it not for the goodwill and cooperation of those who took part in it. It is a pleasure to be able to thank the twenty-one men who so willingly and openly agreed to allow me to interview them for this work. It was a privilege to speak with them. The ease with which they disclosed their innermost thoughts, their emotions and even the most private aspects of their lives was a revelation. These men were intelligent, thoughtful and articulate and any strength of this work is in no small way due to the depth and richness of their stories.

In addition to those men I was fortunate enough to interview, I also need to acknowledge the other men who assisted me in locating the interviewees and encouraging them to be part of this study. I owe a debt of gratitude to John in Griffith, Victor and Terry in Goulburn, John in Wellington and especially to Bernie in Manilla. These men not only put me in touch with most of the men who were interviewed, but also foresaw the value and originality of this project and encouraged me to get on with it.

At an institutional level, I would like to acknowledge the work of the Interlibrary Loans section of the Library of the University of New South Wales. They were always willing to do the impossible and many times, while I was living overseas, they held works for me until I could get back to Australia. Nothing was too difficult and I am most grateful for their efforts and their unfailing courtesy. I am also thankful for the invaluable practical assistance of Dr Peter Yalden who proofread the whole thesis and to Ian Steep who did the final edit and the design.

This thesis would also not have been possible had it not been for the excellent academic supervision I was afforded. I wish to acknowledge the assistance provided by Dr Richard Roberts in the early stages of this project. I would like to thank Dr Eileen Baldry for continuing to have faith in this project and for encouraging me to keep it going. Eileen has a gifted intellectual mind and her willingness to apply it to the supervision of this thesis is greatly appreciated. The critical feedback, the detailed comments and Eileen’s patience in sticking with me were of great support and it is a pleasure to acknowledge my debt and gratitude to her. Dr Michael Wearing took over

iii primary supervision of this thesis at a time when I had lost all hope and confidence. It was his timely offer of advice and assistance that stopped me from walking away from this work. It was Michael’s understanding and gentle nudging to not let it go and to return to writing that slowly restored my belief in both the thesis and myself. I cannot thank him enough for his empathy and encouragement, particularly at that low point. His foresight and his big picture perspicacity gave me renewed energy to get on with the writing. Without the guidance of Michael and Eileen, this thesis would certainly not have been completed. That said, its flaws are mine.

Writing a thesis is an unexpectedly lonely experience and it is one that inevitably takes one away from friends. However, while I may have retreated somewhat in order to immerse myself in this work, my friends did not retreat from me. It was their unobtrusive, non-demanding ‘being there’ that gave me the freedom to write. It was their ‘being there’ that gave me the support I always needed and the social outlets I sometimes needed. It was their ‘being there’ that kept me (at least partly) sane through this lonely journey. They know who they are. One of the few regrets I have regarding this project is that, sadly, my Dad did not live to see this thesis finalised.

But most of all, I would like to thank my partner, Aldi, who has also been there on this journey. It was his unwavering, but inconspicuous, support that gave me the freedom and the space to write this thesis. Being with him has been the most fabulous part of my life and his ‘being there’ and his ‘staying’ in all the senses of these words not only made this journey possible, but also makes everything worthwhile.

Glossary

Country, Rural and Bush

These three terms are relatively interchangeable and they will be used in that manner.

‘Bush’ is essentially an Australian term. It refers to rural areas ‘further out’. The bush comprises those places away from large towns, well inland and away from the coast and

‘a long way’ geographically and metaphorically from the city. The bush, especially in the eyes of those who live there, are those places far away from and unconnected to the city. Additionally, ‘bush’ is slightly more colloquial and irreverent and evokes notions of the likeable larrikin. In this thesis, all three terms will be used, but there will be a preference for the use of the term ‘bush’, not only because of its location ‘further out’, but it is the term that better identifies the men in this study. The men in this study referred to themselves as being from the ‘bush’, rather than from the ‘country’. They were from ‘further out’ and they rejected the urban way of life.

The terms ‘rural’ and ‘country’ also carry the idea of being on the land or somewhere other than urban and suburban. But these terms do not have the connotations of hardship and isolation, at least in an Australian context that the ‘bush’ evokes. British research literature, in reference to rural, often uses the word ‘country-side’ (Williams,

1976, 81), while in the US there is a preference for the more geographically precise terms such as ‘plains’ or ‘prairies’ or ‘mountains’.

Community

‘Community’ has a plethora of meanings. A common definition sees community as a group of people with diverse characteristics who are linked by social ties, share common perspectives, and engage in joint activities in geographical locations or settings. In this thesis ‘community’ is used in two ways. It is used to refer to:

1. the people of a district, and/or

2. the quality of holding something in common such as common identity and/or characteristics and/or interests.

The first meaning of ‘community’ refers to actual social groups while the second sense indicates a particular quality of relationship. ‘Community’ used in the first sense usually refers to the people who live in the respective town or district in which the gay men live.

Thus there might be reference to the Geriffi community. The second sense is meant when ‘community’ is used to refer to groups of people not necessarily from the same locality, but whose interests and characteristics are in common, though not identical.

Thus there is reference to the rural community/ies and gay community/ies.

‘Community’ has been one of those warm and fuzzy terms that never seem to be used unfavourably. However, a small community often develops a set of mores that is said to add cohesion and harmony to a group. To belong to the community may require participation which is not voluntary for the individual but which compels the individual to conform to the norm. To not comply invites some form of social sanctioning.

Ferdinand Tonnies (1957) encapsulates this in his term gemeinschaft which is essentially representative of rural communities. Because of this capacity to marginalise and exclude, community is not always used in a positive light in this thesis. It also makes a clear distinction between community and place.

Place

‘Place’ is a term that has a variety of meanings in a dictionary sense, but is principally used as a noun to denote location. Sociologically, places are localities that people give meaning to by the experiences they have in them. ‘Sense of place’ refers to both a set of meanings given to a person’s experience in a place and attachments to places by

vi individuals as a result of those experiences. This thesis adopts a phenomenological concept of place in that place is about location experienced.

The seminal works in this area are Edward Relph’s Place and Placelessness (1976) and

Edward Casey’s Getting Back into Place (1993). Relph describes place as the ‘fusions of human and natural order and are the significant centers of our immediate experiences of the world’ (Relph, 1976: 141). For Relph, one can experience place in degrees of intensity, the most intimate experience of place being one that he termed ‘existential insidedness’. For Relph, if a person feels ‘inside’ a place, he has a feeling of attachment and belonging to it. Casey says that ‘to be in the world, to be situated at all, is to be in place’ (Casey, 1993: xv). His study aimed to accord place

… a position of renewed respect by specifying its power to direct and stabilise us, to memorialise and identify us, to tell us who and what we are in terms of where we are (as well as where we are not’) (Casey, 1993: xv).

The men who informed this thesis made a clear distinction between community and place.

They belonged inside ‘place’ but were positioned and positioned themselves outside the community of the place where they lived. It was the bush identified these men, just as it facilitated and accommodated their gayness.

Gay

‘Gay’ should not be conflated with ‘homosexual’. The term ‘gay’ will be used to describe people. The men who informed this thesis described themselves as ‘gay’ men rather than as homosexuals or as homosexual men. ‘Gay’ is sometimes applied to both men and women who are attracted to the same gender in much the same way that ‘man’, when used generically, has been used in the past to encompass both men and women.

Many lesbians object to the use of ‘gay’ applied to both gay men and lesbians, and it is

vii often used only to identify homosexual males. ‘Gay’ implies a degree of choice in how one responds to and acts on one’s homosexuality. ‘Gay’ implies a degree of self-identity.

It signifies that a person’s affectional, emotional and sexual fulfilment will be found with a person of the same sex. Most homosexual men prefer to define themselves as

‘gay’, as it is seen as a more positive term that encompasses notions of culture, lifestyle, lived experience and sensibility rather than a focus on sexual behaviour. ‘Gay’ is a term that pertains to people rather than specifically, or only to, same-sex behaviour.

The term ‘gay’ will generally be used when referring to men with a same-sex orientation. The definition given by L.R. Holben gives a thoughtful reflection:

Referring to gay … persons, I will not have in mind mere erotic itch, what ‘turns one on’ physically and nothing more. Rather, I will be speaking of a person in whom, not only the sexual drives but also, the deepest emotional and psychological urges for self-revelation, intimacy, connectedness, bonding, closeness and commitment – all that we call romantic/erotic love – find their internal, spontaneous fulfillment not in the opposite sex but in the same sex (Holben, 1999: 17). Like the word ‘camp’ which it replaced in Australian usage, ‘gay’ also had connotations of flamboyant and effeminate behaviour among homosexual men. However, there is some evidence to suggest that the word ‘gay’ did not come into modern usage until this aspect of its meaning had been dropped (Chauncy, 1994:18) and its subsequent adoption by the Gay Liberation Movement that followed. The masculinisation of the term ‘gay’ led to its wider adoption in the 1950s replacing the word ‘queer’, which had until then, connotations of masculinity, but then become a term used by heterosexuals to refer to gender non-conforming men.

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Homosexual

Since the word was originally used to describe what was considered a pathological condition, most gays and lesbians do not like to use this term to define themselves. The term ‘homosexual’ is used in this work to describe same-sex behaviour rather than people. None of the men who informed this thesis identified themselves as

‘homosexual’. Homosexuality is, theoretically, the condition of being homosexual.

Homosexuality will also refer to the condition of being ‘gay’ or ‘queer’.

Queer

The term ‘queer’ has been reclaimed by some lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered people as an inclusive and positive way to identify all people targeted by homophobia or heterosexism. Individuals who do not identify with any of the more common terms will often use the term ‘queer’ to describe themselves and their sexual identity. Many of those who use the term feel it is more inclusive, allowing for the diversity of race, class, ability and gender that is represented in being described as non- heteronormative. However, when it is applied to people, some see the term ‘queer’ as pejorative. None of the men who informed this thesis saw themselves, or termed themselves, as ‘queer’.

In this thesis, the term ‘queer’ will not be used to describe people, but will be used in a more political or discursive sense to refer to ideas. The term is often used as a political statement in which the mainstream viewpoint is contested and/or disrupted.

Abstract This study explored the experience of what it is to be a gay man and to live in a rural community. It sought to understand why gay men would want to live in places that are said to have a reputation for hostility towards them. The empirical data from the semi- structured interviews with twenty-one gay men living in fifteen small-town locations across New South Wales, Australia, was analysed using a qualitative method derived from phenomenology, ethnography and modified grounded theory.

The distinctive findings of this thesis centre on these men’s desire and determination to stay in the bush. They chose to stay in rural locations and effectively employed a diverse range of strategies to both combat the difficulties of rural life and enhance its advantages. The bush was the place in which these men could find themselves, be themselves and also find others like themselves. The space and the isolation of the bush gave them the latitude and the scope to live gay lives. This is why they stayed. By staying, they were also able to live out both the gay and rural components of their personal and social identity.

Building on notions of ‘the stranger’, the conceptual framework draws on resilience, agency and resistance theory to understand these men’s ability to live in an unwelcoming place. Resilience allows these men to cope and deal with the difficulties they face. Social agency, the individual's capacity to exert autonomy over his life, is used to restore prominence to resistance theory. Agency is the catalyst to resistance and resistance fuels an individual’s, and sometimes a collective, opposition to the dominant social forces that inhibits one’s agency. These men’s desire to live in a rural place can be understood through theoretical considerations of place, the freedom of place and queer theory. Their satisfaction with life can be theorised through the application of a concept new to theory in gay literature - thriving.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements iii

Glossary v

Abstract x

Table of Contents xi

Introduction This Study 3 The Research Problem 8 Significance of the Study 9 Outline of the Thesis 11 Contextual Background 15 Queer Iconography and ‘the Bush’ 18 Conclusion 22

Part One: Context, Concept and Process

Chapter 1: Contextualising the Bush Introduction 23 A Legacy of Disadvantage 23 Challenging the Accepted Wisdom 36 Rurality and the Bush – Definitions and Developments 39 Gay Men and the Bush – Some Historical Ruminations 49 A Hint of Better Circumstances 57 Conclusion 67

Chapter 2: Being Gay in the Bush – A Conceptual Framework Introduction 69 The Conceptual Framework 70 Conclusion 95

Chapter 3: The Research Process Introduction 97 The Researcher in the Research 98 The Research Methodology 100 Dealing in Data – The Analytic Process 114 Ethical Issues 123 Reciprocity in Research 124 Conclusion 126

Part Two: Results and Interpretation

Chapter 4: Staying in the Bush because of its Advantages Introduction 127 ‘I Like it Here’ 129 ‘There’s No Way I’d Like City Life’ 135 ‘What Keeps Me Here is … the Security of the Town’ 138 ‘My Family are Here’ 140 Intimate and Community Friendships 142 ‘I Feel Just So Free Here’ 148 “Ahm … We All Live Isolated Lives’ – The Attractions of Isolation 153 Conclusion 161

Chapter 5: Staying in the Bush in Spite of the Difficulties Introduction 163 ‘I Don’t Plan on Leaving’ 164 Homophobia – Staying in Spite of It 167 ‘Have you Employed one of Those Arse-Lickers in Your Shop?’ – A Rural Community Reacts to Homophobia 170 Homophobic Violence 176 The Downside of Isolation 177 ‘There’s Always an Element of Loneliness’ 184 Conclusion 194

Chapter 6: Position Oneself in the Community Introduction 196 The Extent of Disclosure 198 Connections to the Community Within – the Local Gay Community 208 Family Connections and Disconnections 211 Perceptions of, and Connections to, the Wider Community 218 ‘Live and Let Live’ 224 Conclusion 233

Chapter 7: Strategies for Staying Introduction 235 ‘Ohhhh … I Don’t Flaunt It’ 236 Not Hiding One’s Homosexuality 247 Staying By Leaving – Getting Out of Town 258 Out and About – Getting Laid 262 Conclusion 273

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Part Three: Discussion and Conclusion

Chapter 8: ‘Staying’ in the Face of Difficulties Introduction 275 Staying Through Resilience 277 Loneliness Diminished 281 Homophobia Moderated 285 Knowing and Being Silent 291 Conclusion 299

Chapter 9: ‘Staying’ – The Effect of Agency and Resistance Introduction 302 Determined to Stay 305 Isolation and the Making of Strangers 310 Thriving 321 Thriving by Staying 324 Conclusion 329

Chapter 10: Queering Place Introduction 332 Belonging to the Bush 333 ‘Queering’ the Bush 343 Conclusion 351

Chapter 11: Conclusion Introduction 353 Unanswered Questions and Further Research 354 Final Thoughts 357

Bibliography 361

Appendices (1) Subject Information Statement and Consent Form 421 (2) Information Sheet 424 (3) Interview Sequence 425

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Introduction

He’d left his hometown in rural NSW 26 years earlier to find himself in Sydney. He was gay. That’s what gay boys from the country did then. They slipped away from family, farm [and] community to find out why they were different. But homosexuals are heading for rural Australia in growing numbers. They are country boys, the prodigal sons … seeking longevity in the country air, a small property, a new start. … Country people have confounded the stereotype in their acceptance of gays. It can depend on where you are. … Redneck attitudes still flourish [but] … … country Australia is changing its attitude … [Adele Horin, ‘Prodigal Gays are Reclaiming the Country’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 22 June, 1994].

‘There was no more prejudice against lesbians or gay men in Dubbo than there was in the city,’ sexual health nurse and Western Link spokesperson, Robert Baldwin, said yesterday. ‘It’s perhaps more conservative in Dubbo, but no more aggressively homophobic. In the country, they are more likely to have an attitude of live and let live’. [The Daily Liberal, Dubbo, 10 February, 1994]

The above two quotes are now twelve years old. But they well illustrate the central

topic of this thesis. These quotes indicate that while many gay men born and raised in

the bush have left their home and heritage to make a new life for themselves in the

cities, not all of them did so. These quotes from a metropolitan and a rural newspaper

intimated that, in spite of much of the academic literature indicating that the lives of

rural gay men were so difficult, there just might be an alternative story. This study is about those gay men who did not leave. It is their story of being gay in the bush.

Horin’s article acknowledges that, in the past, many young gay men did ‘what gay boys from the country did then’ and ‘slipped away from family, farm [and] community’. The prejudice against gay men was strong and the likelihood of them being able to live

fulfilling lives in rural communities was low. Horin’s reference to those men who were

now returning to their rural roots as ‘prodigal sons’ suggests they may not have

originally left the bush entirely of their own volition. She insinuates that had they not

felt they had to ‘slip away’, many may well not have done so. She says they, too, are

‘country boys’ with the implication that not only do they have a right to be in the bush and a right to be gay in the bush, but as country boys, they might actually prefer to live

there.

This indicates a disjuncture between some of the academic evidence and the apparent

reality. There was the possibility that not all gay men felt the need to escape the

apparent derogatory and offensive attitudes of their rural communities and not all gay

men were leaving the bush. The question of why they did not leave needed to be

explained. Whether those gay men who did not leave actually chose to stay in the bush

also had to be understood. Whether they were able to exercise a personal resolve and a

significant influence in deciding to live as and where they wished has not previously been examined in an Australian context.

Horin refers to a ‘stereotype’ by which rural communities are assumed to be conservative, narrow-minded and homophobic with the result that any gay men who were raised there have long since fled to the cities ‘… where they could find themselves’. But she challenges that assumption and, in agreement with Baldwin, asserts that attitudes were changing and that some country people had ‘confounded’ the usual perception of the wider society whereby they had become more accepting of gay men living in their communities. Nevertheless, in referring to attitudes that would be hostile and discriminatory to gay men as ‘redneck’, she clearly implies that such points of view are intolerable and unacceptable. She emphasises that this mind-set is still prevalent in rural Australia and insinuates that this is a matter in need of change.

The claim that gay men were ‘heading for rural Australia in growing numbers’ is put forward as evidence that the Australia bush was a place of changing attitudes and a

growing acceptance of diversity. That Baldwin speaks of gay men living in Dubbo and the surrounding district is evidence, perhaps, that not all gay men left the rural communities in which they were raised. This thesis is about those men.

This Study

The words ‘being gay in the bush’ encapsulate what this thesis is about. In reference to

‘being’, this thesis does not delve into the word’s philosophical and metaphysical implications. Nevertheless, it is useful in passing to refer to the German philosopher,

Martin Heidegger and his work Being and Time published in 1927. In that work,

Heidegger insists that ‘being’ entails a connectedness to the world and to everyday

existence and he moves away from the more conventional concept of ‘being’ as a more

abstract consideration of the nature of reality. In a 1963 lecture, Heidegger

conceptualised phenomenology as the

… systematically planned and secured investigation of the structure of acts of experience together with the investigation of the objects experienced in those acts with regard to their objectivity (Heidegger, 1963: 77).

He says it was his consideration of phenomenology that brought him to a consideration

of ‘being’ (Heidegger, 1963: 79). This thesis takes up Heidegger’s worldly definition of

‘being’ and uses the term to mean both an awareness of, a living in and being part of the

world. In this thesis, ‘being gay’ denotes an awareness of one’s homosexuality and a

realisation of how that manifests itself in one’s life. In this case, ‘being’ does not imply

a choice as to whether one is gay or not, but it does imply a choice as to whether one

acts upon and incorporates being gay into one’s everyday life.

‘Gay’ signifies that a person’s affectional, emotional and sexual fulfillment will be

found with a person of the same sex. ‘Gay’ encompasses notions of culture and lifestyle

and lived experience. ‘Gay’ implies a degree of self-identity. Therefore, ‘being gay’

also means living out the homosexual component of one’s personality and identity. It

means acknowledging, responding to and acting on one’s homosexuality. It means

desiring and having homosexual sex.

‘Bush’ refers to rural areas further out. The bush, especially in the eyes of those who

live there, are those places far away both physically and metaphorically, from the city.

Additionally, ‘bush’ is slightly more colloquial and irreverent and evokes notions of the likeable larrikin. It has been noted that gay men living in rural areas in Australia have

been virtually ignored, not only in the press (Winters, 1997), but also in the research

literature (Roberts, 1997: 67). Some previous studies have concluded that gay life is

essentially a metropolitan ritual and others cite the bush as a place of relative fear,

isolation and considerable loneliness for any gay men living there. My intuition, based

on my long personal experience of living in the Australian bush, hinted that there was

another story waiting to be told.

This is a story of twenty-one self-identified gay men living in rural communities across western New South Wales. It is a story that examines their lived experience of being gay in the bush. It is about discovering the meaning that these gay men give to that experience, mindful of where they lived and the social conventions that existed there. This study is part phenomenological in which these men can ‘… display the complexity and variability of their lives’ (Agar, 1980: 204). It is their story of their everyday lives detailing the difficulties and the joys. It attempts to describe, understand and appreciate the ways in which they went about living and constructing a life in a place that many gay men are reputed to have only too willingly left. As a

thesis, it seeks to understand the meanings these men gave to their experience of life

in the places in which they lived.

What are the circumstances of these lives of gay men in rural areas? Rural Australia is

often portrayed as conservative territory, a place where acceptance of difference is low

and a fierce conformity and parochialism, if not abject bigotry, are the queens of a

hierarchy of traditional values. Why do gay men live in places where academic studies

report that discrimination and physical threat is common; where psychological stress

together with emotional and sexual deprivation is omnipresent and social isolation is

part of the bush environment? Why have some gay men remained in the bush when so

many of their compatriots chose to leave families, friends and their rural heritage

behind? If the environment is such that discrimination and violence is as endemic and

severe as some studies have reported, then why do gay men live in such a situation?

What are gay men doing in these places and why would they want to be there? These

questions are explored in the chapters that follow.

Of course, these questions presuppose that the living conditions for these gay men are

actually as onerous and inescapable as previously suggested. This study will question

whether, for the gay men who live there, rural society is as tough and difficult as is

often portrayed. Or have, in these men’s opinion and experience, attitudes in rural

communities begun to change in the way that Horin and Baldwin suggest in the media

reported on page 1? Alternatively, have these men found ways to deal with the social

and geographical conditions in which they live? Therefore, questions of ‘what is life like for gay rural men’ and ‘what are the conditions in which they live’ need to be pursued. Understanding how gay men living in rural regions cope in the circumstances

in which they find themselves and the strategies they employ to enable them to live

where they do will form a large part of this project.

These questions also invite inquiry about place and this study will explore these gay

men’s sense of place and the ways they construe the place in which they live. It looks at

how these men interact with the place in which they live in both physical and social

ways. The thesis is concerned with how the place in which these men live affects their

behaviour and the manner in which they go about living their lives. These men are

asked not only whether they wanted and chose to live where they did but why and what

is it about that place that keeps them there. This study is also concerned with whether,

for these gay men, the place in which they lived – the bush – was one in which they

sensed they belonged and felt at home. These questions have not previously been asked

or extensively explored by researchers in an Australian setting.

Also of concern to this thesis is how the everyday life of a group of gay men living in rural areas can be understood from a theoretical perspective. Resilience is a concept that may be helpful in understanding how these men cope with the aspects of living in

the bush that they found difficult. This work also explores whether gay men in rural

areas are able to improve their own lives. Using Giroux’s (1981, 1983a, 1983b)

concepts of agency and resistance theory, this research explores whether these men

can rise above their experience of externally imposed social disadvantage and

invisibility and live a life of their own making. It is interested in whether these gay men, through resistant behaviours, attitudes and beliefs against hegemonic convention and rite, have been able to take action to live the lives that want to live. Resistance theory provides for the possibility of change at both the social and individual level.

This study, while interested in whether the strategies of resistance and agency that these gay men may engage in foster change in the wider community, focuses more on what Giroux calls the ‘self-emancipation’ of the individual (Giroux, 1983b: 290).

There are limits to this research. For example, it did not investigate the lives of lesbians, transsexuals, transgendered persons or those who identify as bisexual living in the country. While those people are as understudied as rural gay men (at least in Australia), this study focused exclusively on gay men. Therefore, masculine pronouns and words will be used deliberately in reference to gender. As is detailed in Chapter Three, the sample was composed only of gay men who had lived in rural areas of western New

South Wales for at least ten years. It did not include in its sample men living within easy reach of the coast. Most people living in the bush would see the coastal regions as rural but would not consider such localities to be part of the bush. The bush might be partly defined by its very distance from the coast as well as from the city.

The research focuses specifically on these gay men residing in their rural district. No claims are made for other gay men living in other places or indeed for other gay men who might be living in the same place. This is not a study of the communities in which these gay men live. Any conclusions that might be drawn about the communities in which these men live will emanate from the testimony of the gay men who live there.

This is not a comparative study of gay men in rural communities with gay men who live in the city. Nor is it a comparative study of gay men who currently live in the bush with gay men who left the bush and now reside in the city. In a field largely untouched by scholarship in this country, this work leaves many areas of inquiry open. The take-up of communications technology and the role of the internet in the lives of gay men living in

the bush is just one such topic. Additional questions are suggested in the final chapter of

this thesis.

The Research Problem

This study set out to explore phenomenologically the lived experiences of a sample of gay men living in several rural locations. The research question was how can ‘being gay in the bush’ be described, understood and theorised? It used the voices of the gay men themselves. It sought to discover the meaning that these gay men give to their

experience and to recognise and appreciate what ‘being gay in the bush’ was about for

them. It endeavored to understand the paradox of why these gay men who reside in

rural areas might want to live in an environment that the literature indicates is ostensibly hostile to and does not care for their presence.

The primary line of inquiry focused on these men’s everyday lives and, in a

phenomenological and ethnographic sense, was about grasping these men’s descriptions

of those everyday experiences. It was about their experience of ‘being gay’. Therefore, this research was interested in the operational and contextual questions of the conditions under which these gay men lived as seen through their eyes, the social mechanisms and strategies these gay men used so that they could live in the bush and the part their sexuality and sexual practice had in all of this.

What was it about these men that enabled them to live in a place that most research had depicted as inhospitable and even hostile to gay men? Were there tactical actions or patterns/modes of behaviour that might make them somewhat untouchable by and impervious to the supposedly antagonistic social order in which these men lived? I

wanted to understand how these men positioned themselves in the locality in which they

lived and whether and how that impinged on their personal autonomy and the choices

they were able to make in terms of lifestyle.

While these questions can be stated as individual questions, there is clearly an underlying relationship between them. They cannot adequately be asked in isolation from one another, let alone analysed as such. Attention is given to the interrelationship between the primary research questions, the more conceptual issues and the contextual concerns. In accordance with the methodology adopted in this project, namely the inductive logic of the qualitative research paradigm, questions evolved and developed as the research progressed. However, the main question remained – how can ‘being gay in the bush’ be described, understood and theorised?

Significance of this Study

Browning has suggested that, in North America, the voice of gay people is ‘… with rare exceptions, the voice of an urban metropolis’ (Browning, 1996: 2). Additionally,

Edmund White concedes that by not ‘… penetrating the necessarily closeted gay life of small towns’ (White, 1980: 336), his work has ‘… a strangely lopsided view of

American gay life’ (White, 1980: 336). Therefore, it might be concluded that without studies of gay life that acknowledge and take account of the experiences of gay people who live outside the cities, the picture of what it is to be gay in society is fragmentary, selective and incomplete. As Judith Halberstam notes,

… there has been little attention to date to the specificities of rural queer lives … and yet urban queers have exhibited and endless facinitation for stories of gays, lesbians and transgender people living outside the city’ (Halberstam, 2005: 34).

The raging success of the movie, “Brokeback Mountain”, is testimony to Halberstam’s

insight.

Similarly, few studies of gay men living in rural areas in Australia appear in the

literature. This study is an attempt to address, using White’s term, this ‘lopsided view’

of much of the current research into the lives of gay men in which those living in rural areas have been largely bypassed and overlooked. It is an attempt to fill the gaps in our knowledge about the lives of gay men in Australia that Roberts (1996) and Dowsett

(1996) identify. In recognising that gap in the existing Australian literature, this

empirical research seeks to build upon, extend and open up new avenues of thinking

about gay men living in rural localities. It also endeavours to challenge the current

conceptualisation of what it is being a gay man living in a rural area in Australia in the

twenty-first century.

Comment has already been made on the urban bias of much of the research of and

writing about gay men. Creed and Ching argue that this urban bias is reflected in a far

broader context by the lack of attention given to rural life in the academic literature.

Though they are more polite about it than they need to be, they suggest that ‘the identity

politics of being and becoming an intellectual’ has caused many academics to shy away

from research into rural places and rural people (Creed and Ching, 1997: 11). They

suggest that because of this factor, writers and researchers, when they have focused on rural issues, have done so from a position of supposed intellectual superiority and academic authority. As Creed and Ching emphasise,

… to speak for rustics without questioning the forces that make this ventriloquism necessary ultimately reinforces the cultural hierarchies it ostensibly challenges (Creed and Ching, 1997: 11).

In this study, gay men living in the bush will speak for themselves. The strength of this work will be derived from the narratives of the gay men who informed it. It is about giving voice to the silent and the silenced.

Studies exploring the lives of rural gay men in the USA and Canada and what it might entail for gay men to live there have emanated largely from an ‘outsiders’ perspective

(Silverstein, 1981; Yates-Rist, 1992; Fellows, 1996; Riorden, 1996). They have been written without an intimate knowledge and long-term personal experience of life in the countryside. While the ‘outside’ has some advantages in respect to the conduct of qualitative research, as Creed and Ching infer, ultimately it is a position that is more likely to preclude a deeper understanding of those cultures and groups the researcher is outside of (Merton, 1972). Merton claims that from the ‘outside’, because of its very position, the researcher has ‘… a structurally imposed incapacity’ to understand those that he is not part of (Merton, 1972: 15). While this position may be a little unbending, it does suggest that when the researcher has experience of both the culture and the phenomenon being studied, he is better positioned to use ‘thick description’ (Geertz,

1975: 8–30) to detail what it is being gay in a rural area of Australia.

Outline of the Thesis

The thesis is divided into three sections. Part One comprises Chapters One, Two and

Three. Chapter One contextualises the study. Although this thesis explores the lives of gay men living in the Australian bush, it is in putting the bush into some historical and social context that a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the lives they

11 lead there can be arrived at. This thesis accepts that gay men have always lived in rural communities, but suggests they have been ignored and rendered invisible. The chapter includes a consideration of more contemporary notions of rural and rurality and posits that against a consideration of recent historical scholarship that has deconstructed the historical rural landscape and revitalised it with a gay presence. This chapter identifies some of the international and local literature on gay men living in rural communities, much of it complaining of the urban-centric focus of research into gay and lesbian issues and the need for additional studies into gay men and lesbians living in rural areas.

Chapter Two conceptualises the study and outlines a theoretical framework against which the data is analysed and discussed. It presents a review of social concepts that do not specifically focus on gay men living in rural areas but instead looks at a range of theoretical ideas which will facilitate an informed and critical understanding of the empirical data.

Chapter Three describes the methodology of this study. It discusses the position of the researcher in the research. The processes of determining and accessing the sample of gay men who informed the study, the collection of the data and the interview procedure are also detailed. The second part of the chapter recounts the post-interview phase of the research process, and in particular sets out the steps taken in the analysis of the data.

Other matters concerning ethical considerations and reciprocity in the research are discussed here.

Part Two, consisting of Chapters Four to Seven, details the results of the analysis of the data. Chapter Four explores these men’s conception of ‘place’ and links that with the

12 reasons they give for wanting to live in the bush. Issues discussed include these men’s affinity with the bush itself and their lack of attraction to the city. It explores their sense of place and their notion of ‘belonging’ and situates that in the context of both community and place. The importance and value they placed on friendship in their lives and their notion of freedom are explored in the context of the attractions of rural life. In their determination to continue to live in the bush, these men reveal surprising agency in creating considerable autonomy in how they live their lives. This element of gay men’s lives is unexplored in other Australian studies.

The data is further analysed (in Chapter Five) by looking at how these gay men conceptualise the difficulties of living in rural areas and in rural communities. In this context, the impact of loneliness and isolation and the significance they gave to incidents of violence and homophobia in their lives are reported. This chapter ventures that incidents of homophobia and loneliness do not have a destructive and debilitating effect on these men’s lives because of the support from friends in the face of such problems. It will also demonstrate how these rural gay men use place and space to create elements of aloneness and seclusion in their lives. This self-imposed social isolation better enabled them to remain in the bush and at the same time enhanced, from their perspective, the quality of their lives.

Having established that the men in this study do choose, and want, to live in the bush,

Chapter Six explores the question of how these men positioned themselves within the community so that they could remain and continue their lives there. Questions of connections with their family, with the community in general and with what I have called ‘the community within’ – the local gay group – are discussed. But these issues

13 also need to be seen within the context of place, and this chapter will elaborate how these rural gay men used the natural and physical isolation of the bush to enable and foster an element of disconnectedness from family and, even more so, from community.

The men in this study suggested that while the attitudes of rural people towards gay men were becoming more tolerant, by becoming somewhat ‘disconnected’ from the community in which they lived, they were able to reduce their dependence on the community’s level of tolerance and so were better able to remain in the bush. The matter of disclosure, the ramifications of it and how these men use it to position themselves within the community are explored in this chapter.

The numerous and varied strategies that these gay men use in order to stay in the bush and continue their lives there are fleshed out in the final chapter of Part Two (Chapter

Seven). It not only discusses the ways in which these gay men conducted their lives, including the sexual component of their lives, but shows that place – the bush environment – better equipped these gay men to deal with the actuality of being gay and living in a rural community. It shows that the bush, far from being a hindrance for a better gay life for these men, is the very factor that they used to make for themselves the life that they wanted.

The final section of the thesis, Part Three, draws together the findings of the research and discusses them in the context of the literature and the conceptual framework set out in Part One. Though the bush was the cornerstone of their lives, it did not, alone, account for the personal determination of these men to stay in the bush, particularly in light of the unavoidable difficulties of homopbobia and loneliness they encounter.

These difficulties forced the researcher to return to the literature to seek fuller

14 explanations of these men’s experience. Chapter Eight suggests that these men’s desire and capacity to stay in the bush, particularly in the face of difficulty, can be explained in terms of their resilience.

Chapter Nine makes it clear that these men stayed mainly for more positive reasons.

Their resilience was a springboard from which they could take action to enhance the advantages of bush life, resist encroachment on their autonomy and create a satisfying life. They stayed in the bush because that was where they wanted to be. These men’s desire and determination to stay in the bush can be partly explained by a deeper affinity with place than has been previously acknowledged. They were able to use the physical attributes of the bush, its space, its isolation and its beauty to enable them to remain in there. These men’s act of staying in the bush can also be explained in a number of conceptual and theoretical frameworks and this chapter uses agency and resistance theory to do this. These men’s sense of disconnection from their own communities invokes the use of the concept of ‘stranger’ to provide an explanation and understanding of how they ‘stay bush’.

Chapter Ten draws these men’s experience of life in rural locations together with a theoretical consideration of place and queer theory. It suggests that their close affinity with the bush gives them a sense of belonging – an existential insidedness – that, when combined with the gay lifestyle they lead, effectively queers the places in which they live. Chapter Eleven suggests avenues for further research and concludes the thesis.

Contextual Background

This thesis is written with an ‘insider within the inside’ perspective. I lived the first

forty years of my life on my family’s sheep property on the isolated plains of north- western NSW. There, I often struggled with the very problems and issues encountered by these men. This context has important ramifications for the methodology of the

thesis. Oakley states that ‘… personal involvement … is the condition under which

people come to know each other and to admit each other into their lives’ (Oakley, 1981:

58). As a gay man, I may be considered a ‘stranger’ and not really belonging to the rural communities in which these men lived. But I also have ‘insider’ status and a sense of belonging to and ‘personal involvement’, not only with my part of the bush, but also

with the group being studied. I expected to have considerable appreciation of the

informants’ position and that this would allow for deeper revelation, increased richness of the data collected and a greater reliability of that data. My anticipated affinity with

the informants, my personal insight into the topic of study and my extensive and

intensive experience of the New South Wales bush and life out there may provide an

intimacy and a poignancy that the study may not otherwise have had. Perhaps Maslow

is correct when he says that,

… there is no substitute for experience, none at all. All other paraphernalia of communication and of knowledge – words, labels, concepts, symbols, theories, formulas, sciences – all are only useful because people already know them experientially (Maslow in Moustakis, 1990: 17).

It has already been noted that the literature examining gay men living in rural areas,

including some written by gay men, seems founded on the notion that gay men have

had to leave rural areas to live fulfilled lives. The corollary of that is that those gay men

who did not leave must have lead relatively unfulfilled lives and, of course, these lives

are evidenced by depression scores, suicide rates, mental health issues, isolation,

loneliness, violence and a whole reel of attendant problems.

My own long experience of rural life informed the antecedents and the interpretive

frame for the writing of this thesis. While my own experience has not been considered

as empirical data, it does bring an empathy, an understanding, a context and a

connectedness to this dissertation. Half a lifetime of living and working in the bush

cannot, nor need be, ignored in the writing of this work. That experience is part of the

contextual framework in which the thesis is situated. The position of the researcher in

the research is taken up at greater length (in Chapter Three) in a consideration of the

methodology of this thesis.

A second aspect of the contextual framework in which this thesis is situated is the

history and sociology of the Australian bush. While not attempting to rewrite that

history and sociology, this thesis takes implicit issue with some of its major themes. For

example, this thesis questions, through the narratives of its informants, the harshness of

place that appears to characterise much of the writing and thinking about rural Australia.

Is the bush, at least for these gay men, a place as geographically harsh as it is so often

portrayed in films, art, books and academic articles? Are rural communities as

conservative as they are often described? And what is rural Australia anyway? In terms

of gay men, is it accurate to depict rural Australia as a place largely devoid of gay men ostensibly because they have been forced to leave or hide due to the overt and latent hostility of rural communities towards them? This is not a quantitative study, so the exploration of these questions will not be statistical or representative but will be in qualitative, narrative and descriptive forms. Contextualising the history and the rurality of Australia are matters discussed in the next chapter.

Queer Iconography and ‘the Bush’

The iconisation of the countryside is not a recent phenomenon. Literature, art, music, film and culture of many societies bears out the regard in which the rural landscape is valued (Lawrence, 2003: 112). In Australia, the bush is part of the national heritage and culture. It has been appreciated for its beauty and bounty as well as for its rugged and

stark expanses of wilderness. Though much has been said or written about the meaning

and mythology of the Australian bush, there has been little thought given to connecting

that with a gay iconisation and homoeroticism of the bush. Nevertheless, one can see

elements of a gay sensibility in much of this country’s literature in its depiction of the

stockman and the boundary rider and in the social construction of mateship. This gay

iconisation is present in the idealisation of the Australian landscape and the

representation of the Australian bush as a place of stark and rugged beauty, a place of

splendid isolation, of freedom and refuge and of open space.

The idealisation of the bush, according to Russell Ward’s hypothesis, grew out of the

actual conditions in the bush and was transported to the coast and the cities where it was

transformed into the basis of the national culture (Astbury, 1982: 176). It was the city-

based writers and artists who, from a safe distance and without the smell of sheep-shit

under their fingernails, transformed bush life into a national sentiment and mythology.

It was also city-based writers and artists who later gave this romance with the bush a

homoerotic edge, both explicit and implicit.

Bech argues from a theoretical perspective that ‘absent homosexuality’ is

‘homosexuality’s most common mode of being in modern societies - the dialectics

between presence and absence, knowing and ignoring, desire and denial’ (Bech, 1997:

39). Coad localises this theoretical hypothesis and describes as a ‘major tension-point’

the rupture between the heterosexual imperative and the repression of the homoerotic in the representation of Australian masculinity and in readings of the mythology of the bush more generally (Coad, 2002: 14). He implies, but does not state, however, that the heterosexual is not, and never has been, so imperative and the homoerotic was never as repressed or absent as the heteronormative view would suggest. The gay iconisation of the bush was not entirely fantasy.

The depictions of masculine valour and mateship at Gallipoli by war historians and artists, for example, has a homoerotic whiff which is given greater scent in the film representations of those events. Gallipoli, while about male friendship in a national context, is difficult not to read as a coded gay love story. Even the cult move, Mad Max

2, invokes the gay leather scene in all its masculinity and muscularity and the image of the mohawked rider and his blonde boyfriend set against the stark and semi-surreal landscape of the Australian outback is unmistakably homoerotic. Perhaps the most notable gay iconisation of the Australian rural landscape is in the film Priscilla: Queen of the Desert. While the notion of mateship is seen as rural, it is also depicted as ‘both profoundly homophobic and as intrinsic to outback masculinity’ (Tinknell and

Chambers, 2002: 148). Nevertheless, though the notion of a rabidly heterosexual mateship and masculinity is parodied and questioned, the film extols and queers the bush landscape. Not only is it a place in which the heteronormative flounders and its hegemony looks decidedly shakey, but it is a place in which the marginalised, instanced by the drag queens and the Indigenous Australians, can live in peace and harmony with themselves, each other and the landscape.

But film is not the only genre in which the mythology and landscape of the Australian

bush has been adopted and iconised by gay culture. For example, in Patrick White’s

early novel, The Twyborn Affair, the bushman myth and its compulsory heterosexuality

and macho masculinity is shattered in the very landscape that bred it. In the Sydney

Olympics and the subsequent Gay Games, bush images combined with gay culture abounded. Modern day horsemen, Driz-abone coats, R.M.Williams boots and cracking whips combined with Priscilla stilettos to bring a combination of bush mythology and gay sensibility to the world. The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras gives sizeable prominence to floats from out-of-town just as the city leather queens have adopted and re-invented the rodeo cowboy’s chaps in a style not dreamt of in the original version.

The cowboy look is an integral part of gay iconography as seen with the Village People and countless other images across the world including country-and-western themed gay bars, the gay rodeo circuit in the USA, the homoerotic cowboy art of Marc Houde,

George Quaintance, Rick Chris and a host of other examples. The most recent addition to this gay cowboy theme is the acclaimed movie, Brokeback Mountain. Many critics have suggested that it is a story not about sex, but about passion denied and a chronicle

in the tradition of forbidden love. For me, this is a movie that captures and celebrates

the vast, ascetic beauty of the rural landscape. It is the isolation and the ruggedness of

the land and the bitter cold that drives the characters together to precipitate and consummate a lust and a love between two men. It is the landscape itself that sanctions

and facilitates the fulfillment of an act not endorsed by the society. The implication is

that, alone in the isolation of the prairies and in oneness and collusion with the landscape and each other, these men could have made a life together.

There are notable examples of the incorporation of the stockman into gay culture in

Australia. The chaps-wearers at Sydney’s Mardi Gras have already been mentioned.

The Tenterfield Saddler, a song penned by the Australian gay icon Peter Allen, idealises

the bush lifestyle. The stoic manliness in the bush poetry of Henry Lawson and Banjo

Patterson epitomised in the poem ‘The Man from Snowy River’, and the idealisation of

manhood and masculinity in the film The Man from Snowy River is described by one

commentator as a ‘paean to phallic prowess’ (Coad, 2002: 78).

However, with all these examples it was city-based artists who adopted, adapted and

incorporated the bush and its mythology into gay culture. Attachment to a rural

sentimentality or place is perhaps better portrayed by those who have experienced the

juxtaposition of a rootedness to place with a sense of exile or displacement (Tuan,

1976). Paradoxically, this depiction of the bush finds its finest expression in the efforts

of those not from the bush. Though all iconography is based on fantasy and fancy, the

homoerotisation of the Australian legend has allowed the reality of gay life in the bush

to be investigated. Bech’s notion of ‘absent homosexuality’, while not referring to rural

society, characterises the existence of homosexuality within bush culture – its hidden

nature due, in part, to a reluctance to know about and acknowledge it (Bech, 1997: 38).

Ironically, the homoerotic fantasy of the bush landscape has permitted and chronicled

the evidence of homosexuality within the history, culture and life of the bush. As

Dollimore notes, ‘the negation of homosexuality has been in direct proportion to its

centrality; its cultural marginality in direct proportion to its cultural significance’

(Dollimore, 1991: 28). The homoerotisation of the bush mythology has sanctioned

queer representations of the bush landscape. This thesis seeks to build upon and, in

some ways, challenge, through an experiential qualitiative study, those symbols and

images. These queer reconstructions (as opposed to reflections) of the bush lead to a

consideration of place and its impact on gay men and their impact on it. These discussions lay the groundwork to theorizing about the queering of place later in the thesis.

Conclusion

For many gay men, even those who currently live in rural areas, the bush might well continue to be a difficult place to live. The bush and its conservative belief systems – political, social and religious – may continue to deny a real and open visibility and an inclusivity to gay men. This is not to accept that gay men living in rural areas do not comprehend the situation they are in and are powerless to take action to both accentuate the positive factors associated with living in the bush and to ameliorate the difficulties.

This is not to accept that these men are equipped with so few skills that they are unable to navigate the social mores of rural communities and are prevented from exercising agency or proactivity to better their own lives. If the media reportage of journalists such as Horin and the opinions of in situ professionals like Baldwin are indicators of change, making a life for themselves in the bush is an option some gay men may be increasingly willing to take. Being ‘out’ in the outback may not be the impossibility it once was. It is this alternative option, the largely hidden and untold story of gay men living in rural areas, which is the subject of this thesis.

Chapter One

Contextualising the Bush

… they could either sublimate their erotic identities and remain in their hometown or … they could move to a larger centre of population and lose themselves in its anonymity (Preston, 1991: xvi).

Introduction

The prevailing academic construction of the sociology of homosexuality would

… view cities as centrifugal forces, magnets that pull isolated individuals from the hinterlands into large urban centers, where they could recognise their sexualities, find one another and become a community (Howard, 1997a: 221).

Other sociologists and historians have made the same point that, ‘though we [gay

people] are everywhere, our voice, with rare exceptions, is a voice of the urban

metropolis’ (Browning, 1996: 2). Browning’s comment emphasises that while some gay

men may live outside metropolis, they had no voice. They were oppressed, hidden and silent. This comment implies that people in the ‘hinterlands’ dictated that gay men have no place and, perhaps, were not wanted in rural communities. This is not to say, however, that there were, and are, no gay men living in rural areas. A closer reading of history and sociology reveals otherwise.

A Legacy of Disadvantage

As already noted in the Introduction, Horin recognised that many rural gay men chose to escape the climate of rejection they experienced in the bush. There is evidence of the apparently well-trodden path from the bush to the cities that many gay men felt they had to take in order to make a life for themselves. Numerous studies have reported on the huge migration in the 1970s and the 1980s that gay men took from the prairies and the plains in the USA (Weston, 1995a). Browning speaks of the traumas of small town life

that had ‘…driven legions of seventies gays to flee hometowns in Michigan or

Kentucky or Kansas’ (Browning, 1993: 4). A special report in The Advocate on gay life

outside the cities in the USA was prefaced by the statement that ‘Untold numbers of us

[who] have fled to the big cities to find ourselves, bring with us stories of the toll a

repressive environment can take’ (Bull, 2000: 1). Other researchers suggest that this

migration may have begun somewhat earlier (Kaiser, 1968: xii).

For gay men, the hinterland was depicted as a place of never-ending emotional (and sexual) drought. Preston suggests that gay men living in rural towns in the United States usually thought they had only two choices, ‘… they could either sublimate their erotic identities and remain in their hometown’ or ‘… they could move to a larger centre of population and lose themselves in its anonymity’ (Preston,1991: xvi).

Gay men in Australia also raised clouds of dust as they left the bush and headed for the

cities (Wotherspoon, 1991: 15), because ‘… that’s what gay boys from the country did

then’ (Horin, 1994). They came to the cities not only to ‘lose themselves’ (Preston,

1991), but to ‘find themselves’ (Horin, 1994) in the obscurity and ‘incognitoness’ of the

metropolis. Despite their apparent plight, it may not have always been with enthusiasm

that gay men living in rural areas left these places that they knew as home. Casey cites a

report from the USA that makes the observation that ‘the results of over 25 studies

around the world indicate, with no exceptions, that the execution of compulsory

relocation among rural populations with strong ties to their land and their homes is a

traumatic experience for the majority of relocatees’ (Casey, 1993: 35). Perhaps those gay men who felt that they were forced to leave the rural places they grew up in were as

24 much ‘relocatees’ as the Navajo Indians and others to which that study referred. The nostalgia of leaving is not only about times past, but also about place lost.

Not all gay men could, or did, move to the cities. Preston argued that young gay men living in rural areas in the USA had, at a personal and emotional price, the option of remaining in their rural community. Browning takes this option further and argues that gay people are admitted to rural community

... only to the degree that they sequester their difference and conduct a sexless public life that offers no model, no quarter, no inspiration to others – child or adult – who would explore all that is queer in themselves (Browning, 1993: 18).

Of the international literature that addresses gay men living in rural communities, much of it has emphasised their relative invisibility (D’Augelli and Hart, 1987; Bell and

Valentine, 1995a; Cody and Welch, 1997). This invisibility is said to be the product of the exclusion imposed upon them by the community in which they lived (Boulden,

1999) and a self-imposed invisibility that gay rural men feel is necessary in order to remain in such a community (Brown, 1996). In rural Australia, it would seem as if these patterns of behaviour find some resonance, applying as much to same-sex attracted women as to gay men (Edwards, 2005). The evidence of Hillier (1996), Roberts (1992,

1995, 1996) and others would concur with the sentiments of Preston and Browning.

This is indicative of what can only be described as a depressingly bleak outlook for gay men living away from the cities.

In Australia, it is commonly thought that gay men live mainly within the city’s gay inner suburbs, particularly so in the case of New South Wales and its focus on the inner

Sydney gay scene. Gay men living outside the metropolis are said to be often ostracised

and discriminated against. As Roberts noted,

Recent searches of local newspapers of this region (Riverina – NSW) revealed no coverage of gay and lesbian identified achievement, innovation and contribution to the community. Without exception, where articles mentioned the words ‘gay’, ‘lesbian’, or ‘homosexuality’, the events were sensationalised and the non-heterosexually inclined persons mentioned were stigmatised or marginalised in some way. Left to media reports, one might believe that gay men and lesbians do not exist in this area (Roberts, 1993: 14).

While other regional newspapers may not have marginalised and ‘invisibilised’ gay men to the same extent that Roberts suggests Wagga Wagga’s The Daily Advertiser did, their coverage of the contribution of gay men to the local community has been minimal

(Winters, 1997). However, the academic literature concerning gay men in Australia has, with its urban-centric focus, also played a part in perpetuating the invisibility of gay men in rural areas. There have been few studies of gay men currently living in rural areas. This not only echoes the urban bias of recent scholarship in the area, but is also a reflection of the urban-centric view of much work in the social sciences (Creed and

Ching, 1997). Furthermore, the extant research is dominated by the view that rural

Australia is, by and large, contemptuous of gay men and that their lives in rural communities are therefore overly difficult and oppressive (Roberts, 1992, 1993, 1995,

1996, 2001; Hillier, 1996; Thorpe, 1996; Crisp, 2000).

This relative invisibility of gay men in rural communities that Roberts identified is said to be a feature of the lives of gay men living in rural communities that will continue.

For example, Altman predicted that

Over the next decade, it seems very likely that we will see an increased visibility of lesbigay life in provincial centers, as the metropolitan ceases to be the only available definition for life beyond the heterosexual norm (Altman, 2000: 46–47).

The implication is that gay men have not been (or as Roberts says, have not been able to be) particularly visible outside the metropolitan areas. Altman’s comment suggests that gay men will continue to be invisible away from the metropolitan and provincial cities.

But more than that, Altman suggests that few gay men (in 2000) actually lived outside the cities and therefore the cities, essentially, provided the ‘only available definition for life beyond the heterosexual norm’ (Altman, 2000: 47). There are some who would suggest that it has been that way for a long time. Chauncy maintains that at the turn of the twentieth century in America, homosexual men saw their world as a ‘… distinctly urban phenomenon’ (Chauncy, 1994: 131).

Nevertheless, there are others who have begun to question this seeming necessity to live in a city for gay men to be able to be gay. In an Australian context, Hodge (1995) questioned whether ‘… the inner city ‘gay territories’ are the only places where gay men and lesbians can be truly ‘out’’ (Hodge, 1995: 41). If Horin’s observation in 1994 that gay men are ‘reclaiming the country’ was correct, then, twelve years later, it stands to reason that gay men are living in rural areas in greater numbers than has generally been given credence.

The level of services in rural communities that focus on gay people suggests that not all gay men have moved to the cities (see the map of NSW on p. 106). A reading of the metropolitan gay press reveals the existence of a number of gay support groups located in various inland country towns (Albury, Wagga Wagga, Griffith, Orange, Tamworth and Dubbo). University campuses in Albury, Wagga Wagga, Bathurst, Orange, Lismore and Armidale all have support groups for gay students. A number of inland health services (such as at Albury, Dubbo, Orange and Tamworth) have dedicated placements

to service the health needs of gay men and lesbians. The Police Service has designated

Gay and Lesbian Liaison Officer positions in several inland towns. Clearly, this range

of services for gay people implies that there is sufficient clientele to justify and maintain the services.

Just how many gay men and lesbians live in the bush, however, is unclear. There is empirical evidence to support the anecdotal evidence that a comparable proportion of gay men live in rural areas of NSW as in the population as a whole (Hillier, 1996;

Hillier, Harrison and Bowditch, 1999). Given the level of service provision, Horin may well have been right when she asserted that increasing numbers of bush-born gay men are returning to the country to live. More to the point, maybe they are simply not leaving at rates they once did. But two issues said to adversely affect gay men in rural

locations just won’t go away.

(i) Two Inexorable Issues – Homophobia and Loneliness

The state of the lives of those gay men who did not, for whatever reason, leave the bush

has been long characterised as less than healthy, wholesome and fulfilling. Evidence

emerged early in this research, that, for gay men, the Australian bush had acquired the

reputation of being a place of social isolation and heartbreak. The bush was depicted as

a place where gay men were ‘stigmatised or marginalised’ (Roberts, 1993). There was

evidence of the high rates of suicide among young gay men in the bush (Dudley, 1992,

1994; Nicholas and Howard, 1999). There were stories of rejection and ostracism of gay

men, often at the hands of family. For example, Hunter found that 46% of young gays

and lesbians reported violence being perpetrated against them, and of those attacks,

61% were at the hands of their own family members (Hunter, 1990). An Australian

study of young gay homeless youth found that 70% of them ‘… had experienced some form of violence from their family’ and 57% of males identified ‘… their sexuality as one of the major reasons for leaving home’ (Irwin, 1994: 30). The data on the prevalence of violence perpetrated against gay men inferred that much of it occurred in the bush.

A number of reports have made findings that gay men in Australia are frequently victims of violence and discrimination (Mason, 1993; G.L.A.D., 1994; Sandroussi and

Thompson, 1995; Irwin, Winter, Gregoric and Watts, 1995). The Anti-Violence Project in NSW has monitored the violence against gay men and lesbians for many years, though, in regard to gay men in rural communities, little has been reported. However, other studies do make comments. Hillier (1996) reports ‘alarmingly’ intolerant attitudes towards gay men in rural communities. Roberts (1995) reported some instances of

‘severe’ physical abuse and he made the point that all the gay men in his study had been subject to verbal abuse. Hillier, Harrison and Bowditch in their study of young people in rural towns found that ‘… young men in particular, and some young women, expressed very strong anti-gay sentiments’ (Hillier, Harrison and Bowditch, 1999: 74).

Much has been written on the nature of homophobia, the extent of its occurrence in

Australian society (and elsewhere) and the consequences of it on both those who suffer at its scourge and on the society as a whole (Altman, 1971; Tate, 1991; Blumenfeld,

1992; Elia, 1993; Cox, 1994; GLAD, 1994; Mahamati, 1995; Roberts, 1995; Lane,

1997; Flood, 1997; Mason and Tomsen, 1997; Adam, 1998; Hogge, 1998; Walters and

Hayes, 1998; Hillier and Walshe, 1999; Plummer, 1999; Polimeni, 1999; Fone, 2000;

Klein, 2001; Martino, 2001). The public manifestations of homophobia are not difficult

to demonstrate and document and there is enough literature, academic and otherwise, to

substantiate the case. And the effects of this homophobia are also not difficult to

establish and verify (Dempsey, 2000). Homelessness (Kruks, 1991; Bennett, 1993;

Irwin, 1994; Delvecchio and Vass, 1995, Margolius, 2002), being bullied (Rivers,

1995a,b,and c; Bochenek and Brown, 2000; Callaghan, 2000; Beckett, 2001), drug

abuse (Brown, 1996b; Brown, 2002;), suicide (Asher, 1997; Green 1996 and 1998;

Bagley and Tremblay, 1997), depression (Vincke and Bolton, 1994; Frable, Wortman

and Joseph, 1997), under-achievement (Crowhurst, 1993; Epstein, 1994), moving away

(Weston, 1995), and distancing from family (Newman and Muzzonigro, 1993; Floyd et

al., 1999; Elizur and Mintzer, 2001) are but some of the effects of homophobia on gay people1.

In Australia, it is widely believed that homophobia is exacerbated in rural areas.

Certainly that was part of the thrust of the Australian Human Rights and Equal

Opportunity Commission’s (HREOC) decision to investigate the lives of rural

Australians. HREOC has conducted several inquiries into the lives of rural Australians with gay men and lesbians being a ‘major focus’ of the Commission’s work. HREOC singled out as ‘in need special attention’ lesbian, gay and bisexual young people so as to

‘… ensure that these young people are no longer isolated, but affirmed and included in their communities’ (Sidoti, 2000: 1). The Commission delineated the overlapping hardships faced by these young people, the first three being ‘… discrimination, violence

1 For additional studies, see: (1) Rural men and AIDS – Bennett, Chapman and Bray, 1989; Bishop, 1994; Shernoff, 1996a, 1996b. (2) Rural men and Homophobia – Martin, 1993; GLAD, 1994; Mahamati, 1995; Passey, 1995a; Thomas, 1995; Fallone, 1996; Kendall, 1996; Phillips, 1996; Flood, 1997; Lane, 1997; Mason and Tomsen, 1997; Callaghen, 2000; Crisp, 2000; Kirby, 2000; McDermott, 2000; Beckett, 2001; Farnan, 2001; Martino, 2001; Milligan, 2002. (3) Rural youth suicide – Bulrich and Loke, 1988; McQuarrie, 1994; Kendall and Walker, 1998; Macdonald and Cooper, 1998; Smith et al., 1998; Frere, Jules and Crowhurst, 2002; Dyson et al., 2003.

and family conflict’ (Sidoti, 1999: 2). But little of this is brought to the attention of the

public. Few complaints regarding such injustices are brought to the attention of the

police or other instrumentalities, such as the Anti-Discrimination Board (Spence, 2001:

191). Little is being done to address these matters and, in some respects, it is the

policies of governments rather than the actions of rural communities that give rise to the

gravest of the injustices. For example, under the Commonwealth Government’s

National Youth Suicide Prevention Strategy,

… the only project funded by the Strategy which dealt specifically with gay and lesbian youth suicide issues was the “Here For Life Youth Sexuality Project (Western Australian AIDS Council in conjunction with the Gay and Lesbian Counselling Service) which received $250,000 (Bacon quoted by Tremblay at www.sws.soton.ac.uk ).

That project had its national funding withdrawn completely in 1999 and the “Getting

Real About Preventing Youth Suicide” website had to delete specific reference to

suicide by gay and lesbian youth because government agencies had indicated that

‘operating grants would be lost if GLB suicide problems were tackled in an up-front

manner’ (Tremblay at www.sws.soton.ac.uk). These are injustices committed by

governments against the very people that Sidoti had warned were being denied adequate

services and protections.

The other inexorable issue said to face gay men everywhere, and taken to be especially

difficult for gay men living in the bush, is loneliness. Loneliness has been described as a

human condition prevalent in most people at various stages in their lives (Tanner, 1973;

Medora and Woodward, 1986). Woodward and Frank suggest that loneliness is ‘a

human condition with which we all have to cope at some time or another’ (Woodward

and Frank, 1988, 559) and later still Brage said of loneliness that it was ‘… one of the

most pervasive of human experiences’ (Brage et al., 1993, 685). If these opinions hold

true, then loneliness in today’s world is almost a universal human experience, although

the intensity of that experience may vary from person to person. Similarly, the

experience may differ depending on circumstance within each person’s life and at some times the intensity of loneliness might be more than at other times. However, if loneliness is such a universal phenomenon and we have all experienced it at one time or another, then we all know what it is. A definition of it becomes unnecessary and pointless.

When loneliness is mentioned in the literature in relation to gay men living in rural areas, it is said that loneliness becomes more intense and inescapable (Sidoti, 1996,

1999; Hillier, 1996, 2001; Hillier et al., 1998; Hillier, Warr and Haste, 1996; Hillier and

Walshe, 1999). This type of loneliness is often associated with mental health issues such as depression, suicide ideation and suicide (Remafedi, 1994, Dudley, 1994). But making this association is only to pathologise loneliness in a way that is not helpful when considering loneliness in non-suicidal gay men, especially those living outside the cities. Furthermore, it assumes that loneliness of any kind should not be part of the normal experience of life and that occasional bouts of loneliness are indicative of a less than wholesome mental health.

The traditional and ‘virtually unchallenged’ (Devereaux, 2002) typology of loneliness is that of Weiss (1973). That typology imputes that a person’s loneliness is essentially an emotional loneliness or social loneliness, or both. Emotional loneliness results from the lack of a close and intimate attachment to another person whereas social loneliness arises from the lack of a social network.

Mijuskovic suggests that the only means of avoiding loneliness is to ‘belong’ and to be

with significant and desirable others (Mijuskovic, 1986: 946–7). However, few studies

have looked at the sociology of loneliness in rural areas (Cart and Stanlet, 1999) and whether that loneliness is even partly a result of the ‘isolation’ of the rural context in which (young) people live (Young Gay America, 2002). Perhaps the study that is most pertinent in a rural situation is that by Stokes though he did not look at a rural cohort.

Interestingly, he looked at urban college students and showed that the link between the number of people one feels close to and loneliness is a weak one. Rather, it is the density of one’s social networks, and the degree to which one’s friends are interconnected and important in each others’ lives that is more important. The more dense the social network, the less the self-reported loneliness (Stokes, 1985: 987–8).

If gay men are unable to make connections with other people in the community and feel, or are in fact, somewhat ostracised from it, they might become socially lonely. If, too, they are unable to make contact with a significant other gay man, they might well also become emotionally lonely (Egan, 2000). The (pop) psychologist, Gregory Flood, wrote in his book Looking for Mr Right, But I’ll Settle for Mr Right Away that ‘the number

one problem of almost every gay man I’ve ever counselled is loneliness’ (Flood, 1986).

He was referring to a lack of ‘community’ within the urban gay community and one of

the symptoms of that, according to Flood, is a widespread and deep loneliness among

urban gay men (Varblow, 1998). However, it is usually wise to be sceptical when a

practitioner makes a statement based on a clinical sample and then applies that finding

to the more general population.

While realising that urban Canada and the USA are a long way from rural Australia, it

is not too difficult to find similar opinion echoed among writers here. Such arguments are even more prevalent when applied to gay men in rural areas where loneliness is said to become more intense and relentless. For example, Hillier said that many in her large research sample of young people ‘… described depression, unhappiness, loneliness and alienation’ (Hillier, 1999: 25). She went on to quote one young man who, though he said he felt ‘pretty good’ about his homosexuality, said, ‘… it’s hard if all your friends are straight and you don’t feel like you can talk about it with them. Loneliness is the hardest part’ (Hillier, 1999: 25). However, it should also be noted that the same research made the point that one third of participants felt ‘great’ about their homosexuality and that only sixteen percent felt negative and despondent about being gay.

Loneliness exacerbates one’s sense of difference. One possible outcome for those who are labeled, or see themselves, as ‘different’ is to leave the place where that occurs.

Those who choose, or had, to remain are thought to be required to hide and closet that difference. It has been indicated that some studies of gay men living in rural areas propose that one of the hallmarks of a non-city community is its seeming inability to accept difference and diversity within its ranks. Iris Young, in an article entitled ‘City

Life and Difference’ (1995a), which owes much to the work of Durkheim and Simmel, implies that tolerance of difference can only exist in what she calls an intensely urban life and that the concept of tolerance is, in fact, foreign in the suburbs and beyond

(Young, 1995: 264). Therefore, she implicitly excludes the existence of difference and a possibility of the tolerance of it in rural towns. Like Durkheim before her, she argues that where social regulation and conformity are the determinants of social behaviour, then difference, and acceptance of it, is unlikely to exist.

There is some evidence that Young might be correct in claiming that difference is unable to exist within a rural community. For example, the work of Canton-Thomson

(1998) indicates that rural communities see non-local residents as essentially strangers in the community. The notion of ‘countrymindedness’ that Share and Lawrence (1995) espouse is predicated on the lack of acceptance of difference and diversity within a rural community. The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (1996) in its extensive investigations into the lives of rural Australians found that small rural communities had difficulty in accepting difference and the different. Research by

Hillier, Warr and Haste (1996) emphasises the difficulties for gay youth in rural communities. It is, therefore, unsurprising that a gay man’s social interaction, even within his hometown, might well be along the lines envisaged by Iris Young as that of

‘the stranger’ (Young, 1995: 264; Bidstrup, 1977). As has been noted, Durkheim,

Becker, Simmel and Young maintain that the ‘outsider’ does not belong. Loneliness is one of the issues that lends itself to an understanding of what it is to feel that one does not belong. While loneliness can be conceptualised as a sense of not belonging to or not having a personal connection with community and social institutions, there are other ways to belong. This thesis takes up this idea and looks at whether being an outsider and not belonging to their community means that these gay men suffer intense loneliness. Do these rural gay men find other bonds of attachment and ways of belonging?

As was said earlier in this chapter, much of the evidence depicting the lives of gay men living in rural areas indicates what can only be described as a depressingly bleak outlook for them. The question arises, then, of whether the social and personal experience of life of gay men in the bush is actually as miserable as suggested. Is the

impact of homophobia and loneliness as debilitating as is usually suggested? Does the

current literature tell the whole story? Is there an untold account that perhaps builds on

Horin’s hint of changing attitudes and Baldwin’s notion of ‘live and let live’? Was

Hodge on to something when he queried whether the cities were the only places in

which gay men could live open lives? What is one to make of the plethora of services

and organisations set up in rural regions to cater to a gay clientele? What is to be learnt

from Hillier’s work indicating that one third of participants felt ‘great’ about their

homosexuality and that only sixteen percent felt negative and despondent about being gay (Hillier, 1999: 25). Are rural communities as devoid of gay men as the tales of migration and exile would imply? Perhaps there is room to re-examine the accepted wisdom.

Challenging the Accepted Wisdom

Though there is increasing research into aspects of the lives of gay men in Australia, most of this research, as it is elsewhere in the world, centres on gay men living in the cities and reflects an urban context and an urban values system. Bell observes that

‘much remains to be done’ in regard to ‘… developing a broader picture of sexuality in the country’ (Bell, 2003: 192). As already noted, few studies of gay men living in rural areas in Australia appear in the literature. An academic who has contributed in this field notes that virtually no research has been conducted in Australia that documents the lives of gay men living in rural areas (Roberts, 1996: 67). A more provocative call to action by Dowsett observes that ‘… not a skerrick of empirical work was being done to investigate the living of gay lives …’ (Dowsett, 1996: 8). Little has changed since that comment was made.

However, just as Horin forecast that increasing numbers of gay men would return from their life of self-imposed exile in the cities, Altman also speculated that,

… increasingly they [lesbians and gay men isolated from the big cities] will find ways of carving out meaningful ways of living in provincial centers which were unimaginable in the past (Altman, 2000: 46).

But Altman continues to associate a ‘meaningful’ gay life with the metropolis though he

gives some hope to that possibility for gay men in provincial cities. He has failed to

understand that, in returning to the bush, some gay men may be suggesting that they

could have an even more meaningful life by living outside the cities of Australia.

Altman misses the point that those rural gay men who did not move to the city when

they realised they were gay always knew and understood that a meaningful gay life is

not only defined by, or is only dependent on, living in the metropolis. The fact that they

were gay men did not alter their desire for a rural way of life. Altman overlooks the

possibility that, for these men, the bush held out the only prospect of a meaningful life.

The small literature pertaining to gay men living in rural areas is partly a reflection of a

new interest in the notion of ‘others’ within the more traditional concept of rural

community (Boyle and Halfacree, 1998). Within this emerging scholarship, even the

often-reported migration of gay men from rural areas to more urban places was seen as

a migration ‘from’ rather than a migration ‘to’ (Knopp, 2004). Some historians of the

gay past go so far as to suggest that this apparent migration away from the prairies and

the plains was not as great as is often made out. Howard, in speaking of Mississippi

gays in the 1950s, says,

Hardly an exodus to the cities, queer movement more often consisted of circulation rather than congregation … many queer Mississippians, especially agrarian and working-class people – those with limited mobility – found companions as they always had, within the immediate vicinity (Howard, 1999: xvi).

Sears, in writing about gay life in the USA noted that gay history there has had a bi- coastal bias that could lead to the supposition that the South was irrelevant to the contemporary lesbian and gay movement. He goes on to suggest that the pivotal role of

Southerners in the development of the gay liberation movement remains an untold story.

This sounds a familiar refrain. Sears makes the point that those who contribute to the making of gay culture also come from

… the small towns bordering the bayous, sandy banks, and river mouths of the Coastal Plains, blanketing the mountains of the Great Smokeys, the Blue Ridge, and the Ozarks, or dotting the hill country and grassy prairies of Texas where southern, western, and Mexican cultures meet (Sears, 1997a).

This new scholarship focusing on gay men in rural communities has emerged largely from a feminist perspective and is underpinned by reference to notions of ‘queer theory’.

It reports a desire of some gay men to live rurally and, in more recent times, being optimistic about actually being able to do so. Additionally, an increasing literature, mainly from the USA, of gay men in rural areas would also suggest that the urban lifestyle has little attraction for them, opportunities for education, career and relationships notwithstanding (Spiro and Lane, 1992; Oswald, 1992; Whittier, 1995;

Riorden, 1996; Fellows, 1996; Boulden, 1999; Kirkey and Forsyth, 2001; Jones, 2001;

Davis, 2003).

This emerging literature questions the long-held view that gay men raised in the bush have to escape its countrymindedness and the attendant narrow-mindedness and bigotry to live fulfilled, dignified and open lives (Bell, 2003: 186). Such literature supports my suspicion that maybe there is another story. This thesis questions whether the gay man leaving the bush is archetypal. To begin this re-conceptualisation and perhaps to begin

to discover the untold story it is first necessary to consider some of the characteristics of

the Australian rural environment in which these gay men live and then to look back, even fleetingly, at the historical evidence that gave shape to the social attitude and

outlook of rural communities.

Rurality and the Bush – Definitions and Developments

Despite the enormous changes in Australian society over the past two hundred plus

years since the British invasion and settlement, one division has remained – that between the city and the bush. The debate between the poet of the city, Henry Lawson,

and his bush counterpart, Banjo Patterson, illustrates the division over a century ago.

Lawson had described the bush in terms of

those burning wastes of barren soil and sand With their everlasting fences stretching out across the land! … Where, in clouds of dust enveloped, roasted bullock-drivers creep Slowly past the sun-dried shepherd dragged behind his crawling sheep. … Bush! where there is no horizon! where the buried bushman sees Nothing. Nothing! but the maddening sameness of the stunted trees! Lonely hut where drought's eternal -- suffocating atmosphere… (‘Up the Country’, The Bulletin, 9 July 1892).

Later, in ‘The City Bushman’, Lawson asks of Patterson, ‘Do you think the bush is

purer, and that life is better there?’ Patterson, in turn, paints a grim picture of the city as

a place where men have ‘flabby muscles’ and the ‘little city urchins … greet you with a curse’. The city is a place where

The seamstress plies her needle till her eyes are sore and red In a filthy, dirty attic toiling for her daily bread and ‘…fallen women flaunt it in the streets’ (‘In Defence of the Bush’, The Bulletin,

23 July 1892). What is important in all of this is that both the city and the bush were

romanticised and rendered, such that little reality remained and the truth was to be

found in between. The bush was rarely an Eldorado for the people living there and was,

39 more often than not, a place of harsh living conditions, social isolation, and poor wages.

There was very little in the way of education for the young and opportunities for women were unheard of.

But conditions in the bush did progress, as they did in the cities. The coming of the railways, the construction of roads, the advent of the car and its increasing accessibility by many, the introduction of the telephone, the radio and then television all brought the city and the outside world to the bush. And it brought the bush to the city.

Although these conditions improved over the next century, the divide persisted between the city and the bush (Bowman, 1981; Beggs et al., 1996). Certainly, attempts to split the Australian society into rural and non-rural has been an evergreen of national politics.

Indeed, much of the history and economic development of the nation has been flavoured by the rural/urban tussle (Ward, 1966; Clarke, 1979; Blainey, 1966). One of the dangers of the Lawson–Patterson stereotyping and of the iconisation of aspects of

Australian bush life is the tendency to homogenise all geographic areas outside the city and assume they all have the same strengths, weaknesses and needs. This is not the case.

As Sher and Sher make clear,

Policies and programs that, in essence, treat them [pastoral areas] as identical and interchangeable [with] ‘farming areas’ miss the mark and are likely to fail (Sher and Sher, 1994: 14).

Just as care must be taken to not label or stereotype people, there is also a need to be wary of doing the same with rural communities (Day, 1998).

(i) Community

The study of rural sociology might be said to be in its infancy in Australia relative to

Europe, the UK and even the USA. Much of the international literature in rural

sociology has revolved around rural representation, economics, agricultural practice,

and around the concept of rural ‘community’ and rural identity (Creed and Ching, 1997).

Furthermore, at one point, the notion of community fell out of favour within the

academy (Day, 1998), and community studies became ‘… far less common than they

were’ (Falk, 1996: 164). But since Falk lamented the demise of community studies,

there has been something of a resurrection of the concept (Kenny, 1994).

Notions of rural community have sometimes incorporated the idea of predictable

unchangability (Richardson, 2000), just as the rural seasons and rural patterns of

production in the bush are repetitive and predictable (Leipins, 2000). Certain things are

done on the farm at certain times in line with the seasons and it has always been that

way. The still classic study of the seasonal regularity of life on the land is that of John

Camp and his depiction of rusticity and family life in rural Minnesota (Camp, 1986).

Because things seem to stay the same, it is thought that there is also little change in the nature of what it is, or what it means, to be rural (Edmondson, 1997).

In recent years there have been calls to look again at the accuracy of depicting rural communities as homogeneous and unchanging (Leipins, 2000; Graber, 1989). In fact, it is in the depiction of a changing rural landscape that the concept of ‘community’ has resurfaced (Wilkinson, 1986; Saunders et al., 1996). Other evidence would seriously question the often touted claim that ‘small towns are dying’ (Sadkowsky et al., 2001).

These calls suggest that there have been oversights. One such oversight may be that

there is increasing evidence that there are marginalised and ‘excluded’ people living in

rural communities (Cloke and Little, 1997; Jones, 2001; Murdoch and Pratt, 1997;

Murdoch and Day, 1998; Cameron, 2001).

It seems that much of this recent awareness of the marginalised in rural communities

stemmed from the emergent feminist studies that have focused on upsetting what has been seen as a ‘phallocentric cultural tradition’ (Alston, 1993: 10). Now, the new marginalised in rural community studies are racial minorities and, in the USA, this applies to Afro-Americans and Hispanics (Falk, 1996), criminals (Weisheit et al., 1995), the dislocated (Lankford-Rice, 2000), agricultural workers (Bell and Newby, 1995), the poor (Schucksmith and Chapman, 1998; Sharpe, 2000) and even rednecks (Jacobsen,

1994; Creed and Ching, 1987). In Australia, the new ‘others’ in rural communities include the young, especially in regard to mental health issues (Hillier, 1996; Sidoti,

1996; Davies et al., 2001), on-farm families (Wright and Rosenblatt, 1987; Hughes,

1987; Davis-Brown and Salamon, 1987; Wilson and Petersen, 1988; Cheers, 1991;

Stehlik et al., 1996; Sarantakos, 1998; Lawrence, 1998; Bryant, 1999), and Indigenous

Australians (Human Rights Commission, 1996). This thesis suggests that gay men and lesbians, who have been out of sight for too long, might well be added to this list of

‘others’ in rural communities.

However, this resurgence in the usage of ‘community’ in rural studies has turned almost full circle. In Australia, the genre of community studies based on small rural towns is also evident (Dempsey, 1990; Poiner, 1990; Falk and Kilpatrick, 1999) and the situation is quite similar in Britain (Smith, 1996). The notion of ‘rural’ and ‘community’ have come to be re-focused on the idea of ‘others’ and ‘otherness’ within small communities

(Emslie, 1996). But out of this re-focusing seems also to be emerging the idea that rural

communities might actually have a future. The idea that those who live in rural

communities might well be satisfied with their lot has resurfaced (Wilkinson, 1986;

O’Malley, 1994; Filkins et al., 2000; Ryan and Bernard, 2001) and there is some

evidence that not all rural communities are in crisis (Fost, 1993). Despite the continuing

recognition and delineation of problems in small rural communities – economic decline

(Finsterbusch, 1980), religious violence (Murtagh, 1996), youth issues (Hessler, 1993;

Glendenning, 1998; Plunkett, Henry and Knaub, 1999; Perkins, 2000), health

(Humphreys, 1998), social services (Cheers, 2001), and on-farm financial uncertainty

(Swisher et al., 1998) this tentative optimism remains (Wilson and Petersen, 1988).

This might be reflected in the contention that in Australia, and elsewhere, the desire to

‘stay’ rural is increasingly an option for the young, regardless of the perceived

attractions and opportunities of the city (Jamieson, 2000; Durey et al., 2001; Sharplin,

2002).

(ii) Rurality

So … what is rural Australia? In many ways, Australian values still reflect the values of the bush (Le Vin and Reus, 2002: 17). The Australian national psyche still seems to want to ‘go bush’. Governments, the media and even society in general continue to foster the images of rugged stoicism, independence and freedom, egalitarianism and fairness, and, above all, the value of mateship, despite the fact that these values were as romanticised in the folklore of a century ago as they are today. Yet rural Australians have tended to become ‘the forgotten’, and they have tended to be dismissed with a strange amalgam of economic and social irrelevance, cultural simplemindedness, and

‘nostalgic sentimentality’ (Sher, 1994: 33). The notion of the ‘outback’ has become an

urban phenomenon (Le Vin and Reus, 2002) in which the rural locals have become

culturally marginalised and have been (metaphorically) removed from the landscape

(Dominy, 1997).

Small towns and the people who live in them have become cut-off from the commercial

and political decision-making processes and in so doing have become increasingly

vulnerable to forces and verdicts in which they have little input and outcomes over

which they have no control (Ching and Creed, 1997). As Bowman notes, ‘… most

places beyond the city are … “small and unimportant” in national affairs and… full of

small and unimportant people’ (Bowman, 1981: xx).

Australia is one of the most urbanised countries in the world with about three-quarters

of its population living in the eight state or territory capitals and the six other cities in excess of 100,000. The balance of Australia is made up mostly of small towns and even smaller towns, together with many farms and stations. As Cheers notes, Australia does

not have the population base, nor the physical geography, to support a host of medium- sized cites throughout the country that could act as regional centers of development and industry in an economic as well as a socio-cultural sense (Cheers, 1991: 26).

In Australia, rurality is about space. Some might describe this ‘space’ in terms of distance, while others might describe it in terms of population scarcity. Remoteness and isolation could be other parameters of this ‘space’. Blainey (1966) coined the phrase

‘the tyranny of distance’ to indicate that distance brought disadvantage and that there was a direct relationship between the two. The greater the distance one is from urbanity, the greater the deprivation one encounters (Cheers, 1991). Wilkinson suggests that one

of the reasons for this deprivation is rural Australia’s dependency on larger centres for

goods, services and resources,

As people in rural areas look elsewhere for needed services, they weaken their behavioural attachments to the local society, if not their psychological ties (Wilkinson, 1986: 7).

He goes on to argue that this dependency on outside provision, largely brought about by distance, has resulted in what he calls ‘… a widespread rural malaise and an unfulfilled potential for rural community development’ (Wilkinson, 1986: 7). For sociologists such as Wilkinson, it is the very nature of rurality that is its undoing. It is its inherent lack of

‘urbanity’ that makes for disadvantage, and it is this factor that is the feature of rurality.

However, Sher, like Patterson before her, maintains that

… this absolutely crucial, and disproportionately large, rural contribution to the nation’s wealth and well-being appears to be largely unnoticed – and certainly unapplauded (Sher, 1994: 33).

It is not surprising, therefore, that despite the large and disproportionate contribution to the national well-being by rural Australians, it has been shown that rural Australians are disadvantaged, relative to their urban cousins, on nearly every gauge of physical, social, economic and psychological measure (Lawrence, 1996; Bell, 1992; Sher and Sher,

1994). Cheers details this index of disadvantage very thoroughly (Cheers, 1998: 29–54), though the delineation of disadvantage is prominent in other studies (Bell, 1992;

Bourke, 2001). This disadvantage has led to stresses on rural populations (Davis-Brown and Salamon, 1987; Gray and Lawrence, 1996; Park, 1996; Lawrence, 1998) and has forced changes on traditional rural communities (Hughes, 1987; Alston, 1993; Ling,

1994; Lawrence, 1998; Bryant, 1999; Leipins, 2000; Collits, 2000; Gray and Phillips,

2001; Bourke, 2001). Therefore, it appears that rurality has been defined by what it is

not rather than by what it is. We have moved towards a definition of rurality as

pertaining to the absence of economic advantage and community wellbeing.

Nevertheless, there is another sense in which rurality is defined by what it is not.

Traditionally, rurality pertained to the countryside, or to ‘the bush’, to use a more

appropriate Australian expression. Of course, it might also be said that what is not

urban is rural (Gray and Phillips, 2001). Hite suggests that ‘… rural can have no

meaning without reference to urban’ and that therefore, ‘…rural must be defined by

what it is not’ (Hite, 1998: 1).

However, it would be well to be cautious in any leap to define rural (Ashton and May,

1994), just as there is a need to not assume that every rural community or town has the

death rattles (O’Malley, 1994). Studies over a long period of time have repeatedly

suggested that more attention be given to concepts of rurality and its derivatives (Falk

and Pinhey, 1978; Miller and Luloff, 1981; Fitchen, 1991; Witham, 1993; Rousseaux,

1994). A number of studies have serious doubts about the usefulness of such definitions

(Mills, 1998) and while Cloke has a point when he states that ‘… any attempt at … a definition (of rurality) is steeped in futility and sterility’ (Cloke, 1983: 9), this should not preclude attempting to explore the parameters of the concept.

(iii) ‘Countrymindedness’

In spite of this warning, perhaps it might be argued that rurality is a social construction

that refers to ‘a way of life’ which revolves around behaviour that, in turn, is influenced

by perceptions, values and attitudes (Beggs, Haines and Hurlbert, 1996). Maybe rurality

is a notion of assumed difference. Country people, as even the banter of Lawson and

Patterson has shown, have always seen themselves as different (Ward, 1966: 102) and

they have usually wanted to be seen as different. From before the Gold Rushes in

Australia, country people have rejected urban values and ideas (Ward, 1966: 106). And

they have also wanted to reinforce and maintain that difference. Some of the reasons for

this can be found in politics and economics. Behind most of such logic, however, are

convictions that ‘… emphasise the economic centrality of primary production [and] the moral superiority of rural life’ (Aitkin in Share and Lawrence, 1989: 2).

In 1985, Don Aitkin coined the term ‘countryminedness’ to describe this distinctly rural creed (Aitkin, 1985: 34 - 41). It emulates agrarian ideology in the USA, which held strongly to the supposition that ‘… there is a pride, a certain nobility, in what a man produces by the sweat of his brow. There is a suspicion about a man who makes his

living using his head and not his hands’ (Flinn and Johnson, 1974: 194).

‘Countrymindedness’ is an attitude that postulates that agriculture is ‘a way of life that

is wholesome, moral and superior to other ways of living’ (Botterill, 2001: 10).

Country people think they have different attitudes, a different approach to life and a different and superior way of life. Aitkin goes on to suggest that these attitudes depict a certain ‘countrymindedness’ which is characterised, among other things, by a predisposition to discrimination. This attitude of moral superiority invites the associated conviction that those who do not conform to country values and outlook should be excluded. In fact, these sentiments seem to be little different to the idea that bush people prior to the 1850s saw themselves as the ‘true’ Australians (Ward, 1966: 106). Roberts refers to a traditional lack of tolerance for most urban and urbane sentiments (Roberts,

1995: 162) among rural people and sees this as evidence of ‘countrymindedness’. In so

doing, he links what Ward saw as an anti-urban feeling among bush people with

Aitkins’ idea of a more contemporary concept of moral superiority among them. This concept of ‘countrymindedness’ will be referred to regularly in this thesis.

Share and Lawrence argue that country people perpetuate and reinforce these myths of difference (Share and Lawrence, 1989: 1) partly because they feel they are true, but also

because it would be unthinkable to know, or even contemplate, that the opposite was

true. Nevertheless, Cheers has shown that rates of domestic violence (Cheers, 1998:

29– 54), violent crime and property crime are higher (Weisheit, Wells and Falcone,

1995), while youth suicide rates are much higher in the country than in the city (Dudley,

1992 and 1998; Remafedi, 1994 and 1998; Green, 1995, 1996, 1997 and 1998). Other studies have suggested than country adolescents are more sexually experienced than their city cousins (Grunsit et al., 1996: 399; see also: Weisberg, North and Buxton,

1992; Nixon, 1996; Phillips, 2000). It follows that cities are not necessarily the only places of youth alienation, godlessness, rampant hedonism, promiscuity, drugs and a lack of concern for others.

But it could be that differences between the city and the bush are more of perception than reality. More to the point, the country is not really seen, even by those who live there, as some idyll of rustic simplicity and pure living. The people who live there are

not, and do not really see themselves, as quite as stoic and heroic as the outward display

of the social construction/stereotype would have it (Wright and Rosenblatt, 1987). The

Arcadian image of a wide brown land dotted by small and prosperous country towns

with strong men ploughing rich fields and the traditional family living a healthy and

happy life is one that country people dream was there and is now gone (Flora, 1998). As

has been noted, even poets of the nineteenth century raised questions of the reality of

the depiction of the Australian bush as an always wonderful place for decent people to live.

What has happened is that the mirage and façade of the bush has dissipated. The sense of difference that country people themselves wanted to believe in, and also have others believe in it, has been questioned. And without this cloak of difference, and with the economic centrality of primary production now only a historical remnant, the pretence of the moral superiority of the rural way of life has shattered. Richardson echoes

Aitkins’ words when she suggests that rurality is ‘…a state of mind rather than a state of being’ (Richardson, 2000: 1). Aitkin was right over twenty years ago and, while he noted even then that, as an ideology, it had passed its use-by date, ‘countrymindedness’ probably remains still the best word to describe rurality (Aitkin, 1985: 40).

Gay Men and the Bush – Some Historical Ruminations

Rose poignantly states that both individually and at a national level, ‘if we are to

understand our psyche and our sexuality … we must understand the historical forces

shaping us’ (Rose in O’Carroll and Collins, 1995: 73). Edwards also makes the enlightened comment that ‘contemporary phenomena are best understood in a historical

perspective’ (Edwards, 2003: vii). An intensification of negative attitudes towards gay

men has been documented (Winters, 1997; Hillier, Harrison and Bowditch, 1999;

McDermott, 2000; Wheatland, 2001 and 2002; Hopwood and Connors, 2002; Herek,

2003). But such attitudes are not a new phenomenon and so the past can be instructive

in understanding the present. Without some appreciation of the historical background, it

becomes more difficult to comprehend the place of gay men and lesbians in

contemporary society (Sears, 1997a).

The international literature concerning homosexuality and homosexuals has grown

almost exponentially in recent years. There are some outstanding studies of homosexuality within historical periods (Dover, 1978; Goodich, 1979; Boswell, 1980 and 19822) and some excellent studies of homosexuality in other cultures (Murray, 1992

and 1995; Gevisser and Cameron, 1995; Howard, 1996; Treat, 1999; Louie, 2002,

Aldrich 1993, 20033). Equally, there are excellent published studies of homosexual

individuals (Barea, 1944 – on Lorca; Furbank, 1978 – on Forster; Farnan, 1984 – on

Auden; Ellerman, 1983 – on Wilde; Borer, 1993 – on Rimbaud; Leeming, 1994 – on

Baldwin;), and lesser studies (Green, 1990 – on Aelred of Rievaulx).

In Australia, much of the written or oral Aboriginal history has been wiped out and the

place of homosexual practices in pre-invasion society is largely unknown. One

Aboriginal academic makes the point that,

We have only some glimpses of pre-Christian clan rites of passage where young men (13 years old) ‘slept with uncle’ (teachers, mentors) the night before initiation/circumcision rites of passage into manhood. Such a gathering was called a ‘corraboree’. I suspect there was a physical or sexual component to this ceremony by which manhood was passed on from older to younger men (Ron Johnston in Ammon, 2006).

There are also significant studies of gay history in Australia since the time of the

European settlement (Wotherspoon, 1988, 1991, 1992a; French, 1993; Moore 1994,

1996; Phillips and Willett, 2000; Aldrich, 2003) and gay men in times past

2 For additional studies, see: Weeks, 1977; Trevisan, 1986; Bray, 1988; Watanabe and Iwata, 1989; Hinch, 1990; Marcus, 1992; Chauncy, 1994; Haggerty, 1999. 3 For additional studies, see: Haddad, 1992; Boellstorff, 1999; Boellstorff, 2005; Jackson, 2000; Williams, 1993; Waller and McAllen-Walker, 2001; Storer, 1999; Liverman, 2001.

(Wotherspoon, 1996 – on the bushranger, Captain Moonlight; Marr, 1993 – on Patrick

White). However, most studies are centred on the history of the gay rights movement

(Wotherspoon, 1991; Johnston, 1999; Willett, 2000; Moore, 2001; Reynolds, 2002) and the history of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras (Carberry, 1995). There is little on the gay rural history of a particular locality (Verity, 2002), but a recent collection of articles on gay life in the Hunter Valley (Wafer et al., 2000) demonstrates there is scope

for additional research of this kind. There is also a small, but important, literature on homosexuality in the convict era when the fledgling settlement was anything but urban

(Wotherspoon, 1988; Hughes, 1987; Fogarty, 1989; Hay, 1992; Moore, 1992; Lloyd,

2001). Court records provide quite substantial evidence for homosexual activity and much of this is to be found in Fogarty’s thesis and the early pages of Hughes’ text. But the court records of the Australian colonies of the nineteenth century also turn up occasional cases of homosexual activity among pastoral workers (French, 1993).

Russel Ward says that ‘national character is not … something inherited. Instead, it is a people’s idea of itself’ (Ward, 1966:1). That other great Australian historian, Manning

Clarke, concurs that this national ‘mystique’ was forged on the frontiers of settlement by the bushmen of the early eighteenth century and persisted until well into the twentieth century. For Ward and Clarke, a concept of mateship was, from the earliest days, the single most important factor in the allure of the bush. It has endured in the history and folklore of this country from before the uprisings on the gold fields through to the great labour strikes of the 1890s. This cult of mateship has been immortalised in the exploits of soldiers on the beaches of Gallopolli and the trenches in World War I.

This was repeated at Kokoda and other places of valour in World War II. Since then, it has underpinned all forms of bravery and assistance in the face of hardship. Mateship

has been the enduring characteristic of the national psyche so much so that a much less endearing Prime Minister sought unsuccessfully, in 1999, to enshrine the concept of

mateship in the nation’s Constitution. Of course, it is recognised that these ideas are

Euro-Western-centric and exclude Indigenous Australians.

Ward suggests that the development of mateship among the bushmen might have been,

in part, the result of the absence of women in the bush. He continues his discussion that

this, and the other conditions of bush life, does

… not account for the tradition that a man should have his own special ‘mate’ with whom he shared money, goods, and even secret aspirations, and for whom, even when in the wrong, he would make almost any sacrifice (Ward, 1966: 99). However, Ward finds an explanation for this fraternal devotion in an unexpected area.

He argues that

The typical bushman, blessedly ignorant of psychological theory, appeased this spiritual hunger by a sublimated homosexual relationship with a mate, or a number of mates, of his own sex (Ward, 1966: 99–100).

To suggest that a sublimated homosexuality, particularly among the stockmen and

bushmen, was/is at the heart of that most Australian of concepts – mateship – is an idea

that, until recently, has been unacknowledged in the social and anthropological history

of this country. Ward, while raising the idea, seemed disinclined to develop it further.

Nor did others and an asexual concept of mateship became one of the traditional

features of the national character. However, in the USA, there was not the reticence to

air such a view. For example, Wilkie cites a 1882 issue of the Texas Livestock Journal

that suggested ‘ … if the inner history of friendship among the rough, and perhaps

untutored cowboys could be written, it would be quite as unselfish and romantic as that

of Damon and Pythias’ (Wilkie, 1997; 1)4.

It might be argued that the ideas of mateship in rural Australia in the 1800s were a

forerunner to the philosophy of agrarianism in the USA and ‘countrymindedness’ in

Australia. Some would intimate that the canonisation of the bushman through the idea of mateship idealised a wholesome and physical rural life against a pathetic, soft,

sedentary and decadent city life. It also coupled a strong masculine identity with bush

living and pitted this against a weak and feminine identity associated with urban living

(Iglebaek, 2000; Rosen, 1993).

Paradoxically, the gay movement, and the gay historians and sociologists who have written about it, contributed to this contrivance. Such historians and sociologists claimed time and time again that the gay movement was a product of urbanisation and it was only in the cities that gay men could be who they really were (Weston, 1995;

Browning, 1996; White, 1980; Johnston, 1999). This suited the heterosexist ideologies

of gender and geopolitics for it could then be claimed that gay men were not only

inherently weak, unmasculine (if not feminine) and decadent, but because of these

factors, they were able to live only in the cities (Knopp, 1995; Waterhouse, 1995).

Moreover, it suited the notion of ‘countrymindedness’, under which gay men were seen

as morally unfit to live openly in otherwise respectable rural communities. Though

Moore makes the point that ‘… as late as the 1950s and the 1960s, the typical

4 According to Greek mythology, Damon and Pythias were the lovers both of whose lives were spared by King Herod after Damon offered his own life in exchange of his condemned partner. Wilkie goes on to note that ‘Many circumstances contributed to personal closeness on the ranch and trail. Cowboys commonly bedded in pairs, sharing bedrolls with their “bunkie”. Bedding in pairs had obvious advantages on cold winter nights, but cowboys paired up even during hot summer months when they abandoned the stifling bunkhouse, sometimes called a “ram pasture”, to sleep outside’ (Wilkie, 1997: 1).

identifiable homosexual male type remained “feminised”’ (Moore, 1998a: 1), he goes

on to argue that

… since the 1970s there has been a marked shift away from the old stereotype towards a ‘masculine’ one, weakening the link between male homosexuality and female gender (Moore, 1998a: 1).

Despite the latent homosexuality inherent in the cult of mateship, the bushman was

depicted as red-bloodedly heterosexual and rampantly intolerant of homosexual

inclinations. The Bulletin magazine in the 1890s battled against an emergent feminism

and backed a ‘re-masculinisation’ of the society, partly based on the perceived and

idealised masculinity of the bushman. In the process, The Bulletin rekindled a

homosexual/heterosexual dichotomy during the trial of Oscar Wilde, that city-living intellectual that the magazine denounced as a ‘… a dirty-minded fat man’ (Murrie,

1998: 74). Just as the ‘…exclusive manifestations of mateship’ (Murrie, 1998: 72)

excluded women, non-European men and Aboriginal peoples, it also excluded the

homosexual. However, while the popular depiction and representation of the bush ethos

might have incorporated elements of discrimination, racism and the exclusion of those

who were seen as different, the question of how that was realised away from the

metropolis remained unresolved. The historical evidence also provides glimpses of a

more ‘live and let live’ attitude that some of the sociological literature would suggest is

still in evidence today.

The suggestion that a latent homosexuality, particularly among the stockmen and

bushmen, and actual homosexual encounters in the convict era were part of an emerging

concept of mateship, is an idea in need of closer examination. This thesis is not focused

on a history of the social and sexual mores of the convicts or the early Australian

54 bushmen. But it is important to understand that the alleged basis of the Australian psyche – mateship – has a definite homoerotic edge to it which, even in times past, was evident (Hay, 1993: 77). Aldrich also notes other parallels between contemporary gay life and Australia’s colonial heritage (Aldrich, 2003: 235–242). More poignantly, Bob

Hay makes the observation that

It is tempting to speculate … that the experience, perforce, in the early days by large numbers of Australian men of satisfying and intimate sexual relations with other men laid the foundations for latter day ‘Aussie mateship’ and contributed significantly to our traditional male egalitarianism (Hay, 1993: 76).

The Introduction to this thesis raised the issue of the representation and iconisation of the rural landscape and the subtle infusion of a homoerotic sensibility into representations of the bush, be it in art, literature, film and culture more generally. This queer aspect to the Australian bush has not been hidden so much as it has been unlooked for, unacknowledged and unappreciated. Perhaps this also applies to the gay men who live out there.

This brings us back to the questions that were raised earlier in this chapter of whether the bush ethos has been misrepresented and may have been more inclusive of those who were seen as outside the mantle of respectability. Was there a quiet acceptance of difference in the bush that is deserving of a more detailed assessment? In part, the gay iconisation of the bush referred to in the Introduction to this thesis has allowed such questions to be asked and explored. Much of the traditional thinking that tended to cannonise the rural cultural heritage of Australia has, in more recent years, been contested. For example, Coad in his Gender Trouble Down Under (2002)

…takes up the ‘Oz bloke’ image as the hypermasculine, heterosexual fantasy and shows to what extent this sexual, gender and national stereotype is odd, partial and exclusionary – in a word, queer (Review of Gender Trouble Down Under entitled ‘The Outback is Outed’)5.

Perhaps Russel Ward was right all along when, almost forty years ago, he timidly and

coyly suggested that mateship was founded on ‘… a sublimated homosexual

relationship’ among men living in the Australian bush.

There has been a small literature that pointed to homosexuality among the early cowboys in the USA. For example, David Dary, in his text Cowboy Culture: A Saga of

Five Centuries (1989), wrote that cowboys ‘sought to live lives that were free from

falsehood and hypocrisy’ (Dary, 1989). Wilkie (1997) suggests that this freedom meant

that

On the open range, cowboys often developed strong and loyal relationships with one another … [and] many circumstances contributed to personal closeness on the ranch and trail... . Many cowboys engaged in ‘mutual solace’, a tender, expressive and euphemistic term for sexual relations… . The randy side of cowboys left for posterity numerous ‘ugly songs’ explicitly describing sodomy, phallic size, and virility. Cowboy songs … reflected the mutual interests of the cowboys who sang them. There were other variations, such as limericks describing anal intercourse … . Cowboy terms such as ‘swanson neuf’ – a bastardization of the French word for ‘sixty-nine’ and common among 1920s Nevada buckaroos – give a different perspective of mutual solace (Wilkie, 1997: 1–2).

Since the 1990s, there have appeared a small number of excellent studies of gay men in

North America who had lived, or were living, in rural areas (Sears, 1991; Howard,

1999; Bebout, 2000; Jones, 2001). These and other life stories of gay men living

outside the cities (Silverstein, 1981; Preston, 1991; Yates-Rist, 1992; Fellows, 1996 and

Riorden, 1996) portrayed rural areas as being unwelcoming and even hostile to gay

men. But they also depicted the gay men themselves, especially those who had moved

5 See the review at http://www.openbookltd.com

56 away, as having fond memories of the prairies and the mountains of their adolescence

(Watson, 2001; Maddux, 1996).

The work of Will Fellows (1996), which he titled Farm Boys, is often cited as the seminal work on rural gay men, but most of the 36 men presented in Fellows’ book no longer lived in rural communities, let alone on working farms. And of those who remained in their communities, few led openly gay lives (Fellows, 1996: xi). Fellows suggested that the gay men in his study may well have had ‘… a sense of belonging on the farm’, but their homosexuality automatically made them ‘misfits’ in rural culture and small-town communities (Fellows, 1996: 311). Fellows went on to observe that, in effect, these gay men were forced from their home towns not only by communities that would not accept them, but also by the gay men’s own intuitive hunch that they could not stay. He says,

If the prospect of staying in their rural communities had not appeared to be so incompatible with leading honest, unconstricted lives, more of these men might have made their homes in the farm communities (Fellows, 1996: 314.).

An emerging literature contests these findings. This thesis will also question and move beyond such findings.

A Hint of Better Circumstances

Casey writes that place has the power to ‘… tell us who we are and what we are in terms of where we are (as well as where we are not)’ (Casey, 1993: xv). When people are asked where they come from, the answer is usually in terms of place – in terms of a person’s ‘hometown’. One’s hometown is important. It gives a person a sense of origin and, as such, partly determines, or at least gives shape and substance, to his identity and

57 who he is. The origin of the word ‘hometown’ is unclear, but it has connotations of birthright and reference to the place where one was brought up. But it means more than that. Preston (1991) uses the term ‘hometown’ in the title of one of his books and the meaning he ascribed to the term can be best understood from the book’s subtitle – ‘Gay

Men Write About Where They Belong’. Home and hometown signify belonging as well as providing a connection between place and identity. The literature on Australian rural gay men, like elsewhere in the world, proposes that rural gay men have not always had a wholesome sense of hometown and that their hometown has not usually been the source of support and belonging that it has been for their heterosexual counterparts

(Roberts, 1995). Gay men in the bush have had a legacy of disadvantage.

Many rural gay men, as Fellows and others have argued, have felt it necessary to abandon their rural origin in order to bring about an integrity and openness in their lives.

Others have suggested that ‘… queer migrations constitute migration as emancipation’

(Fortier, 2000: 2). It has been considered that gay men in rural areas have too often had to abandon their past in order to look to a future (Riorden, 1996). It is in this sense Paul

Monette writes towards the end of his novel, Half-Way Home, that ‘…home is the place you get to, not the place you came from’ (Monette, 1991: 262).

Many gay men in rural towns have been excluded when they sought inclusiveness

(Weston, 1996; Fellows, 1996). It is precisely this point that is central in Browning’s

The Culture of Desire in which he speaks of ‘… the divisions, the denials, the invisibilities that breed anger’ (Browning, 1993: 31). He harks back to his origins in rural Kentucky where he tells of his first inklings of erotic and different desire. He speaks of straight adolescents as having ‘…a context’ in which to unravel the mystery

of their sexual nature and desire and in which the ‘… landmarks by which to plot the

points of a heterosexual journey’ have been already charted (Browning, 1993: 15–16).

But there were no equivalent landmarks or lighthouses for gay boys (Enright, 1995). It

seems to me that young gay men have been very much alone in their fumblings for an

identity. Society has stolen their adolescence from them as it expects them to make sense in an adult way of their emerging difference and the reality of their sexual desire.

This situation was repeated in Australia. There were no role-models or safe havens of

support for those adolescents attempting to understand and come to an acceptance of

their homosexual nature and desires. Their struggle had to be waged largely alone and

in the knowledge that their own emerging homosexuality had to be kept secret and

hidden from what they saw as an intolerant and condemning community. In the previous chapter, the rural communities were characterised by attitudes and social

conventions of ‘countrymindedness’. This countrymindedness was epitomised by,

among other things, as having ‘the moral roots for society’ (Botterill, 2001: 10). This

notion encompassed support for the hegemony of heteronormativity and the attendant

conviction that those who fell outside that lifestyle model of compulsory

heterosexuality should have no expectation of inclusivity, much less welcome, in the

community. Gay men living in rural communities were very aware, and bore the brunt,

of the countrymindedness and heterosexism of rural communities and many decided not

to stay.

But has it been and does it always have to be this way? Not every gay man living in

rural areas could leave and not all of them did leave. Howard (1997a, 1997b, 1999)

identifies the existence and describes the lives of gay men in rural Mississippi in the

1950s and ’60s in amazing detail and Sears does likewise with gay men and lesbians in the South of the USA over the period 1895 to 1999 (Sears 1991, 1997a). In Australia, gay men lived in rural areas in colonial times as Hughes (1988), Fogerty (1989),

Wotherspoon (1988) and French (1993) have revealed. Wafer has shown it to be true of small towns in the Hunter Valley at the turn of the twentieth century. In fact, he goes on to detail the war of words in The Newcastle Herald over ‘styles of dress (or undress)’ and ‘… unmentionable activities occurring on Newcastle’s beaches’ (Wafer, 2000: 44) in the early 1900s. The evidence of this thesis is that, just as in the past, not all gay men living in rural Australia today have a desire to flee to the cities.

For those gay men who did not head for the cities, the evidence to date is that they have had to remain largely invisible in order to live in rural communities. Riordon's ingeniously titled book, Out Our Way: Gay and Lesbian Lives in the Country, concludes that the basic context of gay men living in rural areas in Canada remains the same – that their lives have to be sanitised and de-sexualised to be tolerated. Riordon notes, with some regret, that his book contains the views of very few non-Caucasians.

But the fact of the matter, Riordon suggests, is that ‘By and large, rural areas are about as welcoming to them [ie: blacks] as to homos, only we can hide better than they can’

(Riorden, 1996: xiii).

Fellows has pointed out that despite many of the men in his study expressing a sense of belonging to the farm, they still felt alienated from farming culture and reluctantly decided to leave their hometown. Fellows does not make it explicit that it could have been the rural communities in which the men in his study lived, rather than the gay men

themselves, that invented and attached the label ‘misfits’. The gay men simply had to

wear it.

As has been mentioned before, gay men actually living in rural areas have been largely

ignored in the social science and the humanities literature. Perhaps the only mention

they received until very recently was that they were the part of the out-migration of young men from the prairies of Canada and the USA (Weston, 1995), as well as from the plains of Australia (Wotherspoon, 1991: 15). It might be nearly possible to conclude from such work that there were no gay men living in rural areas, or at least none of sound mind, wanting to live there. Of the major studies that have looked at gay men living in rural areas, all of them lament the paucity of a literature. All of them suggest that the topic needs additional attention and research. Indeed, the more well-known studies of gay men in rural areas complain of the urban focus of current gay culture and studies, the dearth of research and the concomitant need for further studies into gay men in rural areas (see Silverstein, 1981; Lynch, 1987; Banaszynski, 1987; Preston, 1991;

Rist-Yates 1992; Kramer, 1995; Bell and Valentine; 1995, Fellows, 1996; Riorden,

1996; Howard, 1997 and 1999; Whittier, 1997; Boulden, 1999; Bell, 2000a and 2000b)6.

Few studies of gay men living in rural Australia have appeared in the literature (Roberts,

1992, 1993, 1995, 1996 and 2001; Hillier, 1996 and 2005; Thorpe, 1996; Green, 2001 and 2004). While there is increasing research into the lives of gay men in Australia, most of this research centers on gay men living in the cities. There are exceptions.

Some of Roberts’ work has revolved around discrimination against gay men in the bush

6 For additional studies, see: Brown, 1976; D’Augelli and Hart, 1987; Miller, 1989; Weston, 1995; Smith and Mancoske, 1997; Signorile, 1997; Cody and Welch, 1997; Hollister, 1998; Waldo, Hesson-McInnis and D’Augelli, 1998; McCarthy, 2000; Shuttleton, 2000; Kirkey and Forsyth, 2001.

(Roberts, 1992, 1993, 1995, 1996 and1997). There has been some overlooked work

from the Rural Unit of the AIDS Council of New South Wales (ACON) (Carrington,

1991; Andronis and Carrington, 1993; Westlund, 1993; Watts, 1993; Gallon, 1994;

Buchanan and Baldwin, 1994; Chris, 1994; Douglas, 1994; Poetschka and Linnich,

1995). While this unit was inexplicably disbanded, other AIDS Councils have been

interested in issues to do with rural men (Cousins, 1995; Brown, 1996a; 1996; 1999).

The work of HREOC has already been noted.

The lives of gay men have perhaps been ignored by researchers partly because of the

invisibility of gay men living in rural communities (D’Augelli and Hart, 1987; Bell and

Valentine, 1995) and because of the seeming inaccessibility to them which that

invisibility imposes (Cody and Welch, 1997; Boulden, 1999). Nevertheless, there is

increasing evidence internationally that gay men living in rural areas are becoming

more visible and open and, on rare occasions, even integrated into the wider community

(Whittier, 1997; Signorile, 1997; Lovelock, 1998; Gwynn, 2000; Kirkey and Forsyth,

2001; D’Augelli et al., 2002). Banaszynski’s Pulitzer prize winning study, AIDS in the

Heartland, indicates that this ‘visibilising’ of gay men, even those with AIDS, began much earlier (Banaszynski, 1987).

That trend appears to have occurred in Australia also. For example, one rural local council in NSW has initiated a policy to more fully cater for and to integrate the gay and lesbian population living within its boundaries into the wider community. To this purpose, it has included the specific needs of gays and lesbians in its Social Plan (Bega

Valley Shire Council Plan, 2000). Evidence of the increasing visibility of gay men in

Australia is that the last census in Australia included for the first time the option for

62 people to note that they were in a same-sex relationship, with the result that 19,596 couples did so (Dale, 2001). Dowsett’s study (1996) reported on the quiet acceptance of difference in one large rural town. ‘Harriet’ was a well-known drag queen in the town.

And while her shows in the town’s gay bar were not necessarily enthusiastically endorsed by the mainstream community, Dowsett implies that the fact that her act was public knowledge and that she lived in the town unharassed indicated a level of acceptance, or at least quiet acquiescence, by the town (Dowsett, 1996: 112). This greater visibility of gay men in rural areas might also explain the emergence of Lesbian,

Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) organisations in non-metropolitan centres of population and the importance of these groups to gay men (Oswald et al., 2002).

Nevertheless, this notion of the increased visibility of gay men living in rural areas must be viewed with some caution. This is because the literature points out that not all gay men living in rural areas are able to be more visible. These may include gay men with

AIDS (Shernoff, 1996a; 1996b; Begley, 1987), adolescent gays (Hillier, 1996; Young

Gay America, 2002; Peavy, 2001), Men who have Sex with Men (MSM7) (Roberts,

1995), black and ethnic gay men (Petersen, 1992; Boykin, 1996; Waller and McAllen-

Walker, 2001; Livermon, 2001; Crichlow, 2001), Non-English Speaking Background

(NESB) gay men (Pallotta-Chiaroli, 2000), older gay men (Kimmel and Martin, 2000;

7 Men who have sex with men (MSM): Men who engage in same-sex behavior, but who may not necessarily self-identify as gay. This term is used in Australia, usually in connection with men living in rural areas (Poetschka and Linnach, 1995). The phrase, MSM, recognised as an imperfect and dangerous term, denotes a brand of homosexuality that broadens its definition to include homosexual behavior not associated with a gay identity and involving straight-identified men. Such men do not form gay partnerships and run little risk of being labeled a fag, poofter, gay, or even bisexual. But the MSM concept denies the existence of anything resembling a gay community, even as fledgling communities of self-identified gay people are beginning to emerge, particularly in places like South America, Africa and South Asia and other so-called ‘developing countries’. Using this political logic, the recognition of gay men at risk for HIV transmission would mean that governments might have to address the issue. But it is more expedient to keep gay men invisible and continue to aim prevention strategies at straight couples and heterosexual youths. MSM fits perfectly into this strategy, since it diverts attention away from openly gay men to ‘traditional family men with a wild streak’ (Frasca, 1997).

Beard and Hissam, 2002; Cruz, 2003), ‘redneck’ gay men (Jacobsen, 1994; Stein, 1996)

and Australian Aboriginal gay men (Close, 1992; Chapple and Kippax, 1996; Lawrence,

2004; Lawrence, 2005). Additionally, the otherwise common-variety gay men living in

rural Australia may not be able to be more visible because of a whole range of reasons

such as employment, living with parents, being married, or (most commonly), just a

fear of disclosure and a personal reluctance to do so.

This increasing reference to gay men living in rural Australia is repeated on the Internet.

A search on Google (19 January 2004) with the keywords Rural +Gay +Australia came

up with 72,400 sites while a similar search on 30 November 2005 indicated an

exponential explosion of information with 1,810,000 sites. A subsequent search on

22 May 2006 resulted in 3,500,000 available sites. Additionally, Gaydar.com has a number of Australian regional chat-rooms for gay men to communicate online.

Increasing references to gays living in rural communities occur in the NSW regional press (Winters, 1997), and to a lesser degree in the metropolitan press (Purcell and

Vaughn, 2000; Reid and Christian, 1994). In regard to the regional press coverage of gay matters, Winters comes to the tantalising conclusion that

… we might have to give up on the blanket assumptions that regional newspapers just present homophobic viewpoints and that gay and lesbian communities in country towns are voiceless and powerless (Winters, 1997: 21).

The same sentiment was echoed in other smaller rural press publications (Carr, 2001;

Wheatland, 2002). In fact, it is the Australian metropolitan press that paints a

depressing and dismal picture of what it is to be gay and live in the bush. Perceptions of

suicidal gay youth, rampant homophobia and violence against gays, and an unrelenting

sense of isolation seem to dominate the message of the metropolitan media (Horin,

1994; Saltau, 2000; McDermott, 2000). Positive stories about gays living in rural

communities in Australia are few and far between in the metropolitan press and the gay

press publishes most of them (Hearnden, 1997; O’Grady, 2002; Stevenson, 2002;

Oswald, 1992; Westwood, 1992).

Other sources of information on the condition and quality of life for gays living in rural areas of Australia are from the reports of government instrumentalities such as Health

Departments, AIDS Councils and others. Such organisations provide support and advice for gay people (Stewart, 1998), ascertain the needs of gay people living in rural areas

(Hogge, 1998; Farnan, 2001) and promote mental health (Frere, 2002). Additionally, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission of Australia (HREOC) has taken a significant interest in rural communities in Australia and has made a number of reports on matters affecting Australians living in rural and remote areas (HREOC, 1996;

1998; 2000). However, these reports tend to emphasise the negative aspects of living in rural areas and do not seem to build on the positives where they exist. Hogge advanced a project to minimise ‘…the shame, self-hatred [and] depression’ in the lives of sexual minority youth’ (Hogge, 1998). But Hogge’s report also quoted one mother of a homosexual son who remarked that ‘Quite remarkably, there are many young people and families who successfully negotiate the issue of homosexuality without assistance’

(Hogge, 1988: 49). However, such reports (imitating the academic literature) appear to be urban conceptualised and administered, even when they focus on a rural client base.

The report of the Youth Affairs Council of Victoria entitled Reversing the Drift (2002)

is a recent attempt to turn this trend around. It was a forum in which rural youth themselves addressed issues pertaining specifically to young people living in rural

regions. One of the matters on the agenda concerned the problems faced by same-sex

65 attracted young people in the bush.

Overseas media coverage of gays living in rural areas is more positive. Story lines across both gay and straight media suggest that gay men in rural areas are finding life more accepting and more acceptable than the popular image of rural life would imply

(Fedarko, 1993; Probst, 1998; Plaster, 2000;)8. Where there are reports of violence, murder and intolerance, these are reported with a sense of shame and an underlying message that this is not how things should be (Lacayo, 1998; Lopez, 1998; Firestone,

1999; Cartand Stanlet, 1999)9. America’s largest gay newspaper, The Advocate, published a new perspective in its article ‘Homespun Homos: Rural Lesbian and Gay

Men at Home in the American Hinterlands’ (Spiro and Lane, 1992). Some years later, the same newspaper published a special report entitled ‘Pride Across America’. This report made the point that many gay men and lesbians live outside urban areas and that in actual fact ‘… for most gays and lesbians, small town America … is where gay people come from’ (Bull, 2000: 1).

Other very positive images of rural life for gay men come from a most unlikely source – the rodeo circuit. The International Gay Rodeo Association (IGRA) and its affiliated regional bodies have an unexpectedly large following across the USA and Canada

(Rubinstein, 2001a, 2001b; IGRA, 2002). Their regional newletters make for enlightening reading and give a fresh, optimistic and down-to-earth spin on being gay in rural communities.

8 For additional studies, see: McKay, 1999; Precker, 1999; ; Davila, 1999; Leonard, 2000; Dahir, 2000; Parvin, 2000; Erickson, 2001; Fallon, 2001; Pinaturo, 2002; Nemitz, 2002. 9 For additional studies, see: Shewey, 2000; Kirp, 2001; Vaf, 2002; Mustikhan, 2002.

However, it has been generally accepted that for such men, their life choices were rather limited. Essentially they could stay in the bush and pretend to be heterosexual or leave in the hope of finding a better life in the anonymity and diversity of the cities. Certainly, there is evidence that gay men from rural areas utilised both of these options and continue to do so. Both alternatives were, and are, unsatisfactory to gay men. For a gay man to pretend to be straight involves denying the very essence of who he is. To leave his hometown and rural heritage may also involve denying and sacrificing a fundamental aspect of his being. No gay man wants to have to take these actions and, in that sense, they are non-choices. There needs to be a continued questioning of desolation and loss being the inevitable fate of gay men living in rural communities in

Australia. This thesis will question aspects of this ‘fatalistic’ view for rural gay men.

Conclusion

The accepted evidence to date indicates that rural communities have not been kind or accommodating to the presence of gay men. It is alleged that many gay men felt that they had to leave the bush in search of a better and more wholesome life for themselves as a result of these countryminded attitudes.

This chapter has examined some of the literature on the social and economic forces that have shaped the attitudes and values of people in rural communities and contributed to a formulation of what rurality means. This chapter also took account of some of the historical evidence and its interpretations concerning gay men in non-urban Australia.

What has emerged from this chapter is that the lives of gay men currently living in the bush are not without precedent. The literature on rural life generally, especially that

pertaining to the lives of rural gay men, is complex and sometimes contradictory – an

ironic reflection of the lived experience of being gay in the bush. This thesis seeks to

explore the complexity of those relatively unknown lives. To do this, the story has to be

underpinned by, and situated within, a theoretical framework to help provide explanations for what emerges. To more fully understand what being gay in the bush entails, a conceptual framework has to be developed against which the data can be analysed and discussed. This conceptual framework is the subject of the next chapter.

Chapter Two

Being Gay in the Bush – A Conceptual Framework

… we still lack queer facts ... there are still large gaps in our understanding of … gay lives as lived in history and represented in culture (Crain, 1980: 3).

Introduction

This chapter conceptualises the thesis. A conceptual framework for this study was

constructed against a background of the supposed oppression of gay men in rural areas,

both by the society at large and by the physical landscape. A review of the theoretical literature across a number of social paradigms underpins the framework. This literature

does not necessarily focus specifically on gay men living in rural areas but rather looks at a range of theoretical perspectives which facilitate an informed and critical understanding of the data. It identifies both the urban-centric focus of extant research

into issues affecting gay men living in country areas and the need for additional work

reflecting a greater sensitivity to the rural milieu in which they live.

This chapter initially examines the works of Durkheim, Simmel and Becker to situate

the gay man living in a rural location in relation to the community in which he lives.

The work of Tonnies is also useful as it provides for a movement of how the gay man

positions himself in the community depending on the circumstances in which he finds himself. This leads to the reflection that an individual, even from the position of

‘outsider’, is able to survive an inhospitable social environment. One way of conceptualizing this survival is through the idea of resilience and the work of Garmezy,

Rutter, Resnick and Oswald are examined. Another theoretical perspective against

which the data is analysed is the capacity for human agency that resilient individuals

69 seem to have which, in turn, enables them to resist hostile attitudes and behaviours in others that impinge upon the lives of these gay men. In this regard, the work of Giroux is particularly important in this thesis.

There are two other theoretical perspectives that are used in this thesis. In order to give a greater sensitivity to the rural milieu in which these gay men live, this thesis uses the concept of place, especially the ideas of Relph and Casey, to explore how the bush influences, and is influenced by, these men’s life experiences. The other is the perspective of queer theory and this thesis draws on that body of work to explore and theorise these gay men’s everyday lives and how they impacted on the place in which they lived.

Conceptual Framework

In constructing the conceptual framework of this research, it was important to refer to some of the classical sociologists and see ‘…how great masters dealt with issues and problems of their times’ (Turner in Jones, 1986: 7). This thesis uses these specific theoretical constructs to underpin the analysis of the data, the discussion of the findings and to theorise the everyday life of a group of gay men living in rural areas. It recognises that the social life of people can be seen as performances and studied within the framework of the theatrical stage (Goffman, 1959: 9). However, this thesis has had to go backstage to understand lives that are largely hidden from the podium of public performance.

(i) The Outsider

The research literature on gay men, and particularly on gay men living in rural areas, depicted these men as alone in a hostile environment. If not outcasts, they are outsiders.

Given that premise, it was important that this research be conceptualised around the notions of being an individual somewhat alone in the community. The question of the individual in community is as old as the human race itself and has been commented on for just as long if the Paleolithic cave art of Lascaux and the rock art of early Aboriginal

Australians is an indication. Scholars from every age and place have commented on this issue in its broadest sense (Sorokin in Loomis and Loomis, 1965, ix). It is not the intention here to survey the extent of that literature, nor the minutiae of the arguments. I bring together some of the more ‘recent’ scholarship to arrive at a theoretical context for the thesis.

At the beginning of this work, it was noted that ‘community’ will not be depicted in glowing terms but perhaps more as a social entity that compels the individual to conform. To not comply with community mores usually invites some form of social sanctioning. Tonnies (1957) encapsulates this in his term gemeinschaft which is said to be essentially applicable to and representative of rural communities. This is important because it takes in notions of the marginalisation or ‘othering’ of those who do not comply, the extent to which they can belong and the resultant isolation they can be subjected to. It gives cause to consider whether the gay individual is robust within himself despite the ‘hostile’ attitudes of others, in turn leading to a consideration of the ways in which those excluded can do something about it and the efficacy of such actions.

Emile Durkheim (1858–1917) argued that traditional societies allowed little deviation

from the moral codes embodied in what he called the ‘conscience collective’ (Giddens,

1996: 136), which perhaps is another phrase for the values of a society. Under this line

of Durkheimian theory, it follows that where there is only an insignificant allowance for

difference, then that society or community cannot be considered as modern or

enlightened (Durrheim, 1952: 222–3). Durkheim essentially proposed that a progressive

community was one in which there was respect by the individual for the common

values but also an allowance or permission by the community for the individual to be

different (Durkheim, 1952: 364). Durkheim takes this a step further in his study of

suicide where he considers ‘altruistic suicide’ as occurring when the society places too

little value on the individual (Jones, 1986: 96). As Durkheim himself says,

Precisely because of the strict subordination of the individual to the group is the principle on which they [lower societies] rest, altruistic suicide is there so to speak, an indispensable procedure of their collective discipline (Durkheim, 1952: 363).

The over-regulation of the individual causes some individuals who cannot comply to

engage in conduct outside the ‘conscience collective’ or the social and moral mores of

the community (Simpson, 1952: 15). The community makes such men outsiders and they make outsiders of themselves. These ideas sit well with the parameters of this study of gay men and there are clear implications for the research.

How do Durkheim’s theories relating to the lack of tolerance of the diversity of individuals within a community sit with Australian rural communities’ presumed intolerance of gay men? Does Durkheim’s concept of the over-regulation of individuals, especially those who do not conform, result in those individuals having to set themselves apart from, or sense they do not belong to, the community? Both the

research and the accepted wisdom that gay men leave rural communities and head for

the cities suggests that rural communities over-regulate the individual and are therefore

more traditional than modern. If the gay men in this study are found to be living largely undisturbed and contentedly within their relative rural communities, this might provide some affirmation of Durkheim’s concept of a modern community exhibiting a tolerance of diversity within itself and indicate that communities in the bush are, in Durkheim’s analysis, more enlightened than they are often given credit for. If, however, they are found to be living apart and in isolation from the wider community, the comment by

Durkheim on the nature of a community that causes this remains current.

This concept of marginalisation or ‘othering’ of some within the community might lead to those constructed ‘others’ becoming strangers within the community. The idea of setting oneself apart from the community, or being set apart by it, is a matter taken up by other theorists. ‘The stranger’ as a character is no stranger in literature. Perhaps

Albert Camus’ novel, L’Etranger (The Stranger) (1946), is the most well known in the genre. ‘The stranger’ as a subject in the academic literature is also no stranger there.

Academic works that use the concept of ‘stranger’ are also plentiful – Wood (1934),

Stonequist (1937), Meyer (1951), Siu (1952), Schutz (1964) and Rose (1967). In addition, the use of the theme of ‘stranger’ has not waned with time. The studies continue – Graber (1974), Franck (1980), and Canton-Thompson (1988), these latter studies reflecting a more recent interest in rural sociology.

While not wishing to trace the origin of ‘the stranger’ in the sociological literature, it would seem that the work of George Simmel and his Essay about the Stranger (1908) was at the forefront of this model of positioning an individual within the community.

Two of the essential characteristics of Simmel’s ‘stranger’ are that he does not belong

to the group and that he exhibits attitudes and behaviours that are not acceptable within

the group (Simmel in Wolff, 1950: 402). However, Simmel was not talking about gay

men, nor was he referring specifically to a rural society. Nevertheless, this

categorisation of ‘the stranger’ has important ramifications for this study of gay men

living in rural areas and it has implications for understanding why and how these men stayed in the bush.

For example, it requires this study of gay men to question and explore whether such men have been, and are, strangers in the bush. This will include the concepts of belonging and alienation. It will foster a utilisation of Simmel’s concept of the stranger who ‘… has not belonged’ to explore the position within their community of the gay men in this study (Simmel in Wolff, 1950: 402). Although Simmel did not specify any criteria which might lead to marginalisation, being gay and living in the bush may well fit within his concept of ‘stranger’. For Simmel, ‘the stranger’ was essentially someone who moved into a community, resided in it but did not become part of it. The gay men who informed this research are not transients. They are not Wood’s ‘newcomer’ (Wood,

1934), nor are they Siu’s ‘sojourner’ (Siu, 1952). They have not come into the rural environment. All but one was bush-born and bred. Therefore, Simmel’s idea of

‘stranger’ may need some modification in the context of this thesis.

In theorising about the individual in the community and using the concept of ‘stranger’ to link with a Durkheimian sense of having to be apart from the world in order to be oneself, there also needs to be a link with the notion of rurality. This thesis uses the theory of Ferdinand Tonnies to make this link. The central tenets of Tonnies’ theory are

74 the concepts of ‘gemeinschaft’ and ‘gesellschaft’ which were non-existent in reality but were to be seen as conceptual polarities (Tonnies translated by Loomis, 1957: 34). This meant that actual persons or the relationships they entered into would be positioned somewhere on the continuum between the two extremes. Furthermore, such a position was not static and was in a process of movement and change. Tonnies also applied this conceptual theory to communities. For Tonnies, this theory can be configured such that

‘gemienschaft’ is essentially representative of, or applies to, a rural community and

‘gesellschaft’ applies more to an urban community.

But it is instructive to note something of a paradox in all of this. If it can be agreed that the term ‘gemeinschaft’ describes human social interaction in a country town while

‘gesellschaft’ describes social interaction in an urban centre, inconsistencies seem to appear in the case of gay men living in country areas. In such a case, it is likely that their social interactions in a rural district might not have the sense of belonging and living together associated with ‘gemeinschaft’ and instead be looser and somewhat detached in the mould of a city lifestyle. By the same token, gay men might also be subject to the ‘flip-side’ of ‘gemeinschaft’ – an intense pressure to conform or face consequences in the form of covert exclusion, the lack of invitation, the withholding of inclusion and the whispered gossip, let alone more overt and violent methods of segregation.

However, what is important in all of this is that human beings and associations and relationships among them are composed of features of both of these absolute models.

Tonnies’ conception allows for individuals to seek out conditions and ways in which to live their lives. Therefore, the tight bonds of kinship and the inherent conformity of a

tightly regulated community may not allow for diversity of opinion and action from

individual members. Those who cannot adhere to the strictures of such a community

may have to seek a looser and less regulated lifestyle. They may break from ties of

family and the locality and move either to more accommodating places or set

themselves apart from the community. Or they may form other ties in which individuals

are still bound by a common bond and a communal interest, but outside that of the

mainstream community. Durkheim would phrase this as over-regulated individuals

moving outside the ‘conscience collective’. Simmel would conceptualise it as becoming

a stranger.

Tonnies’ conceptualisation is helpful because it allows for a continuum of mix between

the absolute types of individual and community and for a movement along that

continuum as circumstances change (Tonnies, 1957). What is significant for this thesis,

and perhaps new in the application of Tonnies’, Durkheim’s and Simmel’s theories to it,

is the submission that they provide for the agency of the individual. As Tonnies

explains,

… a dynamic condition or process is assumed which corresponds to the changeable elements of human feeling and thinking. The motives fluctuate so that now they are in one category, then the other (Tonnies, translated by Loomis, 1957: 249).

The ‘individual in community’ construct that began this section has now become the

‘individual outside the community’. This conceptual framework is fundamental to this thesis. Simmel’s construct of ‘the stranger’, the concepts of the fluctuating position of the individual with regard to Tonnies’ ‘gemeinschaft’, Durkheim’s idea of withdrawing from community life when the individual is ‘over-regulated’ all lead to the position of

the individual in relation to his world – inside or outside.

Howard Becker, in Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance (1963), describes the making of an ‘outsider’. Such a person is likely to see himself as morally at odds with those members of the mainstream society. The matter over which an individual may be at odds with the mainstream community may be defined as such not because it is harmful to the community but more because it is outside the social norms held by the majority of the community or perhaps by those in positions of power within that community. As Becker notes,

… deviance is not a quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an “offender”. The deviant is one to whom that label has been successfully applied: deviant behaviour is behaviour that people so label (Becker, 1963: 9).

Becker’s research is closely linked with studies of deviance, though what is of importance is the positionality of the individual. Though Becker formulated his theories primarily around marijuana usage, ‘outsider’ could be a label and a position in relation to itself that a rural community might impose on a gay man. On the other hand,

‘outsider’ may be a label and position that gay men living in rural communities may apply to themselves.

One of the ways in which both of these scenarios may be played out is through the

impact of homophobia. For gay men, and especially for gay men in the bush, this is a

seemingly inexorable problem. It is one of the scourges of rural culture that can over- regulate (in a Durkheimian sense) the behaviour of gay men and force them to engage socially outside the mores and sensibilities of the community. It is the factor, more than any other, that marginalises rural gay men in their communities, in a Durkheimian sense, and makes strangers of them under Simmel’s theoretical construction. Homophobia can be considered as one of the moral bulwarks that a conservative community (in the

77 manner of Tonnies) might invoke against gay men to enforce either their invisibility or their expulsion. It is this notion of the community keeping out those that it does not want to include that leads to a consideration of whether there is another way in which those so excluded may find a means to belong. Theories of place and the phenomenology of place may be that conceptual conduit and will be considered later in this chapter.

(a) The Outsider and Resilience

It became clear only after an initial appraisal of the empirical data of this study that the theoretical concepts of ‘place’ and ‘individual in community’ alone were seen not to be adequate to explain the findings of the research. The resilience of the gay men in this study and the manner and strategies they employed to stay in a relatively unwelcoming environment – their agency – was an unanticipated aspect, so much so that the literature dealing with the concepts was not reviewed in preparation of the research. However, as has been intimated, once the strength of this theme began to emerge, it became imperative that the literature around resilience and agency be examined in some detail.

A pioneer of studies into resilience was Norman Garmezy. Though his major works were with children, the ramifications of his study have carried over into other arenas.

His research suggests that it might be more productive to study the factors that move people towards survival and to change rather than look at factors which might minimise the level of a person’s vulnerability (Garmezy, 1971). Garmezy also discusses an individual’s capacity to take action to move from vulnerability to adaptation and survival, a matter he calls ‘invulnerability’ (Garmezy, 1987: 114). The essential factor in much of the work on defining, measuring or promoting resilience has been this

notion that individuals can act in their own interests. Being resilient implies that

individuals have more options than to passively accept detrimental circumstances. They can act both to lessen the effects of the problems and difficulties that beset them and to use the difficulty in such a way as to move on from it and to so create a better life for oneself. This is especially pertinent in framing this study as it allows for the possibility that these gay men can, even from a position of subordination and disadvantage, take action to allay adversity and so improve their lives.

Other academics came to see resilience more in terms of ‘invincibility’. The influential work of Rutter (1987) suggested that resilience might be a factor of social context as much as individual strength. The social context of resilience was expressed in terms of

‘risk’ to effective social functioning. Werner (1989) details some of these risk factors though she seems disinclined to list factors that are idiosyncratic to the individual.

However, Murphy and Moriarty (1976) cite these risk factors as inordinate sensitivity,

inherent passivity and other factors as posing risk to the individual’s effective social functioning.

Studies of resilience also point to the idea that just as there are factors that might predispose an individual to risk, there are also factors that ‘protect’ a person. It is

argued that the greater the exposure of the individual to these protective factors, the greater the resilience of the individual against adversity (Artz, 2001). Benard encapsulates the literature in suggesting that

these ‘protective factors’ … can be grouped into three major categories: caring and supportive relationships, positive and high expectations, and opportunities for meaningful participation (Benard, 1995: 1).

Care needs to be taken with this conceptualisation. If resilience is seen as a person’s capacity to deal with difficulty and protective factors are those that shelter an individual

from difficulty, then the question arises as to how resilience can be conceptualised if a

person has little exposure to the vicissitudes of life. However, a more useful

conceptualisation of resilience is if it is seen as a person’s positive response after being

subject to some tribulation. If gay men are seen to be subject to significant hardship, the

concept of resilience is a valuable and informative framework to explore their capacity

to deal with this and how they then get on with their everyday life in a rural setting.

The large scale work of Resnick, Harris and Blum (1993) with follow-up research

(Resnick et al., 1997; Resnick, 2000; Thoits, 1995) largely concurs with Benard, but

these works laid greater stress on a connectedness, and in particular, connectedness with

family

… in whatever way family was comprised or defined by the adolescent … without specifying the form or composition that families must take in order to serve this protective function (Thoits, 1995: 56). A number of studies (Resnick et al., 1997; Resnick, 2000) have postulated that the most

potent factor in fostering resilience is ‘… a sense of belonging and closeness to

family…’ (Resnick, Harris and Blum, 1993: S6). However, such research appears

inconclusive. Studies by Bragge (1993), Mijuskovic (1986) and Stokes (1985), while

not focusing on gay men, have shown that those living under adversity find strength to

face that adversity primarily in non-family relationships. A study of gays and lesbians

in rural settings suggested that while family was not unimportant in the provision of

support in the face of adversity, it was supportive friends who provided most assistance

in the face of prejudice and stigma (Kurdek, 1988; Kurdek and Schmitt 1987). Similarly,

Oswald, in a study of rural lesbians and gay men, notes that ‘… gay and lesbian adults

receive more social support from their gay friends than from their families of origin’

(Oswald, 2002: 385).

Resilience is also dependent on the nature of the adversity and so a person may be

resilient in one circumstance and not in another. However, resilience should not necessarily be seen simply as a passive reaction to adversity. The literature exploring traits that can bring about resilience in individuals suggests that resilience comes from a personal strength of the individual in facing social hardship (Werner and Smith, 1992;

Smith, 1999). Some call it self-actualisation (Benard, 1995; Richardson, 2002) and others call it ‘empowerment’ (Marshall, 2001).

If resilience is positive change in the face of social impediment, this can be read in the context of ‘growth’. Resilience is about using the condition of adversity itself such that one becomes less affected by it. To take action to move from a position of vulnerability to one of being less so is evidence of resilience. From these studies, and of particular relevance to gay men living in rural communities, is that in the face of adverse psychosocial conditions those who exhibit most resilience find a stronger sense of belonging and acceptance.

(b) The Outsider: Agency and Resistance

This focus on the individual, when combined with my suspicion that gay men in rural

areas had more choice about their lives than is generally recognised, meant that the

conceptual framework had to consider how individuals enacted choice, and in this case,

from a position of disadvantage. This led to a realisation, especially after the data was

collected, that theories of agency and resistance would have to be essential parts of the

81 theoretical framework. These concepts sit well with, and are of particular significance to, a study of gay men living in rural areas. In theoretical terms, the focus is on the enactment of agency in everyday life by individuals who have generally been regarded as confined and controlled to the point of being made almost invisible in the community in which they live. One outcome, or expression, of that agency is the resistance of the individual both to his subordinate position in his society and against the control and hegemony of that society that put and attempts to keep him there.

What this body of research implies is that resilient individuals can enact agency. There are a number of definitions of agency in both the philosophical and sociological traditions. Applying both these traditions, I use ‘human agency’ to mean the capacity for an individual to make choices and have those choices bear positively on his own life and the environment in which he lives. Perhaps the sociologist whose work is most useful in the context of this thesis is Henry Giroux. While his research has been largely in the area of education, it is of invaluable use in the sociological context of analysing and understanding the lives of gay men living in rural areas.

Giroux’s work uses resistance theory to explore

… how subordinate groups embody and express a combination of reactionary and progressive ideologies, ideologies that both underlie the structure of social domination and contain the logic necessary to overcome it (Giroux, 1983a: 103).

While Giroux does not mention him by name, Foucault had stated that ‘where there is power there is resistance’, but the thrust of his early argument was that resistance was a reaction to power and was not a positive action in itself (Foucault, 1978: 95). For example, Hartsock suggests that Foucault's conceptualisation of power sees individuals

as objects of power with little capacity to resist (Hartsock 1990: 171–2). Similarly

Russo notes that ‘the concrete … operation of this resistance remains largely an open

question’ (Russo, 2003: 4). It was not until 1982 that Foucault recast his concept of

resistance in terms of a ‘recalcitrance of the will and the intransigence of freedom …

incitement and struggle [and] a permanent provocation’ (Foucault, 1982: 139) that there

was any sense of taking action, challenge or defiance attached to Foucauldian notions of

resistance.

Giroux takes the view that the Marxist idea of ‘reproduction theory’ has argued that

social institutions, including educational institutions, have been instrumental in

… functioning, in part, to distribute and legitimate forms of knowledge, values, language and modes of style that constitute the dominant culture and its interests (Giroux, 1983a: 258).

However, Giroux argues that such theories have not recognised those aspects of daily life that demonstrate the theoretical and practical importance of counter-hegemonic

struggles (Giroux, 1983b: 77). More importantly, he suggests that within such theories

human subjects have ‘disappear[ed]’ and that there is ‘no room for moments of self-

creation, mediation and resistance’ (Giroux, 1983a: 259). It could be argued that Giroux

falls into this mould himself. While he suggests that a weakness of resistance theories is

that ‘… they rarely take into account issues of gender and race’, he has failed to

mention the matter of sexuality (Giroux, 1983a: 287). This thesis picks up this

sexuality-blindness and seeks to extend Giroux’s theory of resistance into that arena.

However, not all agency by individuals has to be conjured as resistance to the hegemony of mainstream heterosexuality. I will argue that agency is not always acting in opposition, but it can just as easily be conceived as not participating as well as doing

one’s own thing without regard to whether one is acting for or against the dominant

interests or attitudes. For example, if a gay man in a rural community does not accept an

invitation to a social function, it is not necessarily done as an act of resistance against

the community in which he lives. While his non-participation may be an act of resistance, he simply may not want to go.

This thesis also extends Giroux’s application of his ideas on resistance theory from institutions of ‘reproduction’ within the society, such as schools, factories and the institution of the state to that of the community itself, particularly as it treats gay men

living within it. For example, a re-writing of a central tenet of his work could read,

By downplaying the importance of human agency and the notion of resistance, reproduction theories offer little hope for challenging and changing repressive features of schooling [communities]. By ignoring the contradictions and struggles that exist in schools [the community], these theories dissolve human agency, and they unknowingly provide a rationale for not examining teachers and students [individuals] in concrete school [community] settings (Giroux, 1983a: 259).

This seems to have some echo of Foucault’s later conceptualisation of resistance and

Giroux goes on to argue that future studies in resistance theories should address the

‘crucial area’ whereby a dominant ideology inhibits those who are oppressed from

taking action. To use his words, new studies should address and explore how some

individuals are able to step outside the dominant structures and ideologies to so act on

their desire for, among other things, ‘… an aesthetic sensibility, eros and emancipatory

freedoms’ (Giroux, 1983a: 288). Such studies, Giroux maintains, should emphasise the

role of human agency and seek to understand the ‘… complex ways in which people

mediate and respond to the connection between their own experiences and structures of

domination and constraint’ (Giroux, 1983a: 290).

Resistance is essentially about opposition, usually to aspects of the superiority of the

status quo. In the case of gay men, it is likely that they would oppose the dominance of heterosexuality. They would oppose the status quo that accords an inferior status to homosexuality and to gay men. However, resistance theory also suggests that the

purpose of such action is not only to struggle against the dominant ideology represented

by the status quo, but to effect social change. Giroux states for example that

resistance has to be measured against the degree to which it contains the possibility of galvanizing political struggle around the issues of power and social determination (Giroux, 1983a: 111).

There is a danger in overextending these notions. As has been mentioned, not every act

of opposition has to be interpreted as resistance that seeks social change. Secondly,

even those acts that may be construed as resistance may not necessarily be carried out to

deliberately attempt to effect social change but simply to have a better life outside of it.

For example, gay men living in a rural area may disassociate themselves from the status

quo and not enthusiastically interact with the community in which they live simply to avoid what they see as pressures to conform. Resistance is not always about social change, but it is about self-emancipation. It is about securing the ability to act, even from a subordinant and inferior position within the status quo. It is about the freedom to reject and defy the status quo without necessarily attempting to overturn it. In this sense, resistance is also about the exercise of power from a position of powerlessness.

Giroux goes on to argue that

...resistance must be grounded in a theoretical rationale that provides a new framework for examining … the experiences of subordinate groups. The concept of resistance ... depicts a mode of discourse that rejects traditional explanations of … oppositional behavior and shifts the analysis of oppositional behavior from the theoretical terrains of functionalism and mainstream educational psychology to those of political science and sociology. Resistance in this case redefines the causes and meaning of oppositional behavior by

arguing that it has little to do with deviance and learned helplessness, but a great deal to do with moral and political indignation (Giroux, 1983a: 289).

Giroux intimates that this moral and political indignation may partly fuel the drive for

‘relative autonomy’ in individuals (Giroux, 1983a: 102). For him, human agency is those willful actions of individuals that mediate between what he calls ‘structural determinants and lived effects’ (Giroux, 1983a: 102). Perhaps another way of saying the same thing is that human agency is the autonomy of action individuals carry out to improve their lives in the face of antagonistic community attitudes or beliefs. Such human agency then also fulfils Giroux’s definition of resistance theory in that the action

taken should be an act of self-reflection and struggle in the interests of ‘social and self-

emancipation’ (Giroux, 1883a, 290). For Giroux, the greater the hope for emancipation

in human agency, the more it can be considered as an act of resistance. In effect,

resistance theory provides an avenue to develop a theoretical framework or method of

inquiry that restores the critical notion of human agency. In summary, agency refers to

the individual’s capacity to improve their lived experience and to exert autonomy over

how they live their lives. Agency is the catalyst to resistance and resistance may be

thought of as an individual’s opposition to the dominant social forces that would inhibit

one’s agency.

(ii) Queer Theory

Queer theory is used as part of the conceptual framework of this thesis. However, it is

discussed separately because it is a perspective or body of theory that can inform and

augment the previous concepts and infuses the whole work. It is an issue that will be

revisited in detail in the final chapter.

It is argued that there have been major advances in the judicio-social situation of gay

men and lesbians (Kirby, 2004). As a functioning force applying influence on political

institutions, the world ‘gay-rights’ movement may be said to have begun in Germany

well before the First World War when German states such as Bavaria (1813) and

Hannover (1840) were repealing their sodomy laws. This relatively comfortable

position that Kirby speaks of gathered pace only after World War II with the roll out of the decriminalization of homosexual sex across Europe in the 1970’s, though that had happened in the United Kingdom in 1967 and Canada in 1969 and sodomy had never been illegal in the Netherlands. These legal and social improvements have allowed many gay men and lesbians to build respectable lives and careers in societies that increasingly see sexual orientation as just another facet in the rich tapestry of human diversity. Accepting such a stance might lead one to think that using queer theory in a thesis on gay men as an over-arching conceptual framework is both redundant and anachronistic (Crain, 1998). Nevertheless, I argue that it is still a useful and appropriate theoretical perspective.

Queer theory, it might be argued, emerged from feminist theory. The necessity for the development of such theoretical constructs arose in the first place from the hegemonic position males and masculinity occupied in society that meant that social situations were usually understood in a patriarchal framework/ideology. Similarly, it was the assumption of, and an imposition of, a heteronormative perspective that led to the necessity to specifically queer aspects of social inquiry. It was the dispossession of gays from an inclusive place in the society and concomitant sociological inquiry that pushed queer theory into the realms of academia.

The etymology of the term ‘queer’ has been traced earlier in this thesis where it was

stated that ‘queer’ has been reclaimed by some non-heterosexual people as an inclusive

and positive way to identify all people targeted by homophobia or heterosexism. It was

out of this reclamation of the term that academics such as Foucault (1978), Butler

(1990), Dollimore (1991), Warner (1993) and Sedgwick (1994) began to develop a

body of ‘queer theory’ which suggested that categories such as sexuality and identity

are flexible, changing and multiple. Queer theory evolved so that it had to do with

whatever is at odds with the dominant and the status quo. It moved away from what was

initially seen as a necessary association with homosexuality. Increasingly, queer theory

is used to provide an approach open to all those oppressed by the hegemony of

heterosexual norms (Halperin, 1995; Nagel, 2000). ‘Queer’ is often seen as more than

simply having a sexual orientation not acceptable to mainstream society. After Nagel,

the term is usually a political statement as well as a label or identity in which the

mainstream viewpoint is contested and/or disrupted. This has led to claims that ‘queer

theory’ is an ‘identity without essence’ and that ‘queer is, by definition, whatever is at

odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant’ (Halperin, 1995: 62).

However, Sedgwick maintains that ‘queer’ is about ‘same-sex sexual object choice’.

She warns that queer theory will have been defined out of existence if it continues to be

merely about non-normative, non-hegemonic representations of fluid and multiple

sexualities and not about homosex (Sedgwick, 1993: 8). In this thesis, ‘queer’ refers to,

and is associated with, same-sex desire and practice.

Accepting that queer theory is about putting the homosexual back into everyday life,

where of course it has always been except that it has been notionally absent and not

88 talked about, this thesis will ‘queer’ its research and discourse. Nevertheless, there is a need to particularise and keep queer linked to homosex, to use Howard’s term (Howard,

1999, xviii). Queer theory has not been much concerned with the non-western world and those who have used it have also neglected the very constituency it sought to give voice to (Kinsman, 2002). It has focused almost exclusively on the ‘normal’ non- heterosexuals – white, urban, able-bodied, middle-class. Queer theory also has to be used to explore the lives of non-homonormative homosexuals – working-class,

Indigenous, Asian, non-Christian, non-able-bodied and non-urban. There is a need to ground queer theory in what Edwards describes as ‘solid empiricism and wide-ranging theories’ (Edwards, 1998: 482).

‘Queering’ pertains to the realm of the sexual and it is about either bringing a homosexual connotation to an argument or topic or the citing of the subject of discussion within a homosexual framework or context. More particularly, it brings the matter of sexuality into the everyday activities of people and disrupts what Bech calls

‘absent homosexuality’ that was referred to earlier in this thesis. It does not deny and expressly exposes the presence and possibility of homoerotic desire in everyday life and in doing so, queer theory also disrupts the heteronormativity of everyday lives. Queer theory will be used to expose the lives of gay men in rural areas that have previously been hidden or thought not to exist. It will explore whether there is an integration of aspects of gay culture within rural traditions and lifestyle in the everyday experiences of these gay men. Therefore, the utilisation of queer theory forces a re-think of what it is to be a gay man and whether rural customs and sensibilities are as unaccommodating of gay life and representation as routinely depicted. The term ‘queer’ is not applied to these gay men because none of them saw themselves, or termed themselves, as ‘queer’.

The term will be used in a more discursive sense to refer to the contestation or

disruption of the mainstream viewpoint by gay men and homosexuality.

Queer theory brings a particularly useful perspective to this study because it highlights

and grounds queer in the everyday and, of particular relevance in this case, is that it

queers the everyday. As such, it can be effective in bringing new understandings about the lives of gay men living in rural Australia. While it allows a focus on the sexual,

queer theory also allows for an exploration of the connection between ‘outlaw’

sexuality and rural community. Queer theory is not used here to make sexuality

necessarily ‘central’ to social analysis and therefore essentialise sexuality (Seidman,

1997: xi). However, such theories are instrumental in exploring the expression of

different visible sexual consciousnesses and the integration of that within a rural

lifestyle and a rural heritage.

Furthermore, while queer theory refers to an opposition to the heteronormative,

resilience, agency and resistance are concerned with how these men deal with the

hegemony of community values and principles as heteronormative. There is a clear

linkage between the two concepts when they are particularlised, in this case, by an

exploration of the everyday lives of gay men living in the bush.

(iii) Place

A further aspect of the conceptual framework in a consideration of the individual and

the way he functions in a community concerns the ontology of place. In this case, place

is the Australian bush and those small communities that are sprinkled throughout an

otherwise sparsely populated landscape. ‘Place’ is a term that has a variety of meanings

in a dictionary sense, but is principally used as a noun to denote location. Sociologically, places are localities that people given meaning to by the experiences they have in them.

‘Sense of place’ refers to both a set of meanings given to a person’s experience in a

place and attachments to places by individuals as a result of those experiences. This

thesis adopts a phenomenological concept of place in that place is about human

experience in a place and about a person’s experience of that place. Earlier in this chapter,

it was noted in passing that place may be the conceptual conduit by which some

marginalised individuals, especially those living outside urban areas, may find a sense of

belonging.

The seminal works in this area are Edward Relph’s Place and Placelessness (1976) and

Getting Back into Place by Edward Casey (1993). Relph describes place as the ‘fusions

of human and natural order and are the significant centers of our immediate experiences of

the world’ (Relph, 1976: 141). For Relph, one could experience place in degrees of

intensity, the most intimate experience of place being one that he termed ‘existential

insidedness’. For Relph, if a person feels ‘inside’ a place, he has a feeling of attachment

and belonging to it (Relph, 1976: 55). Casey essentialises this by simply saying that ‘there

is no being except in place’ (Casey, 1993: 313). This thesis adopts a phenomenological

concept of place and from that perspective I have used the phrase that place is ‘location

experienced’. In my view, places are localities that people give meaning to by the

experiences they have in them. ‘Sense of place’ refers to both a set of meanings a

person gives to their experience in a place and the emotional attachments to places by

individuals as a result of those experiences.

Mention has already been made of those men who felt that they had to forsake their heritage and their roots and move to new places in order to find themselves (and be found) and be themselves. One of the consequences of this decampment by gay men in the USA was that there lingered a nostalgia and a sense of loss and longing for the places left behind (Fellows, 1996: 21–26). In many ways, these Australian men who embarked on the rural to urban expedition uprooted themselves and became (and remained) placeless much like their counterparts in the USA. The paradox of this rationale is that those who moved away from the bush to find (a place for) themselves did not always find that sense of belonging that is intrinsic to a sense of place, evidenced in part by the return of bush-born gay men to rural areas who Horin call

‘prodigal sons’ (Horin, 1994). In fact, a number of the men in this study who initially went to the city encountered that lack of belonging and returned to the bush. While

Bech might remark that, for gay men, the ‘… wish for a place to be became the wish for change’, this change, especially for rural men who moved to the city, did not always result in the place they dreamed of finding (Bech, 1997: 150). They remained outsiders and placeless (Fellows, 1996: 311). But what of those who did not move?

If Pickles’ idea, that place becomes a ‘fundamental condition of human existence’, has some validity, then the question of how this applies to gay men living in rural areas calls for an answer (Pickles, in Knopp, 2004: 129). Gay men living in rural areas have usually been depicted as in search of, and in need of, a place to be. Gay men who have continued to live in rural areas were often seen as not having a sense of place because, as gay men, they were seen as different and as outsiders. Gay men were seen as not being wanted or welcomed in the countryside and it was assumed that the escape to the city that many of them made was in search of a place to belong. Therefore, the current

92 arguments would have it that gay men were and are placeless in the bush and many of those who moved elsewhere found that they were also placeless when they got there.

This thesis questions this position and would be open to the notion that gay men living in the bush have a greater affinity and liking for the bush than is generally understood.

It explores the idea that for gay men, a sense of place and the need to belong to place has a strong place in their identity and psyche. Just because they are gay, gay men should not be considered automatic misfits in, and outcasts from, a rural lifestyle.

Place has physical, social and imaginary dimensions. In suggesting this, there is agreement with phenomenological and existential approaches that see place in both material and more abstract ways (Knopp, 2004: 129). On the one hand, place is real and has the power to cause effect in peoples lives. On the other, place becomes a site of wishful thinking, imagination and escape. But Knopp also suggests that gay men, in their movement to new places as part of an ongoing quest for identity, have ‘ambivalent relationships to place and identity’ and an ‘affection for placelessness and movement’

(Knopp, 2004: 129). This seems not to be what Fellows has concluded about rural gay men. Nor is it what Horin seems to imply in the quote that began this thesis. While it is acknowledged that some rural gay men did (and do) move away from their rural environments, the evidence of Fellows, Horin and others is that that move is made with some ambivalence and misgivings. They suggest that there is a sense of loss and regret at having to leave the bush to find a better gay life.

This study, therefore, intends to ask questions about place. It will explore these gay men’s sense of place and the way they experience the place in which they live in both physical and social ways. Place affects one’s everyday life and this study will pay

93 attention to how these men relate to place and whether they had an attachment to, a rapport with and even a fondness for the bush. It also examines these men’s acquaintance with personal aloneness and solitude and the interface between these issues with the geographic isolation of the places where these men lived. These men are asked not only why they lived where they did, but whether and how place was important in their sense of themselves. Place is a conceptualisation in which to situate these men’s practice of gay culture and their practice of same-sex activity. Place is a way of conceptualising what Bell calls the ‘homosexual rural’, a place that exists only in the imagination of gay men (Bell, 2003: 179) and perhaps more so in the imagination of gay urban men.

Using place and queer theory is one way of exploring and theorising whether the practice of being a ‘rural homosexual’, to again invoke Bell’s terminology, reifies the

‘homosexual rural’ and brings it back from the imagination into the real world of lived lives. This study is about exploring whether place influenced these men’s sexual behaviour and whether their sexual behaviour had an effect on place. Were there gay places in the bush, and did these gay men make some places gay? The use of both place and queer allows for an exploration of these constructions. In keeping with the prominence given to these men’s voice and their experience of life in the bush, attention will also focus on whether these men were able to use place to transform queer from a description of their desire to a description of their practice. Could they, and did they, queer the bush?

Conclusion

Drawing on classic and some contemporary sociological theory, a conceptual

framework in which to analyse or understand the empirical data was devised. This

framework consists essentially of four components. The first of these is the perennial

issue of the individuality of a person and how that person functions socially within a community and in this case a community that has been generally unwelcoming, if not

blatantly hostile, to gay men. Common among sociologists such as Durkheim, Simmel

and Becker is the view that the greater the sense of individuality an individual wishes to

affect, the more that individual places himself outside the society or community and the

less that individual will belong to it. These twin concepts of ‘outsider’ and the

oppositional notion of belonging are of particular significance in relation to a study of

gay men in rural areas.

The second element of the conceptual framework is that the individual has some control

over his own actions. The individual can act and can move. The individual has agency,

even from a position of disadvantage and relative powerlessness – be it that of ‘outside’,

‘over-regulation’ or ‘strangerness’. While resilience may be required to enact agency

from such a position, agency also allows for resistance. Agency, while not always

carried out as a deliberate act of resistance against the dominant or mainstream ideology,

is generally based on the idea of a combination of emancipation, determination,

improvement and empowerment. This thesis stresses that resistance theory allows for

the possibility of meaningful actions on the part of socially subordinate individuals or

groups. This thesis asks how these gay men enact agency and self-determine their own

lives in the rural communities. It also asks how such agency is possible, what strategies

are used and whether they are effective. Agency and resistance theory provide a suitable

and appropriate framework in which the empirical data of this research can be analysed

and discussed.

Queer theory infuses the whole thesis. This allows for possibilities within the study for

a deconstruction of modes of exclusion. A space is opened up that encourages the airing

of multiple voices, where those voices are heard and where their hearing gives meaning

and shape to homonormative life and social relations. In this sense, queer theory will be

used so that the gay men in this study can, themselves, articulate different voices from

the bush. Queer theory will be used to ensure that those voices are heard. Queer theory

also provides a link between these men’s resistance to the heteronormative community

values and theorising how these men’s homosexuality shaped place and even how place

affected the praxis of their sexuality.

In recognising the need for additional work reflecting a greater sensitivity to the rural milieu in which they live, this thesis brings in the notion of place within the conceptual framework. Gay men living in rural areas have usually been depicted as in need of a

place to belong precisely because they were seen as different and outsiders. Therefore,

the current arguments would have it that gay men in the bush are essentially placeless.

However, this thesis is about exploring and theorising that hypothesis and to do so it

adopts a phenomenological concept that place is about location experienced. The

narratives of these men are analysed against this construction.

The next chapter presents the methodology adopted in this study and how the study was

devised so as to both respond to the research questions outlined in Chapter One and to

analyse the data within the conceptual framework formulated in this chapter.

Chapter Three

The Research Process

… it is an illusion for [the researcher] to think that he can remove his personality from his work and become a faceless robot or a machinelike recorder of human events (Powdermaker, 1967: 19).

If we must take sides, and there is no choice about the matter, then our partisanship must lie in the direction of ‘the reign of freedom’ in which all humans are free to become who they can be (Denzin, 1989: 267).

Introduction

This chapter discusses the research methodology adopted in this study. The first section looks at the theoretical perspective that underpins the process. The chapter goes on to discuss the role of the researcher in the research and researcher bias. It then proceeds to an account of the ways in which the data was collected and an outline of the research devices used to view and analyse the data. The chapter includes a consideration of the ethical issues and it concludes with an examination of how to achieve a degree of reciprocity – a giving back to those twenty-one gay men who informed the research.

The aim of this research was to explore, understand and theorise on the experience of being gay in rural Australia. It describes what life is like for the gay men who informed it and it explores the meanings they give to their lives. This was largely hidden and unknown territory. A qualitative methodology was chosen as the most appropriate research approach to use and therefore, this study is both descriptive and theoretically exploratory.

This study follows the principles and the assumptions of qualitative research.

Qualitative research has several identifying characteristics (Oka and Shaw, 2000: 1–4)

97 including the use of highly detailed descriptions of human behaviours and opinions

(Heath, 1997: 1). Qualitative analysis involves making sense of these descriptions by looking for ‘patterns and relationships’ in the data that lead to an explanation of the phenomena under discussion (Seidel. 1998: 5; Sarantakos, 1993: 298). The research questions usually evolve as the study progresses and there is a tendency for it to become narrower or more focused as these research questions are teased out (Walshe in Seale,

1988: 223). In qualitative research, it is not generally assumed that the specific findings of one inquiry may apply to other situations and some caution is taken in any extrapolation of the results. Thus, there is a concern for, and attention given to, the uniqueness of a particular context and a particular group of informants.

The Researcher in the Research

The position of the researcher within the research and the associated question of researcher bias in the research process and in the text requires clarification. The issue of the researcher’s perspective was raised in Chapter One in terms of the context of the study and is now discussed here in greater detail in terms of its methodology.

(i) In or Out – The Position of the Researcher

Denzin notes that a researcher’s ‘… own experiences probably provide the most important sources of data for their theories’ (Denzin, 1989: 61). My own long experience of living on the land and of being a gay man has allowed me to adopt an insider position. This oneness with them assisted in establishing an empathy and rapport with the men who informed his inquiry. My personal life experience and story also informed the framing of the interview questions as well as giving a general background to the study as a whole.

This ‘insider’ position can be refined a little more. Heilman (1980) introduced the researcher perspective of ‘native-as-stranger’. This position can advantage the research process. In this case, as well as being an ‘insider’, I saw myself as ‘native’ to both being gay and living in the bush with the attendant advantages that position bestows. However,

I was also ‘stranger’ to both the informants and their particular rural hometowns. This allowed me to establish and maintain some distance and detachment from the data.

Additionally, the use of the ‘native-as-stranger’ position of the researcher guarded against the problems of so-called ‘over-rapport’ encountered by Miller (Miller in

Denzin, 1989: 119). However, this position was neither static nor one of ‘either/or’ – either native or stranger. Rather, I saw my stance as fluid and fluctuating – becoming now more ‘native’ to induce rapport, a richness and fullness of response, then moving to ‘stranger’ to provide appropriate distance from the informant and the data (Levine in

Minichiello, 1990: 220). This recurrent shifting of the researcher’s position during the course of the interview and the slightly different position taken generally in regard to each informant was designed to enhance the richness and completeness of the data

(Valentine, 2002: 125).

(ii) Researcher Bias

Bias, particularly in qualitative research, is a potential problem and qualitative researchers take steps in their research practice to counteract it (Hammersley and Grom,

1997: 2–3). Traditional inquiry methodologies have endured extensive critique. To take account of the intimate and the personal in context is now seen as appropriate, largely due to the influences of feminist researchers and theorists (McReynolds, 1999: 2). New knowledge is created only when those being researched, the informants, place the researcher in a position of trust and allow the researcher access to their expertise.

Therefore, it can be argued that in qualitative research, an appropriate relationship

between the researcher and the researched is, in fact, the key to credible research. As

Oakley puts it, ‘…personal involvement is more than dangerous bias – it is the

condition under which people come to know each other and to admit others into their

lives’ (Oakley, 1981: 58).

As previously stated, I have a strong cultural affinity with the group I am studying. For most of my life, I lived and worked as a farmer in the bush. For much of that time I

quietly acknowledged that I was gay. Thus, my position in the research has some

resonance with Douglass and Moustakas’ concept of ‘heuristic inquiry’, particularly

with their notion of immersion in the phenomenon prior to the data collection phase

(Douglass and Moustakas, 1995: 39–55). This positioning and personal experience

should add to the suitability of the methodology itself, the richness of the data and the

authenticity of the study.

The Research Methodology

The topic of this research is sensitive and may touch on matters that could have caused

the participants personal anguish. The method used to gather information in such

circumstances needed to be appropriate and sensitive to the task. The methodology is

situated within a qualitative framework and makes use of two related research

techniques – phenomenology and ethnography. The aim of a phenomenological

approach in qualitative research is to describe accurately the lived experiences of people.

The primary source of data is the life-world of the individual being studied. However, in

phenomenological research, ‘… each step of the research process is essentially a

personal struggle to maintain a connectedness with the lived world of the other’

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(Barnacle, 2001: vii). Phenomenology is about discovering the meaning given to a

phenomenon by those people who experience that phenomenon. The philosopher,

Jacques Derrida, makes the point that such discovery can only occur when the

researcher is open to the otherness of the other (Reynolds, 2001: 59). This study is

concerned not only with the life experiences of these individual gay men but with

behaviours that derive from those experiences and the meanings the gay men give to

them.

A feature of qualitative research in general, and of phenomenology in particular, is the

value and the prominence given to the informants’ point of view and the meanings they

give to their own lives and to the place where they live. Phenomenology is a way to

account for how individuals define and reflect upon situations and actions and to

establish or find essential elements or ‘… commonalities of meaning’ between

individuals who experience a similar phenomenon (Herschell, 1999: 4). It is through

these descriptions by the gay men of their subjective experiences of rural life that the

researcher can come to an understanding of what it is like being a gay man living in

rural Australia.

On the other hand, ethnography is an exploration of a culture from the perspective of

the people who actually live in that culture. Ethnography aims to describe the values,

beliefs, and practices of cultural groups (Massey, 1998). A culture is not only perceived as an ethnic population but can also be seen as a community or a social world.

Ethnography involves the study of a small group of individuals in their own cultural environment. In this case, it is through these men’s perception of their own homosexuality and its interface with gay culture and with traditional rural values that

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the researcher is made aware of these men’s conceptualisation and interpretation of what, for them, being gay in a rural community is about.

Phenomenological research and ethnography are related research techniques and when combined they make a powerful research methodology. By focusing on the individual, phenomenology explores how people actively construct the cultures in which they take part. By focusing on the beliefs and the cultural domain in which the individual operates, ethnography can be used to come to a fuller understanding of the individual’s experience. However, this study is not an exploration of rural culture per se. The

ethnography utilised in this study is derived from the views expressed by the individual

participants rather than my own observations of the culture of the various towns of the

attitudes of the people. This methodological construct is ideally suited to a study of the individual in society in the broadest of terms and it fits well with a particular study of gay men living in rural communities. It also provides a consistency between the subject of the research and the methodology used to explore it and is itself an embedded test of validity.

(i) Collecting the Data – The In-Depth Interview

The interview process used is based on that detailed by Minichiello and his colleagues in their text, In-Depth Interviewing (1990). The in-depth interview was chosen as the primary means of data collection for a number of reasons. This type of interview allows participants to tell their story in their own way and in so doing be able to emphasise what has been, and what is, important to them. (Patton, 1990: 287) There are advantages in this. Firstly, it ensures accuracy – people are more likely to tell ‘the truth’, and a richer and fuller version of it, when they can tell it their way. Secondly, such an

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interview can be less traumatic and less confrontational for the informant, especially

when the topic is so personal and potentially traumatic in its telling. Lastly, this

interview method allows for some interventions (when needed) to prompt a recollection

or to gently steer the interview back on track if the informant wanders too far. The in-

depth interview also allows for a face-to-face meeting. It ensures a privacy and an

immediacy that helps the informant provide data that he might otherwise not disclose.

Additionally, to assist the establishment of some sense of rapport and trust between the

informant and the researcher, the interview can be much more of a conversation than an

oral interrogation. The language used can be everyday words without the stiltedness, the

caution and tentativeness, that comes from more structured processes (Minichiello,

1990: 93).

Given the nature of this study, sexuality and sex are aspects of these men’s lives that are

likely to be raised and in-depth interviews may allow a more open and frank canvassing

of these issues than other forms of data collection. This is not to acknowledge that the

meaning an informant gives to the phenomenon under consideration is only able to be

co-constructed by way of a dialogue with the researcher. Neither is it to suggest that

data from an interview is co-constructed to such an extent that it is more reflective of

the interview situation and tells very little of the meaning an informant gives to the

outside world and to the particular matter under discussion. The focus is on how these men see themselves, how they construct the environment in which they live and what interpretation they give to their experiences in that environment. The in-depth interview best allowed for this.

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(ii) Determining the Sample

Theoretical sampling is regarded as the classic sampling technique to be used in studies

based on qualitative research. This technique involves an intentional biasing or

weighting of the sample, or purposive sampling, so that the sample selected will shed

light on the topic under discussion (Smith, 1975: 117–118). The researcher chooses

informants who have special knowledge of what he wants to study. It was necessary,

therefore, that the sample be composed entirely of gay men who were then living in

rural areas and had done so for a considerable time – at least ten years was considered to be an appropriate time span for inclusion in the sample. An informant had to self- identify as gay, or acknowledge that he had sex with other men (or desired that). For consent and ethical reasons, no participant was to be under 18 years of age. This purposive sampling technique is an important component of phenomenological research whereby informants are selected precisely because they have experienced the phenomenon under study and they can articulate their experience of that phenomenon openly and freely (Davey, 1999: 5). The sample size was envisaged as being about twenty self-identified gay men currently living in the bush.

It is common for new participants to be added as interviewing progresses. Identifying

potential informants is an ongoing process as the researcher might be referred to other

participants (Smith, 1975: 110). This technique is commonly referred to as ‘snowball

sampling’ in that the sample size increases as the research process progresses. This had

distinct advantages for this research. For example, there may have been informants who

might not initially have been able to respond to relatively public invitations to be part of

the study, partly through fear of disclosure. However such informants might, precisely

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because of their invisibility as gay men within the town, provide particularly valuable

information about what it is like to live as a gay man in that town.

To arrive at a considered and informed decision as to which rural areas I should sample,

two public bodies were consulted. One was the AIDS Council of New South Wales

(ACON) because it had strong links with various rural communities. The second

organisation was the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC).

The Commission had conducted wide-ranging consultations with rural gay and lesbian

youth, though at the time of the consultation, it had not published its findings. While

encouraging the study (see field notes 11/4/2000), the HREOC officer I consulted

warned that to find sufficient gay men from small country towns willing to talk on the

record, even if their identities were protected, was likely to be a difficult process

(Plummer, 1999: 311). He believed that a more feasible option was to attempt to contact

men from several country towns. He tended to play down the differences that might

exist between small bush towns (a question that had concerned me), and suggested that

there might well be more similarities than differences. However, this is not to deny nor

underestimate the value of the uniqueness of each man’s story (Patton, 1980: 103). This

advice on the advisability of multi-siting the research was incorporated into the research

design. In reference to the map of New South Wales on the next page, the towns in

which the participants lived were east of a north to south line through Louth and west of a north to south line connecting Cooma in the south with Armidale in the north.

(iii) Accessing the Sample

After discussions with ACON and HREOC and some reflection on the reality of

accessing a sample of gay men living in rural areas, it was realised that it would be too

105 difficult for me to personally make contact with gay men in several small country towns.

Gay men in small towns might not respond to advertisements in the local press, if indeed the local press would run them. It was expected that gay men in small country towns may not divulge the intimate details of their lives to someone they had never met.

Therefore, I decided that it was important to make contact with leaders of gay groups or with health professionals in larger towns. There was a need to explain to these

‘gatekeepers’ what this project was about hopeful that they would then make contact with local gay men in smaller country towns (May, 1993: 42).

NEW SOUTH WALES

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Gay men in small towns, it was thought, would be more likely to respond if approached

personally by someone they knew either personally or professionally (Waite, 1992: 3).

If the local professional was able to recommend me and my work as worthwhile, and at the same time provide some promise of anonymity, then local gay men might be willing to talk to and allow me to record that conversation. In effect, the local professional, having acted as a ‘gatekeeper’ to the local gay community, would then contact me with the names and phone numbers of several local gay men who had agreed to be interviewed on tape and who had agreed that I contact them. I would ring them and all further contact would be between the interviewees and me. In other words, this was access via the gatekeepers, though the gatekeepers themselves were not interviewed.

It was decided to plan the study using a multi-sited sample. A sample of men from several small towns could have methodological strengths and actually be preferable to a

(smaller) sample from a single location. For example, using a number of sites, would allow for a triangulation across the sites. This would enhance the reliability and validity of the data (Marshall and Rossman, 1995:46). Gay social organisations and gay service providers, such as local health clinics, local ACON offices and local gay groups, in a number of rural communities were approached in order to assess and decide on the location/s of the study. The parameters governing the choice of sites included questions of accessibility and the availability of adequate numbers of suitable and willing participants.

(iv) Contacting the Interviewees – Initial Responses

This mode of accessing the informants was most successful. I had anticipated a huge rejection rate, given the delicate nature of the subject matter, the confidentiality

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required, the reputation the bush has for keeping gay men invisible, and the ease of a

refusal over the phone. Of the first six men contacted, only one felt he was unable to talk. This willingness on the part of these gay rural men to inform the research was as welcome as it was unexpected.

One of the factors arising from this initial phone contact was the reactions of the men who did agree to be interviewed. My field notes (see later in this chapter) say that, at the beginning of the initial telephone conversation, they were ‘… fairly wary’ and ‘… not overly enthusiastic’ (Field Notes: 22/8/2000). However, those notes also record that

Perhaps … I have forgotten, or underestimated, the guts and courage it takes to disclose and reveal our inner most feelings and thoughts; to let a stranger into our private and hidden worlds. It takes more than I imagine to reveal our fears and failures. And perhaps I am not fully cognizant of the extent of the hurt and sacrifice they have been through (Field Notes: 22/8/2000).

What was noticeable was the men’s apparent need to talk and their willingness to talk to a complete stranger on the phone. Perhaps, too, they were sounding me out. As part of my agreement with the men, pseudonyms were to be used for the place names in which men in this study actually lived. For places where no informant actually lived, the actual place name is used.

(v) Interactions with the Gatekeepers

The literature of qualitative method emphasises the building of trust, the gaining of confidence and reciprocity and these matters are usually referred to in terms of the relationship between the researcher and the informant (Marshall and Rossman, 1995:

59–77; Berninghausen and Kerstan, 1991: 4–6; Dowsett, 1996: 53). What was of significance in this study was how important these matters were in relation to the gatekeepers. It took much longer and more persistence, for example, to build the

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relationship, gain the confidence and trust of the gatekeepers than it did with any of the

interviewees. Without these contacts, there would have been no interviews.

Additionally, gaining the trust of the gatekeepers seemed to result in (almost

automatically) gaining the trust of the interviewees. Immediate telephone follow-up

helped establish my integrity. The fact that so few men, despite the difficulties and

potential problems of doing so, refused to be interviewed, is indicative of the

importance in first gaining the opprobrium and sanction of the gatekeepers (Wax in

Patton, 1980: 256).

(vi) Pre-Interview

Once arrangements had been made by telephone, I drove to most of the towns in which

the men lived and usually stayed the night at a local motel. I thought it especially

important to interview the men in their hometown. However, two of the men were

interviewed in the neighbouring town, for my convenience, and two others were

interviewed in Sydney while they were ‘in town’.

(vii) Arriving in Town

I attempted to schedule my arrival in a town, especially in places I had not been to

before, in the middle of the afternoon. This allowed me to drive around the town, to

walk down the main street, have a coffee at a cafe and so generally get a feel for the town and the area in which the men I was about to interview lived.

I did not reveal the purpose of my visit to any local person I spoke to. I was always just passing through and on the road to somewhere else. I was a stranger. Small towns have notoriously efficient communications systems! However, I did make contact with my

109 gatekeeper contacts. In the case of Galburn, it was before the interviews, in the case of

Geriffi it was before and after the interviews and in the case of Tamworth, it was only after the interviews were completed.

(viii) The Interviews

While the interview was to be conducted along ‘conversational’ lines, I had prepared, prior to the interviews, an aide memoir. This aide memoir was not to direct the interview but to remind me of the information I wanted to elicit and to enable a

‘nudging’ of the informant to talk further, or to clarify points that seemed incomplete or unclear (Minichello, 1990: 124).

The data collection was divided into two parts, based on two sets of interviews. The first set of interviews comprised nine interviews with men in five different localities.

The second set of interviews was not organised until the first set had been completed.

This is similar to the two-phase data collection process employed by Alston in her doctoral study of farm women, in which she slightly modified and refined the methodology in light of the previous group of interviews (Alston, 1993: 123–126). In this study, there was a review of the interview style between the two sets of interviews.

The second set of interviews comprised twelve men. Three men in this second set of interviews came from the one town in the Central-West of NSW and the remaining nine men came from eight different small towns in the North-West of NSW. The way in which these interviews were set up was the same as in the previous series.

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(ix) On Tape

The interviews themselves were similar in format. I interviewed each informant

personally, in line with a phenomenological methodology (Davey, 1999: 5–6). There

were some variations as to where the interview actually took place. With four of the men, the interviews were in their own homes and with another man, it was in my home in Sydney. Two men were interviewed in parks in the town. The remaining interviews were held in my motel room. They were spaced so that no one person ever met the other, except where partners were interviewed. This was the case on two occasions. In the case of the couple from Dunno, one partner sat in on the other’s interview, at the request of the one being interviewed. Usually, one interview was conducted in the morning and then I drove on to the next town and conducted another interview in the afternoon.

Most of the interviews, or that portion on tape, went for about one and one half hours.

The time spent in the interview process was a little over two hours. There was always the small talk over a cup of tea before the tape was switched on. There was the facing sheet and the Consent Form to be filled in and this too was done before the tape was switched on. This pre-interview time was important for a number of reasons. Reference has been made to the prominence given to issues such as the building of trust, the gaining of confidence and reciprocity, in order to obtain rich data (Marshall and

Rossman, 1995: 59–77; Berninghausen and Kerstan, 1991: 4–6; Dowsett, 1996: 53).

This is of even greater significance when the matter is one in which ‘… the participant

has a strong personal stake’ (Lester, 1999: 1). Given that it was the first, and probably,

only meeting between the informant and me, there was a need for the interviewees and

me to be as relaxed as possible. I needed to establish a rapport and a trust quickly, and

111 so this pre-interview time was not hurried. It was always established what the interviewee had to do after the interview, and to see whether he was under any pressing time constraints. The pre-interview chat became a time of familiarisation (Alston, 1993:

119–120; Styles, 1979: 151).

Even though the interviewee had been briefed a little by the local gatekeeper, this pre- interview chat time was also a chance to brief him again. It put a perspective and a context to the ensuing interview. I was able to inform him that many of the questions would be personal, and that some might even bring up painful memories. This time was used to reassure the interviewee that in no way did I set out to upset him, though in the course of the interview this might happen. I also told every interviewee that they need not answer a particular question and that they could terminate the interview at any time, either to restart it or to leave. This also gave every interviewee the chance to not proceed further. Not one man, at that point, refused to go on. In the course of all the interviews, not one man refused to answer any question asked of him. Not one man asked that the interview be terminated. In one case, the interview was suspended because the interviewee broke down into uncontrollable sobbing as he talked about his attempted suicide. Remarkably, he wanted to continue the interview after several cups of coffee, and wanted to take up where he left off. On another occasion, I offered to terminate the interview as tears trickled down a man’s face while he related the feelings of rejection and dejection. But he insisted on continuing with the tape running – and his tears continuing to flow. These moments were also difficult for me. Not only did I have empathy with the interviewee’s situation but the matters about which he was speaking also triggered painful memories from my own life.

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(x) Field-Work Notes.

From the outset, I kept a hand-written journal of the research process. The journal

recorded my personal and introspective reaction to and experience of the research

process. It includes responses to interactions with the university’s Human Research

Ethics Committee (HREC), the university’s review process, meetings with external

organisations and planning the interviews. It contains thoughts about the towns and the

travels, responses to the interviewees, feelings about meetings with supervisors and

reflections on the writing of the thesis. It is not exhaustive. Yet it is rich enough to become one set of data.

The journal is regarded as primary data and therefore is accorded the same confidentiality as the interviews themselves. The original hand-written copy was page numbered and all citations of the journal use that numbering.

(xi) Some Retrospective Impressions

In the course of these interviews with the twenty-one men, I was immensely impressed by the men’s sincerity and honesty and by their responsiveness and candidness with me

and their efforts to be ‘straight’ with their answers. I was moved by the courage of these

men and the trust they placed in me to do something worthwhile with the information

they provided. It was very noticeable that many of the men were willing to reveal and perhaps confess, almost as if they needed ‘… to make open books of their lives’

(Fellows, 1996: xix). And on many occasions I was reminded of incidents which resurfaced stressful and emotional recollections of my own experience of how it was to be gay and live in the bush.

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I emphasised with the interviewee that he held control of the situation and it was he who largely dictated the direction and the tenor of the interview. It was the interviewee who not only revealed information, but who also gave varying prominence to the information he related. To this end, I made the interview conversational and initially erred on the side of chat. In the second set of interviews, I corrected this and was less conversational. But at the same time, I did not want to align the interview to a psychologist’s couch or to a lawyer’s witness box. The interview was semi-structured

‘… without fixed wording or fixed ordering of [the] questions’ (Minichiello, 1990: 65).

Because an ‘interview prompt’ was used to ‘focus’ the interview, the scope of the questioning was roughly uniform from one interview to another (Minichiello, 1990, 65).

However, the interviewee was, to use a rural expression, allowed to ‘have his head’ and

I tried to ‘not hold the reins too tight’. The sequence, the time and detail given to the various aspects of the interview varied according to each interviewee’s wishes (Patton,

1990: 283–4). While it was true that I saw myself as being there to listen (and to hear), to learn (and to be taught) and to watch, I was not there as some kind of voyeuristic, non-participant, ignorant-of-the-phenomenon observer. The interviewees did not see me in that light either and the data is richer for that.

Dealing in Data – The Analytic Process

Once the interviews were concluded, the primary data in its raw form had been collected. My ongoing field journal was also deemed to be primary data. The next process was to prepare this data for analysis.

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(i) Transcribing the Interviews

At the end of the interview process, the primary data consisted of twenty-one in-depth interviews and the researcher’s journal. The interviews were recorded on a small micro- cassette recorder using 90-minute micro-cassettes. These micro-tapes were re-recorded on standard cassette tapes not only for reasons of backup, but to improve the audibility for transcription. Though the interviews were conducted in two batches, with a review of the interview technique between the batches, there was no transcription of the interviews, nor any analysis of the data, until all of the interviews had been completed.

Deciding whether to transcribe the tapes personally or to have them professionally transcribed was something of a dilemma. Having them transcribed had huge advantages in terms of time although, noting the experiences of other doctoral candidates, this need not have been the case (Alston, 1993: 129). There were, however, disadvantages. It would have been expensive, and there was always the concern about accuracy.

There was one significant advantage in doing the transcription personally. In accordance with the phenomenological approach being followed, the transcription process was a chance for immersion in the data (Davey, 1999: 6). Having personally conducted every interview and having subsequently listened to each tape on several occasions, accurately transcribing the interviews was an opportunity to become even more intimately acquainted with the data. I was able to include in the transcription notes and recollections, simple explanations of things said and unsaid, of mood, as well as being able to include notes of pauses, sniffles, sobs and other emotional elements of the interview. As Davey notes,

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When the roles of interviewer, transcriber and analyst are combined, richer and more accurate (full) data can be obtained (interviews consist not only of ‘words’, but other verbalisations and non-verbal communications which may be missed when the interviewer, transcriber and analyst are different persons) (Davey, 1999: 6).

Not only was the tape transcribed verbatim, with most of the ‘ahms’ and ‘ahhhs’

included, but also the giggles, the pauses … and the sobs. Additionally, where speech

was given special effect, such as especially quiet replies, some affectation, evidence of

anger and any other effects, these were noted in the transcript.

While acknowledging that ‘… much of the emotional context of the interview, as well

as nonverbal communication, are not captured at all well in audio-tape records …’, this

is not to say that the transcript, by its very nature, should be regarded as unreliable

(Poland, 1999: 14). It is for this reason that the transcripts in this study are verbatim

including the ‘ahms’ and the ‘ahhs’ or the sobs or the laughter. Omitting these would

have removed what emotional context there was in the transcript thereby diminishing

the richness of the testimony of the men who informed the study.

Each transcript was headed with the number, date and place of the interview, as well as

any necessary additional material. The interviewee dialogue was prefaced with the

initial of the interviewee’s first name, and the interviewer dialogue was similarly prefaced with the initial of my first name. On completion, each interview was checked

against the audiotape for accuracy and the field journal to insert any additional notes.

The series of interviews was transcribed in less than three months and came to 1500

pages of typescript. The process was greatly aided by the use of a foot-controlled tape

player/transcription machine.

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(ii) Coding

With the interviews transcribed, some sense had to be made of the typescript. The way

in which data in this form is analysed is by breaking it down for a close and detailed

examination (Kortendick and Fischer, 1996: 1). Generally this means coding it in some

form or other. It should be acknowledged that the coding process did not follow that of

Glasser and Straus whereby coding happens as each interview is completed and before

the next one is done.

While there is some debate about the use of the term ‘coding’ (Dey, 1999:129–131), it

would seem that this term is one generally understood to mean the attaching of labels to

pieces of the transcript. This breaks the transcript down into categories where a section

of the interviewee’s narrative is assessed as carrying a particular meaning that is given a

label. When this meaning is found again in another piece of narrative, the same label is

attached. Thus, new labels are attached to pieces of the narratives until no segments

with new meanings arise from the transcripts (Glasser and Strauss, 1986: 111–112). At

this point, the data is considered to be saturated. It is common practice to allow the

labels to emerge from the piece of data being coded, rather than code using a

predetermined set of labels that would be applied to all the interviews. This is in

keeping with the phenomenological method that eschews imposing meaning, preferring instead to allow meaning to come from the data (Lester, 1999: 1).

Coding was a ‘manual’ operation using electronic, rather than print-based, text. Coding

was a two-phase task. Initially, the transcripts were open-coded, four randomly selected from the first series of interviews and four from the latter series. This was to allow for a full range of categories of meaning to emerge as there had been a slight re-alignment of

117 the interview technique between the two sets of interviews. The code was applied to an idea or concept expressed in the data. Codes were inserted into the transcript after each segment of the text that had a discreet meaning. Many of the codes were being repeated across the transcripts. This allowed a condensing of the codes. There were forty-seven codes in the condensed list. Then the remaining interviews were similarly open-coded using the already emerged codes and extra codes were applied where new information or meanings showed up (Mason, 2002: 157). Where appropriate, the interviewer’s dialogue was kept in the coded dialogue. To remove it would have greatly diminished the meaning of the interviewee dialogue.

The open-coding process then involved a cut-and-paste operation whereby each piece of the transcript needed to be electronically cut from the transcript and pasted under its relevant code. It was at this point that the transcript was broken down. This was done interview by interview. Additionally, each piece of data needed to be able to be traced back to it source. So, each interview was given a number and each page of the transcript was also numbered. Each piece of data could be traced by the number of the interview followed by the page of the transcript it came from. Thus the notation [12/21] after a piece of dialogue indicates that piece of data came from page 21 of the original transcript of interview no.12.

The second phase of the coding process that was undertaken is often termed

‘theoretical’ categorising. This refers to a reconnecting, or a re-relating, of the data.

Theoretical categorising reconnects the open codes in a conceptually different way

(Punch, 1998: 215). Glasser suggests that these theoretical categories should give a new perspective to the data (Glasser, 1978: 72). In this thesis, these new theoretical

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categories arose partly from the data, but they also came (albeit indirectly) from the

research questions. If the open codes rely, or are based on, an idea or a concept as a descriptor, then those concepts can be grouped into a higher or more abstract form of conceptualisation. It is these categories – the higher order abstractions – that are the

‘cornerstones’ from which the research questions are answered and on which the findings of the research are based (Strauss and Corbin, 1990: 7).

Another ‘cut and paste’ was required, this time re-organising the open coded data under the new theoretical categories. These theoretical categories arose from a collapsing of the open codes into far fewer categories, largely in response to asking how the data might be arranged so as to answer the research question/s posed in the Introduction to this thesis. The analytic effect of this second reorganisation of the data was to allow or facilitate the emergence of themes around which the findings of the research would be expounded.

(iii) The Results of the Research and the Emergence of Themes

The results of the research come directly from the theoretical categories, those

‘cornerstones’ of the research analysis process. Though these categories are a more abstract way of grouping the open codes or concepts that emerged directly from the data, they have, nevertheless, like the open codes from which they were derived, emerged from the data. But they are one step removed from the raw data. One of the reasons for expounding the results only from the theoretical categories is that it keeps the results close to the data and able to be verified by the data, but, at the same time, allows them to be set out in terms of higher order abstractions.

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However, in order to keep the results themselves close to the original data and to give credence and authority to the testimony of the men themselves, the literature was not re- introduced at this point. The results of the study are set out without reference to the literature, with the effect of giving greater voice to the men themselves. It is in the formulation of an explanation for, and a discussion and theorising of, the results that reference is made to the literature.

It is in this final stage of the thesis that the themes are developed in the light of, and in association with, the literature and the findings. It is at this juncture that the lines of argument with which to explain the findings are introduced and the literature assists in

substantiating that argument and in making it convincing (Mason, 2002: 182). This methodological concept of ‘theory last’, where the theory is seen to emerge from the data, is often associated with Glaser and Strauss’ idea of the generation of ‘formal’ theory.

Themes are essentially interrelated concepts or propositions by which the findings might be explained, discussed and theorised. It is through a movement between the research results (which themselves result from a movement between the raw data and the emerging theoretical categories) and the literature that the themes develop. The process is similar to what Blaikie calls an ‘abductive research strategy’ (Blaikie, 2000:

25). For example, one of the theoretical categories that emerged from the data was that

for these gay men, living in the bush meant facing a number of difficulties such as

loneliness and homophobia. Though these men refused to leave the bush because of

those difficulties and, in fact, stayed in spite of them, a second-order concept, which

partly surfaced from both the data and the literature, was used to explain and understand

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the findings. Resilience was one such concept used to explain why these men were able

to stay in the bush despite the difficulties they had to contend with.

This inter-relatedness and linkages between the raw data, the theoretical categories, the findings, the development of the themes and the explanation of the findings adds not

only to the coherence of the methodology but also to its rigor, its validity and to the

trustworthiness of its findings.

(iv) Validity

A valid argument is based on sound evidence. A valid deduction is founded on a

coherent understanding of that evidence. The usual definition of validity cited in academic works is that of Hammersley which states that ‘[a]n account is valid or true if

it represents accurately those features of the phenomena that it is intended to describe,

explain or theorise’ (Hammersley, 1987: 69). While a number of terms have been used to refer to qualitative validity, such as ‘trustworthiness, ‘credibility’ and ‘authenticity’

(Miles and Huberman, 1994), all terms indicate that validity strengthens research.

Validity has been a major consideration in this study. The methodological process used

in this study has been detailed in the preceding pages and at every stage there was an

attempt to ensure that the process would allow that the description of the phenomena

intended to be described was accurate. For example, the choice of research methods – a

combination of phenomenology, ethnography and a customised grounded theory – was

made with a view to getting what Geertz calls ‘thick description’, the difference

between the observed and the experienced, in itself a reflection of the accuracy of the

empirical data and the accuracy of the analysis of it (Geertz, 1975: 8-30). In terms of

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the interviews themselves, using a semi-structured format was done precisely to allow

for a more authentic story to be told. If the informants were able to tell their story their

way, a more accurate story of what it was to be gay and live in a rural community might

unfold. This, too, is in keeping with Geertz’s concept of ‘thick description’ which

insists that a detailed and tightly contextualised empirical description underpin any extrapolation. Again in transcribing the interviews myself, and in keeping to a verbatim

transcript, I aimed for increased accuracy. In a similar manner, coding, the analysis and

the emergence of themes were carried out in accord with the methodologies and

cognizant of the data itself and the meanings given to it being a testament to these gay

men’s experience of life in the bush.

Sarantakos suggests that validity can be built into the research process in a number of

ways (Sarantakos, 1998: 80–83). Those checks for validity deemed most applicable and

appropriate to this project were applied. For example, particular concern was given to

the issue of researcher bias, given the topic of inquiry and the background of the

researcher. I have made it very clear that I am gay man who has spent much of my life

living in the bush. It is argued that rather than invalidating this research, this matter may

add to its credibility and authenticity.

However, over and above the fact that concrete steps were taken within the data

collection, data analysis and the writing stages of this research to ensure the validity of

the results, there is another factor that has been incorporated into this research. While it

was important that measures of the validity of the research be incorporated into the

process, what was of more importance to this researcher was that the lives of these gay men also needed be validated. The only way of doing that was to tell their previously

122 untold stories and to do it in a way that was an accurate reflection of the stories they told. The lives of gay men living in the bush are largely absent from both the records of gay culture in this country and the records of bush life and lore as well. For too long the experience of being gay in the bush has been hidden and invalidated precisely because it has not been told. This thesis is an attempt to validate these men’s stories, consider and contemplate their experiences and, through literature and theory, come to a fuller understanding of what it is to be a gay man living in the bush.

Ethical Issues

The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) published a series of statements relating to the ethical issues around research involving gay men, one of which is that,

Research involving gay and lesbian participants should include consultation with appropriate gay and lesbian community agencies and their community representatives at the research design stage (NHMRC, 2001: 1)

Apart from consultations with ACON and HREOC, additional discussions about the project were had with a number of gay support groups located in rural areas. Such discussions were held with groups in Geriffi, and Oregon. Further discussions were also held with sexual health officers in Dunno, Tamworth, Galbern and Albury. No informant was to be under eighteen years of age, in line with the (then) NSW law on the age of consent for gay men and in keeping with NHMRC guidelines on this matter

(Graupner, 2002: 1–6). To assist with issues of privacy, the real names of the men were not used and the names of places where the men lived were invented. However, a code was agreed so that each man could identify himself in the results.

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The guidelines set out by the NHMRC (2001) in regard to the appropriateness of

language, methodology and cultural difference have been complied with. In regard to

the recruitment of informants, the NHMRC also advises that if ‘snowballing’ is used,

the researcher should not seek from an informant the name and contact details of another potential informant. This advice was adhered to, and all informants came from third parties.

Approval to conduct this research was granted by the university’s Human Research

Ethics Committee (HREC) prior to speaking with ‘gatekeepers’ to arrange the interviews and prior to making contact with any of the informants. Each informant also had to give his written consent to be interviewed for the purposes of this research.

Reciprocity in Research

When researching minority, marginal or ‘at risk’ groups, the methodology must be appropriate and sensitive to the informants. This also applies in regard to the Gay,

Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender (GLBT) community – a group that only recently was depathologised in clinical terms, a group whose sexual expression was only recently de-criminalised (but remains so in many countries – see Graupner, 2001) and a

group whose sexual orientation is still regarded as ‘an intrinsic moral evil’ by some

religious leaders (Ratzinger, 1986).

However, under some timely pressures from feminist theory and queer theory and methodology (Sedgwick, 1990: 16), any hegemonic stance has been called into question

(Adam, 1999; McRobbie, 1982; Alston, 1996; Seidman, 1997; Burnett and Ewald,

1994; Nagel, 2000; Kumashiro, 2000; Morin, 1977; Watson, 2001). As intimated earlier

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in this chapter, the informants did expect a degree of reciprocity and the researcher aim was to achieve a ‘reciprocity in spirit’. During the interviews, every single participant asked questions about me and about the research. In their questions to me, it became very clear that their testimony was given partly on the premise that the research would

be used to better the lives of all gay men, especially those living in the bush. They

expected that the research would be both part advocacy and part emancipatory in nature.

So, the informants’ questions were answered. I did engage in some self-disclosure about

my own rural background, my sexuality, my experience of life in the bush and so on. I

trod a fine line between over-disclosing but disclosing enough so that I was able to

engage fully with the informants and they were able to disclose openly and honestly to

me.

I take the view that while researchers are not social workers, teachers, counsellors or

priests (Reinharz, 1992: 4), they can gear their research towards some form of ‘social

action’ (Morin, 1997: 636) or make their research more readily available to

professionals to turn into policy and practice (Chavis, Stucky and Wandersman, 1983:

433). Additionally, they can accept McRobbie’s idea and take up an emancipatory

perspective and challenge the institutions, structures and individuals with power to

implement policies that empower and enfranchise those who are marginalised,

vulnerable and ‘silent’ (McRobbie, 1982; Rose, 2001; Lather, in Burnett and Ewald,

1994). This may provide the reciprocity that McRobbie and Lather speak of. This is the

reciprocity the participants in this study have levied.

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Conclusion

Qualitative research is about humans studying other humans in research relationships.

The research process is, therefore, by its nature, highly subjective (Fine, 1993; Fraser,

1993). This study attempts, with sensitivity and empathy, to examine the realities of the lives of a sample of gay men living in small rural communities. This chapter has provided a detailed and transparent outline of the methodological approach used in the research as well as an accounting of the methods and processes adopted in the collection and analysis of the data.

This chapter also highlighted the assumptions and theoretical underpinning of the methodology and made the point that this study adopts both a phenomenological and ethnographic perspective. This perspective enabled a focus on the lives and the cultural environment of those experiencing the phenomenon under study and fits with a study of gay men living in a rural environment. This chapter also addressed issues of bias, validity, ethics and reciprocity and demonstrated that nationally recognised guidelines as well as academic protocols were followed. The chapters that follow detail and then discuss the findings of the research.

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Chapter Four

Staying in the Bush because of its Advantages

…last night, for example, I came in at six o’clock [from working] all day. I had a shower. There was a lovely cool breeze blowing. And I poured myself a beer and went and sat on the verandah. And [as] I sat there looking over “my Ponderosa”, I thought, “This is all right”. …It was a lovely completion to a lovely day …and at the end of the day I didn’t have anyone to talk to. I mean the dogs were sitting there [waiting] for me to give them a biscuit, [so] I talked to the two working dogs. [Sam]

Introduction

The above quote from Sam’s interview encapsulates what he saw as the advantages of

rural life. Living in the bush gave him the freedom to be self-employed. Working on his

own farm allowed him to live in an environment that, for him, was aesthetically

pleasing and beautiful. Living in the bush gave him a connection with the bush and a

sense of belonging in and to it. The bush gave him the geographical and social isolation

that he needed and enjoyed. For Sam and the other twenty rural gay men in this study, the bush itself and the landscape in which they lived were major influences in their lives.

The place in which these men lived became their refuge. Their affinity with the bush and their ability to use its geographical and social dimensions to improve their lives and, in fact, construct the lives that they wanted to live, are findings that have come from their interviews.

The analysis took a phenomenological perspective and in so doing focused on their experience of the bush and their depiction and interpretation of the physical, social and personal worlds in which they lived. As noted in the previous chapter, quotes from

these men’s interviews will be referenced with a notation, such that [3/21] will refer to

page 21 of the original transcript of Interview 3. Twenty-one men from fifteen different

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towns, all west of the Great Dividing Range, in New South Wales – a state of Australia

– were interviewed.

‘Staying’ is a concept central to the findings of this thesis. That these men needed and

wanted to stay in the bush was one of the factors that influenced them not to leave and

move to the city. Staying in the bush was the culmination, or the result, of all the things

these men liked about the bush just as it incorporated their acceptance of the difficulties.

Living in the bush involved a determination to stay not only because of the joys of bush

living but also in spite of the hardships of a rural lifestyle and the issues around being

gay in the conservative setting of small rural communities.

In ordinary parlance, staying means ‘to remain’. It also means ‘not to leave’. So a

person may stay at home or stay in bed or stay single. ‘To stay’ also has the implication

that one is already there, and so in this case, it can be said of this sample of gay men

that they were already living in a rural community and staying refers to them continuing

to live in that rural community. ‘Staying’ in this sense has no connections with the willingness or the wanting to continue to live in that rural community. It means only that they do so.

But once the dictionary meaning of the word is extended, ‘staying’ becomes an even more useful concept. Often, the phrase ‘staying’ is used to mean ‘to endure’, ‘to cope’, and ‘to put up with’. But in this context, to stay means to endure some form of trial or difficulty. But one can also stay because of pleasures. One stays on to enjoy the party, the celebrations or the experience of being where one is. These men stayed put because they enjoyed being where they were.

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These gay men stayed in the bush in all these senses of the word and what kept them there was more likely to be a combination of factors rather than any single one of them.

They stayed because they liked the bush and the rurality of the places in which they lived. They enjoyed the lifestyle that could be had in living there. They also stayed in spite of the difficulties of living in the bush. This chapter will examine the reasons these men stayed in the bush ‘because of’ and the next chapter will explore the issues that these men stayed in the bush ‘in spite of’.

‘… I Like it Here’

In one of the early interviews, an informant commented that he did not think that too many unhappy gay men would be found living in the bush. At that stage of the research, this was a surprising and challenging comment. He said the ‘… [gay] people that live in the bush … are quite happy to stay in the bush’ [5/42]. The implication of his comment was that gay men living in the bush were generally there by choice, they were happy with that choice and that they intended to stay in the bush. Another informant suggested that one of the reasons he agreed to be interviewed was that he was ‘concerned’ that the researcher would come to the bush with a distorted picture of what it was to be gay and live in the bush. He said he wanted ‘to personify’ that being gay and living in the bush was ‘not all disadvantages’, and he was ‘… a gay man that certainly enjoys living in the country’ [15/51].

The strongest reasons these men gave for wanting to stay in the bush centred on the fact that they genuinely liked the bush and the rural lifestyle it afforded. Perry simplified his reasons for living where he did by saying, ‘… ’cause I just like Geriffi … I just like the town I guess’ [4/75]. Other men echoed these sentiments. Chris said, ‘I’m happy where

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I am’ [6/118]. Jim explained it this way: ‘Ahm … you know this is my home. This is

where I’ve grown up. And I love it’ [3/22–23].

What was it about the bush that they liked? Like Perry, these men found it very difficult

to be precise and definitive about why they liked living in the bush when asked directly.

As Gary said, ‘I don’t think it’s anything specific’ [18/17], adding ‘… it’s the rural

thing …it’s just the outlook that it gives you’ [18/31]. Nevertheless, as will be discussed in the sections that follow, specific aspects of bush life did emerge in the analysis of the data as advantages of living in the bush and reasons to stay there.

The men linked their love of bush living to lifestyle and to their affinity with the bush.

Their happiness to be in the country was part of wanting the rural lifestyle. The bush

gave these gay men the things that were important for them. These factors appeared to

be more closely related to the nature of the bush itself. Space and seclusion, quietness,

tranquility and the unhurried pace of life appeared consistently in their interviews as

important aspects of the bush that they liked. It was the chance for some to live out of

town and be around animals and to tend a garden. For others, it was the activities that

they could indulge in – horse riding, walking and climbing.

Petro explained the attractions of rural life this way,

I think ultimately I’d … have to say … I love the lifestyle … yeah, well a country town can offer horse riding, kayaking and I love bushwalking. … there are just so many things. … So I guess at heart I … I enjoy that part of country living [14/74].

Rudy found that the attraction of the bush was the beauty

… of the hills and the valleys … and I love driving and walking through the bush and the wattle and all that type of stuff [2/29].

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Other men mentioned that life was less hectic and quiet, and this was especially applicable to those who lived out of town. For Jack, it was the ‘… space, quiet, cleaner air, a pleasant natural environment … ahhh’ [1/49]. For Jason it was about the bush ‘… being more relaxed … ahm … not as hectic…’ [9/86].

The bush provided things the city could not – open space, the serenity of a farm, and seclusion. Chris was one who spoke about space, and it was an ‘important’ [6/117] factor in his desire to stay in the bush. Sam was devoted to his cattle property and for him being in the bush was really the only life that he wanted. He said of his life in the bush, ‘…I love … love the tranquility of my farm…’ [15/29]. Toby, too, spoke of a multiplicity of factors that made the bush the place where he wanted to live. For him, it was,

Peace. Tranquility … There’s not the … ah … the rat race… ahm … and [the bush] is such a big world that you can … ahm … get lost in the country really … [8/42].

Gerry said of his and Cleever’s relationship and their life together in the bush that,

More than anything else, it’s the lifestyle we’re living. … we’re on a property, so we can have animals, we can have a garden and things like that… ahm … which is what we enjoy [Laughs]. He’s animals. I’m garden [18/18–19].

Neville, too, had his garden and animals and these were important features of his life.

As he said,

I keep to myself. [I’ve] got my garden. [I’ve] got my pets. [I’ve] got the house. I’ve got … everything that I really ever dreamed of in actually living in a place that I can say is home [16/10].

Another aspect of the bush lifestyle that these men indicated was important was that they could control the level of interaction they had with other people. They felt that they were not caught up in what Toby called the ‘rat-race’ of city life. Jason exemplified this

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position with his comment, ‘I think … it’s the lifestyle outside of Sydney … basically

[it’s] the lifestyle decision’ [9/86–87]. Having a rural lifestyle gave these gay men a

connection to the bush but it also allowed them a level of disconnection from people.

The bush was where they wanted to be because they felt they could exercise a measure

of control over their lives that was not possible in a more urban environment.

Deciding to live in the bush, however, was based on much more than simply liking the

place. Simon’s assessment sums it up for all the men in this study, ‘…it’s [the bush]

part of my make-up’ [10/40]. He was referring to the fact that the bush was not only

part of his life, but it was part of his being. The bush played a part not only in these

men’s happiness and their satisfaction in life but, ultimately, it was part of who they

were.

The men spoke pragmatically of country living. Such matters as the fresh air, the rainwater, the lack of queues, the easy access to facilities were issues that were seen as

some of the advantages of bush living. But other men were more generous and effusive

about where they lived and their comments indicated that while matters such as getting

a car-park at the supermarket were convenient, these factors were not regarded as

especially important and significant in why they lived in the bush.

Many of them also spoke of the beauty of the bush, and their testimonies indicate that

part of the attraction of living in the bush is the appeal of the bush from a physical

perspective. City people speak of the beauty of the bush, but they do not live there.

Country people, too, appreciate many attributes of the bush, but rarely do they speak of

its beauty. But these rural gay men did and some of them did so in fulsome terms.

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Perhaps this is a reflection of their gay sensibility. Rudy almost ‘gushed’ when he spoke of the bush. He enthused, ‘…I love the country. I love … I love, you know, the quiet and the peace of the countryside. I love the beauty of the countryside …’ [2/29]. And later in the interview, Rudy returned to this theme,

like these last few days I have been down in Victoria. And it’s just, you know … just wonderful to be driving through all that countryside. It’s just beautiful. And then there’s you know, then you strike the canola – acres and acres and acres of canola plant and all this golden bright yellow covering, you know, hill after hill and that. That is just wonderful, you know. I find it just incredible for me [2/49].

While one might think of Rudy’s description of the countryside as a little too ‘over the top’ and a little too ‘camp’, it is obvious that he really did like the bush and he liked being there. His testimony indicated a real and genuine appreciation of the physical attractiveness of the bush. This physical attractiveness of where these men lived contributed to their appreciation of it and the importance of it in their lives.

For Ben, who liked to camp-draft10 at rodeos, the beauty of the bush was important too, but he had a different perspective than did Rudy and Petro. The bush was an attractive place because he found it ‘… ahm … it’s a very beautiful area, like … it’s pretty … no, pretty is the wrong word. It’s rugged, it’s ahm … rough country. It’s nice’ [20/5]. In

Ben’s eyes, it was beautiful precisely because it was rough, rugged and physical rather than pretty. Bobby was an exponent of valuing the harsher aspects of the bush and he used words like ‘rugged’ and ‘rough’ and said that ‘pretty’ was the wrong word.

However, all of these words were inextricably linked to the ‘beauty’ of the bush [20/5].

10 Camp drafting is an event usually held as part of a rodeo. It is designed to test the skills of both horse and rider. The contestants must be able to demonstrate their riding skills by a combination of balance between horse and rider in a series of moves including backing up and spinning around. The aim is to cut a beast out of a mob, hold him out and then manoeuvre the beast through a course in a predetermined pattern. It sport requires skills of horsemanship as well as a horse that can block a beast, stop well, turn around and back up, is easy to manoeuvre and with an even-tempered temperament. It involves a close empathy between horse and rider.

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For some men it was the wild severity and more rugged aspects of the bush that was

attractive. In this context, space, distance and isolation were important components of the attractiveness of the bush. Rex noted, ‘I even like having to drive the two or three

hours to get to another place’ [20/53]. The floods, the impassable roads and the

physicality of their work had an attractive edge for these men. Those aspects of the bush

normally regarded with some disdain, even by country people, were not mentioned by any of the gay men in this study. The heat and the dust and the flies did not rate a

remark.

Staying in the bush for reasons ‘because of’ not only involved these men ‘taking a

shine’ to the place in which they lived. It was natural to want to stay in a place because

they liked being there. But these gay men made it clear that the lifestyle they wanted

could only be had in the bush. In desiring to stay in the bush, these men brought a gay

sensibility to that desire and the lifestyle they chose. They brought a certain ‘outside the

mainstream’ quality to it in that they liked the bush as gay men but they also

appreciated the bush in ways that they thought other rural people did not. For example, they thought their enjoyment of both the isolation and the natural beauty of the places in

which they lived was not something they shared with the majority of rural people.

But this enjoyment of the aesthetic was inclusive of, but went beyond, the landscape.

Their gay sensibility was underscored by an element of outlaw that they expressed both as an irreverence for the rural heteronormative and the urban homonormative. The drag shows that members of the Geriffi Gay Group put on fit into the first category. They also expressed this outlaw attitude by rejecting much of what they saw as a slavish attention to fashion consciousness and style in dress and personal grooming common in

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urban gay men. They were well-dressed but not chic and none of the men spoke of wearing the latest label. These men’s expression of a gay sensibility and desire finds little compatibility with the city gay community and, at the same time, little general acceptance within the small rural communities in which they live.

‘… There’s No Way I’d Like City Life’

Just as determinedly as they wanted to live in the bush, these men also made it clear that

they did not want to, nor could they, reside in the city. Living in the city was not an

option. One of the reasons these men lived in the bush was precisely because the city

was not a viable place for them to live. Toby summed up the opinion of these men when

he said of city life, ‘It just would be … for me, the end of the earth’ [8/51]. A number of

these men had been brought up in the bush and went to boarding schools in the city.

Others had lived in the city for a time after leaving school. But they had abandoned the

city in favour of living in the country. The choice was rarely difficult. While the city

had its advantages such as theatre, social networks, career, further education, medical

treatment … and easy sex, it was not enough to keep them there. Chris echoed these

sentiments when he said,

… I knew I wasn’t happy in the city…. There was something about the city. I just didn’t belong there either, even though the … the sex, all that stuff [was] there…. I realised there was something more I wanted [6/53–54].

Similarly, Gerry went to Sydney for work when he left school. He remembered that he

‘… lasted about three months down there. That was it. I hated the place [Laughs]’

[18/27]. His opinion of the city had not changed with time. When he and his partner

used go to Sydney, they drove only as far as the outer north-western suburbs. To go

further into the city, they took public transport because they did not have the confidence

to drive themselves or the knowledge of how to get to where they wanted to go.

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Other men in this study had never left the bush. Of course, most of them had visited

Sydney for one reason or another. But that was about the extent of Sydney’s usefulness

– as a place to visit and enjoy and then to leave it with equal enjoyment. Sam said,

I go down to the Sydney Show11 each year. I make a bit of a trip down, and I find that within two or three days … I can’t smell the fresh air. Ahm … there are noises … and traffic lights … and people. … and I get totally out of my depth and I don’t cope [15/12].

The advantages of the city were there to be had on visits to the city. Perry was another

who enjoyed his occasional visits to Sydney and though he had a great time when he

went down to the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras with the Geriffi gay group, he

knew that he did not want to live there. As he said, ‘… I mean, there’s no way I’d like

city life… the city’s all right [to visit], but …’ [4/68]. The city was not a place in which

these men wanted to live. Their reasons for rejecting city life varied and while some

men did not entirely rule it out as a possibility, to actually make the move to the city

would have been a case of absolutely having to do so. Cleever said that even thinking

about having to move from Barappa to the city for reasons such as employment

involves ‘… the contemplation of leaving … of not knowing what’s going to happen …

sometimes does get me a bit upset’ [17/2].

The realisation that the city was not an alternative or viable place for them to live not

only provided a rationale to stay, but was an incentive to develop even greater ties with

the bush. Knowing that the bush was the only place in which they could be happy not

only gave them a tendency to gloss over the drawbacks of rural life, but it helped these

11 Chris was referring to the Royal Easter Show. Held by the Royal Agricultural Society of New South Wales, it has displays of Australian farm produce, rodeo events, livestock competitions and parades, wood chopping contests and other rural events. The show is said to celebrate the nation’s bush heritage and the economic importance of the rural sector. It is a major social event for country people and many of them travel to Sydney for the show over the Easter holiday period.

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men have a greater appreciation of what they had there. Rex summed it up when he

ventured that what he had in the bush was a lifestyle that he created and enjoyed, but that a life in the city was one that ‘… I find … oh … I couldn’t survive’ [21/53].

While all of these men had decided against the lure of the bright lights of the city, some

based their decision on the experience of others. They had seen classmates leave town

only to hear tales of unhappiness and a longing to come home. For example, Toby’s

reason for not going to the city was his observation of the experiences of other young

people. His parents were relatively well-off. Though they lived in far-western NSW in

the town of Copper, they often went to Sydney during the school vacations and so by

the time Toby had left school he had been to the city a number of times for holidays.

But he had also seen a number of young people from that isolated town in western

NSW go to the city in search of work. He said that many of these young people ‘just

struggled’ [8/39] and had made up his mind that he ‘… didn’t want to do that’ [8/40].

Toby had the impression that many of his friends regretted their decision to leave the

bush and that they were of the opinion that they ‘… should have stayed in the country’

[8/49]. And while he wanted to leave the small, remote town of Copper with, as he saw

it, its limited opportunities, he realised that the city was not an option. For him and for

other men in this study, the city was not the only place where an education could be

obtained and a career might be developed. At the time of the interview, Toby had not

changed his mind and was still happily living in the larger rural town of Oregon.

Having a rural lifestyle was the cornerstone on which these men created a fulfilling life.

But feeling, and being, secure in the place in which they lived was also something that

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these men indicated was a matter of importance to them. Being in the bush allowed

them to do this.

‘What Keeps Me Here is … the Security of the Town’

These men’s sense of physical safety was an important factor in why they said that they

stayed in the bush. These men talked about the bush as familiar territory and that

familiarity provided a sense of security and safety. The bush and its small communities

were described as essentially safe places in which to live.

In living in small towns, they said that they did not feel threatened and the very lack of

threat helped keep them there. For example, when Michael was asked what he meant

when he said that Dunno was ‘a good place to live’, he replied, ‘Well, safe and that, and

you know … you know which direction to go and …you know the people and … and

they know you’ [11/2]. Of course, being known and knowing others does not prevent

random acts of violence. But, leaving random acts aside as well as those attacks that

occurred in the schoolyard, the men in this study reported no physical acts of violence against them by people that they knew. Though many were known in their communities to be gay, they felt safe and secure enough to say that they were not afraid of serious physical attack. For Michael, knowing people meant that you could avoid those who were antagonistic towards you. You could avoid trouble. But he also meant that if you

were attacked or abused, it was highly likely, in a small community, that you would

know your assailants. Thus, knowing people appeared to act as a significant incentive in

preventing abuse. This was the unsaid implication in Michael’s comment.

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Cleever also spoke of the importance of safety in living just outside a much smaller

town. He said,

Ahm … well … ahm … you don’t have to constantly look over your shoulder to make sure that you don’t get a knife in the back or something. … . Although some of the crimes come into the towns, they’re very small minor type things. What keeps me here is ahm … more the security of the town [17/3–4].

Concern for personal physical safety was a matter of importance for the men in this study, especially when their gayness was a matter of suspicion or was, in fact, known.

But they suggested that even under these conditions, their own personal safety was not in jeopardy in the small communities in which they lived. Perry was asked,

E: Would you be frightened, for example, that they’d bash you? P: No … I don’t think I’d be bashed. I’d probably just have people saying things…. Being sort of rude behind my back … being a real nark [4/63].

While every man in this study reported some level of homophobia, they have been free

of physical violence motivated by homophobia perpetrated against them in their

hometown. That most of these men had made the fact of their homosexuality known to

family and friends tended to diminish and blunt any such verbal onslaught. An unexpected verbal attack conveyed nothing that was not already known to the people that mattered to them. Family added to these men’s sense of security and safety, as much in an emotionally supportive way as in terms of physical protection and retaliation. They rarely needed the latter. Ivor spoke of the security that he felt in living

in the bush, and for him it came partly from the proximity of family. As he said,

… My father is here and my two brothers are here and I know that if anything happens to me that they would …wouldn’t hesitate to step in and do something for me [7/9].

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These men’s rural communities were places in which they were known and in which they knew many, if not, most others. The fact that family was close by added to that feeling of safety.

‘… My Family are Here’

The security of living in the bush was also related to having family close by. Having family around was important in its own right, but when combined with the issue of feeling safe, it became a significant factor in why these men chose to live in the bush.

These men wanted to stay for the same reason that many people want to stay in a particular place – family. Perry, Simon, Izak, Rodney, Petro, Neville, Cleever, Gerry,

Ivor, Toby, Jim and Gary all spoke of family as being one of the reasons that they stay in their hometown. Jack was living with his partner on the farm of his partner’s parents and his own immediate family was not in the area so that, in his case, family was not necessarily the reason Jack stayed. But it was the reason his partner did. And Jack stayed because of his partner.

Growing up gay in country towns or on farms had not always been easy and school years were repeatedly mentioned as especially difficult times. For many of these men, the realisation that they were gay and their disclosure of that to families put some strain on family relationships. But these relationships endured and these men continued to remain at home. It says much about the resilience of these men and their families.

About half of the men in this study were still living in the family home at the time of the interview. And of those who were not, several were still living in their hometown. It was where they had grown up and where they had spent most of their lives. Therefore,

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where they lived was a place that they knew well. This local knowledge made it a

comfort zone in which to live. It was one of the reasons to stay.

Jim spoke for many of the men in this study when he said,

Ahm … my family are here and they’re really supportive, so I’ve got no reason to move. Ahm … I’ve got no troubles at work ahm … and virtually everyone in the town knows [I’m gay] ahm … and my … my boss is supportive ahm … other work colleagues are supportive and … yeah, it is good [3/22–23].

The way Jim phrased his testimony suggested that his family was the basis of his

support network in the community. His direct linkage of a supportive family with

having ‘no reason to move’ elsewhere stood out. For Jim, and for others in this study

for whom family was important, it appeared that were that support structure to shift,

they may become less inclined to stay in that particular place, though their intention to

stay in the bush was never in question.

The knowledge that family was not far away was still important, even when

relationships were not particularly strong. For example, Ivor’s relationship with his

father had become strained and difficult following his disclosure that he was gay, yet

Ivor continued to live at home. He reasoned, ‘… I feel comfortable living here because I

know I’ve got family. I almost feel they’re … they’re my security blanket type thing

…’ [7/9]. When family was close by with family relationships intact and when work

and social relationships were sound, these gay men quickly ran out of reasons to leave.

And they stayed. As Toby explained,

Ahm … I think [the reason I stayed in the bush] was because I had family here and I thought, well … and its close and everything … I’d met some good friends [and] … so we had a very good social life …. That’s why I stayed [8/41].

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This is not to say that family was the sole reason, or even the main reason, that these men decided to live in the bush. Nevertheless, the influence of family was a significant factor. Family helped provide a ‘rootedness’, a connectedness to the place in which they lived. Family added to these men’s sense of security. Family provided a sense of belonging and being part of a family group just as friends provided a sense of being included and part of the social unit. Proximity of family and friendship were but two advantages of bush living that enticed these men to stay.

Intimate and Community Friendships

The next chapter suggests that one of the difficulties these men faced was loneliness.

But these men saw ‘loneliness’ and ‘aloneness’ as two different things. The latter was

an expected and usually welcome aspect of rural living. Aloneness only became

loneliness when access to a close circle of friends was unavailable. Being ‘alone’ did

not mean that one lived without the interaction of others. It did not mean being cut off

from other people. The way these men used the term was that it meant not having and

not wanting a wide and engaged set of acquaintances that one mixed with. The analysis

of the informants’ testimonies revealed that while they reported a degree of aloneness in

their lives, they were not friendless. These men did have small circles of friends with

whom they socialised, but such socialising was often at home away from public gaze.

Being out and about in a social sense in the community in which they lived was not the

way they socialised. They kept to themselves and to that small circle of accepting

friends. For these gay men, that was enough and when they wanted more in the way of a

social, cultural or sexual life, they went out of town.

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The satisfaction of having a small circle of friends was one of the delights and charms

of living in the bush. For Izak, living in the bush was ‘nice’, partly because

You have someone to talk to all the time. You can just open up. It’s very nice. Otherwise you’d just be so lonely and … stressed out, you know [12/20–21].

It was not just about having friends that alleviated loneliness, but it was the closeness of those connections and the degree to which one could open up. In other words, it was not the number of friends, but the density and the depth of that friendship. The social isolation that these men wrapped around their lives appeared to inhibit the development of a wider network of friendships. Though they did have a small circle of friends in the town in which they lived, these circles were indeed small. Just as the proximity of family provided these men with a sense of security in their lives, close and accepting friends formed the social bedrock on which these men based their lives in the bush.

What was surprising was that, generally, the men in this study had relatively little to say about friendship. Even when the question was pursued, there was not much response.

Perhaps some of this lack of response might have been due to a traditional lack of loquaciousness in rural men, but there was no doubt that local friendships were an important factor that kept these men in the bush. Though these men were not able to speak easily about friendship, there was evidence that friendship was important in their lives and that friendship was deliberately restricted to a small circle of close friends. For example, even in his youth, Jason had only a small network of friends,

… I had my circle of friends …. And I … I suppose at that stage I couldn’t see any need to widen the circle of friends [9/28].

Rodney said his friends in Gunnawere ‘…all knew that I was gay before I got in with them …’ [13/23]. He implied that his friendships were close and accepting,

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… I’ve got all my friends around me. I’ve got beautiful friends. I’ve got the best friends. They all live here as well, you know. That’s why I’m really lucky……I’d be really sad if any of them left, but they don’t leave. They can’t leave [13/6].

Sam also expressed the view that friendships were restricted to a few and it was the closeness of the relationships that mattered,

…what I like about being gay in the country is the fact that the small group of people, for example our friends in Manilla and Tamworth and the Northern Rivers, are close people. They are very genuine people. Ahm … I really treasure and I try and be as a good communicator as I can …and when we do communicate, I think there is a great love, and I try and show as much as … I’m not a really good … good at that … [15/13].

Gerry said that his (and Cleever’s) friends were local and supportive. He called attention to the fact that

… we’ve got some pretty supportive friends around us… [and] they were there all the time. They just accepted us right along. Which surprised me in some respects, but it’s quite a pleasant surprise really [18/33–34].

Even Rex said that his friends were small in number, but close and that the relationships go back a long way,

I have … ohhhh … five or ten close friends … mainly gay. Long-term. Comfortable. … most of them know each other …. These are all people that we would party with, socialise with, play tennis, you know, croquet … [21/30– 31].

But it was Izak who had the most to say about friendship and the part it played in his life. He articulated the most developed sense of what friendship is about. Izak’s testimony was that for him a country town and the rural environment in general was a place of greater intimacy, in part, because it was smaller than his other point of comparison – the city. Izak commented that while it was not impossible to find friendship in the city, it was difficult. He referred to acquaintances in Melbourne as

‘those people’ and he explained this turn of phrase,

E: What do you mean by ‘Those people in Melbourne’?

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I: They’re just so wild. They just want sex, sex, and sex. E: And … you mean you want more … I: They don’t want friendship. They just want sex … it is very hard to find friendship in Melbourne. Melbourne’s so big [12/22]. Friendship was something that these gay men found was difficult to establish when they

happened to live in the city. This was one of the reasons that living there was so

unattractive and unworkable and why they did not stay. But friendship was something that they felt could be developed and sustained in the bush. As Izak explains,

I think friendship is very important. It is very important for me. It is not like being in a relationship, because [in a relationship] one day you go out with someone, another you break up with him. … But, friendship is very important for me. I’m always loyal to my friends [12/18–19].

Izak speaks of the ‘loyalty’ in friendship and suggests that it was not something to be taken lightly. It involved commitment, effort and an ability to give support and to know when it was needed. Similarly, a failure or inability to establish and maintain friendships had consequences. While aloneness was an acceptable aspect of rural life, loneliness was not. Izak conceded that he occasionally became lonely, but in having loyal friends such loneliness was transitory. As he said,

Sometimes I feel lonely. Sometimes I don’t. It’s just me, I guess. I get lonely when I don’t find someone around here. I call people, say, [and] they don’t pick up the phone [12/20–21].

Without friends, the consequences were obvious.

That these men had their own small and intimate circles of friends was evidence that these men could establish and sustain significant friendship in their lives. For many of the men in this study, friendship with others was a longstanding and enduring aspect of their lives. The fact that most such friendships were local, or close by, added to the advantages of living in the bush. Their friends were one of the reasons these men were happy to stay in the bush. These are unexpected findings. That these gay men have such

145 close friendships largely among other locals indicates that they are not the lonely and desperate social isolates that the image of a gay man in the bush seems to conjure up.

The committed friendships that these men are able to form also indicates that some locals are undeterred by the possibility of social censure in nurturing strong relationships with men known to be or suspected of being gay.

A desire to establish and sustain a wider circle of relationships within the mainstream community was not on these men’s agenda. Whether this was because they disconnected themselves from the community in order to live their lives beyond the reach of curious eyes, or whether the community was essentially unwelcoming to them was not always easy to pinpoint, though both factors appeared to be evident. Regardless of the reasons, it is clear that these men had no wish and no need to maintain close alliances in the mainstream community in which they lived. While these rural gay men were far from friendless, a closeness with the wider community seemed to elude them.

As Jack said,

I’ve found it [finding friendship in Wobegon] …difficult, because they all seemed to talk shop … Ah … and so I’ve never had … I’ve never had a deep and meaningful conversation with any of the men out there. It’s always been about cattle, about weather [1/33].

Jack had previously spoken at some length about the ‘superficiality’ of friendship in the country. He said that, in his opinion, what some country people tended to do in regard to friendship was to

… confuse friendship with acquaintanceship, or friendship with talking shop. And there are people who I meet and the only thing I do with them is talk shop and they confuse that with friendship. …they’re confusing the fact that they know someone … with that person being a friend, and they’re two different things [1/25].

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This lack of a wider friendship network within the community was something that these

gay men had experienced all their lives. Perhaps it was something they didn’t need or care for.

In speaking about his school days in the small town of Barappa where he still lived,

Cleever said that

… I wouldn’t have very many friends to go with. And the friends that I had weren’t very much like real friends. They only wanted to be with me when they wanted their maths homework answers and everything like that done. So, I never went to their places or anything and hardly or most of the time they never invited me [17/11].

In fact, much of Cleever’s time out of school was spent alone down by the river sometimes for hours on end. And he came to ‘prefer to be on my own’ [17/12]. He said that when he left school and took a full-time job as a shop assistant in Barappa, he made

‘extra friends’ [17/13]. But they were mainly work colleagues. He said, ‘that’s when I found a lot of friends came in and … and it was mostly in the shop’ [17/13].

So the friends that Cleever spoke of were those people who came into the shop. But it would seem that they came into there to buy things and not so much to see Cleever. The

‘friendship’ was a by-product of their need to be in the shop. The specious nature of this

‘friendship’ that Cleever speaks of is all but confirmed when he says of these ‘friends’

that ‘… I wouldn’t often go to their house’ [17/13]. Cleever had done what Jack

reckoned many men living in rural areas do and that was to confuse friends and

acquaintances, and imagine that what they had with the latter was friendship, when they

did not have it at all.

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Izak’s words about what friends and friendships involve are worth repeating in this context. A friend is ‘someone to talk [to]’ about anything anytime. A friend is someone

‘you can just open up [to]’. For these gay men, this kind of friend was not to be found in the general community and many of them implied that the lack of friendships beyond the small and longstanding circle was simply one of the consequences of rural life. To

live in semi-isolation in both a geographical and social sense was what these men

desired. The need for friends beyond what they had was unnecessary and a hindrance to

the life they wanted to lead. While their friendships were close and enduring, they were

essentially strangers in their community.

‘… I Just Feel So Free Here’

These men also wanted to stay in the bush because of the feeling of freedom that living

in the bush gave them. Freedom was spoken about in a variety of ways. Petro, for

example, said that the freedom the bush gave him was a freedom from the tyranny of

traffic jams and supermarket queues. For Sam and Bobby, freedom had to do with work

and being one’s own boss. It was about making decisions and running one’s own

business and life without reference to others.

Being free often revolved around an avoidance of constraints. Those men who lived out

of town typified this view of freedom. Usually they were self-employed and worked in

agriculture and could do largely what they wanted, when they wanted and not be

controlled by a boss. Being one’s own boss in the bush was a lifestyle over which these

men felt they could exercise a measure of control. They could regulate the type of work

they did, when they did it and the amount they did. That autonomy also required self-

148 reliance and a capacity to provide for themselves. It gave them release from work-place pressures that others had to endure and also some of the isolation that they wanted and looked for.

Bobby and Sam were two such men. Sam owned his own cattle property west of

Inaway. Bobby was into camp drafting and Three-Day Eventing, the latter being a horse sport in which he competed at Olympic Games standard and in which he trained both horse and rider. He said that this latter aspect of his work provided his income and the former provided a way of spending it! Bobby spoke of freedom in these terms, ‘… ahm

… yeah I like the … ahm … freedom to do what I want’ [20/10]. Sam elaborated a little more on his notion of freedom. He said,

… freedom, it gives me … I mean, I could not work for sixty thousand dollars and have a boss telling me what to do. I don’t … I don’t … I mean, I have been self-motivated for twenty-five years and I know when to go out and plough up a paddock. I know when to do … I know all these jobs. I know what the cattle need and the sheep need and water and feed and etc. So I am my own boss and that in itself gives me the strength to carry on [15/30]. Both Sam and Bobby found their concept of freedom in the autonomy and self- determination of being self-employed and in the physical space that working in the bush allowed. But for these men, freedom had another dimension that revolved around being free to be gay. Being self-employed and living out of town also gave them a freedom from the fear of being fired if the boss found out about their homosexuality. And because they worked largely alone, this gave them a freedom from the pressures of the workplace and the jibes that some, like Perry and Ivor, were frightened of and others, like Rex, were sometimes subject to.

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By being self-employed and living out of town, Sam and Bobby found both the freedom and the isolation to be who they were, where they were. This involved allowing the gay man, as well as the bush man, to be self-evident in their lives. As Sam made clear, where he lived meant that he could

… grow my livestock how I want them and things like that. I’m here in a belt in the tablelands that grows the best wool … [and] the best cattle. The best of everything can be produced. I can grow terrific wheat or barley … everything here. And … I mean … ahm … I’m prepared to sacrifice not living in a more gayer area and live out here because I want to [and] because I want to produce the very best I can produce because I get enjoyment out of doing that [15/43– 44].

Therefore, freedom was more than the opportunity and space to do as one pleased.

Freedom, the way these men spoke about the concept, was also about the possibility of living a gayer life. It was as if these men had set themselves apart from the community in a Durkheimian sense because they could not conform to the mores of a society that would regulate and subordinate them. Living out of town with little connection to it and away from prying eyes provided some men in this study with one avenue of being free.

But not all men could or did live out of town. There were gay men living in rural towns who also embraced with some gusto the feeling and sense of freedom that they said living in a rural environment gave them. Izak said that one of the things he liked about

Geriffi was ‘…I guess, it’s my freedom here. I just feel so free here’ [12/23].

Izak had not found the freedom to be himself, so much as he had taken it. Despite his position of considerable social disadvantage, Izak was able to make choices about the way he lived. He took actions that enhanced his life. And he did resist those who would relegate him to the status of ‘other’. He had taken charge of his life and had refused to conform to the strictures and confinements that a rural community might impose – if

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one were to let them. Izak was a gay man and was quite open about his sexuality. He

had lived for a short period in Melbourne, but had come back to Geriffi. He said he

could be himself there and he intended to stay. Izak was asked to explain what he meant

by the word ‘free’. He said that, for him, ‘free’ meant that,

I do whatever I want to do, you know, It’s just my life. Not other people’s, you know, [that] they control or something. I just control. … I mean, you can find it [freedom] everywhere, I guess, but I just find it here [Laughs]. Yes [Laughs] [12/23–24].

Nevertheless, this freedom to be gay and live in a rural community was not necessarily achieved easily. Living in town forced some men to be more circumspect than those who lived out of town had to be. Nevertheless, they took the view that living in the bush gave one the freedom to be oneself. For some men, though, this freedom to be gay was not possible in the place in which they currently lived. These men spoke of having to go to another place in order to avail themselves of it. For example, Jason went to Albury to the gay pub there. Rudy went to Wagga Wagga to be among other gay men and to avail himself of a cultural life that was not available in Geriffi. When Petro was asked to elaborate a little more on the notion of freedom, he responded by saying that for him there was no freedom to be gay in the town in which he was then living, but that a place like Lismore

… would be much more balanced. It would be … you could do all the things that a bush boy likes to do … ahm [and] at the same time you would be treated as just a normal human being, you know. He’s gay … so what? [14/79–81]

But this did not mean that he thought there was no freedom to be gay in the bush, and in fact some places provided exactly that. He explained with a feeling of some nostalgia that he had previously lived happily and openly in a gay relationship in another small town in the hinterland behind the Gold Coast. Upon returning to Inaway to live with and look after his aging parents, he found his hometown to be personally confining,

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forcing him to be a little more guarded about his sexuality. When Petro was asked whether living in Inaway gave him the freedom ‘to be … yourself’, the answer was

quite categorical, ‘No. To be … to be open? No’ [14/79].

Those men who indicated that the freedom to live openly as a gay man seemed to elude

them still maintained that it could be found in some other bush towns, but for them, just

not in the one in which they currently lived. This was Petro’s reasoning. Rudy also

made this point very strongly. Rudy wanted to stay in the bush, but not in Geriffi, ironically the same town that Izak had found all the freedom he desired. He talked about escaping to other towns to find the freedom that he could not find in Geriffi. Rudy

wanted a university environment, a library and people with whom he could

communicate on an intellectual level. He wanted an art gallery and some theatre, all of which he felt were unavailable in Geriffi. Nevertheless, like other men in this study,

Rudy acknowledged that there was a wonderful sense of freedom to be had in the bush

if one looked for it – or took it.

Though not all of these men were able to enjoy the freedom to live openly as a gay man

that they thought living in the bush should and could afford them, they had no thought

of leaving. For some, another country town might have offered the conditions to live as

gay men and to be open about that facet of their lives. Some men travelled to satisfy that aspect of their lives. This getting out of town from time to time will be explored in greater detail in Chapter Seven. Nevertheless, being unable to lead openly gay lives in their hometown was not enough to motivate any of them to think of leaving the bush.

The men in this study had made the decision to live in the bush and they intended to stay. The space and the isolation that epitomised the bush added to the sense of freedom

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that these men had. The freedom to lead candidly gay lives was something that most of

them only aspired to. However, the point should be made that these men recognised that there were different degrees of freedom and that the freedom to be an explicitly gay man, as they envisaged one could do in the city, was not such a priority. These men realised that the freedom to be themselves was always relative and the levels of freedom they cultivated were generally acceptable to them. In some cases they described that sense of freedom as excellent. Living in the bush gave them the freedom to find avenues and spaces to express the gay aspects of their lives, be that in their hometown or out of town.

‘Ahm … We All Live Isolated Lives’ – The Attractions of Isolation

Of all the advantages of bush living that these men stayed to enjoy, none was more

consistently argued, or unexpected, than that they could create an element of isolation in

their lives. The isolation of the bush was the feature these gay men most often referred

to in their explanations as to why they liked bush life and it was the feature of the bush

that they were able to use with best effect to enhance their lives. Isolation, for these gay

men, was one of the real attractions of the bush.

They not only liked the isolation that was fundamental to the rural landscape in which

they lived, but they made that isolation part of their lifestyle. Yet, this deliberate

integration of isolation into their lives did not, paradoxically, make them feel isolated.

In fact, it had the opposite effect. The natural isolation of the bush that these men

relished gave them a sense of place and bound them to it. It increased these men’s sense

of belonging and connectedness to the bush. It underpinned their desire to stay where

they felt they belonged and where they knew they wanted to be. The isolation of the

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bush was an important factor in why these gay men chose, and so determinedly worked,

to stay in the bush.

The isolation of which these gay men spoke was multifaceted just as its effects on their

lives in the bush were various and complex. Their testimonies made it clear that they

expected and accepted an element of isolation (and aloneness) in their lives. Isolation

and aloneness were not sources of loneliness but rather sources of personal space and

something of a delight to enjoy. Bobby made this point, quite matter of factly, admitting

that ‘… yeah, I like the isolation. I like the … ahm … freedom to do what I want’

[20/10]. Another man emphasised that for him the whole point of living in a rural community was ‘…[the] isolation, I suppose’ [6/97].

Isolation had both a geographical and a social perspective. Geographical isolation was experienced in a number of ways. Rural people grow up with distance and its impact and accept this form of isolation as part of their lives and part of being in the bush. It was the same for these gay men. For many of them, it meant a couple of hours drive to go shopping, to see friends or to do business. For Neville, it was a two-hour drive each way to receive the medical attention he required because of his HIV+ status. For Bobby, it was being flooded in because of impassable creek crossings after rain. Geographical isolation, though, was more than just an accepted part of living in the bush.

Rex said that the isolation he brought to his life was something he welcomed. ‘… I like being alone occasionally. … I suppose I even like having to drive the two or three hours to, you know, get to another place’ [21/53]. The long drive to go somewhere was not an onerous imposition for Rex. While the ‘I like’ in this case referred specifically to the two-hour drive, there is no hint that the isolation which made the two-hour drive

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necessary was a matter of dislike. This notion of liking the isolation of the bush, the

geographical as well as the social that flowed on from it, was a surprisingly common feature of the testimonies of the men in this study. For many men, the raison d’etre of living in the bush was to live with and enjoy an element of isolation. This was not the kind of isolation, geographical or social, which was externally imposed. As will be seen, isolation that these men had imposed on them was more difficult to endure. These men savoured the kind of isolation they could create and factor into their own lives. Some men crafted it by living out of town. Others fashioned it by withdrawing from the community and not participating in the life of the community to the extent that they might have been expected to. And others did it by doing both and so building a sense of geographical and social isolation into their lives.

The bush was where these gay men could have the lifestyle in which their need for some isolation in their lives could be realised. Bobby mentioned choice of ‘lifestyle’ as a reason for being happy to stay in the bush. He went one step further and said it was

‘… the lifestyle of space’ [20/9] that was his reason for wanting to live in the bush. But these men did not conflate space and isolation. They were two different aspects of bush life. Space in these men’s usage of the term took on two forms that overlapped. On the one hand it was a geographical term that involved physical distance and usually that

distance was configured as distance from other people. On the other, they saw space as a personal and psychological dimension that gave them room to be who they were.

For Bobby, space was the outdoors and the dimension in which he worked his horses. It was the dimension through which he connected the bush itself with the lifestyle he wanted. The geographical concept of space gave Bobby a distance from other people. It

155 gave Bobby the perception and experience of isolation that he wanted in his life. But the geographical space and the isolation it made possible also allowed Bobby the mental room/space to be gay.

But this conception of space was not the interpretation of only one man in this study. It was a common feature of their testimonies. For Chris it was the ‘… space to be by yourself’ [6/117]. This statement is rich in intent. Space gave Chris the isolation he needed to be by himself. Being by himself also provided Chris with the space in a personal and psychological sense to be his gay self. These men saw the bush as providing the space they wanted and needed to be both by themselves and to be themselves. The isolation, both geographical and social, that these men infused into their lives allowed them to experience and enjoy a rural lifestyle that accommodated their homosexuality as well. In a way, these men did not have to create avenues to step outside or away from the community. It was already naturally there in the space of the place.

While some men in this study were less inhibited about their sexuality than others, none hid that aspect of their lives. Many were in gay relationships, all were sexually active and all were out to family and/or friends. Most of these gay men were able to be gay in a semi-public way. A number of men commented that, while they did conduct themselves in public with a sense of wariness and restraint, they were still able to be gay. The reasons for this had to do with the fact that these men kept largely to themselves and kept apart from the community. They allowed the space and isolation of place to figure in their lives. For example, in answer to a question from me on this point,

Bobby was very clear,

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E: Do you make any compromises at all in being able to live here in a homosexual lifestyle, rather than a gay one? B: Oh, you don’t need to put that after it. It is a gay lifestyle. But ahm …as far as I’m aware, I don’t make many compromises. I don’t know if I make any. … you see, because we don’t have immediate neighbours, I expect that there are things that we ahm … don’t compromise on that one would have to compromise on if we had someone living at the bottom of the garden. For example, if we wish to ahm … have sex in the chicken shed, we can do that. Not that we do, but … [we] wouldn’t offend the chooks, but you know what I mean. We …we are free to wander around [naked]. Ahm … for example, [after] we’ve been swimming then we can come up get undressed by ourselves in front of the house and no drama. For some people that could be a little bit offensive, but because there is no one there it’s not offending anyone [20/8–9].

However, other men also made the point that they felt that the community may not have

thought the issue too important to make a fuss over. Jim reckoned that people in country

towns, in his experience, ‘…don’t really care’ [3/25–26] about the sexuality of others.

Toby made a similar comment about allowing one’s gay persona to come through,

I don’t think it really matters. Ahm … and the funny thing is when you tell people, they’ll say, ‘Oh, that’s OK’ [8/43]. Chris said about country people that,

Ahm … most of them know and … and …and let you know in some subtle way that they know, and that’s not an issue [6/60–61].

The isolation of the bush and the isolated lives that these gay men chose to live allowed

them the freedom to be gay and, as such, it was a major reason to stay.

The geographical isolation of the bush was one of the aspects that they liked in much

the same way as they did the beauty of the bush. As has been said earlier in this chapter,

it was as if these men’s gay sensibilities equated to the beauty and the ruggedness of the

landscape with its isolation. But though the physical isolation was an inducement to stay, the social isolation that these men could and did make part of their lives was also

an incentive to stay. Chris was the man who most stridently made the point that though

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he lived in a rural community he kept largely to himself because he wanted a sense of isolation in his life. He said he did not feel that this isolation was a burden or that it

made life difficult. Rather, he admitted that isolation is something that he wanted in his

life and that it suited him to be isolated.

[I] could, but, I mean, I’m a bit of a loner anyway … it suits me, ’cause I can sit quite happily here, [and] although I’m in the town and I can hear the traffic and hear the town noise, ahm … I can be [as isolated as I want to be] [6/68].

The ‘I can be’ indicated that Chris regulated the isolation in his life and was happy to be

somewhat reclusive.

Jack and his partner, John (who was not interviewed for this research), lived together on their farm outside of Wobegon. While Jack had previously indicated that he felt he and

his partner had been accepted ‘very well’ by the community in Wobegon, he spoke of a

social disconnection from the community in which they lived. Jack spoke of feeling

socially isolated in that

… socially, we weren’t mixing … . We led a fairly isolated life, in that I remarked on this to John that there were very few houses that we go into socially – very few … [1/29]

In public, they were treated with civility and their relationships with people were

generally ones of cordial acquaintanceship. Though they were well known in the

community and involved on a couple of local committees and in their church, their

interaction did not extend to social occasions at their home. Given that in the country

one invitation usually begets another, the fact that Jack could admit that ‘there were

very few houses that we go into socially’ indicated that they may not have invited many

people to their home. This suggested that they chose to disconnect from this level of

social interaction in the community. The social isolation that Jack spoke of resulted not

from Jack and John being unwelcome in other people’s homes but from their apparent

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reluctance to have neighbours and people from the general community over to their

place for dinner, afternoon tea, a barbecue or any of a number of other social occasions.

However, Jack did speak of having out-of-town gay friends to their home, indicating

that like other men in this study, the connections Jack and John made with people were confined to a small group of friends and to family.

These men infused a level of social isolation into their lives thinking that they could not

readily and openly disclose their sexuality and their relationships beyond their closest

friends. One of the consequences of realising they were gay, and/or of others ‘knowing’ or suspecting that they were, was that these men increasingly detached themselves from the wider community. They were of the opinion that there would be little support and acceptance of them as gay men and so chose to restrict their social interactions with those on whom such support and acceptance could be counted. The space of the bush was a ready-made route from which to escape the scrutiny and censure of the community and what Durkheim might call the ‘over-regulation’ of the individual.

Sam had an exuberant view of the bush. But while he did business in the town, he did not socially interact with the wider community. Nevertheless, he had out-of-town gay friends to visit and spoke of this in a way which implied that his friendships were important to him and he went to some effort to maintain those links and lines of

communication. As he said,

Ahm … we all live isolated lives … well I do, and I … I really treasure and try to be as good a communicator as I can to these other [gay] friends that live in the country [15/13].

Sam owned a relatively large cattle property on the outskirts of the small village of

Dalgety. He liked the geographical isolation of his homestead, the beauty of its setting

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and the personal privacy and seclusion it afforded him. He spoke of his part of the bush

this way,

… last night, for example, I came in at six o’clock [from working] all day. I had a shower … and went and sat on the verandah. And I sat there looking over ‘my Ponderosa’ and I thought, Jesus … I mean, This is all right [15/21–22].

While not all the men in this study wanted to live a semi-reclusive lifestyle, they did use

the physical isolation to enhance the level of social isolation in their lives. These men

connected with the bush itself, and less so with people. As will be seen in Chapter

Seven, these men exercised control over the interaction with the community and they kept it to a level that suited them. This act of isolating themselves was a strategy that gave them protection from the inquisitiveness of others and it was a means by which they were able to silence potential criticism. The point should be made that one can also make oneself socially isolated in the city. Nevertheless, the isolation that these gay men incorporated into their lives was more than simply withdrawing from society. These men’s’ narratives made it clear that the ruggedness and beauty of the physical setting combined with the isolation that such a place allowed them to incorporate into their lives made it possible for them to lead gayer lives. That place could both sanction and facilitate them to be themselves gave added significance to place and, in effect, put these men a relationship with the bush. The meanings and significance of the bush gave these men a closeness and oneness with that place. They were not strangers to it. This sense of place, belonging to place and identifying with it was as real for them as it was intangible.

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Conclusion

These gay men had lived in the bush for many years and had decided to stay. They were acutely aware of the difficulties they faced as gay men and were fully cognizant of the compromises they had made in order to live there. They also stayed because of what they saw as the advantages of rural life. These men emphasised that some of the more appealing aspects of their lives in the bush were those very aspects usually considered as the major disadvantages of rural life and often cited the factors said to force gay men to leave the bush. For example, these gay men said that they not only enjoy rural life but that they disliked urban living. Family played a more significant role in these men’s lives than generally acknowledged. They felt that their physical safety was not in jeopardy in the bush. These gay men nominated their sense of freedom as one of the reasons they continue living in the bush. While these have been nominated as reasons to force gay men from the bush, they are often cited as the advantages of rural life. It is, therefore, not altogether surprising that these men would allude to these aspects of rural life that other rural people found appealing. After all, these men were rural men too.

However, as gay men, they also appreciated other facets of rural life. For example, aloneness and friendship emerged as important aspects in these men’s lives. Their friendship circles were small, close, accepting and usually (but not always) made up of other gay men. Isolation appeared to be a multifaceted issue and these gay men relished a degree of geographical and social isolation in their lives that they accepted as part of living in the bush and part of being where they want to be. Sometimes, though, these men felt that they required a self-imposed isolation from the community to protect themselves from the sting of social rejection and from a sense of passive ostracism in the community in which they lived. Nevertheless, isolation often involved a

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disengagement from the community in order to lead a gayer life. For these men, it was

about choice and the way they wanted to live.

These generally positive responses to what has usually been depicted as the

disincentives of the bush for gay men are unexpected findings. This chapter has shown

that they stayed in the bush because it offered them a lifestyle that other places could

not. However, living in the bush also had some disadvantages. Just as the isolation of

the bush had advantages, it was more difficult to endure when it was thought to have

been imposed on them and outside their control. Likewise, the bush itself also posed

some obstacles and hindrances. These gay men recognised and accepted these

difficulties that rural living entailed, but chose to stay in the bush in spite of them. It is these issues that will be discussed in the next chapter.

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Chapter Five

Staying in the Bush in Spite of the Difficulties

… she came in and asked the boss’ wife [if I was a homosexual]. She said, “Have you [employed] one of those arse-lickers in your shop? [Cleever]

Introduction

The previous chapter demonstrated that the rural gay men in this study deliberately

chose to stay in the bush and some of the reasons for that decision included the

realisation that the city was not a viable option for them, the sense of security they

found in the bush and the proximity of family and friends. Their testimonies revealed a

desire to stay that reflected both a bonding with place but a concomitant detachment from the people and the structures of the community in which they lived. This sense of

place and wanting to stay in the bush that reverberated throughout these gay men’s

testimonies has not previously been examined in an Australian context.

However, these gay men were skilled social operators and knew well the social and physical realities of the bush. They were aware that their passion for a rural lifestyle came with some disadvantages and difficulties which meant a degree of sacrifice and compromise. Staying in the bush, therefore, did not depend only on the advantages of a rural lifestyle. Living in a rural area had its downside and these gay men were well aware of this. Staying was the culmination or the end result of all the things these men liked about the bush as well as their acceptance of the difficulties. Their statements

reveal a tenacity in their resolve to stay and they accepted the attendant disadvantages

of rural living and stayed in spite of them. This chapter will examine this aspect of these

men’s lives in the bush.

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‘ … I Don’t Plan On Leaving’

Elements of determination and defiance were evident in these men’s reasons for

wanting to live in the bush. They were aware of the difficulties of being gay and living

in small towns and of perceived and actual anti-gay attitudes in the community. In order to stay, these men staked their claim to a place in the bush regardless of what others thought. They expressed a desire and a steadfastness to stay on their own terms.

To stay required not only resolve and fortitude but also resilience and defiance. Jim, the young man who had had a terrible time through school at the hands of bullies (and at the hands of teachers who chose to ignore the situation) could say,

I’m going to stay for a long time actually. I don’t plan on leaving. Ahm … you know, this is my home. This is where I’ve grown up [3/22].

The defiant stance indicated in the phrase ‘I don’t plan on leaving’ is unmistakable and can be clearly heard in the intonation of those words on the tape. This defiance is all the more striking given the threats and the physical and emotional violence inflicted on Jim during his school years in the town.

These men felt that, in general, the communities in which they lived were not open and welcoming. And because they were gay men, they knew they did not heteronormatively conform – regardless of whether that facet of their lives was community knowledge or not. They knew that acceptance and inclusion was withheld from them by many in the community because of their known or presumed sexuality. Rex put this view more forcefully than the other men. He believed that,

Mmmmm … [pause] [rural] people’s attitudes to gays are basically that they shouldn’t be here. They have no place here. We don’t need them … ahm … they should move somewhere else [21/3-4].

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The men who articulated this resolve to stay in the bush most clearly were those who

had experienced the more overt instances of anti-gay sentiment. Rex found it galling to

have to endure a few anti-gay comments at work, though it seems that none were

specifically directed at him. Sam was an older man who had already been hounded out

of one small town by the local community. His determination to stay on his cattle

property just outside of Dalgety was unambiguous. He said, ‘And I will continue to stay

here. They will have to burn me at the stake before I leave …’ [15/51]. I am not sure

whether Sam was aware of the irony of his comment in that Joan de Arc was burned at

the stake as much for her gender non-conformity as for any political or religious

motives.

Others, too, made it clear that to stay in the bush required considerable grit and tenacity.

Their comments, though not as strident as those of Jim and Sam, were clear. For example, Chris says, ‘… I have no desire to pack my bags and move … I’m happy where I am …’ [6/118]. While one might have interpreted this as a simple statement,

the cadence on the tape of ‘I’m happy where I am’ suggests a dogged insistence on

staying regardless of the consequences. There is the implicit message of ‘I will not be

moved (from here)’. Simon was asked how the community influenced the way he lived

and he replied, ‘… it doesn’t really influence me in any respect …’ [10/43]. On the tape,

there is a tone of brazenness in his voice, suggesting that he is not going to be overly

influenced by local attitudes. He was not going to live his life according to the dictates or expectations of the community. Certainly, he was not going to be ‘influenced’ by the views of others to leave the place in which he wanted to live. This attitude to public opinion was common and it had little to do with whether the men had publicly disclosed their sexuality or not. Izak was also determined and defiant and was quite clear about

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what he had to do, ‘It’s … my life. Not other people’s, you know, [that] they control or

something. I just control [my life]’ [12/23–24]. Izak did not mince his words. His

determination was as real as it was effective.

The question has to be considered whether this determination was a necessary

ingredient for these men to be able to stay in the bush. The fact that they liked the bush, and had said so with such fervour, meant that they took whatever action was required to stay there. Their realization that a life away from the bush was unacceptable and that a happy and fulfilling life could only be had in the bush only added to this determination to stay. But such a strong desire to stay also has to be seen in the context of resilience to community attitudes and actions that these men thought would oppress them or unnecessarily constrain them – if they were allowed to prevail.

This led these men to devise a number of deliberate strategies to enable them to stay in the bush. While these will be discussed in detail in Chapter Seven, the fact is that these men chose to stay in spite of what they saw as attempts by rural communities to stifle the openness with which they could live their lives. This is not only evidence of the success of their strategies but also evidence of their drive to stay and live the rural lifestyle that they wanted so much.

While they felt it was necessary to exert a level of stubbornness and courage in order to stay and live their lives in rural localities, these gay men did not suggest that they had to deal with attempts by people in the community to drive them away. With one exception, these men did not suggest that there were deliberate and concerted efforts on the part of rural communities to force gay men to leave. But they did not have a sense of

166 belonging to, or oneness with, the people of the area. They did not report experiencing a sense of welcome and inclusivity from the community which suggested to them that the community would prefer it that gay men not live there. It is exemplified by the subtle and insidious perpetration of sexuality-motivated abuse.

Homophobia – Staying in Spite of It

The men in this study felt the impact of homophobia and knew of its sting whether they experienced it through direct abuse or through the barbed comments of everyday talk.

While homophobia adversely affected all the gay men in this study, their testimonies also indicated that the homophobia they have encountered did not have a debilitative and destructive impact on their lives. They did not allow it to have that effect. And they stayed in spite of it.

The men began to experience homophobia early in their lives. They reported schoolyard bullying from primary school through to their adolescent high school years. For some, that bullying was so severe that they actually left school at the earliest opportunity. Jim and Izak, both of whom went to Geriffi High School, were cases in point. However, the level and type of abuse used in the school ground was different to that used in public or in the workplace. Schoolyard abuse appeared to be accompanied by some violence and physical attack. Of the men who completed their final years of high school, none reported direct homophobic bullying during those last two years, although, of course, they went to considerable lengths to conceal their homosexuality and their homosexual encounters.

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While these men also spoke of being homophobically abused subsequent to leaving

school, they played down the severity of that abuse and the effect it had on them and

instead suggested that what they had to endure was low-level and relatively harmless.

This reaction may have been the result of the lack of physical violence. When required, these men could be a thick-skinned and resilient lot. Their dismissal of the abuse was a

reflection of how they dealt with it. Most of them simply ignored any public slurs and insults that came their way not because they were wimps, but because a public response was not in their best interests. A private response, as the next section will demonstrate, was another matter. Nevertheless, the homophobia that these gay men encountered was trying, tiring and wearying. Rex commented,

Ahm … homophobic ohhhhh … I don’t think there is a day that goes by that you don’t hear of someone who’s been bashed, or someone who should be bashed or a … ahm … homophobic joke, or a put-down, you know, within the business people, within the township, with anyone you meet in the town. It’s … it’s just one of those …. I think Nurrupabri is a hard place. Mmmm … [pause] … gays … have no place here. [21/3–4].

These gay men were generally anxious about others to whom they had chosen not to disclose that they were gay. Whisperings around the town, the stares, the avoidances, the snubs and the lack of invitations to all manner of functions were indicators that the word was out. But what they did not know, and yet were always fearful of, was when the next slight was coming and from where it might arise.

As was noted in the previous chapter, while these men felt that their physical safety was not at risk in the bush, this did not imply that they were not concerned about the always present threat of homophobic comment. The dread of being abused in the street was something that these men faced on an everyday basis. It was the uncertainty of if, and when, such attacks might occur rather than the verbal slight itself that these men were

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most worried about. Verbal attacks were relatively rare and did not advance to physical

violence and did not directly threaten these men’s sense of personal physical safety.

Nevertheless, these men felt that they had always to be on guard against the accusation in public of being ‘a poofter’. Such an onslaught on the streets of small towns was always an ordeal better avoided.

It was this always present, but silent, threat that these men had to face on an almost daily basis. It was having to be constantly aware and prepared that was wearying. Petro

made the comment that he was always wary of

… nasty remarks …. I would be the brunt of bad jokes. Ahm … it would be behind my back [and] to my face … [14/7].

While these men did retaliate with good effect and they did receive some community

support in the face of overt and spiteful attack, it was far more difficult to rebut

innuendo and smear. Gary talked about the sense of feeling that others didn’t like you

because of your sexuality. He said,

Ahm … like you get the occasional, you know, someone stares at you or they’re just moving their lips and you know that they are just saying something about you … you know [19/14].

Sometimes the feeling of being the brunt of homophobia was more than just a feeling

and the remarks did have a target. Ivor told the story of

… a couple of years ago, we were actually going around selling World AIDS Day ribbons. And people from the [local gay] group were walking up and down the street … asking people, you know, would you like a pin or what not. And there was actually a few people who turned around and said, ‘I’m not going to give you money for that filthy, disgusting disease of fags’, and that type of thing [7/11].

But this spiteful type of community reaction was not the only way in which some

members of the community reacted to gay people. While these men indicated that such

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public abuse could be subdued, they also made the point that members of rural

communities did not always stand by and do nothing when men came under public

attack because they were gay.

The homophobia they encountered was unpleasant and distasteful. But the men deemed it insufficient to cause them to contemplate leaving. They stayed in spite of the sporadic jibe or, in the case of Jack, the concerted campaign by a small but vocal section of his church’s congregation against him and his partner. And the support these men found not only in the form of family and friends but also in the actions of ordinary people in the community surprised them and added to their determination to stay in spite of the difficulties that they faced. Therefore, it is useful to look at how one gay couple in a small and isolated country town reported their community’s reaction when they faced anti-gay comment.

‘… Have You [Employed] One of Those Arse-Lickers In Your Shop?’ – A Rural Community Reacts to Homophobia

Though the men concerned did not dwell in self-pity on any anti-gay abuse they had to

endure, what they had to say about the reaction of the community is of particular

interest. To get the feel of the level of abuse and the community reaction to it, two men will be allowed to speak at length about their experiences in the small country town in which they had lived for some considerable time.

(i) The Level of Abuse

Gerry and Cleever spoke about the homophobia that existed in their small town of

Barappa. For Gerry, it was something that you dealt with one way or another and got on

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with life. He talked about the slights that were hurled at them in public and they decided

to generally ignore those, saying,

Ahm … most of it’s just the yobbo type thing. You know, for a while there, there were … . We’d drive through town and … there was one or two people that would cooee out and … and throw slurs and things like that. Just ignored it … it never occurred again [18/10].

But they also had to endure non-public instances of abuse. They received a series of annoying phone calls, and they decided not to ignore those, indicating,

We were getting phone calls for a while ahm … until I threatened them some strife and we’ve never … never had another one. … So … [we] soon put a stop to them [18/10].

Gerry decided to retaliate a little and took matters into his own hands. He indicated that he knew who was making the phone calls and made some threatening remarks back to

them. That appeared to quickly cure the problem. There was a touch of defiance in what he said in the transcript and, on going back to the tape, it was certainly in the tone of it

as well. The ‘we soon put a stop to them’ applied not only to the unwanted phone calls,

but also to the people who were making them. It was very clear that Gerry had the will

and strength to withstand and confront the slurs that were directed their way. When

asked about other instances of ongoing abuse, rather than the odd taunt from a passing

car and the phone calls, he summed up the current situation in the town, ‘No. It hasn’t

[been ongoing]. No, we’ve been, I suppose, we’ve … you could say we’ve been fairly

lucky’ [18/13].

Interestingly, Cleever (Gerry’s long-time partner) did not mention the ‘yobbos’ in cars,

nor did he mention the annoying phone calls. Possibly, these were matters that Gerry

had been able to deal with. It could be that he saw them as less severe and hurtful

because they were directed at both of them and they happened usually when they were

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together. But Cleever did remember other instances of homophobia that hurt him

immensely and these also centred on verbal abuse in public places. Two of these

instances related to when he was working as a shop assistant in the town. Cleever said

that he used to have sex out the back of the shop with one of the travelling salesmen.

But there was another salesman,

… one bloke, he was … ahm … a traveller for one of the food groups … he found out [that I was gay] and he started to say that … he had to turn his back to the wall and all that. It got very upsetting sometimes [17/21–22].

Two things were ‘upsetting’ for Cleever. One was that this salesman was acting out the old bush saying of ‘bums to the wall’ that used to be said when anyone who was thought to be gay was around – be it the classroom, the pub or the workplace. It was hurtful because it implied and meant rejection. And it implied that because one was supposedly gay, then one was also predatory and, as such, one fancied every man within sight. It was the insinuation of the untrue that was hurtful. But what was also ‘upsetting’ was that this action was carried out in public in the shop, in front of Cleever’s employers and the customers. Such insults not only hurt, but they jeopardised Cleever’s job. They had the potential to turn customers away from a small business in a small town. But the travelling salesman travelled on.

(ii) The Community Reaction

Cleever also talked about the shopkeeper next to the shop in which he worked. That shop was a hairdressing salon and the owner was a woman. It seemed that she took exception to homosexuals12 and more so to the fact that a (suspected) homosexual was

12 The word ‘homosexual’ is deliberately used in this paragraph in reference to people to reflect the disdain and derision this woman had towards Cleever and towards gay men in general.

172 working next door. The nature of her language, as related by Cleever, indicated a deep- seated antipathy to homosexuality and homosexuals. One day she came into the shop where Cleever worked and confronted the employer’s wife about having a homosexual working next door to her salon. Cleever told of the ensuing conversation,

…one of the next door customers was a hairdresser [and] she came in and asked the boss’ wife [if I was gay]. She said, ‘Have you [employed] one of those arse-lickers in your shop?’ [17/21]

Cleever did not say whether he overheard this comment, but he certainly came to know of it. The boss and his wife were, apparently, not ones to be intimidated and replied that the sexual behaviour of their employee was not a matter about which they need, or should be, concerned. The implication of her reply was that her next-door neighbour also need not be concerned, and that, in effect, she should mind her own business.

Cleever also spoke of one man in particular in the town who used to make disparaging remarks against him and Gerry in the street. Cleever said of him that ‘…he would ahm

… very much try and ahm … put us down and everything …’ [17/28]. However, just as the boss’ wife was able to be supportive, Cleever also found support from unexpected quarters,

And even some of his friends ahm … friends actually would even put him down [when he was] putting us down. So that was really good [17/p.28].

In both instances where homophobia was directed at Cleever and Gerry in public, members of the rural community in which they lived came to their defence. Those who made homophobic and disparaging comments in public were put in their place by members of the community. This surprised Cleever and Gerry. It is evidence that not all members of rural communities hold anti-gay attitudes and that the exercise of a social

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conscience by even a few members of the community can result in the lessening of

abuse against vulnerable members of the community. The ‘live and let live’ attitude that

these men spoke of encountering in their rural communities seems to become more than

that when men who are seen to be good people were unfairly attacked. The testimony of these men tended to indicate that some community members will defend gay men in the face of insult and attack.

This is in common with the experiences of other men in this study. The defence of Jack by others in his church’s congregation that was mentioned earlier comes to mind. Jack and John were well-known and respected members of Wobegon and their local church.

The congregation

… had concluded that we were [a gay couple], but that they hadn’t thought it necessary to raise it means that they didn’t see it as anything of importance to them [1/27]

This testimony suggests that Jack believed that ordinary people in rural communities will defend others in the face of bigotry. Jack felt that gay men would be defended from attack even if the community was not entirely accepting of a gay lifestyle. The testimony of these men has indicated that where men have lived for some time and were known and respected and where they had family and friends, work and business, they could be tolerated, at least, as gay men. These men generally thought they were likely to be defended by conscionable townspeople if attacked. This fits well with the testimony of the men detailed in Chapter Four where they spoke of feeling secure and safe in their hometowns and their local environment. The communities in which these men lived appeared to adopt a ‘live and let live’ attitude towards these men, even if their sexuality was not totally accepted. As Jack tellingly said in another part of his testimony, the rural community is usually more interested in the man than who he might take to bed.

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The opinion of the men themselves was that these episodes of homophobia directed at

gay men living in a small and relatively isolated town appear to be low-key. There was

no violence attached to them. They appeared to be mainly one-off comments and were

not part of an ongoing series of verbal assaults. They were not revealing of anything

that was not already relatively well known. Neither Cleever nor Gerry were being

‘outed’. But to agree with Cleever and Gerry that this kind of homophobia is

inconsequential is an urban-centric viewpoint. It seriously underestimates the effect that

even seemingly petty verbal slights can have on gay men trying to live uncomplicated

lives in small and isolated country towns. And it misunderstands the nature of a small

rural community as well as the experience of living as a gay man in such a place.

Homophobic slurs and abuse, however low-level, against gay men in small towns had

an impact because the size of the town in which it happened made it semi-public. Those

who made the comments were known to all. The person at whom the comments were

directed was also well known. To publicly retaliate was risky, especially when support

from the community could not automatically be counted upon. The resilience they

needed to endure and cope with such taunts and the distress it causes is difficult to

imagine from the outside. The courage of these gay men to have confronted the

instances of abuse when they occurred should not be underestimated, particularly in the circumstances in which these men found themselves. The fact that such abuse stopped was an indication of the effectiveness of the retaliation by Gerry and Cleever, something that was common to the experiences of other men in this study.

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Homophobic Violence

While every man in this study reported some level of homophobia, violence did not

appear prominently in their stories. Rudy was the only man in this study to discuss

physical violence perpetrated against him subsequent to leaving school. He had been

attacked on the way home from a night out in Geriffi. He said that, ‘I’ve always had that

feeling of being physically unsafe’ [2/34] and, of course, this feeling was greatly enhanced after this assault. It was suspected that such an assault might have been homophobically motivated, especially when Rudy said that

I think looking around the town, just at … some of the folk who live here … ahm … there seems to be to my observation to be that kind of …ahm … violent spirit about the place. There seems to be some thuggy looking types … ahm … there seems to be a lot of guys in the town who had that really rough kind of …ahm … thing about them which … where, I think, violence would … would be a way that they would deal with things [2/34–35].

But the assault on Rudy was, by his own admission, a random attack that in his own

words ‘could have happened anywhere’. It did not appear to be a gay-hate assault.

While it certainly didn’t assist Rudy’s already dim view of Geriffi, it did mean, in effect,

that the men in this study have been free of homophobically motivated physical

violence perpetrated against them in their hometowns. However, Rudy’s comment that

he felt unsafe was something that applied only to the town of Gerrifi and not to the bush

in general. It was not a comment he made in relation to any other town that he went to.

This is not to say that these gay men were not sometimes fearful of such an attack were

they to live a more openly gay life. However, violence committed in smaller rural

communities was likely to be known about and the perpetrators were likely to be easily

linked to such violence. The smallness of the community could often be a self-policing

mechanism. The experience of violence that one might have expected from the

176 evidence of previous studies to be perpetrated against gay men living in rural communities did not arise in these men’s’ stories.

The Downside of Isolation

The previous chapter dealt with the advantages that these gay men attributed to living a somewhat isolated life in the bush. But this is not to say that these men did not speak of some negative impacts of isolation in their lives. Isolation was an expected and accepted part of rural living and that also meant an acceptance of the not so positive aspects of living isolated lives. In some senses, isolation was a factor in their lives in spite of which they stayed in the bush. While Bobby might have said, somewhat

‘campy’ and tongue-in-cheek, that ‘… decent chocolate, decent coffee … there are few luxuries and ahm … things tend to be very bad …’ [20/22] were the worst features of the geographical isolation, he went on to talk about isolation in another way that did affect him. The isolation was not really about the lack of decent coffee, but about the lack of news and the lack of interest in, and influence of, the outside world on the community in which he lived. The phone line was still of the ‘party-line’ type (a line common to a group of subscribers and did not allow for a private conversation). Such a telephone line prevented him from being able to surf the Internet or from being able to send (and receive) emails and any phone call he had could be overheard.

A re-reading of the transcript of Bobby’s interview, and more particularly, a re-listening to that part of the tape where he spoke of isolation, revealed a tangible twinge of sadness in his voice. While being careful not to attribute motive to this obviously sad intonation, it was an acknowledgment of the negative impact of the isolation in which

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he lived. According to Bobby, even the television compounded the geographical isolation

… basically, ahm … when I say isolated, perhaps I could sum it up by saying for example, local television. If you watch some of the bulletins … the headline is that somebody has fallen off their bed … rather than … the presidential situation in the [United] States or something like that. I understand that we have to have local news, but that is something that I find quite isolating. I do like to know what is going on elsewhere in the world, and I find ahm … physically, that’s what I mean by isolation [20/22].

But in a way, Bobby was also part of the “syndrome” of introspection that he speaks of.

For example, there was no newspaper or socio-political magazines such as Time or The

Bulletin in Bobby’s home on the farm when I visited him for the interview. But to

expect him to be at variance from his straight neighbours because of his sexuality may be unreasonable. These gay men were also rural men and had some things in common with other people in the community.

The negative effects of isolation impacted more and were more difficult to endure when it resulted in a lack of control over their lives. The downside of geographical isolation

was closely related to mobility. Though these men were not especially concerned about

distance, what did affect them was their ability to traverse that distance and be in a

position to break the isolation as and when they needed to. Neville linked distance and

geographical isolation in a very pragmatic fashion. He said that,

… isolation up here is travelling. To get anywhere you’ve got to drive. Ahm … so you can’t jump on a train or a bus or a tram or something like that and ahm … you going to visit people or places or venues or things like that, but ahm … that’s the only isolation [16/11].

Having transport appeared to be a key issue for these men. Being able to travel to town, the next town or further was a key factor in living contentedly in the bush. It should be

noted, however, that isolation in this context was not only a matter that affected those

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who lived out of town. Neville lived in town. Rudy also lived in the fairly large country

town of Geriffi which was quite some distance from other country towns. It did not

have some of the services, such as art galleries and a theatre, that he looked for. Though

he described the area around Geriffi in almost glowing terms and talked about the

beauty of the bush, the geographical isolation he felt was compounded by his lack of

mobility. When he went to live in Geriffi, he did not have a car for the first two years.

So he had to walk everywhere. If he wanted to go out of town, it was either by public

transport or he had to stay at home. Usually it was the latter. He said of that time,

… before I bought my car, I had a terrible sense of being marooned here. [I] couldn’t get away or anything because the way Geriffi is geographically ahm … located is a very difficult place in terms of transport [2/46].

Later in the interview, he came back to this real sense of isolation that he had to endure

making the point that ‘…staying here has been a very … one feeling has been the geographical isolating experience, ahm … its been a transport isolating experience’

[2/64].

For rural gay men without a car or access to personal transport, the isolation of living in even a larger town was compounded not so much because of the location of the town, but because they could not get about. They could not easily go anywhere else for weekends, short breaks, to see a play or an exhibition. The lack of personal transport made it very difficult for gay men to get appropriate medical treatments, especially in the case of HIV, and this made the sense of isolation all the more acute. The lack of mobility combined with an ensuing sense of being shut off and shut out intensified the feeling of isolation that they experienced and had to deal with. It was not the distance that was at issue. Without mobility, isolation became a problem. Transport gave them access to places and people over the confines of the ‘levee bank’. It gave them a sense

179 of some control over their lives and allowed them to choose the level of isolation they wanted in their lives rather than have it imposed upon them. It should also be noted that both Rudy and Neville quite clearly suggested that once the transport problem was overcome, the negative sense of isolation largely disappeared.

Though geographical isolation might be sharpened by the lack of mobility, for some men this rolled into a sense of feeling personally isolated. Men in this study used the words ‘marooned’ and ‘confined’ in this regard. They talked about being ‘trapped’ and

‘stuck’. The most potent effects of isolation occurred when they could not, or felt they could not, do anything about it. For example, Gary was very clear about it,

E: What is your conception of isolation then? G: Ahm … confined to a spot, I guess, that you really can’t get out of … [19/9].

For Gary, his ‘confinement’ was to the small, and getting smaller, town of Wide Creek where the opportunities for meaningful work were few, where the options for young people were severely limited and where the chances of meeting other gay men were seemingly negligible. Gary had transport and could physically get out, but this left his single mother to bring up other younger children in the family by herself. So the ‘spot that you can’t get out of’ that Gary spoke of was related to the moral dilemma of leaving his mother and siblings alone, were he to live elsewhere. He felt ‘confined’ and unable to do anything about it and this made him personally isolated.

Other than the men with mobility problems, those men most likely to feel ‘trapped’ were those who were young. In speaking about their personal experiences of isolation, a number of men reminisced about their youth. Several men in this study had lived on the family property in their youth and this was a time of real isolation for them as they

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came to realise, comprehend and deal with their homosexuality. Chris grew up on the

large family property in what was then a very geographically isolated part of northern

NSW. Chris’ comments about feeling isolated were very much coloured by his own

personal experiences of growing up on his family’s farm, knowing that he was gay. He

noted that

…I may think differently if I were a seventeen or an eighteen year old [gay] guy stuck in the bush. Or felt stuck. I think that is the biggest problem – for the young ones. They feel … some of them, trapped. Not necessarily the town kids, but the farm kids [6/113].

And he then went on to delineate two kinds of ways in which he thought young gay

men could feel trapped in the bush ‘… they feel that the expectation is that they will

continue on the family business and that they will live at home until they get married’

[6/113–114].

Like Gary, he combined the entrapment of family expectations with that of geographical isolation,

… if you were a young man or woman trapped in the … feeling trapped in the country, it’s very difficult. There is nowhere to get away, because … I know living at home, I mean, you couldn’t go out at night, I mean, the nearest town is fifty miles away. You can’t just say I’m hopping around the corner to see Joe or … or going down to the shop to get some milk and not come home for two hours. It doesn’t work like that. The opportunity for anonymous outings aren’t … aren’t there, especially if you live miles out of town. … And, you know, [in] a lot of those families, you live together twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and there’s not the opportunity to … to express your, or even explore your own feelings quite often [6/115–116].

Chris made the poignant observation that this sense of being ‘trapped’, and the resultant isolation, was likely to have an impact on the out-of-town gay adolescent more than anyone else. Such an adolescent had no readily available transport. He lived and worked at home and his every move was monitored. His absences would have been noted.

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As has been mentioned, these men said that isolation was most acutely felt and was more difficult to endure when it was thought to have been imposed on them and outside their control. The personal isolation that they felt was not so much isolation ‘from’, but the isolation of ‘being confined to’. This was certainly the case for those, like Rudy, without ready access to transport, but it also applied to those who felt that they were trapped by circumstances over which they had little control. It applied to Gary and the need to be around to look after his family. It applied to Neville and his HIV+ related illness. It applied to Chris when he was an adolescent living on the family farm. It would appear from the evidence of these men that this negative aspect of isolation revolves around issues of independence and self-determination. In general, it may affect younger gay men simply because they are possibly still at school (and the rampant homophobia in these institutions) and because they may live at home with the concomitant dependence on, and submission to, parents. Employment may loosen that element of submission, but a number of the men in this study continued to feel isolated in a personal sense because they did not have the level of independence that they thought was necessary to live as a gay man in a country town. For men such as Gary,

Petro, Perry, Neville and Ivor, age appeared not to be an alleviating factor, partly because they continued to live under the parental roof and were very fearful that a more

‘out’ lifestyle would precipitate a backlash against their parents.

However, there is sufficient evidence from the data to indicate that those gay men who did not feel trapped and isolated were those who refused to submit to community attitudes that would silence and invisibilise gay men. Those who did not speak about a sense of personal isolation and being trapped were men like Izak, Jim, Jack, Toby,

Jason, Rodney, Bobby, Sam, Cleever, Gerry and others who, while they exercised care

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and discretion in how they acted in public, decided that they could live their own life as

they wished.

These men also mentioned another negative impact that geographical and social

isolation had on their lives. They said that isolation affected their sexual lives as well.

There was some suggestion that these gay men were not as sexually active as they thought their city counterparts were. Mention has already been made that rural gay men believed that sex and sexuality are pre-eminent factors in the lives of city gay men.

While these bush men were not reticent about discussing their sexual lives, it was clear that they felt that the amount of sex in their lives was something that could be improved.

However, despite what they saw as the relative lack of sexual opportunity, only one man spoke of autoerotic activities, though it would be somewhat foolhardy to imagine

that these men did not find sexual pleasure in masturbation, phone/internet sex, the use

of sex toys, watching pornography or other alone activities. As will be seen in more

detail in Chapter Seven, in talking about sex, these men appeared to assume that sexual

practice referred to sexual encounter with another person. At home, in practice, it may

have been different.

These men accepted that sex was not as ‘on tap’ as they imagined it to be in the city.

Those without partners usually travelled out of town for sexual encounters but that was

not always something that could be done easily or at a moment’s notice. Therefore,

while the negative effects of isolation were not sufficiently severe as to outweigh the

positive, the lack of sexual opportunity with another man was something that was

commented on. For example, while Noel was emphatic that life on his property did not

necessarily feel geographically or socially isolating, the effects of living in the bush

183 were isolating ‘… only so far as gay life goes … as … as sex life goes’ [5/32]. Men spoke of using their trips to the city, to the coast and to large towns to satisfy a sexual hunger that living in small and isolated towns usually could not. However this curtailment on their sex lives because of their geographic isolation was not a matter to even consider in the question of whether to stay or not. It was simply another aspect of living in the bush.

Isolation, then, for these gay men was a multifaceted issue. As discussed in the previous chapter, they actually sought out and used aspects of isolation to enhance their lives.

But isolation had its negative features as well. Whether they were mobile or not made the issue a very pragmatic matter. It was this lack of mobility, rather than the geographic isolation itself, that had troublesome reverberations in their personal lives.

Restrictions on access to medical treatment for HIV, access to out of town cultural events and spontaneous trips were all matters these men referred to in this context.

Access to transport and being able to get out as, and when, one needed relieved the disconcerting effects of isolation, but it did not always eliminate them. By the same token, geographical isolation could enhance a sense of social isolation, but need not cause it.

‘… There’s Always an Element of Loneliness’

As the previous chapter established, these rural gay men enjoyed an element of isolation in their lives, be it geographic or social (or both). But none of them articulated a desire to be lonely. Loneliness was another of the disadvantages of living in the bush. Petro expressed a point of view that was most perceptive. He said,

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Living in a country town … and being a gay man, there’s … there’s always an element of loneliness in there. Ahm … I don’t try to focus on it. Ahm … ’cause my life is active. I’m enjoying life. It’s great. I’m achieving lots of things. But most certainly, ahm … there’s always a feeling of loneliness because you haven’t got a kindred spirit to be with. Yeah. So, it’s … it’s there. It’s underlaying [sic] … at a deep level … I mean, it would be lovely if I could come ahm … ahm … if there was somewhere … that was sort of ahm … gay friendly and that you knew that you were going there on a chance of maybe finding a ahm … date to go to the movies with, you know. … But ahm … that is …that avenue is just not there. It is not in a small town here. Yeah. And I can’t see it changing [14/22–23].

Petro suggested that in living in a small town, especially as a gay man, inevitably meant

that there was an element of loneliness. He understood that loneliness, like isolation,

came with the territory. It was related to the generally negative sentiment held by the

community against gay men and the invisibility of other gay men in the town. The other

point that Petro made was that his loneliness was linked largely to not having a gay

friend, or a ‘kindred spirit’ as Petro called him. It was about not having someone to

whom he could reveal and share that appreciation of being gay which he refused to

disclose to almost all others in the town. It was about not having like company with

whom to relax and explore the possibly meeting other gay men. It was about not being

able to converse in a language that you dared not use on the street. Petro said that he

had quite a few friends, especially at the Technical and Further Education (TAFE)

College that he attended, but he lamented the particular lack of a gay friend/s. Therefore,

loneliness was not something unexpected, nor was it unrelentingly oppressive.

These men suggested that loneliness was related to a perception that the community would not allow them to develop a deeper level of friendship and involvement in the community. This issue, which will be examined in the next section, meant that these

men felt that in some ways, a sense of social isolation was forced on them by the

185 community in which they lived. Because they saw their communities as, in effect, quite conservative, if not homophobic, they could not be themselves and were therefore prevented from finding that ‘kindred spirit’. The lack of openness with which they could live their lives exacerbated the loneliness of being gay in a rural community.

These men talked about a lack of commitment by the community to encourage, or invite them, to be more fully part of it.

Though they testified that they felt that the community did not go out of its way to involve them in community activities, an examination of the transcripts to discover what these men said about their commitment to the community in which they lived revealed another viewpoint. As has already been suggested, these men engineered an element of isolation in their lives and one of the ways in which they went about doing this was to disengage somewhat from the community in which they lived. This had implications in regard to loneliness as well. For example, when Petro was asked about the extent to which he felt he belonged to the town, the severity and finality of his answer was striking. He said,

P: No, No. I don’t … I don’t have any community ahm … I’m not devoted to this community at all … I don’t have any …ahm … loyalty to this community whatsoever. E: Family heritage notwithstanding? P: Not withstanding. I have no loyalty to this community whatsoever [14/58– 59].

Another man, who had indicated that he often felt touches of loneliness in the town in which he lived, said that,

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I’ve found it ahm … difficult to say the least. I’ve always gone to another town. So that generally speaking the social groups [I mix with] are not within your own town. …Ahm … so for me, I go … ahm … to another town for some sort of social support [21/8–9].

There was ample evidence that, for whatever reason, these men did not engage as fully as they might with the communities in which they lived. Whether this was because the communities ostracised them and they then withdrew, or whether it was because they withdrew and the community then did not engage with them, is difficult to ascertain.

Regardless of the process, these rural gay men were largely unwilling to involve themselves in their communities. Not only were they unwilling to be more fully involved in their communities, but their engagement in social activities was often done elsewhere. They revealed that they often satisfied their social, cultural and sexual needs out of town. It would seem that there were no answers in regard to this apparent stalemate.

This does not mean to say, nor is it implied, that those men who were lonely in rural towns were those who did not participate in their communities and therefore brought their loneliness upon themselves. That is too simple and ruthless an assessment. These gay men just found it hard to go out and be sociable within their rural communities.

This inability to go out was very often related to personal factors and was made worse by the fear of a revelation of their homosexuality to the community. The other factor that had to be considered in this context was that while the level of actual physical and verbal abuse encountered by the gay men in this study was remarkably low, the fear of possible verbal abuse on the street was always present. This fear of abuse or ridicule in public added to these men’s fear of being sociable within their community. Regardless of whether these men lived in or out of town, they took the view that it was better to

187 remain out of the public eye. They saw it being to their advantage to remain uninvolved in the events of the community and instead to socialise quietly with a very small circle of friends and to travel out of town regularly.

Loneliness was not necessarily related to not having anyone to go out with. These men were not social isolates, nor were they friendless. Ivor, for example, seemed to know sufficient local gossip that would indicate that he was hardly a social recluse. He lived and was employed in the human services area of the large town of Dunno, but had previously lived all of his adolescence in the small town of Binandback. He was, when he was interviewed, the president of the local gay social/support group, and so was quite heavily involved in the gay social life of the town. He was a very personable man, full of life and character. He had a small circle of close friends. But when he was asked about loneliness, his answer was unexpected. He said,

I do get lonely. Yes. Very lonely … I interact with work colleagues and that type of thing, but that’s work. I want to get out of that and relax and that type of thing. It doesn’t happen as much as what it possibly could …. Maybe I sub- consciously come up with this … to work those extra long hours so that like I wouldn’t have to worry about the social life [7/67].

My field notes indicate that his low body-image and low sense of self-esteem were the most likely factors in his loneliness rather than a lack of friends, gay or otherwise. Ivor was a big man who admitted he was unhealthy and unattractive. He did not suggest that he was lonely because he was overweight. Rather, loneliness resulted from him not engaging with his friends to the extent that he would like, and to which, he intimated, his friends would also like. But it was not always quite as easy as that. The fear of ridicule in front of his friends, the fear of public abuse, as well as the low image he had of his own body, kept Ivor at home.

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Being HIV+, especially in a rural environment, was another personal factor that made it

difficult to go out, that lowered one’s self-image, that made the revelation of one’s

homosexuality more unlikely and that exponentially increased one’s experience of

loneliness. Though there were three men in this study who were HIV+, only one of

them showed physical symptoms of the disease. Neville, after he was diagnosed with

HIV, moved to Glen Iris from the Central Coast where he had grown up. His mother, who had had serious heart surgery, also moved with him. When Neville was asked about whether he experienced loneliness, he responded this way,

Loneliness? Ahm … friends that I used to work with ahm … places I used to visit ahm … I can’t do that any more…. I really couldn’t care less any more. No. No. I suppose [I have] to adapt to … the quiet life. I enjoy it. I’m starting to enjoy it. I get lonely a … few times … No, I’ll get used to it [16/11–12].

After re-reading, and then re-listening to, this conversation, Neville’s loneliness is unmistakable. He recalled with real nostalgia the people and places that had meant so much to him, but were now out of his reach. This was because rural and isolated Glen

Iris was a long way from where he had worked and where many of his friends remained.

Geography and isolation were contributing factors. But his illness and his poor health also meant that he could not easily get about and so there was an enforced social isolation that made him lonely. He tried to dismiss this inability to be with friends by saying that he didn’t care. He tried to dismiss his loneliness by saying that he enjoyed the quiet life of a new country town and his garden. However, such statements were qualified by saying that he is ‘starting’ to enjoy it and that he ‘supposes’ that he will have to adapt. And then he admitted his loneliness. But again, he immediately attempted to pass it off or dismiss it with ‘I’ll get used to it’.

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Eventually Neville began to open up and the reality of his situation came out,

N: … I think it’s the most loneliest … life there could be. There’s no real honest companion, unless you find the right person. It’s a lonely life. It is lonely. E: Is that your reaction since [being] HIV positive, or … N: Yes. I think so. Yeah. E: … rather than before? N: Yeah. Oh, definitely. Yeah. … Oh god, I … look, I had relationships and I …had fun and everything like that. No. No, since I’ve been positive [16/33].

There is a suspicion that Neville’s HIV had not just isolated him from his friends. After all, he could not easily travel and his obvious ill health and its physical effects made it difficult to go out in a normal way without the inevitable questions and the fear of repercussions. There was more than a hunch that Neville’s acute loneliness stemmed from a loss of friends following his diagnosis. This loss of friends seemed to be the part that hurt the most and exacerbated the loneliness the most. The loneliness was about loss and it was about what Izak spoke of – about not being able to ‘open up’ to anyone.

This was partly because Neville felt that he had to keep his gayness very private. To do otherwise, Neville feared, would, in effect, also disclose his HIV status. He was most apprehensive about doing that. He was quite frightened of being driven out of town were that reality to become public knowledge. The consequences for his mother, were that to happen, also concerned him. Loneliness for Neville, it seemed, was a new experience and difficult to come to terms with. In fact, it could be that coming to terms with the loneliness that he felt was more difficult than coming to terms with his HIV.

He admitted that he had accepted his HIV status, but the lingering loneliness was harder to accommodate.

This study of gay men living in rural communities has shown that an element of loneliness was a common experience in their lives. This loneliness was something that

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they accepted as part of the price they have willingly had to pay in order to continue to live in the bush. It was an accepted and acceptable part of their lives as rural gay men.

But in talking about loneliness, these men made it clear that they were not always lonely and that even when they were, it was not a feeling of total desolation. The fact that they were able to use the experience of occasional loneliness to become, either used to it, or at least less vulnerable to it is perhaps indicative of some level of inner resilience and robustness of character. Some men, in fact, went out of their way to signify that they were not lonely and, for those particular men, what they were describing was more akin to ‘aloneness’. This concept of ‘aloneness’ is perhaps an aspect of the isolation that these men inculcated into their lives. Furthermore, it does not necessarily exclude those men who said that they were lonely. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the men who made this point were quite ‘alone’ in the way they lived their lives.

Sam exemplified the men in this study in this regard. Living on his cattle property and breeding top quality cattle was, for Sam, a priority. And when he was asked in the interview about whether he was lonely, somehow his answer was almost expected,

Ahm … am I lonely? … No, I don’t … I don’t think I’m lonely. I keep very … you become in the country self-motivated [15/21].

And a little while later he explained that further,

… no I don’t suffer from loneliness because … I try and motivate myself to be busy. I’ve taught myself not to be lonely [15/22].

For Sam, loneliness was simply a state of mind. And with firm control of one’s mind, one could learn not to be lonely. He was a busy man, and I have memories of him walking down the street of Inaway in a very busy, purposeful, workman-like fashion.

Although he and I were walking nowhere in particular, there was no ambling along.

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There was an intent and a purpose even in his walk down the street. His preoccupation

with his farm and his total immersion in it, and the obvious enjoyment and delight he

got from it, would suggest that Sam was not overly lonely. He seemed not to seek out

local gay friends and certainly did not know the other gay man who was interviewed in

the same town that Sam did business in. In another part of the interview, he talked about

‘suppressing’ his sexuality and on another occasion of ‘putting sexuality aside’.

Sam also spoke of being ‘self-reliant’, and it is unlikely that he meant that idea to apply

only in a practical way on the farm. His sense of self-reliance extended to the emotional.

He cherished close friendships and he would have liked to share his life with someone

special. But the absence of a boyfriend and the lack of close friends who were near by

did not get him down. Sam travelled to Lismore to spend a few days with his aging

parents on quite a regular basis. That was where he socialised and looked for sex.

Business and pleasure were not to be mixed. The former was local and the latter was out

of town. As he made clear,

…I can, I mean, I can get in my ute and I can leave my farm gate and in four and a half hours I can be … five hours … I can be sitting in the bar in Lismore picking someone up if I wanted to …[15/44].

The men in this study were ‘alone’ more than lonely. Their capacity to create a sense of

isolation in their lives, and to accept and live with their aloneness, prevented any sense

of loneliness becoming a permanent and oppressive feature of their lives. The fact that

they could choose not to be alone when they wanted company helped in this regard.

Were these men not able to travel the way they did, and thereby relieve that ‘aloneness’,

it could well be that they might have become lonely. Immobility for these gay men was

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the breeding ground of isolation and inescapable isolation was a compounding factor

that might have been a trigger or catalyst of loneliness.

Neville was, of course, the exception to this. While he was not the only man in this

study who was HIV+, he was the only man who was showing physical symptoms of the

disease. Neville could not bring himself to explore the possibility of being more open

about himself in Glen Iris. He had too much to lose. His mother was ill. He was ill and

they both relied on local social services and the support of other family members. To

risk being ‘run out of town’ and away from that family support, as he feared he and his

mother would be were he to be more open about his health, was a risk not worth taking.

The security to be had from the secrecy and the loneliness that inevitably came with it

was a better choice in a very short list of options. Neville’s testimony showed how

vulnerable to loneliness a HIV+ man in a rural community could be and how intractable

such loneliness could become. Isolation from, and especially loss of, friends along with

the fear of disclosure and exposure together with the consequent ostracism and eviction

from town forced Neville into himself. Aloneness then became loneliness in the real

sense of the word13.

While these rural gay men experienced a sense of ‘aloneness’ in their lives, these

elements of loneliness they experienced seemed not to be the painful and devastating

experience it is often described as being. In having a small, intimate circle of friends,

being mobile and having the ability to get out of town from time to time appeared, for

these men, to alleviate the propensity to become lonely. The ability to be alone and to

13 There is a postscript to Neville’s story. Some time after this interview, Neville moved to a small town on the north coast of New South Wales. His social life improved. His health improved and his emotional scars began to heal.

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be able to switch that ‘aloneness’ on and off also appeared to play a part in rural gay

men not being lonely. Paradoxically, rurality itself might be the mitigating factor.

Conclusion

These gay men were pragmatists and as will be shown in the coming chapters they were

also skilled social operators. They knew that the rural lifestyle that they appreciated

with some passion was not only about the benefits of such a lifestyle. This chapter has

examined the disadvantages of a rural lifestyle as these men perceived and experienced

them. They were well aware that they had to accept these disadvantages, attempt to minimise them and exert a determination and a tenacity in order to stay in the bush.

Their testimonies revealed that homophobia was not necessarily a destructive force in their lives. They revealed that the level of support given by individuals in the

community to those belittled for reason of their homosexuality was in greater measure

than they had presumed available. Similarly, rather than allowing loneliness to have a

destructive and enfeebling effect on their lives, these men realised and accepted that a

sense of aloneness was part of the lifestyle that they aspired to. They were able to

distinguish between those factors that were imposed on them and those over which they

had some control. They were in a position to prevent the aloneness from becoming

chronic loneliness by occasionally traveling out of town and maintaining a close

network of friends. After a consideration of all the things these men like about the bush

and the lifestyle it afforded as well a reflection on the concomitant difficulties, they

stayed. These men stayed both because of the advantages, as was seen in Chapter Four,

and in spite of the disadvantages.

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Nevertheless, they continued to acknowledge their gayness and engage with it. In order

to cope with the generally anti-gay attitudes that percolate through rural communities,

these gay men deliberately positioned themselves to their own advantage in their towns

and districts. They used the isolation of the environment and the maintenance of a small and supportive friendship network to facilitate a disconnectedness from the community that they felt they needed to do in order to continue their lives in the bush. Through this disconnection with the community, they positioned themselves to their own advantage that empowered them to take control over their lives. These matters will be examined in

the next chapter.

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Chapter Six

Positioning Oneself in the Community

I think that a lot of country people are not as interested in sexuality as we might think they are and they’re probably more interested in other facets of the person …like if you’re a good person, or if you’re making an effort for the town or … . I think they’d be more impressed by what you’re actually doing than by what your sexuality is. [Jack]

You don’t hide it ... the penny drops. Ahm ... some of them want to know and curiosity gets the better of them and they ask, [but] very few. Ahm … most of them know and …and let you know in some subtle way that they [do] know, and that it’s not an issue. [Sam]

Introduction

Previous chapters have shown that these gay men’s desire to stay in the bush was reinforced by a quiet determination to live as they chose and to refuse to allow community attitudes to force them away. As was seen, these men represented and

accepted rural life as having both advantages and disadvantages. One feature of rural

life common to both categorisations was isolation. Far from it being something that

drove them from the bush, it, in fact, often induced them to stay. Some of the pleasure

these men derived from this isolation also led them to unfetter themselves from

normative ties to the wider community and create a new space in these places. But it

was not only the isolation of the bush that they used to both loosen some connections,

strengthen others and generally situate themselves in relation to the community in

which they live. This chapter will explore how these men use disclosure of their

homosexuality to position themselves in relation to the local gay community, to the

local community generally and to family in particular.

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Almost every aspect of the lives of these rural gay men revolved around their perception of ‘connectedness’. They felt connected to the bush as a place but disconnected from the community. The ways in which these men cultivated some

connections, and maintained them, and at the same time fostered, or at least allowed,

some disconnections to occur can be understood as positioning themselves in the

community to their own best advantage. They positioned themselves to ensure they had

the level of social interaction with whom they wanted. It should be pointed out that the

words ‘connectedness’ and ‘disconnectedness’ were not used by the men or by me in the interviews. Nevertheless, these words encapsulate the way these men positioned themselves in the community in which they lived. These men also pointed out that there appeared to be a ‘live and let live’ attitude in most rural communities and while this did

not bestow acceptance and inclusiveness, it did allow these men to lead a more socially

isolated life away from community scrutiny.

They spoke of having initially wanted a closer connection with the community, but had

long suspected they could not have one. They had wanted at one time to be part of their

hometown but believed that they would be excluded if their gay identities were known.

It appeared from their testimonies that they had largely given up on the idea of wanting and trying to be part of their respective communities. The decision to disclose their homosexuality became a way in which these men positioned themselves in their local communities and interacted with subgroups within them. Any such disclosure could affect the level of interaction with the community in general just as it might influence the connections with family. Any disclosure could also determine the level of involvement these men had with their local gay support groups and the friendships and acceptance that could be counted on from those groups. Therefore, it is important to

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understand the extent of, and the dynamics surrounding, the disclosure of their

homosexuality. Disclosure determined with whom these men made, or did not make,

connections with the community in general and with specific sub-groups within it.

Therefore this factor largely governed the nature of these men’s interaction with the

people among whom they lived. Disclosure and non-disclosure was a matter that these

men managed. It was a matter over which they exercised considerable agency and

control.

The Extent of Disclosure

This section examines the extent to which these men disclosed their homosexuality while following sections will consider the implications of that disclosure. The twenty- one men in this study had varying perceptions of their communities’ attitudes to being gay and to gay people. While some of these men suggested that there was an increasing level of acceptance of the gay men in their communities, others were somewhat more cautious in their judgements and yet others had found some evidence of bigotry and rejection. The word ‘community’ was used by the men to refer both to the local gay community and to those who lived in the town and district. The distinction will be self- evident in the text.

Given the mixed reception they received, it is not surprising that not all the men reported that the community was the appropriate space and place to be open about their sexual identity. While some men in this study were ‘out’ within their communities, others were more circumspect about the disclosure of their homosexuality outside a close circle encompassing family and friends. Those men who spoke of increasing levels of acceptance of gay men were themselves not necessarily ‘out’ in terms of the

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disclosure of their homosexuality to the general community in which they lived. Ivor

was one such man. He was the president of his local gay support group and said that he thought many people around the town of Dunno knew, or at least suspected, that he was gay. That in itself did not seem to be a problem, but he was not ‘out’ at work, or in the community generally. Ivor went on to say that he thought that the community in general didn’t ‘… usually like anything too much out of the ordinary …’ [7/6]. Tony was in a similar position and he felt that some work colleagues had their suspicions, though he anticipated no real problems if his sexuality were to become known in the workplace.

But he had not raised the matter of his sexuality at work. Yet both Ivor and Tony had

come out to their family and friends. They were typical of the men in this study.

(i) Disclosure to Family and Friends

These men, on the whole, did not withhold knowledge about their homosexuality from

the people most important to them. Only two men had not disclosed their

homosexuality to their families. This denotes a willingness by rural gay men to disclose

their homosexuality, even to family. Most had made the conscious decision to tell their

families, sometimes to siblings before parents. Other men had not necessarily told their

parents directly, but had made this information known to them indirectly. Leaving gay

magazines in his room when his mother came to visit, knowing that she would see them,

was how Chris ‘told’ his parents.

No family absolutely rejected their son (or brother, uncle etc.) on his disclosure that he

was gay, but parents often did need time to adjust to the ‘news’ and, in some cases, that

adjustment took considerable time. When there was real uncertainty as to how parents

would react, these men tended to delay coming out to them, if not to all the family, until

199 they were in the workforce and were somewhat financially independent of their parents.

As Toby said about his parents’ growing acceptance,

… they didn’t accept it on the spot. It took some time – definitely. A lot of time … . My mother was very … ahm … she was the first to come around. …She said, ‘Well … we don’t really care what you choose, but we love you as parents, you know, and we will support you in whatever you do’ [8/30].

Those families that reacted best were those who were told before anyone else and where the family–son relationship was strong. And it was also in these families where at least one parent ‘knew’ within themselves that their son might be gay. Gary had no qualms that he would not be accepted by his mother, although ‘… all she did was cry’ when he broke the news to her. Later, his mother admitted to him that she had had ‘a fair idea’.

Gary was fifteen at the time and, as he remembered it,

… I did not tell the rest of the family. Ahm … my mother actually told them. Ahm … it was later on. And my Mum also told my father as well and they were all fine with it. So, coming out to my family was no hassle at all. Yeah [19/44].

Confirmation of the fact might have been a momentary shock, but the fact itself was usually no surprise. Additionally, none of these men reported that their parents were in any way victimised if and when knowledge of their son’s homosexuality became public in the local community. Some men had a fear of this and were reluctant to come out in their hometown for fear of retribution against their parents. Nevertheless, none of the men had seen that happen.

Every man in this study had local friends who knew they were gay. Where family ties were more tenuous and where the uncertainty of parental acceptance was greater, those men came out to friends first and so secured a support network in case the disclosure to family caused problems … as it sometimes did. Friends did not turn away from friends when one party revealed that he was gay, and these men suggested that they made more

200 friends than they may have lost when the news was out. Jason’s reaction was common among these men,

The friends that I’ve kept from high school are still my friends and they know that I’m gay, and they are fine with it. … I haven’t lost any friends [9/95].

This is not to say that coming out was easy for them. All but two men had decided to confide what, for them, was probably their most intimate secret to their family and friends – rural background, traditional values and conservative communities notwithstanding. And the confidence that these men had in their families and friends to remain steadfast in their support was not misplaced.

(ii) Disclosure to the Wider Community

They were, however, more guarded and wary of disclosing that information to the wider communities in which they lived. Some men, like Chris, felt that such knowledge did not have to be disclosed, and while there was no need to deny, there was also no need to offer the information. As he said,

… most of the people I worked with had worked it out. I don’t consider that …they don’t need to know. …[Some] people knew, [other] people didn’t. [Some] people wanted to [know]. [Other] people let me know in very subtle ways that they knew … [6/40-41].

And a little later in the interview, he made the point in more colourful terms,

I don’t expect my neighbours to rush over and tell [me] that they had a great fuck last night [6/60-61].

Most of these men chose not to directly disclose their homosexuality outside their circle of family and friends. They presumed and feared that if their sexuality was to become public knowledge, they would face the possibility of rejection and ostracism and their families would also pay a price.

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Jason took disclosure a step further and while he was ‘out’ to his friends and family he

also decided, with considerable trepidation, to disclose that he was gay to his work

colleagues. He assumed that most people in the small community in which he lived

were aware that he was gay and he preferred the matter to be at least out in the open.

However, while he feared rejection, this was not the reaction that followed the

disclosure of his homosexuality to work colleagues. He remembered the reaction

… from a work point of view, because we now …we now know where everybody stands … that [disclosure] … I suppose hasn’t deepened it, but the relationship is still there … a good working relationship is still there. It confirmed it more than anything [9/72].

And he went on to say that,

… you hear all these stories of … homophobia and all that sort of thing and you think, ‘Oh shit, you know, what’s going to happen to me when I come out?’ … and that’s got to be a big part of the emotional … trauma. But it didn’t happen [9/74].

Jason was one of the few men who had decided to disclose his sexuality to the

community, though other men had had their homosexuality publicly revealed for them.

Jim had his homosexuality disclosed in the local press after he and his mother were

photographed marching together in the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. As in

Jason’s case, there had been no adverse repercussions to this ‘outing’. As previously

mentioned, Jack and his partner were similarly ‘outed’ by a section of their church and

while they experienced some initial adverse reaction, this was met by highly supportive

counteraction from another section of the congregation.

While these men did not disclose their homosexuality to the general community, this

did not mean that the community was unaware or had no suspicions of it. Toby said that

there was some inkling at his workplace, though he expected no problem to arise were

he to confirm such suspicion. Rodney guessed that many people in his town were aware

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that he was gay. On rare occasions, the antics of some of the gay men must have aroused more than suspicion. Rudy tells of the goings-on in Geriffi this way,

…they [members of the local gay group] just love dressing up and, you know, turning up [to group functions] in frocks and … . They go shopping at the local Vinnies and buy wigs and dresses and they … quite unashamedly buying women’s clothes at the … the seconds shops and [laughter]. Go into the, you know, the … frisking for jewellery [laughter] through the stores [laughter]. I … I just find it just amazing this … this … this completely unashamed and uninhibited approach that some of them have got [2/39].

Though these men knew that it was unlikely that they would face physical violence and

though they admitted that rural communities were taking more of a ‘live and let live’

attitude (in some places more than others), they still chose not to personally reveal their

homosexuality to the general community in which they lived.

But the degree to which one could be ‘out’ in small towns also depended on the

circumstances of the gay men themselves. The prevailing attitudes in the towns were

not always the only consideration that had to be taken into account. Some men were

quiet so as to ‘protect’ family. Petro was in this category. Others had businesses to run

and felt that if their sexuality had become public knowledge, their livelihoods would be

adversely affected. There were other factors to take into account when considering the

degree to which it was advisable to be open about one’s homosexuality. For example,

Neville’s position in the town in which he lived at the time of the interview, Glen Iris,

was complicated by the fact that he had AIDS and was quite ill. He had had some

problems with two of the local doctors whom he described as ‘redneck’14 His view of

the community was one of distrust. He said,

… quite a few people know I’m sick. I don’t work. If they knew I was gay, they’d put two and two together and that in my assumption would be a bad thing.

14 ‘Redneck’ is used in Australia to refer to a person regarded as having a provincial, conservative and bigoted attitude.

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… I think if people found out ahm … about my illness and that … [you] see, I don’t like people knowing that I’m homosexual … all right … because that means they [can] put two and two together and then that means, ‘Oh, he’s got AIDS’, and that’s it. Bang. So I won’t have that and living in a small town, people talk and ahm … yeah. … It would be more degrading actually … I feel it would be very ahm … ahhhh … [involve] more upset [for] my mother and myself [16/7–9].

Neville’s ill health made him especially vulnerable, and he knew it. Sam was also quite

clear about his distrust of the local community. He thought that to reveal oneself as a

gay man in a small country town was not an option. He said,

No. It doesn’t work. As soon as you … you’re associated with being a faggot, you’re … you’re on the outer. … You’re not nice. You’re not nice because you do things with men. That’s filthy [15/37].

Though the testimonies of the gay men in this study revealed that they felt community

attitudes were slowly changing, and though they did not deny their homosexuality when it

became public, these men were reluctant to make it so themselves. While instances of

abject hostility were few, thereby easing fears of rejection, these men were of the opinion

that the community did not give sufficient signal that living as an openly gay man was

something that would be respected, let alone accepted. Consequently, they did not

generally trust the community enough to volunteer knowledge of their sexuality.

Nevertheless, there was a level to which these gay men were ‘out’ in their rural

communities. All of the men were ‘out’ to friends in the districts where they lived.

Almost all of them were ‘out’ to their families and several were known in their

communities to be gay. Furthermore, all these men knew within themselves that there was

some suspicion in their local communities that they were gay, with few overtly hostile

repercussions.

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(iii) The Community’s ‘Right’ to Know

Earlier in this section, the question of whether others have a right to know one’s

sexuality was raised. Chris made the point that one’s sexuality is, in effect, no one

else’s business. As he said, ‘Why do they have to know you’re gay?’[6/107]. Other men

expressed similar opinions, and the fact that so few men had, by their own volition,

disclosed their sexuality outside of family and friends indicated that they were prepared

to act on their opinion. One of the reasons that these gay men decided against disclosure

was the ‘live and let live’ attitude that these men thought their communities exhibited.

These men understood that while ever there was no direct knowledge of a man’s

sexuality, then the matter could be ignored. As Chris put it,

… most of them know and … and … and let you know in some subtle way that they know and that’s not an issue. Ahm … and in that way the people that don’t want to know … know, but don’t know … [6/60].

What Chris seemed to be saying was that country people might not actually want to

know about the homosexuality of a man living in the town. This was partly because, if

such knowledge became public, their association with that person might also come

under some cloud of suspicion. This was a widely held opinion among the men in this

study. Gerry and Cleever spoke about people pretending not to see them in the street,

but the same people being happy to be in their company away from the public gaze.

Jack stated that it is gay men themselves who think that the community is interested in

their sexuality, whereas he believed the reality may be that such matters are of little

actual interest. As he said,

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Nevertheless, the men were generally of the opinion that public disclosure of their homosexuality had the propensity to make some others in the community uncomfortable, if not antagonistic. It had the potential to change the interpersonal dynamics between the gay men and others.

Rex put forward a hypothesis that the community has an easier time dealing with those it sees as the stereotypical gay male – the effeminate man who might walk with a bit of a mince, talk with a bit of a lisp and dress in some supposedly

‘gay/effeminate/citified/not bush’ way. While the community might react negatively to those men who behaved in such a ‘gay’ way and they ‘… would be the brunt of every joke’, Rex reasoned that flamboyant gay men

… seem to be more accepted in the sense that people can ahm … imply that they’re sick, mentally sick in other words. That … that fulfils their … their belief what gay is … so therefore they’re sick. … effeminate behaviour fulfils that expectation [21/6].

Because flamboyant gay men can be seen and identified, they are known and can be reacted to and perhaps even tolerated because they are ‘sick’ and not normal. What was more difficult for country people to deal with was the guy who appeared and acted

‘normal’, but was gay. As Rex emphasised, ‘… they [the locals] can’t cope with anyone who appears normal and gay’ [6/5]. However, not everyone in this study agreed. For example, Bobby believed that it was his ability to train a horse from bronc to show ring and his readiness to muck stables and stack hay as well as anyone else that gained him a measure of respect that outshone the suspicion that he might be gay.

Not only is a person such as Bobby difficult to distinguish as gay, but when it is ascertained that he is gay, it is equally difficult to label him as ‘sick’. These men

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expressed the view that at a community level, often it is better and easier for people not to know. Therefore non-disclosure was not only about their homosexuality being no one else’s business, it was also about ‘not flaunting it’ and therefore allowing the community to, in effect, suspect but not to know. This was also a very effective means to silence the community. Not allowing the community the opportunity to know something to which they could adversely react was an effective mechanism to avert that reaction. Chris made this precise point,

Push it in their face and they have to know and therefore … they have to react, whereas if … if you don’t force it on them, it is live and let live [6/81–82].

These men used non-disclosure not specifically to deny the community knowledge of their homosexuality but more to deny the community the opportunity for an adverse reaction to it. Resistance to community attitudes allowed them to use non-disclosure to position themselves in the community such that they did not expose themselves to public condemnation and rejection. It was agency in action. Yet they were able to take

full advantage of the community’s lack of certainty concerning their homosexuality. It

allowed these men to have the lower profile in the town that they wanted and it allowed

them to keep some distance between themselves and the community.

As has been discussed, these men were, on the whole, ‘out’ to family and friends. They

also disclosed their homosexuality to other men that they knew or thought were gay.

This was not only to open up sexual opportunity, but it gave them connection to and entry into the gay social and support groups and friendship networks that have been

established in many of the country towns across NSW. In this instance, selective

disclosure of their homosexuality allowed these men to position themselves within the social milieu of their communities to their advantage. Just as non-disclosure kept them

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out of their communities’ scrutiny and reach, selective disclosure brought them within

the scrutiny and reach of those with whom they wanted contact – family, friends,

potential friends and ‘fuck buddies’.

Connections to the Community Within – The Local Gay Group

The local gay group, where one existed, was an important feature in these men’s lives in

that it enabled friendships and connections to be formed and it also created avenues of

sexual opportunity. But involvement with the local gay group did not constitute

involvement in and with the wider community. In some ways, it facilitated a

disconnection from the community in that the local gay group gave these men a social outlet that allowed them to socially bypass the communities in which they lived. As was stated earlier in this thesis, not all the actions taken by these gay men have to be construed as resistance to the hegemony of the community. Their involvement with the local gay group is a case in point whereby their participation simply involved acting in their own interests to enhance their lives and living as they wanted to.

The gay group based in the town of Geriffi was active and visible in the community but tightly run and protective of its members’ identities. Rudy noted that, for him, it was the social aspect of the group that was important. He talked about the ‘fun mentality’ and he said, ‘I enjoy being with them’. The group had allowed Rudy to do things that he might not have considered otherwise and he had been involved ‘… in some of the crazy stuff that the group here seems to involve itself in’ [2/39]. In this regard, Rudy said that,

I’ve done a couple of, you know, … got dressed up in drag and a couple of things which surprised me and, in fact, got really hysterical about it [Laughs] [2/37].

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But he also went on to suggest that the activities of the Geriffi group were not all social.

The president took quite a high profile in the town and was prepared to put the case for gay men at public forums and on the numerous local committees that he was on. But the gay men in Geriffi, and similarly in other places, felt they were unable and unwilling to take such a visible profile in the town. They kept to themselves. For example, even though Ivor was the president of the gay group in Dunno, he took a much lower profile within the group and in the town than did the president of the gay group in Geriffi.

Rudy acknowledged that the visible leadership by one gay man (who was not a part of this study) had allowed ‘… the group here [to] establish things that a lot of country groups would be pretty jealous of’ [2/71]. The importance of these groups for gay men in rural communities was illustrated by Perry who, in a more personal opinion of the part the group has played in his life, emphasised that,

If it weren’t for the group … I’ve always maintained if the group weren’t here in Geriffi, I would be dead. I would have committed suicide … . The group’s good [4/45].

If the activities of the local gay group could transform the life of even one gay man, then its existence was worthwhile. Perry had gone through a low point in his life to do with relationship breakdown and ‘coming out’, and his friends from the Geriffi gay group were instrumental in getting him through that very difficult patch. But Perry went on to talk about the group from another perspective. When he was asked whether he had any social activities or other outlets without reference to the local gay group, he said,

I can say ‘No’ really. ‘Cause my … I can’t read and write too good … and sort of … it’s a bit of a handicap for me…. [The group] is really … my main outlet type of thing … . I’m generally satisfied with the group and what we do here…. It satisfies me [4/46–47].

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Perry’s only social outlets were via the local gay group. This underlines the importance of such a group to those gay men for whom it is their main source of friendship and social interaction. It also demonstrates these men’s level of disconnectedness from the wider community and how they use alternative avenues to socialise and connect locally.

Jim also said that the local gay group figured strongly in his life. For him, the group had been a means of actually enlarging his friendship base and of making contact with other gay men. He made the point that,

Ahm … when I was working at McDonald’s, ahm … I only had work friends ahm … . The gay group has been ahm … you could say it was my second family to me…. Ahm … and ahm … it has been really supportive of me [3/28].

Izak also said that the Gerifi gay group was an important factor in his life as it provided

Ah … just support, friendship … you know … someone to talk to … when I had problems, whatever …. . I could meet people. I mean, we have coffee nights every Tuesday night. You know, I met people and now I’ve got friends. [It’s] nice being with new people when I joined the group [12/37].

There were five gay groups in the different towns that had members from the gay men

in this study. It was through these groups that gay men extended their friendships and in

some cases relationships began through such avenues. These men acknowledged the

importance of the local gay group to their lives in the bush. They openly admitted that it

was largely through the gay group that they had contact with other gay men. For these

men, the local gay group provided an important social outlet through a variety of events

and functions. Izak spoke of the coffee nights in members’ homes. Ivor referred to more

public events such as selling red ribbons in the streets of Dunno on World AIDS Day.

Perry recounted his trips with members of his gay group to Mardi Gras. Jason referred

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to gay group activities once a month, with members and friends meeting at one of the

local pubs.

In being part of the local gay group, these men were able to by-pass the community in

terms of social interaction. They were able to keep their social activity largely away

from public observation and limit it to a select few on whom they could count for acceptance. At the same time, they were able to position themselves apart from the general community to reduce both the risk of rejection and a reliance on the general community for their own wellbeing and support. Without the groups, these men said their lives would be much the poorer.

Family Connections and Disconnections

The men in this study reported being generally happy as children. For a few, happiness as children was related to family and friends. But for others, family was a source of violence and pain and, for them, childhood happiness did not always come from within the family. While Jason and Toby could talk about happy childhoods and growing up in

‘normal’ families in the bush, others could not do so. Jim’s childhood was ‘really rough’ because of the interminable bullying at school. Chris’ family was distant and cold. Cleever’s father was a drunk and left the family home. Sam spoke of the absence of tenderness within his family, and especially from his father. Jack said his parents were ‘not affectionate’. But even these men have, in the main, reported childhoods that they described as happy. Other men reported similar sentiments and memories from their youth. But this happiness originated not from within the childhood home but from outside it. It came essentially from the bush.

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A consistent theme of these men’s testimonies was the importance in their lives of

where they lived. And the importance of place had begun to take shape very early,

though, of course, they did not recognise it at that time. The bush provided the space for

fantasy and escape and so fostered and enriched a bonding of the child to the bush that

was to last long after childhood was over. For example, Chris’ childhood happiness

came from ‘build[ing] cubby houses’ and pretending to be in the jungle. There were

horses to ride and push bikes to pedal. But the happiness and joy that this play and

fantasy world provided was the only real happiness that Chris experienced as a child. It

was experienced in the bush and outside the home. It came from place and not from

people.

Cleever avoided talking too much of the heartbreak and domestic violence that having

an alcoholic father entailed. He found solace and happiness away from the four walls of

the family home. He used to escape to his fantasy world down by the creek and would

stay there for ‘hours on end’. His pet dog was the object of his affection and it was from

that source that Cleever experienced childhood love and attention in return. As has been

discussed, bonds and connections to family continued and remained important, but

affinity with, and attachment to the bush, was strengthened – and these ties endured.

Chapter Four of this study suggested that the proximity of family was one of the

reasons these men cited in their decision to stay in the bush. Even in this situation, it

was not always the strength of the relationship with family that kept these men there but

rather that family was close by. That was often close enough. These men wanted to

keep family relationships intact. However, they also wanted to keep them somewhat at arm’s length, though this was not necessarily their choice. Family ties had often become

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strained when the life that parents had mapped out for their son was not being fulfilled.

When ‘differences’ in childhood and adolescence became apparent, parents sometimes

became less affectionate towards their sons. One man said that as an adolescent he was

‘the black sheep’ of the family [14/52]. He was seen to be different, parents withdrew

affection and the family ties were loosened.

Family ties remained important for these men not necessarily because of the closeness

of the ties but largely because they existed. In not a single case did the disclosure of a son’s homosexuality strengthen the ties between parents and son. These men did not report greater intimacy between themselves and their parents subsequent to disclosure of their homosexuality. They were not able to report that their honesty with their parents was interpreted or regarded as a loving act designed to open up an intimate area of their lives and encourage and enable a reinforcement of ties. Although this positive and

affirming reaction was often the response of friends, and sometimes of siblings, it was

rarely the response of parents. But this was precisely what these men sought through

‘coming out’.

This lack of intimacy and openness between the gay son and his family generally

resulted from a continued lack of communication about the sexuality of the son. It is a

matter about which there was little talk and a matter which usually invoked silence

within the family. Petro said that his parents ‘Don’t want to talk about it’ [14/62]. Chris

said that,

…I suppose…not until more recent time did we ever talk about it [homosexuality]. There was snide comments made, and we’d be watching the news and there’d be something about Mardi Gras and [it was said], “Ahhhhh, they should all be taken out and shot.” And similar lines, but that was one of them. Ahm … tough comments, so that didn’t really inspire one to … discuss

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the issue with the family when you got that attitude fed in. So it was just never discussed [6/43– 44].

Part of the lack of communication and the consequent disconnectedness between

parents and their gay sons resulted from parents being unable to fully accept the

homosexuality of their sons and the relationships they were in. This, too, was related to

the loose and less than strong ties between parents and sons. But this apparent lack of

acceptance by parents and their failure to actually enhance the relationships between

themselves and their sons, in line with the sons’ intentions to disclose their

homosexuality, must not be construed as rejection. These parents did not reject their

sons. A son’s disclosure of his homosexuality rarely forced a long-term deterioration of

ties between parent and son, though it did cause some problems in the shorter term. The

very lack of a close and intimate relationship between these gay men and their parents

in the first place appeared to be, paradoxically, a factor in preventing the complete

cutting of ties. And it also allowed the family ties to generally remain as they were –

loose and without great intimacy … but intact.

As these men saw it, this inability to accept was not out of concern for their sons, but

because parents would not budge from their own beliefs and attitudes. For example,

Toby talked about the ‘redneck’ attitudes of his father, who ‘…played a lot of football

and was rough and tough’, as being the reason it took a long time for his father to deal with his son’s homosexuality [8/8]. Petro spoke of his parents’ ‘… Christianity and the way they read the Bible’ as ‘… a really huge stumbling block’ [14/50]. He went on to say that,

… my parents … refused to acknowledge that I was in a relationship as opposed to my other brothers and sisters who were all in relationships with the opposite sex. They recognised those relationships and endorsed them, [but]

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they refused to recognise my relationship [14/51].

Michael, rightly or wrongly, cited his family’s Aboriginality as the reason for their non- acceptance. Michael says of his mother that ‘… she talks to me sometimes but not all the time’ [11/16] and he goes on to say that he has had

… problems with me own people …they ahm …reacted different to my friends. They ahm … called me all these names. They … threatened me sometimes. … Family … it’s strange that they … poisoned their own kind. But … [I] couldn’t … get over why family was teasing their own people like that [11/20–23].

As a gay Aboriginal man, Michael was doubly marginalised on the basis of both race

and sexuality. He experienced racial prejudice from the white community and

homophobia from both the white and some sections of the Aboriginal community.

Michael made no mention of racial discrimination emanating from the gay community

in Dunno. However, what was particularly troublesome for Michael was that the discrimination against him on account of his sexuality came from those closest to him – his family.

This refusal to come to terms with the homosexuality of their sons led to a continuation of the generally loose connections between parents and sons. For a number of men, it led to an estrangement and a disconnection of the relationship in the family in the shorter term. For example, Petro had left home after ten years of attempting to cope with his parents’ intransigence. Their refusal to accept his homosexuality and what

Petro calls ‘… their lack of tolerance’ and their attitude that homosexuality, presumably even in their son, was ‘… an abomination’ was too much to deal with [14/49–50]. In another example, while Chris could admit, with regard to his father, that ‘We’ve never been close anyway’, this disconnectedness led to a situation whereby Chris admitted

I’m fairly estranged from my father. He doesn’t approve of my lifestyle, full stop. [Laughs] …you know, gay [or] HIV isn’t really an issue for him because I

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think he feels in his own mind is society says that all those dirty poofters have got it, and that’s all there is to it. So … I just see very little of my father. [I] probably make a conscious effort to do a once a year visit. Ahm … he used to do much the same too … but he hasn’t been here for four years … we usually get to see each other at things in Sydney. You know, the [Royal Easter] Show, or if he is in Sydney for business, or whatever [6/4–5].

There is a chill in this relationship between father and son that Chris would have liked to thaw, and there was some evidence that he had tried. Chris still made the effort to contact his father, but it was clear that the father had allowed his contact with his son to slide and instead become something that happened at his own convenience. The thawing of chilled relationships also happened at the parents’ own convenience and as a consequence of their own need. Chris’ father had not been a source of support as a result of his (Chris’) diagnosis with HIV.

Similarly, Petro’s ‘bonding’, as he calls it, with his parents and his return after ten years of very little contact came as their health began to fail and they were at that time ‘… only too happy to have me back’ [14/61]. Despite their failing health and Petro’s willingness to come home and nurse them, they have still not changed their attitude towards his homosexuality. He said,

I’d love to hear the words coming from my mother that she wants me to …she wants to see me happy and in a relationship. … but she’d rather see me alone than … ahm how will I put it … than in a relationship with another man. And I think that’s sad [14/61–63].

For other men in this study, it was not so much that a deliberate intransigence and obstinacy led to a weakening in the relationships between parents and sons, but that they simply drifted apart. There was a frailty in the relationships and a lack of communication that led to this disconnectedness. Rex said, for example, that had he known that his parents would not have condemned him for being gay, he ‘…wouldn’t

216 have stayed away for seven years, ahm … not wanting to … make contact and not wanting to get too close or be found out’ [21/16]. The lack of a strong sibling relationship led to a rift between Rex and his brothers when he disclosed his homosexuality to them. At the same time, disclosure led to a new understanding between himself and his parents though the difficulty of articulating the existence of a strong parent/son relationship many years earlier had led to Rex having little meaningful contact with his parents for a long time. As Rex tells the story, at thirty-five years of age he wanted the matter out in the open and his mother’s reaction was,

Oh my god. We thought you were leading up to something … you know, we thought you’d murdered someone. We have known you were gay all your life … it was always surprising to me that you actually got married [21/28–29].

As was discussed in a previous chapter, the proximity of family was cited by these men as one of the reasons they stayed in the bush. But this does not mean that the relationship between a family and their gay son was always close, strong and affirming.

More typically, these men had relationships with their parents that could be categorised as loose and less connected. Families often had difficulties in accepting their sons’ homosexuality, although the sons tried to use the disclosure of their homosexuality as a means to strengthen the family relationship and be open and honest with their parents.

None of the men used disclosure as a means to put distance between himself and his family. On the contrary, these men had tried to improve their positions vis-à-vis their families and especially in relationship to their parents. Disclosure did not often lead to the desired outcome. At the same time, neither did disclosure cause irreparable ruptures.

The very looseness and uncertainty of the parent/son relationship may be one explanation for this.

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However, not every man spoke of family relationships this way. The real bond between

Jim and his mother, exemplified by the fact that they were in the Mardi Gras together, was an exception. Nevertheless, the general lack of intimate connections with families was not enough to drive these gay men who wanted to live in the bush out of the family home or out of town, nor away from their families forever. But just as the relationship with families was less than inclusive, so it was too with the community.

Perceptions of, and Connections to, the Wider Community

As has already been detailed, these men saw the physical environment of the bush as a place of space, beauty, ruggedness, quiet and tranquillity, a place to which they connected and in which they felt they belonged. But they were not so taken with the social environment. In the context of social connections, these men felt somewhat disconnected from, but not necessarily rejected by, their families and they knew that their sexuality and their relationships did not receive the same recognition and respect as their straight siblings. They also felt disconnected from the community. They used the disclosure of their homosexuality as a means to try to shore up and improve their relationships with parents and to enhance the breadth and depth of a small circle of friends. At the same time, they were also able to use the non-disclosure of their homosexuality to the community to facilitate a detachment from it and so prevent unpleasant criticism of themselves.

These men were accurately able to sense the social climate of their communities and gauge the extent to which they felt they were part of the social environment. These men’s perception and understanding of the communities in which they lived was one element of local knowledge which they used to position themselves within the social

218 strata of the town and ensure they could stay in the bush. Part of the agency of their lives was to effectively resist the social structures that would subordinate them.

In general, they said that their communities were conservative and traditional. They concluded that such attitudes precluded them from being anything more than a superficial part of those communities. In describing Nurrapaberry, Rex said,

Nurrupaberry appears to be a fairly ohhhh … what I would call a standard, homophobic ahm … conservative place [21/5].

When the word ‘community’ was mentioned, Rex strongly agreed that there was a sense of community within the town. He said, ‘Oh yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I … I think there is a sense of community in the town …’ [21/6]. But his tone was sarcastic and the unsaid was that he, as a gay man, had little sense of community and gay men were not part of the Nurrapaberry community.

There was considerable evidence from the testimonies of other men to back up Rex’s testimony about the conservative and insular nature of rural communities. Gerry, for example, said of Barappa (a town smaller than Nurrupaberry) that,

… this place is so conservative it would be at least twenty years behind the metropolitan area in outlook. And it’s … about everything. Everything at all [18/5].

He added, ‘That’s typical of a country town. I mean, rural people are the most conservative in the country. You can count on it’ [18/6]. Petro also saw the people in his rural community of Inaway in less than endearing terms saying, ‘I would see this town as being still very small-minded’ [14/6]. He again referred to the blinkered mentality of many of those in Inaway, ‘… ahm … this town …they’re really narrow-

219 minded. They’re really narrow-minded and they’re not experienced [or] exposed [to the wider world] …’ [14/11].

They described their communities as conservative, narrow-minded, closed and reluctant to change. Their communities, as these men saw them, were inward looking. From their point of view, there was little enticement or invitation from the community for them to engage with it. All of these matters made it quite difficult for anyone to belong to such a community, unless you were of like mind and conformed to local attitudes and values.

As such, they concluded that the community found it difficult to accept difference and diversity within it. More specifically, they concluded that the community was unable or unwilling to accept them. Paradoxically, they were content with being on the periphery of the community if any greater involvement meant being cast as outcasts because they were gay. They resisted the requirement to conform not only by not participating in the life of the community, but also by actively disengaging from it.

Those men who were not quite so critical of the communities in which they lived were still not able to speak of their communities in terms of a positive engagement with them.

Bobby, who lived on the property of his employer just outside the very small hamlet of

Wee Tree, said there was a sense of community there,

I would say that there certainly is a community of Wee Tree if that’s … if that what it means. It often gets flooded. Everyone rushes down and banks each other’s houses with rocks. Things, you know, like that don’t necessarily arise every day. But there is a community here in that way [20/3].

So the notion of community applied in times of local crisis, but other than that Bobby did not see too much evidence of it. The phrase ‘… if that what it means’ left open the possibility that if people only came together in a time of crisis, then its status as a

220 community in the more wholesome sense of the concept was in doubt. He gave some confirmation of that earlier in the interview when he said, in regard to his opinion of the social attitudes of the town, that,

It’s very much a ‘G’Day, how are you? Here’s your mail. I see it’s from overseas. It could be something important’ – everyone knows your business. … You go into the shop and it’s all ‘Bit wet’, ‘Bit dry’, ‘Bridge is down’, ‘Bridge is open’, and things like that. You know, it’s everyone is very chatty, everyone’s got something to say, but … unless you make the effort, that is as far as it goes [20/ 2]. The point of Bobby’s comment is instructive. Rural communities want to know and scrutinise your business, but ‘that is as far as it goes’. To become more involved means that the individual has to take the first step in that direction. Jack was very clear on this matter, having said that bush life

… can be very pleasant …but … you have to make it so. It won’t …it won’t happen if you just sit back. You have to make it so, and … ah … you have to take a certain level of risk [1/50].

The community, according to these gay men, could not be relied upon to lay down the welcome mat, much less so to someone they knew was gay.

This lack of a sense of belonging in the community meant that these men rarely involved themselves in community affairs or events. While they may not have seen this in terms of resistance, they certainly recognised it as non-participation. Even someone like Jim, who said that he loved the town and the environment in which he lived, was not able to elaborate on the community activities in which he participated. He was involved in the activities of the local gay group, but other than generally socialising with friends, he played no part in the wider community. Other men made it clear that they did not involve themselves locally and, as will be seen in the next chapter, they often took their socialising out of town. On the other hand, Jack was involved in the

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Show Society, the Historical Society and on the Landcare Committee. His expertise as

an auditor prior to moving to Wobegon to live with his boyfriend was a skill that was

much required by small voluntary organisations. But Jack and John were not able to

develop close friendships as a result of their involvement in community activities.

While Bobby brought much credit, given the regular mentions in the local paper, to his

district with his skills of horsemanship in local rodeos and also on the Three Day

Eventing calendar, he still admitted that he had ‘… a couple of very, very good friends

and that’s about all’ [20/35].

When it came to the extent these gay men felt included in their communities, they were

very sceptical. Cleever, when he was asked whether he felt part of the community,

replied,

Ahhhhhh … [very hesitantly] part of it as in work, yes. In social life, probably not. Like … most of the places I wouldn’t go to unless I had to work there, because you’re not really … you feel probably a bit of tension even before you get to the door … so I’d say my … keeping to yourself otherwise. Yeah [17/30].

It was apparent to Cleever that he was not part of the town in a social sense. He was a man who liked to keep to himself. He was a man for whom engagement with others was not such an important part of his life, though he had lived in Barappa for all of it. Other men were equally aware of their position within the community. For example, Sam did not even think there was a community in the district where he lived. He was a gregarious man, easy to make conversation with and equally easy to get along with. He was a farmer who had extensive business dealings with the town. He had purchased land a few kilometres out of town and also bought and sold his livestock locally. He was well known around the saleyards of Inaway and Dalgety. But when the conversation with Sam turned to his perception of the community and his sense of belonging, it went this way,

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E: Do you find out here any sense of community? S: [Pause] Ahhhhh … very little. No. I … no. The answer to that is a flat ‘No’ [15/32].

A short time later, the conversation turned back to the question of community,

E: I mean, do you feel any community of belonging here? S: No, I don’t. I … I’m saddened to say I don’t [15/33].

It is obvious that these men have spoken about their communities in fairly disparaging terms. But it is important to also look at what was unsaid. These men described the bush as a place in the most enthusiastic of ways and, as was noted before, not one of them mentioned the usual adversaries of the dust, the heat and the flies. Even the isolation was a blessing. But when it came to the bush in social terms, these men were far more reticent to make positive statements. No one wanted to talk about a sense of belonging to the district in which they lived. No one was able to describe the warmth and inclusiveness of the community in which they resided. These men were not able to speak of a meaningful engagement with the town and district organisations. There is no evidence that the community tried to entice or invite them to involve themselves. In fact, there was a discernible sense of alienation from the community. These men resisted the community’s requirement and expectation to conform and fit in. They did it in such a way that there was little community reaction and, in fact, that was the object of their actions. These men lived on the fringe of their communities. That was where the community put them and, to an extent, that was where they positioned themselves.

Certainly, that was where they were content to be. Non-disclosure of their homosexuality allowed these men to disengage, but at the same time it did not give the community the opportunity to totally exclude them. They chose the level of openness with which they lived their lives so they could stay in the bush. For these men, their

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connectedness with the bush was with the place and not with the people. The bush itself

was why they stayed.

‘Live and Let Live’?

The gay men in this study were inclined to agree that times were changing and that for various reasons the open hostility to gay men in rural communities appeared to be

abating. Some suggested that the level of tolerance they encountered in their towns

surprised even them. Through clever and deft usage of the various strategies described

in this chapter, they were able to position themselves to take advantage of this

apparently improving attitude toward gay men in rural communities.

It is useful to explore further why these men thought there were increasing levels of

forbearance. Some men reasoned that the increasing visibility of gays through many

avenues had been of assistance. While not all the men in this study suggested that the

picture presented by the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras had always been

conducive to an attitude of acceptance in rural communities, they did acknowledge that

it had caused those communities to realise that gay men are everywhere, even in the

bush. Other men spoke of the various gay oriented awareness campaigns (such as AIDS

and safe sex) run through Health Departments, in the media and even in some schools.

Their general view was that rural communities were becoming more accustomed to gay

men through these awareness campaigns, the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, television

programs that featured gay characters and articles in the metropolitan press that carried

news stories of gay interest. Cleever’s view illustrated the point,

… there seems to be more of a general acceptance overflowing from the metropolitan. Because it has become prevalent down there, and there are more news and movies aimed at that outlook on life that people have become a little

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more accepting and when they find somebody is actually living that lifestyle, then they are not quite so reactive to it [18/33–34].

Toby had a similar opinion about the community he was living in,

… I think maybe the community’s becoming more educated, ahm … especially [through] television, the awareness campaigns that are happening, the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras … [8/47].

Some men thought that the size of the town might have some bearing on the level of acceptance for gay men in the community, in that bigger towns allowed for greater open-mindedness. They reasoned that bigger towns had greater resources and facilities, especially in the cultural and arts areas, in which gay men were more likely to be more visible and be more accepted. Theatres and arts galleries were generally not viable in smaller towns and any exposure of people to these cultural facilities in small towns was more likely to be only through events such as travelling exhibitions.

However, other men said that some sanction could also be found in smaller towns. For example, both Jason and Cleever found that the larger towns to which they went for shopping and social occasions were the places where they encountered more anti-gay sentiment. Jason lived in the small and considerably isolated town of Keroboken in the mountains. When he was asked about whether he had experienced any expressions of anti-gay sentiment, he said,

[Pause] Apart from the odd ‘Oh, bloody poof’ type comment in the streets of Albury … ahm … in [the village of] Keroboken, I haven’t. Ahm … I suppose, if I had to put it down to something … in smaller communities, or in well, in Keroboken, there is probably a greater level of tolerance …[9/88].

Jason worked in an outdoors job and mostly among other men. He was, he thought, well liked both in the town and on the job. After much thought and anguish, he had decided to ‘come out’ and disclose his homosexuality to his work colleagues. The reaction was,

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A nice surprise … and the reactions I got from the other people in the town that I know have all been fairly positive [9/70–71].

In addition to the greater visibility of gay people and the better airing of gay issues, there were other reasons that these gay men gave for what they saw as the apparent better reception they found in rural communities. One of the reasons was related to the comment that also opens this thesis. There, Baldwin observes that,

There was no more prejudice against lesbians or gay men in Dubbo that there was in the city. In the country, they are more likely to have an attitude of live and let live [Daily Liberal, 10 February, 1994].

This attitude of ‘live and let live’ in rural communities was reflected in these men’s

narratives. This attitude may arise when people in small towns feel that, because of the

size of their community and the relative isolation from other communities, they had to

get along with each other. Several men commented that small communities have the

remarkable ability to turn a blind eye to something. Some called this a ‘not wanting to

know’ and when something was seemingly not known, it did not have to be reacted to.

The testimonies of other men would suggest that being known to be gay did not mean

automatic rejection in a rural community. This idea of being known or suspected of

being gay, but at the same time being ‘tolerated’ ran through the narratives of a number

of the men in this study. For example, Rodney commented that in his experience, a lot

of people in his town knew that he was gay, but appeared not too concerned. According

to Rodney, the reason was simple,

…I’m very … I’m really tolerated in this town … but ahm … lots of people in this town would know that I’m gay. But a lot of them don’t really give a fuck [13/12–13].

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Other men suggested that the apparently less hostile attitude to gay men within rural communities might have something to do with the fact that being gay was really not such a big issue for a number of people living in small towns, despite the generally conservative sensibilities of rural communities. The increasing diversity within rural communities could mean that in learning to accommodate cultural differences and to accept diverse shades of opinion, communities may also learn to increasingly abide the gay men who live there. This was Jim’s explanation of how he saw an improving situation for gay men in the town of Geriffi. He made this comment about the changing views of rural communities,

Ahm … well it seems like they might have changed. Like, more and more they find out that there are gay people in … in country towns like ahm … here in Geriffi, it’s like they’ve all … don’t really care any more… like [gay people are] part of the community. And it’s like, because we are such a multicultural community, you know, it’s like they really don’t care any more. So, it’s just who they [gays] are [3/23–25].

When he was asked to elaborate on the extent of this apparent easy-goingness towards gays in his town of Geriffi and the level to which that acceptance might extend, his optimism was unexpected. He suggested that,

Ahm … I reckon you could take it pretty far in this town. Ahm … I have my boyfriend come in to visit me at work and everyone probably notices…. They’re always seeing us together. …Ahm … [if two men danced together], I reckon that they’d all look, but I don’t think they would say too much. There would be a couple of people maybe, but a lot of people, I think, these days would just accept it [3/25–26].

To give an example of what he was saying, he used his own experience. At one point he and his mother were featured in the local paper as marching together in the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras under the banner of the NSW Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) group. While he had not, at that time, told his boss that he was gay,

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he knew that the article in the paper would ‘out’ him to the whole town. Of that experience he said,

… like when I was in the paper ahm … they all just turned around [and said], “Oh, you’re in the paper. Congratulations!” And the girls from Jazz Café [and] all over the [shopping] plaza were all the same [3/54].

Another reason why some rural communities appeared to be showing a more non- judgmental attitude of those who were seen as different was what might be called the exercise of a social conscience, even by a few. Perhaps one way of conceptualising this is that there was a sub-strata of acceptance that counterposed the general community norms. This was exemplified in several instances in this study.

Not everyone in small communities was necessarily conservative and hostile to gay men. For many people in rural communities, there is an element of repudiation of the injustice and unfairness of the discrimination of anyone within a community. When people object to the unfair treatment of others in a small town, it was likely that those who were being unfair and discriminatory would desist in the face of local pressure.

There were several examples of this in the testimonies of these men. Cleever and Gerry spoke of how their friends rebuked someone who was making homophobic comments about them. While this did not necessarily lead to a change of attitude in the person who made the offensive comments, it was indicative that unfair and unnecessary attacks on people are not always tolerated and ignored in the community. And the comments from that person stopped.

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Jack, too, talked about the relative peacefulness of he and his partner’s life together in

Wobegon. When he was asked whether he – or they – had been subject to any ‘overt

hostility’, he could reply, ‘Not that I’m aware of. We went everywhere together and

were accepted everywhere’ [1/25]. Even when the issue of what Jack calls ‘The

Inquisition’ came up in the interview, Jack could still talk of finding acceptance, not

only within the community, but even within their church. ‘The Inquisition’ was their

experience of both intolerance and embrace in the small town in which they lived. The

story revolved around the attempts by one group within their church to expel his partner

(who had become an Elder in the congregation) for being in a gay relationship. In the

face of this bigotry, they found an unexpected level of openness and acceptance when

another group of parishioners, including the Minister, came out in their support. He says,

It turned out that a lot [of the congregation] had concluded what the situation was and didn’t wish to think any more about it. … they had concluded that we were [a gay couple], but that they hadn’t thought it necessary to raise it means that they didn’t see it as anything of importance to them [1/27].

The fact that a considerable proportion of the church membership were upset enough by

the behaviour of other more conservative and vocal critics of Jack and John is indicative

of a significant level of acceptance of the two men, both as good people and as a gay

couple. Jack and John remained in the town and continued as respected members of the

church.

This comment is also indicative of a couple of other points that have been made in

terms of what these men see as improving levels of response to gay men in rural

communities. Jack’s statement that the congregation ‘didn’t wish to think any more

about it’ as it was not ‘anything of importance’ was indicative that people were able to

accept gay men even if they were not entirely accepting of homosexuality. Bobby

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referred to this as an attitude of ‘… we accept, but do not approve’ [20/33], which, in

his mind, summed up the rural community’s attitude towards gay men living in the bush.

Jack and his partner were known to be good and solid citizens of their community who

contributed in various ways. Being an Elder of the church, on the Show and Historical

Societies and the local conservation group meant that these two gay men contributed to

their community more than most other men in this study. It could be that the support

Jack and John received was more a reaction to unfairness and bigotry rather than an indication of obvious acceptance of their homosexuality and their relationship.

Gerry and Cleever were ‘an item’ and they, too, took the view that people in rural communities tended not to think too much about the issue of homosexuality, but probably conceded that it was likely that some gay men were living in their communities. While they had no doubts that the general views of the community were traditional and conventional stating that ‘… rural people are the most conservative people in the country. You can count it’ [18/6], they also noted, even to their own surprise, the apparent easiness and the overall lack of hostility that they felt the town afforded them as a gay couple. As Gerry said,

… there didn’t seem to be any change whatsoever from [when people were] thinking we were straight to [them] finding out we were gay…. A lot of people just didn’t bat an eyelid. Which surprised me in some respects, but quite a pleasant surprise really. I expected a lot more aggravation and things like that, but it just didn’t occur [18/33–34].

Many people in rural communities had no wish to deliberately make other people’s lives a misery by public and overt displays of denigration and vilification. The ‘live and let live’ attitudes of some country people that Robert Baldwin spoke of was borne out in the testimonies of these gay men. And while this ‘live and let live’ attitude is an improvement on the ostracism and rejection that rural communities have been said to

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direct at gay men, this should not be taken too far. The ‘acceptance’ that these gay men

speak of was what might be termed ‘conditional’ acceptance. It was acceptance so long

as gay men did not step outside the boundaries. Gay men living in rural communities

were accepted so long as they did not, as Chris with deliberate indelicacy expressed it,

‘… push the issue right in their face’ [6/82]. Homosexuality was thought to be a private

matter in rural communities and the homosexual aspects of gay men’s lives was

considered inappropriate for public display.

An additional point stemming from these men’s narratives was that while some of the

men in this study did express a desire for greater acceptance, other men made no

comment in that regard. Either they were of the opinion that, for them, there was

acceptance enough in the community to lead a sufficiently inclusive life, or they were

resigned to the fact that full, or unconditional, acceptance was still some way off. Most

men in this study took this latter point of view. The lack of full acceptance suited these

men just fine because it allowed them to position themselves somewhat outside their

communities and to lead a more agreeably isolated life. It was in the isolation of the

bush and the disengagement from the community that these gay men could live their homosexual lives. In being on the periphery, they were not subject to the overbearing scrutiny of the community. At the same time, they could still conform to community demands to the extent that they kept their homosexuality and their homosexual acts away from community view and community reaction. In doing so, they were not dependent on the tolerance or acceptance (or otherwise) of the community.

Not everyone could count on even ‘conditional’ acceptance. Despite what a number of men said was an improving level of tolerance of gay men in rural communities, others

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in this study made more sceptical and cautionary remarks. It became equally clear that,

despite the reporting of some broad-mindedness, approval of and respect for being gay was far from unbridled in the bush. Many men could not use the word ‘accepted’ in relation to how they thought their communities saw them and preferred to use the more unflattering ‘tolerated’. For example, Jason, who had a generally favourable reaction to his coming out in the workplace and was well disposed towards the small community in which he lived, still used the word ‘tolerance’. Rodney used the word ‘tolerated’, and combined it with the expression that people ‘… didn’t give a fuck’ about his homosexuality. Rodney meant that he was tolerated because people in the community did not care and that acceptance and appreciation were not necessarily part of that tolerance.

Perhaps this was what tolerance was about in the context of rural communities. The point was that people who tolerate might be said not to care one way or the other.

‘Acceptance’, on the other hand, as the men in this study understood it, was about some care, not despite a man being gay, but precisely because he was gay. Noel mentioned this lack of care and disregard by the community about whether a man was gay. Noel was very open within the community about the relationship that he and his (ex) partner were in. The reaction he felt from the community was that

… on the whole, we were … well, not accepted totally, but … ahm … ‘tolerated’ may be a better word. Yeah. Yeah. Most of them didn’t really care. But some did. And, you know, we’d go to local dances and that and we’d get a few taunts there. Jeff, my partner, was very …ahm … good at handling those. He’d sit them down and have long talks with them. I’m more inclined to say, ‘Fuck off!’ [5/28–29].

Noel reiterated the point that tolerance of gay men in rural communities involved not caring about whether someone was gay or not. It alluded to an element of not wanting

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to know. It meant not really being, nor wanting to be, involved with the gay man in

question. Tolerance was about disregarding the gay man or disregarding that aspect of

his being. It was about rendering the gay man not gay. On the other hand, Noel also

implied that those who did care did not necessarily accept one’s homosexuality, and in

fact were more likely to reject it. Noel’s experience was that there was a difference

between not caring and acceptance, whereby those who did not care about someone’s

homosexuality did not react to it and those who did care generally reacted adversely to

it and did not accept.

The level of reaction against gay men in rural areas, as sensed and experienced by these

men, will be more fully addressed in the next chapter. However, these gay men made it clear that living in a rural community was not the equivalent of being in an outback

‘gulag’. The rejection of gay men that was said to have epitomised rural communities

and the disparaging images that such communities have been saddled with may not be

as prevalent as they once were. But gay men living in rural communities still chose to

put an element of distance, literally and metaphorically, between themselves and their

communities. They were justifiably cautious in how they conducted themselves because

as was seen in the previous chapter, these men were subject to an underlying, but

pernicious, homophobia that continued to pervade many rural communities.

Conclusion

This chapter has shown that the gay men in this study deliberately, and otherwise,

positioned themselves flexibly and loosely in the local community so as to enable them

to stay there. Disclosure and non-disclosure of their homosexuality permitted these men

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to position themselves to their own advantage with regard to family, friends and the

community. The decision not to disclose their homosexuality, while on the pretext that

it was none of the community’s business, was used to put some distance between these men and their communities, not to confirm possible community suspicions and so pre- empt and silence any adverse comment. According to these gay men, the act of distancing themselves from the community, or the act of not becoming too involved in it, made staying easier. By the same token, selectively disclosing their homosexuality to family and friends was an attempt to foster greater connection and engagement and to garner support. The position these men were able to adopt within their communities also enabled them to take advantage of what they saw as a ‘live and let live’ attitude that pervaded many rural places. They also facilitated this ‘live and let live’ attitude not only by the non-disclosure of their homosexuality, but also by a disengagement from the community rather than an open opposition to it. This, too, made staying easier.

Living unobtrusively and somewhat removed from the mainstream community was the outcome that these men sought and achieved.

Yet, staying in the bush was not only a matter of positioning themselves so as to be better able to do so. Staying involved more than ‘disconnecting’ from the community and more than ‘connecting’ with the place. While these factors were crucial in the ability of these men to stay in the bush, they also had to engage in strategies of a more overt nature. To stay in the bush, there were some things these men did and others they did not do in order, not only to stay, but to make staying and living in the bush that much more enjoyable, and fulfilling. The strategies that these men adopted as part of living their lives in the bush are explored in the next chapter.

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Chapter Seven

Strategies for Staying

Ahm … I’m … I guess, you know, … people tend to associate … gay people as being ahm … ironed white tee-shirts that really don’t fit properly ahm … after shave that would knock you out … I mean, you need to see me after six hours of … I’m pretty scruffy now, but after six hours work, you know, being up to your eyeballs in mud, sand, dust, dirt, hay, straw, horseshit, the full works … [Bobby].

Introduction

One of the more striking findings to arise from this research is the determination these men exhibited and employed in staying in the bush. This agency is demonstrated both in the actions they took to improve their lives and in their resistance to community mores and expectations that would impair what they saw as a fulfilling life as a gay man.

The previous chapter established that in order to stay in the bush, these men positioned themselves so as to be better able to do so. They tended to disconnect from people generally and put a greater reliance on their close friendships and their affinity with place. As successfully as these men employed these quieter, less evident strategies, they were aware that they had to engage in other practices of a more overt nature.

In order to do this, these rural gay men explained that they engaged in various strategies and manoeuvres so that living in the bush could be a more satisfying and fulfilling experience. This chapter details some of those tactics and courses of action. The fact that they stayed and that they intended to continue living in the bush is evidence of the considerable success of their strategies. These strategies also indicate that these men do not simply stoically endure on the periphery of their communities. As has been noted before, these men are skilful social operators and this reflects a lot about their own lives and how they go about living them. They are very conscious of what they do and how

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those actions will be seen and interpreted not only by their friends but also by others in

the wider community. They are also mindful of the effect of their actions on others and are particularly aware of how such actions will impact on themselves.

‘Ohhhh … I Don’t Flaunt It’

One of the strategies the men spoke of using was ‘not flaunting it’. When they talked about ‘not flaunting it’, they did not necessarily mean hiding their sexuality from the community. Nor did they necessarily imply a fitting in with the community. They suggested that ‘not flaunting it’ was something that could assist them in appearing to fit in with the community in which they lived as and when that was necessary. Though

‘not flaunting it’ was related to both of these issues, hiding their sexuality and fitting in,

it was not the same as either of them.

‘Not flaunting it’, the way the men in this study used the term, meant not advertising

one’s homosexuality. It referred to not bringing attention to oneself, or more

particularly, to one’s homosexuality. This was largely a passive behaviour pattern. It

was something one did not do rather than something one did. ‘Not flaunting it’ also

implied not conforming to what these gay men thought country people saw as the

stereotypical image of what it was to be gay. ‘Not flaunting it’ meant not ‘camping’ it

up, not dressing gay, not talking gay and so on. It also referred to not displaying

affection, not holding hands and not dancing together. By its very nature, ‘not flaunting

it’ referred to not doing something in public. ‘Flaunting it’ was something that only

related to behaviour in public – on the street, at the cattle sales, in pubs and was not

related to behaviour in private.

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‘Not flaunting it’ was one of the most consistently mentioned strategies that these gay men incorporated into their public lives. ‘Not flaunting it’ was a natural part of their lives and something they did anyway, almost without thinking. It seemed to be a part of their lack of identification with what they saw as the stereotypical gay image. Perhaps it was their inclination to play down personal idiosyncrasies, rather than to play them up.

In general, they shied away from bringing attention to themselves and ‘not flaunting it’ should also be seen in this light. While ‘not flaunting it’ was a strategy that was common to all of these men, there were variations in the meanings they ascribed to this phrase and to the behaviours that were associated with it.

Simon was not a big man, but he was something of a rather rugged individual. He was not the most articulate of men, but at the same time he was able to get to the essence of issues without too much fanfare. Simon had indicated that it was generally known in

Dunno that he was gay but that he had experienced few overt problems arising from that.

When he was asked why he thought that was the case, he replied, ‘Ohhhh … I don’t flaunt it. Ahm … that’s just the way. I just be myself’ [10/1].

Two things arise from this. One is that Simon felt that because he had accepted himself, then he could also be himself. His sexuality was not something that set him apart, nor was it something that made him particularly different. It was just him. Because his homosexuality was just as much a part of who he was, and as unexceptional as his brown eyes, then there was no need to flaunt his sexuality. Indeed, given the unexceptional nature of his sexuality, as he saw it, there was nothing to flaunt. He was aware, though, that other gay men did flaunt their homosexuality and suffered at the hands of the community for doing so. As he said, ‘I know that … ah … some people …

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get heckled … ahm … insulted … and that type of thing …’ [10/1–2]. And the reason

such men were ‘heckled’ was because, naturally or otherwise, they adopted the

mannerisms of the effeminate man that Simon believed most rural people understand is

typical of the behaviour of gay men. As he said, the insults occurred ‘[be]cause they’re pretty well … ohhh, what would you say… they take on sort of …I can’t think of the word I’m after … it’s what people expect of gay people’ [10/1–2]. For Simon, ‘not flaunting it’ was something that was just a part of his ordinary everyday behaviour. ‘Not flaunting it’ was not necessarily a mechanism that he consciously used in order to fit in and to avoid the homophobia that was inflicted on others. But it was a mechanism that he was conscious of and he knew it contributed to him leading a peaceful life in Dunno.

When Simon was asked to explain what he meant when he used the word ‘flaunt’, he said,

Well, I don’t sort of ahm … like even … even the way I speak, people have said to me [that] … I don’t speak like your typical stereotype gay … Like the ones that are out. … If you don’t act gay, you’re more accepted in society [10/3].

At first glance there seemed to be something of a contradiction here with what Simon had said earlier. Initially, he said that even though he was ‘out’ and that it was quite well known that he was gay, he did not get hassled because of that fact. But, in re- listening to what Simon is saying, there appeared to be some subtlety to it. He was

saying that some gay men, in being ‘out’, also advertised the fact that they were gay and

deliberately and consciously drew attention to that aspect of their lives. They

deliberately spoke, walked and acted with a level of affectation that conformed to the

effeminate gay man that is commonly portrayed in television sitcoms (such as Jack in

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Will & Grace15). Perhaps what Simon was hinting at was that this behaviour involved living out an expected role. It was the ‘taking on’ of a persona. In Simon’s opinion, it was this dramatisation and not being yourself when in public that got gay men into trouble. ‘Not flaunting it’ was about just being your usual and ordinary self. The

‘extraordinary’ self could be, and was, flaunted at other times and other places. What is also important to recognise here is that these men, in their everyday lives, sometimes appeared to contradict themselves as they reflected on their own experiences. Being

ordinary and human is part of that. As such, being ordinary is a constructed identity that

is liable to change according to circumstance and to be fluid and to fluctuate with

emotion and mood at the time.

Others though had a slightly different view of ‘flaunting’. They suggested that when

they go out socially, they adjusted their behaviour according to the company they are in.

When they were out with straight friends their behaviour was a little different to when

they were gay friends. With gay friends was the occasion to ‘flaunt it’, but usually not

too much. As Toby said, when he was out with gay friends he felt that he was ‘…more

myself …’ [8/60]. But he also made the subtle point that, ‘ahm … where, if I’m in a

straight social group, you tend to be a little bit more … ahm … I don’t know … self-

conscious. You’re trying to be what they don’t think you are’ [8/60]. What he meant

was that gay men, in straight company, try to act straight even though they are aware

that most would have an idea that they were gay. We see here two slightly different

presentations of the same thing. Both men wanted to be their real selves. Simon was his

ordinary self when he did not flaunt his homosexuality and was a little less his ordinary

15 Will and Grace is a TV series about two best friends. The twist is that Will is gay and Grace is a straight interior designer. The show, from the USA, also features Grace's sharp, shrill and sarcastic, assistant, Karen, and Will's flamboyantly gay friend, Jack.

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self when he occasionally camped it up in gay company. Toby was more himself when

he was out with gay friends while behaving with a little more restraint in straight

company.

These were revealing comments, because they raised two issues. The first was that these

men did not act the same way when they were in a straight setting as they might if they were among gay friends. This was the ‘not flaunting it’ strategy that these gay men were so conscious of. They tended to tone down their behaviour just that little bit more

in public. But the other instructive comment was that because they tended to

‘straighten’ their behaviour when they were with straight friends, it appeared that they

were trying to be straight when those friends already had suspicions or knowledge that

they were gay. In other words, these gay men made the point that straight friends might

not always have expected gay men to behave in exactly the same way straight men did.

There might be an anticipation, and even an expectation, that a gay man would, because

he was gay, act a little differently to a straight man, and that smidgen of difference was

acceptable. The implication was that these gay men thought that straight men see gay

men as different. Nevertheless, to accentuate the difference, or to ‘force it down their

throat’ as one man with deliberate indelicacy described the situation, was to ‘flaunt it’,

and that had the potential to make life difficult for a gay man living in a rural

community.

Bobby, like other gay men in this study, also made the point that any behaviour that

brought attention to, or accentuated, one’s homosexuality would be frowned upon and

he described such behaviour as ‘over the top’ [20/8]. For Bobby, being gay, or being

known to be gay, was not a problem in itself in his community. Even in the small

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village of Wee Tree, where he said most of the town would have known that ‘… I am a man that lives with another man and that we have a relationship …’, there was no

problem because ‘I’m not over the top’. Bobby said that, at least in his experience, ‘…

it’s a case, if you’re not too camp and you’re not too over the top, then it doesn’t offend

anyone’ [20/7–8].

This suggested that the community might be willing, if they knew someone was gay, to

accept some types of behaviour that might not be acceptable if they thought that person

was straight. After all, if gay is seen as somewhat different, then to expect absolutely

undifferentiated behaviour would be irrational. But such aberrant behaviour would not

be offensive, even if not entirely acceptable, so long as it was not too aberrant or, to use

Bobby’s words, not too ‘over the top’. This was the distinction between ‘flaunting’ and

‘not flaunting’, and it was this fine line that gay men in the bush had to tread, but not overstep.

Perhaps Rodney put it most plainly, and for him the matter was simple. As he explained,

I’m very … I’m really tolerated in this town ’cause I don’t go around … ahm … being really flamboyant or whatever, but ahm … lots of people in this town would know that I’m gay [13/12–13].

For Rodney, his being ‘tolerated’ in the town was directly related to his non-flamboyant behaviour. But again, it should be noted that he allowed a concession along the same lines as Simon and Bobby. Like both of them, Rodney thought that his behaviour in public was ‘[not] really flamboyant’. Like the other gay men, he felt that the community gave him some space because he was a gay man and both he and the community was aware of it. However, these gay men were not fooled that this space was akin to licence.

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Some gay men took the view that ‘flaunting it’ amounted to behaviour that was likely to

confirm the suspicion of one’s homosexuality in the community. This viewpoint

suggested that confirming what was previously uncertain might lead to belligerent

behaviour from some members of that community. This issue was raised in Chapter Six

of this thesis in regard to a ‘live and let live’ attitude in which the community did not

want to know about the homosexuality of the gay men who lived there. Therefore, if a

gay man knowingly flaunted his homosexuality, then the act of flaunting it could be

construed as confrontational behaviour.

Noel said that even though he was in a long-term relationship, he and his partner did not

encounter too many problems in Galbern ‘… because we … we didn’t flaunt it and we didn’t carry on in front of them’ [5/34]. What Noel meant was that when they were out in public, they did not draw attention to themselves. People knew that he and his partner were gay and that they were together in a relationship. But they refrained from the usual displays of intimacy that other people in the community never thought twice about.

Noel and his partner did not hold hands in public. There were no overt signs of affection between them when they were in the street. They did not dance together. He was aware of the likely consequences were he and his boyfriend to do so. As he made clear, ‘I think if we did that [flaunt it], we might have broke a few eyebrows and presented a whole lot of different problems’ [5/34].

These gay men generally agreed that there was a fine line between being thought to be gay and being known to be gay, but they also agreed that there was a definite distinction.

There was also general agreement that being thought to be gay was not such a problem for rural communities. But being known to be gay and being ‘out’ in a fairly active and

242 overt way as a gay man was thought to have the potential to cause problems. For example, Chris felt that people can know about someone being gay in a number of ways and, as he said, they can ‘… know without knowing. … and then … it’s not an issue because they can still ignore it’ [6/81].

This ‘know[ing] without knowing’ was really about feigning ignorance of a matter, or in this case, that someone was gay. If a man came ‘out’ or was known to be gay, then

Chris felt that the community had to react to that knowledge. Having knowledge about something implied that it could not be ignored. Chris saw being ‘out’ or being openly gay at the community level, if not at the level of family and friends, as a forced imparting of knowledge about something they preferred not to know about. What he meant might have been an actual ‘outing’ of oneself, but it may also have been actions along the lines of what other men in this study have called ‘flaunting it’. For Chris, it meant making other people aware of your homosexuality by the way you dress, speak and act or by the company you keep. This was ‘flaunting it’. And Chris went on to warn that ‘… if you don’t force it on them, it’s live and let live. But as soon as you … you get out there and push the issue right in their face, you’re asking for a reaction’ [6/82].

All this might sound reasonable enough on first reading. After all, what was wrong with the community not especially liking behaviour that flaunted, or otherwise brought attention to, one’s sexuality, and more particularly, to one’s homosexuality? What was wrong with expecting behaviour to conform to community norms? To be expected not to ‘flaunt it’ required vigilance by these men such that they had to be careful all the time and to always and everywhere pay heed to the sensitivities of others. It added a constant tension to their lives. In pragmatic terms, it meant some behaviour modification on the

243 part of gay men. It meant not only restricting any gay exuberance to places and moments away from the public gaze, but it also meant that these gay men were not able to do the very normal and natural things that everyone else in the community took for granted. There could be no indication, for example, of affection between lovers. There could be no holding of hands or anything that would have confirmed the reality of a relationship or even of a man’s homosexuality.

For Ivor, ‘not flaunting it’ meant that he had to,

… almost act straight to make sure I don’t get any hassles. … I used to try and get out, but now I just … feel like it’s … just asking for trouble to sort of go out…. Because I don’t fancy going out and, you know, trying to have a good night and only to walk out of the club or something like that [and] get bashed or anything like that, ’cause someone didn’t like my sexuality or the way I said something or the way I acted or … [7/6–7].

In his case, it clearly restricted Ivor’s social life in town. But he was not the only gay man in this study to remark that ‘not flaunting it’ had ramifications for their everyday behaviour in the town in which they lived. For example, Perry would very much have liked to ‘let his hair down’ from time to time. But he felt constrained on an everyday basis. He said he could not do the things that he saw gay men in the city take for granted. For Perry that meant that he could not ‘… act like you’re sort of … walk sort of … put [on] different clothes, … wear like a bit of makeup …’ [4/49]. The implication was that he would like to, on occasion, ‘act’ gay and to reveal a little of his sexuality. But he felt that he could not. However, when he could, he did. But it was never in public. However, unlike Simon who had no wish to affect a gay role, Perry would have liked to adopt a more ‘campy’ persona in public, and, in fact, he did so at home. He talked about ‘swishing’ around within the four walls of his own home. He spoke of cross-dressing at gay functions.

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For Perry there were other aspects of ‘not flaunting it’. It was what he called being ‘… sort of careful what I done …’ [4/65]. For Perry, being ‘careful’ referred to not being seen out with another man [4/66]. It was about not putting a rainbow sticker on his car

[4/67] and it was about his car not being seen at a local beat [4/60]. Flaunting it, for

Perry, had connotations of ‘showing off’ that you were gay. Despite the fact that he would have liked to ‘show off’, he felt he could not do so because of the possible (and probable) repercussions at work and on the street.

‘Not flaunting it’ was an issue for the men in this study which had repercussions for how they conducted their ordinary lives as well as how they conducted the gay component of their lives. ‘Letting their hair down’ was something these men did, but they kept their ‘camp’ behaviour and their gay exuberance away from the public eye.

They put some restrictions on their interactions with the community in order to not be accused of flaunting their sexuality. For example, Bobby could be himself because he didn’t look too gay, or act too gay, and because he brought some credit to the town due to his work and his skill. Bobby said that a level of acceptance in the town came, despite the fact that others might have known of, or suspected, that he was gay so long as ‘… you’re not too camp and if you’re not too over the top…’ [20/8]. And then he added that if these traits are evident in a gay man’s behaviour ‘then it doesn’t offend anyone’ [20/8]. The strategy of obeying the unwritten rules of the community and not bringing to its the attention the fact that you are gay and at the same time not pretending to be straight allowed him and his boyfriend to stay.

One of the effects of trying not to flaunt it was that some men did not go out much socially. Cleever and Gerry fell into this pattern of behaviour. In some ways, Cleever

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thought that even being seen together in public might in itself be interpreted as

advertising and promoting their homosexuality and their relationship. As Cleever

remarked about their being together, they ‘… don’t overly broadcast it’ [17/22]. And he

went on to say that for them,

People see us together, [but] we don’t hold hands in public. We walk like men should walk or whatever, as they say. Ahm … affection is kept to a minimum, if any, in public [17/22–23].

But it was much more than simply not displaying their relationship as a gay couple. As

he said,

You don’t overly advertise you are gay [and] go out … [and if you did go out, you’d] pick a night when the pubs and the clubs weren’t too busy [and] there weren’t a lot of people around … . You don’t push it on people … in case you do get some other guy who wants to make a bit more of it [17/24].

They tended to socialise at home or in the homes of friends. Cleever and Gerry did

‘… not worry about what people think’ [17/25], and they were not necessarily the tame or submissive men that this comment above might imply. This refusal to become

absolutely invisible is clear in Cleever’s comment that,

If we do come across someone who ahm … would probably be very obstinate [meaning ‘obstreperous’] about us being together … we just tell them that we’re happy with what we do and the way we are [17/26].

Nevertheless, Cleever and Gerry tended to restrict their social life so as not to bring

attention to themselves. These two men had been in a relationship for the past four

years and they lived together a few kilometres outside Barappa. Most of the town, they

surmised, would have known that they were gay and lived together. Despite the fact that they did not hide who they were and that they felt the community was aware of their

relationship, they, too, believe that they must ‘not flaunt’ their relationship.

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Though these men may have used different words to express it – ‘act straight’,

‘broadcast it’, ‘pushing it in their face’, ‘carry on’, ‘not flamboyant’, ‘over the top’,

‘showing off’, ‘don’t act gay’ – the notion was the same. If they were to flaunt their homosexuality within their rural communities, they knew they could expect consequences such as less tolerance and less respect. They could have expected greater scrutiny and to have been given less space to be themselves. They could have expected problems in the way of derisive public comment. That was without mentioning the fact that they might also have been given a black eye – just for good measure.

These seemingly contradictory statements indicate the constant tensions these men faced between exerting some level of assertiveness about their lives and ‘not flaunting it’. The issue was not clear-cut and it changed according to the situation. Nevertheless, these men negotiated this complicated behavioural maze with a dexterity and skill borne of local knowledge and an awareness of who they were and where they lived. They had sophisticated social skills and the fact that they lived lives largely violence-free and devoid of flagrant community hostility and ostracism indicated that they knew when to be visible and when to go unnoticed. While they did not always conform to community attitudes and expectations, these gay men successfully trod the fine line between ‘not flaunting it’ and being just that little bit different.

Not Hiding One’s Homosexuality

One of the problems of using a strategy of ‘not flaunting it’ was that it may lead the community to be quite unaware of the possibility that someone is gay. The evidence of these men is that rural communities could be tolerant to the extent that gay men conform to the social mores and be relatively quiet about their homosexuality.

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Furthermore, these men made it clear that adverse community reaction was more likely

to arise when suspicion about a man’s homosexuality became confirmed knowledge.

However, problems were also likely to arise when they allowed themselves to ‘not

flaunt it’ so well that they inadvertently led the community to assume that they were not

gay and then the reality became evident. These men believed that in those cases where

men had tried to hide their homosexuality and were found out, the community might

actually take a dimmer view of that deception than if they had not hidden but just not

disclosed. In ‘not flaunting it’ too well, these men reasoned that they might actually be

doing themselves a disservice. Sam made exactly this point from bitter personal

experience. He had lived in another country town for a number of years and it had not

been generally known that he was gay. However, it did become widely known after an

exposé by the local newspaper. The reaction was immediate and uncompromising. Sam

remembered what happened to him this way,

People were devastated [when it became known that I was gay]. … They just couldn’t cope that they had talked to me for six years and all of a sudden, since this newspaper came out, I was … I was a raging faggot. I was a poofter. They couldn’t believe it. I think [my ostracism] was because I was gay. Because I believe 99% of the people that I came into contact with didn’t realise that I was gay. And this article told them I was. And they couldn’t … they couldn’t accept that I had … ahm … misguided them. That I had, in some sort of thing, lied to them. I mean it was none of their business, but the paper made it their business [15/38]. Sam, like other gay men in this study, was aware that some people in the community might become angry with a man they had presumed to be straight but who was gay. In this regard, these gay men blamed themselves for this community reaction. In Sam’s words, it was the gay man who had ‘lied’ about himself and ‘misguided’ those among whom he lived. Therefore, while it was very important that these men not flaunt their homosexuality, it was another thing to deliberately hide and deny one’s sexuality and

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thereby deceive the community in which they lived. These men appeared to imply that

the onus was essentially on the rural gay man to conduct himself appropriately in order

to prevent a hostile community reaction. This perspective provides some evidence for

the confidence these men have in their own capacity to stay in the bush. They are aware

of the unsaid requirements of the community and they use their own not inconsiderable

social skills to superficially conform but to essentially disengage from the community and so resist and bypass the social constraints that would suppress them.

In a previous chapter, there was considerable discussion about the extent to which these men disclosed their homosexuality and the implications of that disclosure. This discussion was in the context that disclosing their homosexuality to a chosen few gave them a level of openness and support which positioned them to their advantage in their

hometowns. One of the outcomes of that selective disclosure that was not discussed at

that point was the issue of hiding. The men in this study made it very clear that there

was a relationship between non-disclosure and ‘not flaunting it’ and that there was an

unmistakable distinction between these actions and ‘hiding it’. They made it clear that

they did not hide their sexuality from the community in which they lived. In fact, not

hiding their homosexuality was one of the mechanisms they used to enhance their lives

in the bush. Mention has been made before of the fine line these men straddled in the

way they coped with the social conventions of living in the bush. The distinction

between ‘non-disclosure’, ‘not flaunting it’ and ‘hiding’ it is another example of this

fine line, but these gay men understood and handled that distinction very well.

Care must be exercised about what is meant by ‘hiding’. The Oxford English Dictionary

defines to ‘hide’ as to ‘put out of sight, veil, cover, silence, disguise or obscure’. But in

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regard to ‘hiding’ the knowledge of one’s homosexuality from others, the word also has

meanings that include, to ‘repudiate, repress, deny, reject, contradict, disagree and rebuff’. The way I see it, the word ‘hiding’ evokes quite demeaning and offensive meanings. It has connotations of faint-hearted behaviour, of running away from the truth and not being ‘man enough’ to face up to who you are. Because of this, it was a word that I rarely used in the interviews. When it was used, the interviewee’s response

indicated that for them the word also had a derogatory meaning that questioned the

integrity of the person about whom it was used.

These gay men acknowledged that to hide was to concede a level of fear of the

repercussions if one’s homosexuality were to become known. To admit to hiding was to

reveal a certain lack of courage and honesty. Nevertheless, as has been mentioned in

other sections of this thesis, these men had to maintain a level of caution in the way

they disclosed the sexual aspects of their lives. Petro explained ‘… I deem it appropriate

for self-preservation reasons not to disclose my … being gay’ [14/3]. Petro had not used

the word ‘hiding’, and though this was one of the very few times that I did so, it was

used to test his reaction to it. Petro was asked,

E: So essentially, one of the ways you’re coping or … or dealing with … your homosexuality in the town at the moment is to hide it? P: … you could say that. But ahm … that’s a bit of a tragedy in saying that because ahm … I’ve always said that I … I would never ahm … hide my … to live in a closet, and I still like to think I’m not. But as a self-preservation thing … I’m not living a lie as such, but I’m just … it’s non-disclosure [14/4–5].

In this exchange, there were glimpses of the touchiness in using the word ‘hiding’ that

was mentioned at the beginning of this section. For example, he made it very plain that

I had used the word and not him. And Petro made some attempt to deflect the issue.

And of course, to be fair to Petro, when he lived with his boyfriend in another country

250 town, he was very open and out. But living with his parents in his hometown had changed things and he felt that he now had to be more circumspect. Petro redefined the notion of ‘hiding’ that was put to him. He implied that in reality he was not really hiding his homosexuality, given his self-acceptance, his previous long-term relationships and his previous open life. The implication was that his current non- disclosure of his sexuality was something temporary while he was living in Inaway under the same roof as his parents and it was also something he had to do to protect them.

For Petro, ‘hiding’ had connotations of denial, and while he might have done that in his youth, denial had not been part of his life for a long time. Denial also had the sense of hiding from oneself, and Petro claimed that he was fully accepting of his own homosexuality. By the end of his comment, it was apparent that Petro refused to accept that he was ‘hiding’ his homosexuality saying, ‘I still think I’m not[hiding]’. But given his living conditions in Inaway at the time, his homosexuality was not something that he wished to discuss or display in public in his hometown. Petro would agree that life was better and more fulfilling when one could be out and open – even in the bush.

Certainly that had been Petro’s experience in the hinterland behind the Gold Coast when he lived there. But, for Petro, the issues of hometown and living under the same roof as his parents meant that ‘being out’ to all and sundry was impossible. These gay men generally felt that they did not hide their homosexuality from themselves, their friends, their families and not even from the community. In fact, as has already been shown, they were remarkably ‘out’, particularly to friends and family.

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Take Izak as an example. Izak was a young, ruggedly handsome man of Turkish descent. But his rugged good looks still did not cover traits of effeteness and affectation that were just so intrinsic to Izak’s cheery and cheeky personality. And of course, such traits allowed for the ready perception that he was gay. Furthermore, he had known and acknowledged that he was gay from a very early age. As a young man, Izak knew the nature of his difference and that it was a core part of his character, temperament and identity. He not only knew that such difference was obvious to everyone but that his homosexuality was self-evident. He says of himself,

It’s just me. It is who I am. I didn’t hide it. … I didn’t. I mean, this is me. But I didn’t say that I was gay to them. Whatever. I couldn’t care less. This is just me. I know they knew, but yeah, … so what? [12/8–9]

At this point we get a clearer idea about what Izak means by ‘hiding’. His difference, his gayness if you like, was so much part of his personality and his being that he could not hide. In three lines, he said ‘It is me’ four times. Other young men who felt, or who were, different became his friends and he was never friendless. Not only could he not hide, he had no need to … and he did not.

Others had more of a choice than Izak. They could act straighter. Jim is a case in point.

At about fifteen, he told his younger brother that he was gay and a little while later he told his mother. Both parents, as well as Jim’s siblings, were very accepting of him.

Jim’s place in the family was very secure. At school, he also chose to be reasonably open about his homosexuality. Much of Jim’s school life had been plagued by bullying, not so much because other boys and teachers perceived him to be specifically gay, but more because they perceived him to be a ‘sissy’. Even in high school he was beaten up and despite this, he was

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… at the same time, I was sort of, I wasn’t too closed about it, but I had friends that knew I was gay and ahm … ahm … a couple of teachers knew and from the moment it got out, I got sort of, [called] ‘fag’ or ‘queer’ and things like that [3/13].

Jim did not hide nor deny his gayness at school and the news spread. Because of the

bullying and the negligent lack of intervention by the teachers at Geriffi High School,

Jim left school as soon as he was able and went on to find a job in his hometown. As

mentioned in a previous chapter, Jim and his mother went to the Sydney Gay and

Lesbian Mardi Gras parade and they marched together as mother and son under the banner of the Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) organisation. Their photo was published in the local paper and so the whole town knew not only of Jim’s homosexuality but also of the strong support from his family. Jim spoke about the reaction of the community as

Ahm … really good actually. Ahm … Mum at work ahm … when it was in the paper like, they all congratulated her as in effectively supporting her son. You know, they were all … it was very good. And ahm … with Dad, he’s had no problems. He comes along to functions and ahm … he gets seen with the gay group and it doesn’t worry him and everyone still talks to him … [3/52–53].

In choosing not to hide, Jim had found a level of acceptance within his family and within his town. And the thing that he feared most – the rejection of his parents by the community because they supported their gay son – did not eventuate. In fact, the opposite occurred. While Jim’s family were well-regarded citizens of Geriffi, they had no special standing that would have made overt opposition or hostility to them on account of their son’s sexuality less forthcoming or vitriolic. Jim noted that the community’s reaction to him and to his parents was supportive and, in the case of his own work colleagues, it was congratulatory and celebratory.

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Like Izak, Jim had taken a deliberate option to not hide. That stand had won him

support and friends in Geriffi in much the same way that it had done for Petro and his

partner in the hinterland behind the Gold Coast and Jack and John at Wobegon, Jason at

Keroboken and Bobby at Wee Tree. But while these men were cautious, they were not

timid and wimpish. These gay men had a fine line to tread in the bush. On the one hand,

they could be ‘out’, but realised that they must not ‘flaunt it’. By the same token, they

were of the opinion that if they hid their homosexuality and were then found out, they

would be regarded as less honest and treated more harshly than if they simply chose to

not to disclose. Despite this fine line, the gay men in the bush appear to know the rules

and, in the main, are able to negotiate the social terrain.

Jack was the one city-born man in the sample. Jack met a new boyfriend who lived in

the bush and, after a number of visits to Wobegon, he moved there to live with John. At

the time of the interview, Jack had been living with John on the farm for over fifteen

years. The move to the bush provided Jack with the impetus to become more open in

regard to his homosexuality and his live-in relationship with another (local) man. As he

put it,

… when I moved to the country, I didn’t ever make any attempt to hide it. And similarly, I didn’t say to people, ‘Hello, I’m gay’ … [1/25].

The result of not hiding his homosexuality in the country was surprising both to Jack and to his partner John, who had lived all his life in Wobegon like his parents before him. Jack said that he and John went everywhere together and did everything together.

They were seen together so much so that ‘… it turns out that many people presumed we were gay’ [1/23]. Regardless of this presumption, Jack found that he was accepted in

Wobegon, and that was a surprise to him particularly because he was a ‘blow-in’ from

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the city and he was gay. Jack explained this acceptance in terms of his refusal to hide

and as he said,

… maybe part of that [acceptance] came from the fact that I just wasn’t trying to get accepted. Maybe the fact that I was not hiding anything helped, and I was perhaps perceived as genuine. Whereas maybe, if I’d been … closeted, I would have been perceived as false, or hiding something [1/25].

This was a very powerful argument that Sam also made and it is referred to earlier in

this section. Jack went on to suggest that ‘hiding’ his homosexuality when he lived in the city had a very debilitating effect on his life. Hiding his sexuality from himself (in

the form of self-denial) and then from others put a distance between himself and his

family. It made him ‘very apprehensive’ about mixing with others, with the

consequence that for much of his life he was withdrawn and lonely. The move to the

bush, paradoxically, gave Jack the opportunity to be more open. His relationship blossomed and his health (he was HIV+) improved dramatically. Jack did not attribute

all of this directly to his more open approach, but he suggested that not having to hide

improved his life and his relationships with people.

Jack’s openness in the town of Wobegon ‘… meant that we were more inclusive

because it was known who we were … and ah … and [we] were [still] getting sent

invitations [to social functions]’ [1/38]. ‘Hiding’, at least in Jack’s experience, was a

mechanism that induced social exclusion when the intent might have been social

inclusion. From Jack’s experience in the bush, not hiding permitted and facilitated a

degree of social inclusion when the expected outcome might have been social exclusion

and ostracism. The point of portraying Jack in some detail is to show that not only did

the ‘hiding’ cease when he moved from the city to the bush but that it ceased in the very

place where it might be expected that it would begin.

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Bobby was another man who did not hide and thought his work, his achievements and

even his physique gave him considerable standing and ‘street-cred’ in his community.

He exuded a masculinity that any straight man would have been proud of. And he was

quite aware of this advantage. As he said,

I’m pretty lucky. I’m a tall guy. I’m relatively, probably, [Laughs] relatively strongly built, ahm … masculine looking, hairy, all that, so ahm … I can go to the rodeos. I can go anywhere [20/6].

He went on to explain a little further what he meant saying,

… Because people see us [he and his partner] wandering around without our shirts and up to our armpits in horseshit, or whatever, they actually realise, oh yes, these guys can stack hay as well as anyone else or aren’t scared to clean out stables or whatever. For example, if you go to the local [horse] sales and … or the local rodeo and you buy a nice horse that you’ve just seen broncing around, and when you turn it into a competition horse… when people see that, they say, ‘Oh, he must be quite good at what he does and he’s not afraid to hit the deck’, … that’s a very positive side. ‘He might be gay, but gee, he’s doing a good job there’ [20/14–15].

Bobby did not project the commonly held gay image of either some slightly effeminate man or some scrubbed-up dude in a tight white t-shirt, blue 501s and Colorado boots.

He was neither of these in a public sense in Wee Tree. He noted that many in his community not only knew of the existence of gay men and had a stereotypical image of them, but he also noted that despite that, there was considerable latitude given to gay men in the country. He was almost certain that, in his case, the community knew that he lived with another man and some local people would also have known that they were a gay couple. Yet he said that he ‘… doesn’t make any compromises …’ [20/8]. And he said in another part of the interview that ‘…my work … because of the nature of it … it is actually a lifestyle. I also happen to be gay. So these are two lifestyles that work very

well together’ [20/20].

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While Bobby said that being good at his job allowed him some acknowledgement in the

community, there was a hint that there appeared to be more to it than that. He did his

bush job well, with a pride and confidence in himself and he was highly successful. But within the town of Wee Tree, there was not too much that caused him to be seen as

exceptional. He made the point that

Ahm … I’m … I guess, you know, … people tend to associate … gay people as being ahm … ironed white t-shirts that really don’t fit properly ahm … after shave that would knock you out … I mean, you need to see me after six hours of … I’m pretty scruffy now, but after six hours work, you know, being up to your eyeballs in mud, sand, dust, dirt, hay, straw, horseshit, the full works … [20/23].

He suggested that he could live his gay life and his bush life in Wee Tree with little

malicious interference.

Like Bobby and his excellence in horsemanship, Sam also worked hard to produce

well-bred and well-turned-out cattle – ‘a good product’, as he said. He also talked about bringing some credit to the town and building some credibility in himself. In Sam’s case, he spoke with some pride of producing a fine line of fat steers and running a well- maintained and profitable farming enterprise. Just as Bobby felt that he was partly accepted because it was known that he could train a horse from a bronc to a competition winner, then similarly with Sam and his pen of fat steers. And in so doing, he could, within his own limits, identify with the community of Dalgety. As Sam said,

So therefore ahm … when you produce a good product, people seem to wipe under the carpet … that … a couple of things that, you know … . Sam is not married ahm … Sam is a middle-aged man … ahm … that possibly …[he] is gay. But because they … they ahm … want my business, ahm … they sort of, I suppose, they look the other way and do business with me. Ahm … that’s … that’s how I see it [15/4].

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These gay men have found that they have not had to hide, and despite some occasional misgivings, they had been able to live relatively open lives, not necessarily without fear of, but largely free from either rejection or vilification. Not hiding is at once both an act of agency to improve their lives and it is also an act of resistance to those attitudes and conventions that would confine and render them subordinate to the conformity of the community. Because of their very finely attuned combination of strategies – ‘selective disclosure’, ‘not flaunting it’ and ‘not hiding it’ – the gay men in this study have been able to stay in the place they wanted to be – the bush. But these were not the only strategies these men had in their armoury of social skills.

Staying by Leaving – Getting Out of Town

A number of these gay men periodically left town for a short time. This getting out of town sometimes involved a trip to the city or perhaps a drive to a larger town down the road. This was another strategy or act of agency these men used to improve their lives in the bush. Sometimes the leaving was to find and engage other men in sexual encounters. But there were other reasons that often masked the sexual component of the escapade. For Petro, as with Cleever and Gerry, it was to see friends. For Jason, it was to do the shopping, for Neville it was to see his HIV specialist, for Rudy it was to see a show or go to an exhibition, for both Perry and Jim it was to go to the Mardi Gras, for

Rex it was to see his children and for Sam it was to see his parents. Getting out of the place and the community in which they lived from time to time was a strategy these men used in order to continue living there.

It was also to get away from where they were … just for a while. This is not to say that they wanted to leave the towns where they lived or, much less, to leave the bush. In

258 order to stay there they needed to escape for a while, and then return. The language in which these men expressed these sentiments varied. For some it was being ‘trapped’ and ‘stuck’, for another it was being ‘marooned’, and for yet another it was a feeling of

‘can’t get out’. ‘Escape’ and ‘respite’ are not terms that they have used, but they did seem appropriate terms to use in this context. Some men needed to escape from where they lived for a while because they ‘felt trapped’. When this concept began to recur, it was thought that it might apply more to those men living in the smaller and more isolated towns. However, ‘feeling trapped’ was not necessarily related to the size of the town in which the men lived.

Rudy was one of the men who felt trapped. He was a music teacher in the large town of

Geriffi. He said on a number of occasions in the interview that he felt that the school was a difficult and pressured place in which to work. Part of this was the normal unruliness of the students but he also felt that he could not get away from this hurly- burly, even after the school day had ended. While this phenomenon may apply to many teachers in small towns, it seemed to impact on Rudy more. As he said, ‘… one of the things I’ve … I’ve had to deal with all the time [is] that I’ve not been able to escape from the school [and] the impact of the school after 3.30pm’ [2/50]. And there were other factors in Rudy’s life that had him (feeling) trapped. He said,

… like when I go … when I drive to Albury and Wagga, I feel very comfortable [because] I know that those two towns have an academic world. You’ve got a university campus … you know, they’ve got their own choral society, they’ve got other small music groups, ensembles and that … all happening ahm … and being fostered and … being promoted in the … in … in the community [2/30–31].

For Rudy, the ‘feeling trapped’ was not so much about geography, but it was about being in a place in which matters cultural were both absent and dismissed as being of

259 little value. But Rudy was able to go to these other places where he was able to get his measure of culture. Out of town, he was able to indulge what might be termed his gay sensibility. He was able to engage with other gay men who were involved in cultural and artistic pursuits. And that enabled him to return to Geriffi. In being able to escape and indulge his cultural cravings, he was then able to return. His need for respite was not only an escape ‘from’. It was even more an escape ‘to’, in the sense that he went to these other towns to engage in and to absorb what was on offer there rather than to simply escape what he saw as the underwhelming cultural life he had in Geriffi.

‘Escape’, the way these men spoke about the concept, though they did not use the specific word, was not about leaving. It was not a concept that implied any permanency.

Staying, the way the concept is used in this study, does not negate or preclude the occasional need to escape. As much as they liked living in the bush, these men found it necessary and healthy to take a little bit of what might be called ‘respite’. Without it, these men felt ensnared and caged. Rudy was not the only man who talked about escaping or getting away for a while. Chris, too, spoke about being trapped and he spoke of it by way of recollection. It was not something that applied to him at the time of the interview, and, in fact, Chris made the point that he did not feel trapped and was very comfortable living his semi-isolated life in Galbern. But it was something that he had felt as an adolescent living on his family’s farm quite some years before. As he said,

‘… I might think differently if I were a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old guy stuck in the bush’ [6/113].

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The word ‘stuck’ has a harshness associated with it, even by way of sound. The way

Chris used the word, there was an immovability and an inevitability and, if not an eternity, then a very long time associated with it. It was a word that implied no escape, and this was its power. When Chris used the word ‘stuck’, it applied to those young gay men whom he calls ‘farm kids’, those young men living and working on the family farm, as he was. Chris regarded this being ‘stuck’, or feeling stuck, as ‘… the biggest problem’ for young gay men [6/113]. In remembering what it was like for him, Chris said,

… if you are a young man … feeling trapped in the country, it’s very difficult. There is nowhere to get away, because … I know, living at home, I mean, you couldn’t go out in the night. I mean, the nearest town is fifty miles away. You can’t just say I’m hopping around the corner to see Joe or … it doesn’t work like that. The opportunity for anonymous outings aren’t … aren’t there, especially if you live miles out of town. … And, you know, those families live together twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and there’s not [even] the opportunity … to express your, or even explore, your feelings quite often [6/115–116].

Chris did make an attempt to return to the farm, but the expectations of his father and the subservience under which he was expected to live were too much and he left a second time, never to return. However, he did return to the bush, but not to the family farm.

Chris continues to escape occasionally, even from his contented life in rural Galbern, and goes to Sydney to see friends, to take in a show, to visit his HIV specialist … and to indulge in a little sex! Just as in his younger days, Chris feels the need to occasionally get away from people and insular attitudes, but not the place. Even though it might appear that the differences between Rudy’s need to escape Geriffi and Chris’ previous need to escape the family farm are worlds apart, this is not the case. Chris’ recollections of his earlier time in the bush and his current periodic outings to the city had striking

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similarities with Rudy’s contemporary experiences. It was about getting away from the

omnipresent gaze and the constant surveillance that, as a gay man living in a small town,

he felt he was under. It was about going to a place where one was unknown, even for a

little while. The need to escape, the way these men spoke about it, was about getting

away from an entrenched insular viewpoint and being among people who had different

and more accepting attitudes. It was about doing things that could not be done at home,

be that going to a gallery, a show, or even just to the beach. ‘Escape for respite’ was a

mechanism that some men used in order to refresh themselves in order to return to the

town in which they lived and wanted to stay.

Out and About – Getting Laid

The previous section indicated that one of the reasons these gay men got out of town

was to seek out opportunities for sex. To ignore these men’s sexual lives and the part it plays in their lives is to dehumanise them. To present them as asexual or chaste is to deny them their sexuality, to further invisibilise them as gay men and to misrepresent them. Because sexuality was, in many ways, the issue that defined their difference and the facet of their lives that caused these men so much angst at both a personal and social level, and it was unsurprising that they considered matters of sexuality and sex as important. The Introduction to this thesis made it clear that these aspects of their lives would be canvassed in this thesis and because these men had no difficulty (and no reticence) in talking about the sexual side of their lives, the data they provided was rich and detailed.

This discussion of the sex lives of the men in this study should not proceed on the premise that all of the men were single. But that was not the case. Eight of the men

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were in committed relationships and none of them suggested in any way that there was

no sex within their relationship. As mentioned previously, being in a relationship added to these men’s desire to stay in the bush. Staying in the bush was enhanced because of the relationships that these men formed and committed themselves to.

However, as was noted in Chapter Five, in talking about sex, these men appeared to assume that sexual practice largely referred to sexual encounter with another person.

The sexual activities these men engaged in alone was not a matter that was raised in the interviews. Only one man spoke of masturbation, reluctantly admitting that such a practice was his only sexual outlet not so much because sexual opportunity was unavailable but because of his own fear of rejection on account of his age and his body image. By the same token, to assume that these men did not engage in any autoerotic activities such as phone/internet sex, the use of sex toys, watching pornography in addition to masturbation would be naïve.

(i) Availability of Male-to-Male Sex

Given what the gay men in this study have had to say about having to be careful and vigilant, about ‘not flaunting’ their homosexuality (and presumably other gay men in the bush were doing the same), it was a wonder that there were any sexual goings-on at all. Yet all the men in this study were sexually active. Some men were more sexually active than others. Some men would have liked to have been more sexually active than they were. Some kept their ‘doing it’ as an out of town treat. This, however, is not the image that one associates with gay men living in the bush. Country towns are not

generally typified as places where the sexual component of a gay man’s life can be

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explored and find some consummation. But these men suggested that sex in the bush was, for them, not as problematic as might be thought.

Nevertheless, sex was something that these men had to look for – and be available for should the opportunity present itself. Sexual opportunity rarely just popped up.

Therefore, in order to find other men who may be interested in sex, these gay men had to travel to other towns, frequent beats with all the clandestine planning and attendant protocols which that entailed and seek surreptitious contact in (otherwise) straight places such as pubs, cafes and the cattle yards. While the lack of sex may not have been a factor that would have caused them to leave the bush, the availability of sex, when these men chose to seek it out, was a factor that made staying there all the more satisfying.

On the whole, these men’s testimonies indicated that that sex was easy to find – if one went looking for it. Talking about sex, Jim said, ‘Ahm … yeah. I found it [sex] easy [to get]’ [3/31]. Chris concurred, ‘Oh yeah [it’s available]. And it depends on what you want’ [6/67]. Toby explained that, in his experience, there was plenty of gay sex to be had in the bush. As he remarked, ‘If you want it … yes … you could [find sex easily] if you wanted to …’ [8/52]. Izak had little trouble finding sex. He was asked whether it was ‘easy to find sex in a country town’, and he replied, ‘For me it is. I don’t know about other people. It is … I mean, it is easy for me. I think sex is very easy to find. It’s just so easy’ [12/42].

Rodney, who was somewhat older than Jim, Izak and Toby, expounded, with some relish, that getting sex was not a problem in Gunnawere. He said,

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No. Not at all. … [Laughs] yeah. I’ve been a slut. I go to those parties. They have those gay parties, you know … . Oh, they have them out at, you know, farms and things … and like all the gay people get there. … I always used to have wild sex there and … ah … the last time I had this just … the most gorgeous guy and [we] were in the bushes out there and ahhhh … fuck … . It was so wild. And the next day, he was just … gone [13/11–12].

Bobby used to live in Gunnawere before he moved to Wee Tree. And in passing, he made a comment about getting sex in Gunnawere. His comment is interesting because

Bobby thought that the men he encountered would not necessarily have seen themselves

as gay, although, of course, Bobby saw himself as gay,

… I guess I actually knew people … different people … not so gay, but people who wanted sex and ahm … it [Gunnawere] was a great place … I would say there was six people who I had sex with [regularly] … and we all had sex with each other … . Ahm … cattle sale, Monday [20/37–38].

Cleever also said that sex was not too difficult to find in the bush when he wanted it. As

he said, ‘Ohhhh, not really. Not for me it wasn’t. … you could find it if you wanted to’

[17/17]. Gary said much the same thing and when he was asked if, in his experience,

there was plenty of sex to be had if one went looking for it, he summed it up in one

word, ‘Definitely’ [19/26]. Ivor said that for him, sex was more difficult now than it

was when he was a little younger (and thinner). He remembered his not so distant youth

in a very small country town this way,

… growing up, when I first probably … mid to late teens and stuff like, around twenties, it [sex] was not a problem at all because I mean, of all places, I mean, this was the reason why I find this the weirdest part of my life … of all places, the smallest village that you could find, not a shop, not a post office, nothing, and I had more sex there than what I did anywhere else [7/27].

Similarly, Michael, the Aboriginal man from Dunno, was quite frank about the ease of

finding sex. He said,

It’s not that hard … no. Sort of if you dance at nightclubs and that … probably no gay nightclubs in Dunno, but they’re [gay men are] all gathered around Dunno all …in a lot of places [11/8–9].

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Clearly, for these gay men, there was no lack of sex. And the apparent ease with which they were able to engage with other men on a sexual level indicated not only that other gay men were about and were available, but that these men knew how to seek them out.

While none of these men suggested that a lack of sex in their lives would have forced them to leave the bush, their ability to engage with other men on a sexual level meant they did not have to consider the option of leaving on this account. Just as leaving the bush was not on the agenda, staying was, and the availability of male-to-male sex made that option all the more palatable.

(ii) Sexual Places

Gay sex was easy to find in most country towns, though for a number of men, getting

sex was something they did only out of their own town or district. Travelling out of

one’s hometown was a common feature of these rural gay men’s lives and those most

likely to travel were those men who lived in small towns and on farms. This travelling

out of town was part of not disclosing their homosexuality within their communities.

These men did not want their cars to be seen at the local beat. They did not want to

‘pick up’ in the pub and risk ‘outing’ themselves locally. But in travelling out of town

for sex as well as for other purposes, these men could also be more adventurous than

they could be at home. They could make unambiguous eye contact as well as cruise and

flirt. They could be less inhibited than was possible in their small hometowns. Sam is a

case in point. He travelled to another town, ostensibly to visit his parents, but that larger

town also provided far more congenial sexual opportunities than the small town of

Dalgety where he lived.

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Jason talked about driving out of Keroboken to a much larger town nearby with the

intention of doing his weekly shopping. That shopping trip just so happened to coincide

with the gay night at one of the local pubs or with the meeting of the local gay group and there was always the opportunity to cruise the quite active beat/s in that larger town.

Like Sam and others, sex was not something he went looking for in his small hometown.

Sex was a part of his life that was kept for out of town.

Some men travelled even further afield to have sex with other men. This was not so much because sex was unavailable locally or in neighbouring towns, but sex in the city was so much more available and certain. The city’s gay bars, beaches and saunas provided sexual certainty that the long trips to country beats could not. Some men did not generally seek sexual opportunities in the bush and chose instead to satisfy their sexual appetites with frequent trips to the city. For a few men, their sexual lives were largely urban-centric.

Petro was a case in point. He said that his sex life in Inaway was almost non-existent, but that he travelled out of Inaway, often to Sydney or Brisbane. It was on these trips that he allowed sex to be part of his life. While the travelling was supposedly for some respite away from Inaway and to catch up with friends, it was also a sexual opportunity.

When Petro was asked whether sex was something that happened only outside of town, his answer was plain, ‘At the moment, yes. Yes. Yes’ [14/27]. So important were these periodic forays out of town, that Petro said of them,

If I wasn’t in a position to travel ahm … to a city as much as I am, I don’t think I’d be able to cope [with being in Inaway]. I think it would be a matter of having to pick up … pack up and relocate closer to … a more accepting town [14/13].

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But places in which sexual possibilities existed were not only out of town. Some men, particularly those living in the larger towns did not need to travel for sex. Some men alluded to the fact that they found sex locally in a variety of places, including pubs, social gatherings and beats. Sometimes the social gatherings were gay and were organised by the local support groups. Sometimes, the pubs were gay, but the men in this study referred to only two country towns that had gay bars. There was a gay pub in

Lismore that Sam referred to and there was a pub in Albury where on one night a month, one of its bars was frequented by gay men.

Generally, gay men met in the same places that straight men and women met. They socialised in ordinary places and went out to the places that were available. Gary and

Michael talked about going to the straight nightclubs. Jim spoke of going out to regular places in Geriffi. Ivor mentioned going to straight pubs in Dunno. Toby told of going to the movies and restaurants. And both Sam and Bobby portrayed the cattle yards on sale days as being pregnant with possibilities. While they had to be a little more circumspect, they also tended to use the places they went to as places where they kept open the possibility of meeting someone else who was gay.

For example, Jack talked about two younger men he knew in Wobegon who told him that they met at one of the local pubs. Jack remembered his conversation with them and he said that

… they see no reason other young guys can’t meet each other, as they did, just [by] being at a popular pub and noticing a guy who’s gay … and making a move to meet him [1/40–41].

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Toby also mentions that he knew of gay men who went to straight clubs and pubs and were able to find men in those places willing to engage in sex with them. He says of those men,

There are some that are a bit promiscuous … they’ll ask blatantly … do you want to have sex ? … I don’t think they go into a club and just ask for it. I think they’d pick someone that they know or have an inkling or a definite positive [vibe] that they know are [gay] … [8/55–56].

The point is not to make some moral judgement on the pick-up tactics of these gay men, but to note that for some gay men living in country towns, finding sex is not always about going to gay bars (because there are none) or other gay places, partly because of the perceived risk. Gay men can find other men willing to engage with them, sexually or otherwise, in the ordinary places that people socialise in – popular pubs, clubs and nightclubs are such places. Chris also met gay friends in the local pub. But he did not go with the intention of looking for sex with someone that he did not previously know. He claimed that,

I mean, I go [to the pub] occasionally if I’m meeting somebody for a drink or whatever, but I don’t go to the …RSL Club or … it’s not my place to make social contact, I suppose. It’s … it’s a place to meet people on a prearranged basis. You don’t go there just to meet somebody. I don’t go and sit in the bar and hope that somebody’s going to walk through the door … [6/58–59].

But he did enjoy the ‘eye candy’ when he went out. And while there was always the chance that contact might be made in ‘eyeing off’ other men, Chris also just enjoyed looking at other men. As he said,

I mean, you can, in actual fact, if you’re into eye candy … looking … then you’re probably better off in a country town than you are in the city. The men here are so innocent. They don’t realise … I mean, they walk around here with baggy short and worn out tee-shirts and all sorts of things. And it’s just them. Whereas, in the city, it is all contrived. …. Here, they don’t see that a gay man would find them attractive …and … some of them are so confident in their sexuality that they couldn’t care less anyway [6/98–99].

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(iii) Unrequited Sexual Opportunity

As was said at the beginning of this section, while all the men were sexually active,

some men were more sexually active than others and some men would have liked to have been more sexually active than they were. For example, Rex had had relationships in his life and said that it would be nice to be in one again ‘… if I could find the right one’ [21/42]. But even when Rex goes out of town, often to Sydney where the possibility of sexual opportunities would be immeasurably improved, he does not find

the sexual encounters that he once could. As he said,

When in the city, [I] don’t do anything anyway. I don’t know. … Ahm … I found that I could cope quite well and … and do basically what I like without … I mean, you do miss not having a significant other that you can confide in and talk to and get some, you know, feedback and … but … ahhhh …. I’ve found that I’ve become very choosey [Laughs] [21/42].

Rex was one of a number of men in this study who chose not to consciously look for a

boyfriend in the bush and was more interested, at least at the time of the interview, in

companionship and friendship. Rex did not especially want a lover and living in the

small town that his career had taken him to made it difficult, at least in his own

estimation, to sustain a gay relationship. The part the bush plays in this predicament is

that it accentuates the self-enforced situational celibacy. And he expanded on this a

little, ‘I find it very difficult to find other gay people within a town … [especially] in

the last five years’ [21/43]. The bush itself was not the cause of Rex’s difficulties in

finding either casual sex or a gay friend. Rex’s refusal to make an effort in both cases

contributed not only to his celibacy in the bush but to his aloneness and a developing

lack of confidence in himself. Rex is over 50. He had become a big man and, by his

own admission, somewhat withdrawn. Not only did he not socialise in the town, but he

found the town and the people in it difficult to live with. When Rex was asked what he

did for sex in the bush, the conversation went this way,

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E: … what do you do for sex these days? R: Sex? E: Mmmm R: What’s that? [Laughs] [21/40].

However, this is not to say that Rex did not engage in any sexual activity and in fact he

was the only man to admit to autoerotic activities. His later reference to putting his hand

to bed and jumping in after it [21/p.40] was a coy insinuation in regard to masturbation.

While he may have been rather embarrassed by his lack of sexual activity with another

man and the aloneness that his inability to socialise locally has resulted in, Rex had no

intention of moving to the city. He did say in his interview that he would like to move

from where he was, but only to another country town.

But Rex was not the only man who chose not to seek out gay sex or gay friendship

locally. Sam said in regard to life in the bush, ‘… there’s nothing easy’ [Laughs]

[15/17]. And though he was aware of the risqué ambiguity of his statement - hence the

laugh - the statement applied to his life in general as much as to having a satisfying

relationship with another man and living on his property at Dalgety. He explains what

he means,

I mean, I … I … I have for thirty years put my sexuality aside to have my desire to live in the country. There … there, I mean, ahm … there’s no … there’s no …I mean ahm … it just doesn’t happen [15/17].

Unlike Rex, Sam is sexually active and enjoys a robust sex life. But that sex life is out of the town in which he lives. Sam said that he sometimes goes to Tamworth where there is quite an active gay social support group that regularly organises various activities, from picnics and dinners through to bush dances. These activities are opportunities for friendship and the possibility of some sexual encounter. Sam also indicated that he had elderly parents who lived at Lismore and he tried to get to see

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them about once a month. It is a four-and-a-half hour drive (each way) for Sam, but it

allowed him to keep in touch with his parents. But it was also an opportunity for a bit of

sexual foraging that was simply not possible around Dalgety. Lismore has a large and

very active gay organisation and there is a gay pub in Lismore as well. Sam called the

few days each month in Lismore his ‘play time’ during which

I go out hunting. I go hunting at a few of the places. I go to the pub at night. I have a few young friends that when they seem me ahm … we might go together… [15/20].

But Sam chose not to be sexually active within the vicinity of his hometown. He said

that other than his out of town forays, ‘… there’s nothing’ [15/20]. When he is at

Dalgety, there is no sex with other men and there are also no friendships with other

local gay men. There is no one with whom he could have a beer, either at the pub in

Dalgety or on the verandah of his homestead, and with whom he was able to talk about

his homoerotic desires. There was no one with whom he could talk about the times he

had in Lismore. There was no one with whom he could simply remark that another guy

in the bar is cute, has a nice arse or whatever. There was no opportunity to be gay, even

sometimes. This fettering of his sexuality saddened Sam, but his need to live in the bush and grow the best wheat and raise the best cattle overrides his need for sex, gay

friendship and/or a relationship. His life of abstinence when at home was a choice he

had made. But even Sam’s out-of-town sexual exploits were conducted in another

(larger) country town. Sam stayed bush, even where the getting of sex was concerned.

Some men found plenty of sex in the bush and others found it not so available. Still

others did not have it high on their list of priorities. Whatever their choice, they had the

opportunity to weave a healthy sex life into the fabric of their lives. Staying in the bush

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did not mean that these men had to sacrifice an active sex life. For the men in this study,

sex was like other aspects of their lives. Many things took effort and so did an active sex life. On the one hand, these men could not flaunt their sexuality and so the making of sexual opportunity was more surreptitious. An active sex life was something that had to be adjusted to suit living where they did. But living in the bush did not mean living a sexless life. In maintaining their sex lives, these gay men utilised such rural gay places as beats, gay dances in remote bush halls and shearing sheds as well as coffee nights in each other’s homes. But they also made the most of the ordinary places and community social occasions, especially the pubs which were available to them as providing potential sexual opportunities and the chance to find gay friends. A healthy and hearty

sex life gave their lives a completeness I had not anticipated.

Conclusion

This chapter has detailed some of the strategies these men engaged in to make their

lives in the bush more satisfying. One way in which they handled themselves in public

was to ‘not flaunt’ their homosexuality. This was not an overly contrived strategy, but

rather one that put the brakes on what they indicated the community may see as

stereotypical gay behaviour. They did not walk, talk, dress or otherwise act in a ‘gay

way’. Nor did they, for example, hold hands in public or dance together at public

functions. Some of them stepped out of the gay stereotype by being especially

competent in their rural occupations, be it running a cattle property or breaking-in a

horse. To this extent, it was something they naturally did and it was not something they

deliberately did to gain acceptance in their communities, though this was one of the

outcomes.

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While they were mindful about how they conducted themselves in public, this is not to say that they hid from the community or denied their homosexuality. In fact, these men did not hide their homosexuality. That they successfully managed to not advertise it and

at the same time not hide it is indicative of their own adept social skills. All these men

were sexually active and several were in committed live-in relationships. Most of these

men realised that the fact that they were gay men was essentially an open secret in the

communities in which they lived.

But not every strategy they employed was focused on enabling them to better live in the

community, an entity from which they had partly disengaged in any case. For example, getting out of town on a regular basis just for a break away from the confines of their hometowns was something that was common among these gay men. Their escapades beyond the local levee bank allowed them to engage their interests in theatre and art, to catch up with friends, to see doctors as required and also to seek out sexual opportunities.

What is important in all of this is that these gay men did find ways to live balanced and rounded lives in rural places. They have shown quite remarkable social skills in devising and implementing strategies that allow them to stay in the bush. These strategies tapped into the resilience of the men and involved a street-wise mix of agency and resistance to would-be oppressive attitudes. The next section of the thesis examines the findings of this research in the context of the literature considered in the early part of this work. It will be suggested that the rural lives of these gay men and the meanings that the men give to their lives can be partly accounted for in relation to a number of themes that emerged from both the data itself and from the literature.

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Chapter Eight

‘Staying’ in the Face of Difficulties

Nurrupaberry appears to be a fairly ohhhh … what I would call a standard, homophobic ahm … conservative place [Rex].

Introduction

This thesis began with an exploration of the lived experience of twenty-one gay men

located in rural communities across western New South Wales. It opened up the largely

untold story of their everyday lives and how they went about building and living a life

in rural places that both the literature and the accepted wisdom indicated many gay men

had been only too ready to leave. This thesis is about understanding the essence that those gay men gave to their experience of rural life, including an appreciation of the difficulties and the joys. The research found that these gay men living in rural areas engaged in a number of strategies to improve their lives in the face of unsympathetic community attitudes and beliefs. Resilience is one way to conceptualise this. They also lived their lives in ways that took advantage of the positive aspects of rural life. These measures, too, made their lives more satisfying and more fulfilling for themselves and can be theorised through a consideration of agency and resistance theory. In being resilient in the face of difficulties and by employing agency and resistance to enhance the advantages of rural life, these men, instead of leaving, stayed.

This chapter looks specifically at their difficulties and discusses how they faced and shouldered the challenges of being gay in a rural community. The way these men lived their lives was not indifferent to the challenges that confronted them. They reacted to and dealt with the obstacles they faced. This discussion of their actions in confronting

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difficulties will be situated within the conceptual framework of the thesis previously detailed in Chapter Two and will make reference specifically to the concept of

resilience. An analysis of the empirical data has shown that these gay men faced a

number of difficulties in living in rural communities. These were noted at some length

in Chapter Five where it was shown that, according to these men’s evidence, violence,

isolation, loneliness and homophobia were the main problem issues. However, these

men reported very little actual physical violence (and none post-school) and they spoke

more in terms of homophobia because they said the ‘violence’ was essentially verbal

and, even then, not overly frequent. Similarly, the isolation of the bush became a

problem primarily when it was imposed on these men in such a way that they were less

able to alleviate it. It was in these circumstances that loneliness became a problem in

their lives. Therefore, the two main disadvantages in their lives that these men

articulated were loneliness and homophobia. Though these matters were often present

in their lives, they were also not ones that pre-occupied them and with which they could

not cope.

This study has revealed that while these gay men admitted that they considered the rural

communities in which they lived had unsympathetic attitudes towards gay men, they

chose to stay and live in the bush for a variety of reasons. They combined a toughness

of spirit to withstand the rigours of bush living and the ‘countryminded’ attitudes of

rural communities with adept social skills to find friendship and intimacy within a small

group of accepting friends. For these gay men, their lives in the bush were more

satisfying and more fulfilling because they were able to take action against the

unsympathetic community attitudes and beliefs. They were able to bring a sense of

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autonomy to their lives and step outside the compulsory heterosexuality that would both

subordinate them in, and excluded them from, the community.

Resilience, as discussed in Chapter Two, is an individual’s ability to incur stressful circumstances, to deal with them and continue a normal life. Resilience is one’s capacity to cope with disadvantage and discrimination. Theories of resilience ask why some individuals who live through difficult social and personal conditions triumph over their challenges and do well when all expectations would have been otherwise. Gay men who live in rural areas are not protected from the difficult circumstances they inevitably face. These men’s lives were not always easy and they had to face considerable challenges in order to live out their desire to stay in a rural environment.

The extent to which they confront and cope with adversity and go on to live contented lives can be seen as a measure of their resilience. That these men were able, by choice, to fulfill their desire to stay and live in a rural environment may be explained and theorised through a consideration of resilience. However, as shall be seen, particularly in the next chapter, this was not the only attribute they had in their inventory.

Staying through Resilience

‘Staying’ is a concept that arises from the research data of this study. The meanings of the concept ‘to stay’ were discussed at some length at the beginning of Chapter Four.

There it was suggested that the simple meanings of ‘to remain’ and ‘not to leave’

(Collins Concise English Dictionary – Australian Edition, 1988) are useful in discussing the results of this research. However, it was also noted that to explain why these men stay and how they do so necessitates moving beyond this elementary meaning of staying. The term is also used to mean ‘to endure’, ‘to cope’ and ‘to put up with’ some

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form of adversity, obstacle or challenge (Collins Concise English Dictionary –

Australian Edition, 1988). It is used to denote stamina and determination in the

individual in physical, social and mental contexts. If a little license is taken with the

term, those who ‘stay’ do not succumb to the difficulties that beset them. Staying

indicates an element of success in overcoming obstacles. These men stay in the bush not

only in the more conventional sense of the word, but they also stay in the sense of

managing effectively the rigours of being gay and living in a rural environment. It is these extended meanings of staying that give weight and understanding to the findings

of this research.

The idea that gay men stay in non-urban areas and, moreover, that they choose to do so,

goes against much of the previous thinking on those gay men who began their lives in

rural localities. The rendering of gay men in the bush has been that not only did they not

stay but they chose to leave at the earliest possible opportunity. It has been assumed for

too long that gay men did not choose to live in the country and those that were there

were so repressed and invisible that they were impossible to find. The result has been

that gay men living away from cities have been largely absent from depictions of both

rural life and representations of gay life.

However, these gay men wanted to stay, they chose to stay and they actually did stay in

the bush. The word ‘staying’ was not something that the men in this study used, but as a

concept it had a dominating presence in their narratives. ‘Staying’ is a term that

encapsulated their ideas of living in the bush, of accepting and dealing successfully with

its challenges and not wanting to leave. It embraces the idea of remaining there, despite

the difficulties. The term also involves the notion of wanting to remain in the bush

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because of the pleasure and satisfaction to be found in a rural lifestyle and the affinity these gay men felt they had with the place.

These men articulated their staying both ‘in spite of’ and ‘because of’. The former

relates to the difficulties and challenges of life in the bush such as loneliness and

homophobia. They accepted and endured these aspects of life in the bush and they stayed in spite of them. But they also stayed for more positive reasons and these will be

considered in the next chapter. None of the men in this study said he stayed because he

had to. Staying bush, therefore, was a matter of choice. Because the taxing attitudes and

rigours of bush living did not force these men to leave, one might conclude that they

inevitably possessed a remarkable degree of resilience. Carver advocates using the idea

of resilience to refer to a ‘homeostatic’ position by which he means that people neither

succumb to the adversity they face nor do they move to a ‘better-off-afterward’

experience of life (Carver, 1998: 2). If these men stayed and endured a life of adversity

and trial, then they might be seen to be resilient in Carver’s terms. Under his rubric, the

trials of being gay in the bush would neither get them down, nor would they have a life

of much more than stoic endurance let alone one with some sense of fulfillment.

Staying in the sense of simply being in the bush is not enough to conclude that these

men have the resilience to deal with the difficulties of rural life and more especially the

difficulties of being gay in a rural area. Furthermore, this is not how these men

described their lives.

This research suggests that these men are realists and wily practioners in the art of

social skills. These rural gay men exhibit considerable resilience particularly in the face

of those things they cannot change. For example, they know that rural communities

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usually contain some people with homophobic attitudes and there is little they can do to change those attitudes, except to deal with them as best they can. Nevertheless, they strongly reacted to the instances of homophobia, especially when such comments and actions were directed at them. They displayed resilience when they dealt with the loneliness they see as inherent in life in the bush. They accepted bouts of loneliness and, in managing them, used resilience to find a sense of belonging to and affinity with the bush intimacy and friendship with others who accepted them. Their resilience gave them strength and resolve in the face of these difficulties to become more optimistic about their lives and more determined and able to stay.

However, the men in this study do not just stoically endure the difficulties of their lives.

That they take action to alleviate any adversity is a mark of their resilience. To use

Garmezy’s phrase, they ‘move’ on from their difficulties to get on with life. This

rebounding from distress and alleviating, if not overcoming, difficulties and getting on

with life is indicative of these men’s higher order skills. They also move beyond the

operational attribute of resilience and use it to ensure that they have a more fulfilling

and enriched life than if they were to simply endure. They enhance their own quality of life. They challenged those people and the societal pressures that would add to the difficulties of their lives. In other words, they have a multiplicity of actions and reflective processes that, despite their apparent subordinate position in the community, they are able to bring into play to consolidate their place in the bush. Resilience becomes a means of exploring and theorizing the strategies they used to deal with the twin difficulties of rural life - loneliness and homophobia.

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Loneliness Diminished

Loneliness is one of the two impediments that these men said they had to face and deal

with in order to have a happy and fulfilled life in the bush. When loneliness is

mentioned in the academic literature, it is often associated with mental health issues

such as depression, suicide ideation and suicide. This association strengthens when gay

men are factored in (Remafedi, 1994; Dudley, 1994). Making this association, however,

is only to pathologise loneliness. Furthermore, this medicalisation of loneliness assumes

that loneliness of any kind should not be part of the normal experience of life. There is,

however, literature that indicates that loneliness is the human condition that most people

experience at sometime and to some extent in their lives (Medora and Woodward,

1986). Commentators in the USA and Canada have suggested that loneliness is endemic

in the gay population (Flood, 1986), and it is not too difficult to find similar sentiments

echoed among writers in Australia (Callaghan, 2000). Two things are striking about

these writings. One is that they tend to assume that all gay men living in the bush are

very lonely much of the time. The second is that they appear to accept that in all cases

loneliness is something pitiful and, conversely, that the well-adjusted individual should

never be lonely. Loneliness, it seems, is a little bit like homosexuality itself was. It has

become pathologised and, therefore, deemed to be always unhealthy and unnatural.

This research accepts Mijuskovic’s depiction that loneliness is essentially to not belong

(Mijuskovic, 1986: 946–7). It is this lack of togetherness or ‘oneness with’ that brings about an internal emptiness and loneliness in a person’s life. However, the men in this study who said they were lonely also emphasised that they were not lonely all of the time. Many of the men who recounted an element of loneliness in their lives expressed the view that rural living, in itself, involved some social loneliness. It is notable that

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those men who said that they did not feel any great loneliness in their lives also linked

that essential lack of loneliness to living in rural areas. The way these men experienced loneliness is not of the inexorable type described in much of social psychology literature. For these men, loneliness, like isolation, was not seen as something that cut them off indefinitely from those around them. They did belong and had a well-founded and grounded sense of belonging to both friends, family and to the landscape in which they lived.

While some men reported that they enjoyed an element of isolation, be it geographic or

social (or both), none of them articulated a desire to be lonely. At the same time, none

of them saw their episodic loneliness as a sign of maladjustment or social

dysfunctionality. As has been discussed in the results of this research, some men said

that they could and did do something about the loneliness they encountered while others said that the lack of real loneliness in their lives was because they did something to

prevent it from intruding in the first place. Resilience is relevant to these findings.

Chapter Two made mention that much of the literature around resilience indicates that

being robust and hardy implies that the individual can act both to lessen the effects of

the problems and difficulties that beset them and to use the difficulty in such a way as to

move on from it and to so create a better life for oneself (Garmezy, 1987: 114). But

being resilient may be more than an ability to act and involves a willingness to alleviate

adversity. In this regard, there is evidence that people living in rural areas are more

likely to try to minimise hardship. For example, a study by Marotz-Baden and Colvin

suggested that the approach of rural males to what they call ‘stressors’ is

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… one of exerting as much influence as they can over the other events that affect their lives and to utilise strategies which will help them cope with events they cannot change (Marotz-Baden and Colvin, 1986: 287).

Similarly, the men in this study did exert an influence over other aspects of their lives in order to cope with their loneliness. They formed friendships and joined support groups.

They visited friends and invited them to their homes. They accepted invitations from others. They communicated and socially engaged with those that supported them. They were quite mobile and were able to drive to other towns for social activities as well as for sexual encounters. Most kept a car because, for these men, the car was an important adjunct to a fulfilling life. It was a way to meet friends, go to other places for a show, for dinner or just to get away. Rudy’s initial discontentedness in Geriffi was simply the result of not having a car to get about. The problems that younger gay men faced, according to Chris, was that they didn’t have access to a vehicle. This importance of mobility is repeated in the work of Retzloff (1997) and Howard (1999) in which the car gave access to opportunity for friendship, social activities and sex. This was the case with these men and the car was a means of lightening the loneliness.

This indicates that in dealing with loneliness, they took alleviating action which was more likely to involve interaction with other people. They responded to the loneliness they felt and connected with others. They adapted to it and took positive action to lessen the severity of its effect. These men used their feelings of sporadic loneliness to actually enhance their lives. They used resilience and were resilient and through this they alleviated the loneliness in their lives and improved their quality of life. This is in line with Foster’s (1997) theory that real resilience is about personal growth. It is about not

only adapting to the psycho/social condition of loneliness and enduring it in the

homeostatic way that Carver envisages (Carver, 1998: 2). It is about using resilience to

283 empower oneself so that one becomes less affected by loneliness and there is a back-to- normal experience of life.

Perhaps, though, this is not the whole story. Chapter One contextualised this research and demonstrated that, in the literature, loneliness was thought to be related to the geographical isolation of place. The literature examining gay people in a rural environment suggested that the social isolation of being gay in a morally conservative rural community was exacerbated by the geographical isolation of place. In contrast to previous studies, this has not turned out to be the case. These men do not describe loneliness as a deep inexorable emptiness inside themselves. It is a passing emotion.

Nor do they describe loneliness in terms of geographical isolation. Part of the explanation for this lack of loneliness appears to be in terms of their appreciation of place.

If Mujuskovic is right in suggesting that to belong is the only way of avoiding loneliness (Mijuskovic, 1986: 946–7), then these men do it partly by having a small network of close and supportive friends and connections to family. They feel supported.

But they also have an acute sense of belonging to the places in which they live. It is place that gives an extra sense and meaning to their lives. The bush is where their everyday lives are lived and where the meaningful experiences of life are conducted.

The bush contains their life memories and their history. Their intimacy with the bush is a positive and looked-for experience that mitigates loneliness. These men appear to use their sense of place and belonging to the bush as a defense against long-term personal loneliness.

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A sense of place engendering a lack of loneliness is not a new idea. But to suggest that

an affinity with the bush alleviates loneliness in rural gay men has not been explored.

Place for these gay men is not so much a geographical spot, but a phenomenon experienced. That these men’s strongly developed sense of place is instrumental in their

lack of deep-seated loneliness is an idea that runs counter to the findings and theorising

of previous studies. These men’s experiences and their social worlds show they have

developed an affinity with a place that one might expect these gay men to reject. They

have largely abandoned community in order to belong to place. This mitigation of

loneliness by way of an attachment to place is indicative of the proclivity of these men

to reposition themselves in relation to community as a conscious choice. It shows they

have the resilience to make their lives oppositional to the conformity expected of them

and so not only alleviate the immediate difficulty but to enhance their lives from a more

holistic perspective. It also signifies that other forces are also at play in enhancing their

lives including a willingness to both act and resist the heteronormative social order of

the community. These are some of the thematic concerns that will be developed in the

next chapter.

Homophobia Moderated

There is another finding of this research to which the concept of resilience brings some

understanding. One of the major adversities gay men everywhere face is that of

homophobia. In this study, all these gay men were stung particularly by the impact of

what Miller calls ‘hidden’ homophobia. He put it this way,

Usually, it’s the things that each of us, as lesbians, bisexuals and gay men, notice all the time, but can’t quite put a finger on. It’s not feeling safe enough to show even the simplest mark of affection when we greet our partners in a public place. It’s abiding by the requests of relatives not to bring our partners along to family gatherings. It’s not being able to be open at the workplace for

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fear of the consequences. One of the saddest results of this … is not the actual discrimination. It’s the ample evidence that gay men, lesbian, transgender and bisexual people live in the expectation of discrimination and adjust their behaviour to avoid it (Miller, 2000: 2).

These men used their resilience to cope with this behaviour and mitigate its effects by

toning down their sexuality in ‘not flaunting it’, by not displaying affection in public,

in watching the way they walked and talked and by just not being ‘too gay’. They

lived with the expectation that they would be discriminated against if they trumpeted

their sexuality in public. This is reminiscent of the men in Boulden’s study in

Wyoming of whom he said, ‘… it is very evident that part of the way we survive in

Wyoming is to control how and when you are willing to be visibly gay’ (Boulden,

1999: 97).

Although all the men in this study reported some experiences of homophobia – whether overt or covert – its nature, context, severity and frequency differed between them.

Nevertheless, these men reported that episodes of despicable behaviour emanating from sexuality-based comments and/or actions were lower than expected since mid-high school. This is supported by Plummer who showed that homophobic abuse by boys peaked in their mid-teens and decreased in the later years of high school (Plummer,

1999: 68). However, this is at some variance with a report coming out of Victoria

containing evidence of sexuality-based harassment (GLAD, 1994). It is also at some

variance with other surveys and reports which suggested a higher incidence of

homophobia (Farrar, 2003; Roberts, 1995; Roberts, 1996). By the same token, these

very same reports indicated that not all gay men living in rural areas reported

experiences of explicit and incapacitating homophobia and discrimination.

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Another study suggests that if a gay man ‘… does not fit the gay stereotype and appears to act like a straight boy, he is able to escape the regimes of homophobia’ (Martino,

2001, 67–8). Most of these men were able to escape post-school homophobia largely because they ‘acted straight’ in public. Like some of the men in Connell’s 1992 study of straight-acting gay urban men (Connell, 1992: 746), these rural men also talked about being a man, being butch, acting straight or ‘not flaunting it’. Most of these men were in a position in that they could, when they chose, pass as straight to the extent that some more obviously effeminate gay men may not have been able to.

Where this study moves away from Martino and Connell’s work is that none of these men, even some of the more obviously (or openly) gay men in this study (like Izak) or the publicly ‘out’ men (like Jim and Jason), suggested that homophobic abuse was one of the inevitable elements of living in the bush. None of the men said that they expected overt abuse to be hurled at them because of their known or presumed homosexuality.

This is not to say, however, that they did not fear it from time to time. Furthermore, unlike the urban men in Connell’s sample, these rural men did not express a dislike for

effeminate gay men. Though they adjusted their publicly visible behaviour to take

account of the context of where they were, their rurality did not, perhaps contrary to

expectations, make them despise other gay men with a noticeable gender-bending

demeanour. Instead, they moved to a more reflective agenda in resisting the dominant

social structure of an obligatory heterosexuality and masculinity. For example, a

number of men who said that, while they didn’t flaunt their homosexuality openly, they

were quite happy to do exactly that away from the public gaze. These men were very

selective about those to whom they disclosed their homosexuality. They did not

disclose to those who would dispute them, not so much to find support, but to defy and

287 deny such people the opportunity to adversely react. They did not disclose, as one might expect, so as to foster a greater inclusion with the community but, instead, to facilitate disengagement with it. The styles and forms of non-disclosure were contrary to the faint-hearted behaviour and the weakness of spirit more commonly expected of these men by the community in which they resided.

This was not the only indicator of resilience in these men in the face of homophobia. Of the men who spoke about experiencing homophobia since leaving school, most displayed an ability and a willingness to take direct action to confront it. They retaliated and did not put up with the abuse. When they did react against what they decided was unacceptable behaviour (and it is an important point that the gay men themselves decided when behaviour was unacceptable to them), it stopped. Cleever and Gerry threatened retaliation when they ran up against a series of harassing phone calls. Noel told those who didn’t like the fact that he was gay to ‘fuck off’ and he was rarely bothered again by others because of his sexuality. Not only did these men exhibit considerable innate strength of character in taking some retaliatory action, they also displayed considerable resilience in doing do. They refused to simply endure, and instead drew some strength from the adversity itself, took action against it and ameliorated its effects.

There is an exception to this course of action in this study and it concerns the man who chose to try and ignore the verbal slights that came his way. But there was more to his choice of action than merely deciding to put up with it. He was the young Aboriginal man and the abuse came from those he called ‘my people’ – other Aboriginal people within his extended family. Choosing to ignore the issue is, at least partly, a reflection

288 of his reluctance to hit back at members of his own family. A recent study looking at

Aboriginal gay men reported sexuality-based discrimination as usually ‘occasional’ rather than ‘often’, within the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community

(Lawrence, 2004: 27). An earlier study of Aboriginal urban gay men provided evidence of greater discrimination and referred to the difficulties Aboriginal gay men faced concerning identity, race and sexuality (Chapple and Kippax, 1996). In this young man’s circumstance, not retaliating was courageous. He also exhibited considerable resilience by not only enduring the slights but in maintaining as positive a relationship as possible with members of his extended family.

It would be easy to attribute these lower than expected levels of the homophobia these men said they experienced to improving social attitudes towards gay men. This is not the only interpretation. To ignore the social skills of these gay men in contributing to lower levels of homophobia is to misread the data. They reacted to the regulating effect of homophobia partly by regulating their own behaviour, being resilient and not forcing their sexuality down the throats of the community. However, to ignore or forget that these men had the courage to take action and confront homophobia when they encountered it in their hometowns is also to misread the data and misjudge the men.

In several ways, the homophobia these men experience in their respective rural communities adversely named these men’s difference. They could not but conclude that that difference was unacceptable to local social conventions. They also knew that the conservative attitudes of their communities, attitudes that may be categorised as

‘countrymindedness’, alienated them on account of that difference. Furthermore, because of the homophobic and countryminded attitudes that some people paraded,

289 these men could not help but infer that the community saw them as strangers to it.

While Simmel’s theoretical model of the stranger requires that the individual comes into the community, this was not the case with these men. All but one of the men were bush-born and bred and over half of them continued to live in the towns in which they were raised. But they fitted Simmel’s stranger construction in that they resided in the community but did not become intrinsically part of it. These men, in fact, exacerbated their strangerness by staying in the bush and being resilient to the conformity many in the community demanded and expected of them.

As has been discussed, all of the men in this study reacted to their experience of homophobia in country communities by taking various types of action to limit its stressful effects. It has been said they exhibited a personal resolve in taking action to quell their tormentors and drew some strength from the success of their actions. In this matter, too, these men exhibited considerable resilience and strength of character.

These men were made strangers by their communities in Simmel’s terms (Simmel,

1950: 402–408) and they made strangers of themselves in a Durkheimian sense

Durkheim, 1952: 363–364). They were simply unreceptive to the social demands and values expected of them and opted out of a social engagement with the community generally and particularly with those who would regulate them. This disconnection from the community can be understood using Durkheim’s theory as an individual’s response to an over-regulating heteronormativity. Their coexistent connection with place can also be understood using the same conceptual model whereby the individual responds to a non-regulating and accepting entity – the bush. This skilful use of resilience to cope with difficulty and, in so doing, better their lives is a new way to conceptualise the lives of gay men living in rural areas. These men, in fact, used

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resilience to not only deal successfully with the difficulties they faced in living in the

bush. They used that same toughness of spirit to not only position themselves in the

community to exploit a strategy of social disengagement to alleviate the difficulties of

homophobia and loneliness, but, as will be shown in the next section, to enhance their

lives and lead a gayer life.

Knowing and Being Silent

One of the ways in which these men were able to socially disengage from the

community they lived in was to know it and know how (and when) to be silent. The

men in this study ‘knew’ the bush and they ‘knew’ the communities in which they lived.

It was this ‘knowing’ that was an important factor in their deciding to stay in the bush.

‘Knowing’ has a number of meanings. They knew many people in the town and district.

They knew the way bush people thought and behaved. After all, these gay men were

also rural men, born and bred. A few men referred to this sense of knowing in terms of

geography – they knew their way around the town and the district, and it could be

inferred that all these men knew their way ‘around the traps’.

But such knowledge was also couched in other terms. These men knew their

communities in terms of the accepted mores and attitudes towards the unspoken. They

knew only too well the countrymindedness of their communities. They knew how to

navigate the maze of social conventions, those unspoken but well-understood attitudes,

especially concerning that unspoken topic. The mainstream’s hope was that the issue would go away, but failing that, it would not be raised and therefore would not have to

be dealt with. It was their knowledge of local social convention that allowed these gay men to be resilient. However, these men had an armory of other social skills at their

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disposal. In being able to deal effectively with the difficulties that confronted them, they

were then able to take action to better their own lives. The literature considered in the

development of the conceptual framework of this thesis indicated that such men are

psycho/socially better equipped, even from a position of subordination and

disadvantage, to enhance their lives having been able to deal with the vicissitudes and

fluctuations in their lives. The conceptual framework in which this discussion of the

research results is situated makes it clear that such action can be better undertaken by resilient men. This ability to take action to better their own lives has been

conceptualised in the literature as ‘agency’ and was defined in Chapter Two as ‘the

capacity for an individual to make choices and have those choices bear positively on his

own life and the environment in which he lives’ (p. 81). Agency, therefore, has been

conceptualised as the ability of an individual to take action to improve his life.

Resilience alone was not enough to ensure that they had what it took to stay in the bush.

They needed the willingness and the personal impetus to take action to ensure that their lives would be improved as a result of the action they took. It has been said a number of times that these men were socially ingenious and one of the outcomes of that was that they knew how to combine resilience and agency to enable them to stay. Agency took many forms, and being silent was but one.

Foucault makes mention of silence in discourse and says,

Silence itself – the things one declines to say … is less the absolute limit of discourse … than an element that functions alongside the things said … There is not one but many silences, but they are an integral part of the strategies that underlie and permeate discourses (Foucault, 1978: 27).

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Foucault was suggesting that silence is about choosing not to speak rather than

necessarily being forbidden to speak. Furthermore, silence is a function of speaking

while the movement between what one says and withholds is the strategy of disclosure.

Silence, in these men’s experience, operated as both a noun and a verb. They knew how

and when to be silent and their silence itself was a discourse. Nevertheless, this silence

should not necessarily be read either as ‘… a cowardly denial of gay identity or as a

successful institutional suppression of gayness’ (Howard, 1999: 31).

These men’s social dexterity also showed in how they used silence to silence others. For

many of these men, saying nothing was very firmly saying something. For example,

Chris made it clear that the community did not have ‘the right’ to know the details of

his everyday life which also meant that he had ‘the right’ to be silent on matters that he

chose. He chose to be discreet, especially around other gay men, when non-

homosexuals were present. For him, silence was a form of discretionary discourse.

Bobby knew that in not speaking of homosexual matters in the pub at Wide Creek, he was not only circumventing unnecessary disclosure, but he was also avoiding the possibility of detrimental repercussions. The silence of being silent could also be

powerful. It stopped, or at least limited, the attacks of others. Bobby’s silence also silenced others. It was more than resilience in that it both acted to withstand conformity and positioned one in opposition to the hegemony of that conformity.

Howard writes that,

Queer sex in [rural] Mississippi was not rare … homosexuality flourished between close friends and distant relatives; casual sex between strangers was clandestine but commonplace… (Howard, 1999: xiii).

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But he goes on to suggest that, despite the relative prevalence of homosex and that

‘men-desiring-men were neither wholly isolated nor invisible’, the heterosexual community’s resolve not to know about it and the associated pretence of ignorance proved amazingly pervasive (Howard, 1999: xiii–xiv). This pretence of ignorance also allowed and facilitated the ‘flourish[ing]’ of those acts about which the community did not want to know. Boulden also speaks of the community’s position of not wanting to know. He writes,

When I reflect on the people of Wyoming, my general feeling is that people don’t want to know if you are gay. It’s like they may suspect that you are. They may even discuss the possibility or gossip among themselves about someone being gay. But it’s almost like they don’t want to have their suspicions confirmed (Boulden, 1999: 94).

This pretence of ignorance also operates in rural Australia today.

Restricting the ability to adversely respond also sits well with the community’s desire not to know, or not to let on that they know, or at least not to know too much. This knowing but not knowing is what Bech refers to as ‘absent homosexuality’ – a term that he maintains is homosexuality’s ‘most common mode of being in modern societies: the dialectics between presence and absence, knowing and ignoring, desire and denial’

(Bech, 1997: 38). In a community that does not want to know too much about something, especially about something ‘forbidden’ or unspoken of, silence sometimes makes it possible for the forbidden to happen. These men were aware that the community was ambivalent about knowing and ignoring that homosexuality was present. Using this ‘absent homosexuality’ was of benefit to these gay men. In Bobby’s case, for example, he lived with his boyfriend, but nobody knew for certain that Antony was Bobby’s lover. To those not in the know, he was a housemate. These men’s silence

– their agency – allowed the community to look the other way, ignore what was

294 happening, deny the reality and see only an ‘absent homosexuality’. This agency allowed Bobby and Antony to live unaccosted as gay lovers in Wide Creek.

The men in this study also used the discourse of silence very effectively to identify potential support within the community. Cleever and Gerry never told anyone that they were gay or that they were in a relationship. Friends just found out – they deduced it.

Other people had no need to know anything. Additionally, silence was used as a way of recognising potential sexual opportunities. John’s story of two men meeting in a hotel in Dunno, Simon and Michael’s story of how they met each other among the aisles in the supermarket and other similar stories in the testimonies of these men attest to the skill with which they utilised this discourse of silence. This is particularly important to rural gay men who may not have access to known venues where it is possible to meet other gay men or where traditional meeting places, such as beats, may not always be safe. This is evidence of their knowing the community in which they live and how to interweave that knowledge to meet their own desire. It is evidence of how they could silently and selectively convey that desire. Silence was used not only to silence opposition but also to also not oppose and, in fact, seduce other others. Therefore, these men’s use of silence is a sign of their social skills and their ability to use a multiplicity of strategies around a single issue. This multiplicity of strategies, both action and abstract response, can be conceptualised in more than one way.

But knowing and silence are also related in another sense. These men made it clear that they knew the community sufficiently well to have the agency to choose not to know it too well. These men acted to disconnect from the community as a way of enabling them to stay in the bush. They disconnected to preserve some privacy and to give an

295 unremarkability to their lives. This kept them out of the public gaze, yet simultaneously preserved the discourse of silence. They disconnected from greater interaction with their community, partly by being silent, both to distance themselves from it in order to remain silent and so maintain the detachment. This is reflected in the testimony of informants in other studies. Silverstein says of Robert and Eugene that they

… don’t spend much time with the natives, anyway. They have no interest in blending into the local scene and socialising with the old-timers. Their socialising is limited to the lesbian couple and another black/white gay couple. They like the isolation of their eighty-acre place (Silverstein, 1981: 251).

Chris, Ivor, Bobby, Jim, Perry, Izak, Cleever, Gerry, Sam and others in this study all behaved in similar ways.

The very act of using silence, or any other strategy for that matter, indicated that these men exercised considerable control over the way in which they conducted themselves in public. Moreover, these gay men exercised significant control over how they interacted within those communities. This higher than expected level of agency is an outcome of this research that is both unforeseen and largely unreported in other studies of gay men living in rural areas. These men controlled the extent to which they disclosed their homosexuality and to whom. Through their non-disclosure and silence they controlled both the level of disconnection from and involvement with their communities. They controlled the extent to which they were silent and, in so doing, imposed a silence on the community. Most significantly, they controlled the extent of the community’s involvement in their lives. This is more than mere resilience. It is a persuasive demonstration of their strategic use of resilience and agency from a position of supposed subordination.

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This is in contrast to the now generally held view that the disclosure of one’s homosexuality is vitally important milestone in gay men’s lives. One researcher calls it a ‘rite of passage’ (Charvat, 1999). To remain silent about one’s sexuality has been seen as a sign of personal and social problems. Conversely, ‘… disclosure was viewed as necessary to achieve a positive gay identity and as evidence that one no longer held ideas and attitudes that led to self-oppression’ (Cain, 1992: 31). These views, promulgated by Humphreys (1970), Dank (1971), Weinberg and Williams (1974),

Plummer (1975), Troiden, (1979) and others, are views still largely in vogue. They are the views, however, of an urban-biased academy intended for an urban-based gay community. For example, Connell states that it is ‘… the urban gay community which currently defines what it is to be a gay man’ (Connell, 1992: 748). Such views take little account of the gay man living in a rural community far removed from the metropolis, and no one had asked them.

This research shows that perhaps it is not disclosure itself that should be considered the milestone. Rather, it is the capacity and ability to choose whether to disclose, indicative of a personal control over one’s life, that is the milestone. Nevertheless, it should be remembered that these men did disclose their homosexuality, albeit very selectively.

They were ‘out’ to those who mattered. Those who did not matter, or who would cause them trouble, had no need to know – and were silenced.

Yates-Rist’s findings in his acclaimed travelogue across the ‘hinterlands’ of gay

America are important. Gay men in the rural heartland of the USA lived lives quite unlike those of urban gay men and were therefore very mindful of the values and traditions of where they were. They refused to deny who they were and the actuality of

297 their lives and in doing so got on with their neighbours, perhaps in ways similar to the men in this study. Yates-Rist says that gay men in rural regions of the USA blended themselves to the culture in which they lived without succumbing to the dominance of a compulsory heterosexuality. In an interview about his book, he says,

… When I got out into the hinterlands where the real people who were all socially and politically constructed lived, I found their lives are not like those of gay activists or gay identified men in the city. They share their lives with their neighbours; they don’t have a lot of gay men to associate with. So they must learn to deal with people they attend church with and their families. … Those others out there were learning that they still could insist on being open about their same sex relationships, knew that there would be occasional if not frequent difficulties, but learned somehow to accommodate themselves to the culture in which they lived (Yates-Rist, 2000: 2).

In like manner, the men in this study also had to ‘… deal with the people’ around them.

Just like the gay men in Yates-Rist’s book, these men in the Australian bush also knew how to conduct themselves in the rural culture in which they lived. After all, they had grown up in and were still part of it.

However, in living in a rural area, it may be thought that the men in this study accepted what gay men elsewhere may not accept. Because these men wanted to stay in the bush, they may appear to accept conditions and interactions that other gay men, especially those in the city or those more politically focused, might not accept. For example, having to be ever vigilant about what one might inadvertently say, to always watch one’s mannerisms so that there is no slip of the tongue – or the wrist, and to be apprehensive about being abused in the street … these matters, and others, are accepted by these gay men as being the lot of a gay man in the bush. It is a misconception to think that these men put up with everything and they made it clear they do not put up with conditions that are unacceptable to them. It has been demonstrated that these men took action to alleviate the loneliness they encounter. They took direct and decisive

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action against those who would homophobically denigrate them. And over and above

this, they disconnected from and silenced those who would disparage and malign them.

This was resilience and agency in action and at level of sophistication and power that

has been unanticipated and unreported. It was also a platform from which these men

were able to take advantage of what they saw as the advantages of the bush and so build

a full and enriching life for themselves.

These men handled these issues in ways that are deft and acceptable to them. And it is

important to stress again that in exercising considerable control over their lives, they

also decided what behaviour was acceptable and what was not. Just as they would not

be dictated to by the countrymindedness of the community, neither were they dictated

to by political agendas of gay activists from the city. Additionally, it should be borne in

mind that they were only vigilant when they were in public view – on the street or in the

cattle yards. But this is not to excuse the attitudes of some country people. This is not to

sanction an outlook encapsulated by notions of countrymindedness, nor is it to exonerate or explain away the behaviour of those who seek to exclude or marginalise

gay men from the communities in which they live. But that gay men deal with these

matters and stay in spite of them does accentuate the social dexterity and the skill of the gay men who live there. It also accentuates the complexity of their everyday experiences of being gay in the bush as well as the multiplicity of response they are capable of.

Conclusion

The literature on the psychosocial development of young gay men focuses largely on their propensity for ‘going off the rails’. Their heightened risk of suicide, drug abuse,

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unsafe sex and loneliness are all seen as evidence of what one researcher called the

‘potential for dysfunction’ (Anderson, 1998: 55). This literature tends to apportion

blame to the individual. It frequently fails to take account of the fact that gay men are

not as readily accepted as heterosexual men and that, in fact, they face extraordinary

pressures in their efforts to forge a positive self-image and authentic identity. What this

research has shown is that even those gay men who have been perceived as being the

most vulnerable to the challenges of being gay – gay men living in rural areas – have

been able to demonstrate considerable strengths in their everyday lives.

These men were a resilient lot. They were able to demonstrate a strength and toughness

of character in the face of the difficulties so that those issues did not affect them in ways

to cause them permanent harm or disadvantage. More positively, they took action to

mitigate the effects of loneliness and homophobia. However, this is not to say that every

man overcame every incident or ordeal every time. Nor is it to say that when they

experienced episodes of loneliness or acts of abuse that they were sometimes not

resilient. The absence of difficulties was not the reality of their lives.

It must be considered that, in deciding to remain silent and not to disclose their homosexuality so as to silence opposition and to socially disconnect from their communities rather than endure the unwelcome and debilitating attitudes of some in the community, these men were more than resilient. This research has shown that these rural gay men, usually considered more vulnerable and more at risk in conventional perceptions, were in fact stronger than expected and were able to exercise greater control both over their own lives and over the community in which they lived. They saw themselves in a mentally healthier light than did the wider communities in which

300 they lived. The agency and control they exercised over their lives is a finding that pushes the boundaries of knowledge about gay men, particularly those living in rural areas. Their determination to live the way they wished, in spite of the adverse social conditions they face, was a contributing factor in making them happy and well-adjusted, precisely because of the effectiveness and unconventionality of their responses to the difficulties of living in conservative, rural communities.

The next chapter will expand on the idea that the control these men exercised over their lives both positioned them to, and allowed them to, resist the social order. It will suggest that the considerable autonomy they were able to exert over how they lived their lives can be situated within Giroux’s idea that resistance is an act of self-reflection and struggle in the interests of ‘self-emancipation’ (Giroux, 1883a, 290). I take the view that while resistance is not always about social change, it is about personal liberation. It is about the ability to act, even from a subordinant position within the status quo. It is about the freedom to reject, defy and step outside (in a Durkheimian sense) the existing social order without necessarily attempting to overturn it. In this sense, resistance is also about the exercise of power from a position of powerlessness. For the men in this study, it was just about being gay in the bush.

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Chapter Nine

‘Staying’ – The Effect of Agency and Resistance

Ahm … I’m going to stay for a long time actually. I don’t plan on leaving. Ahm …you know, this is my home. This is where I’ve grown up, and I love it. Ahm … my family are here and they’re really supportive, so I’ve no reason to move. …and virtually everyone in town knows [I’m gay] … yeah, it’s good [Jim].

Introduction

The previous chapter showed that these rural gay men’s determination to stay in the bush in spite of the intransigence of the rural environment is evidence of their considerable resilience and agency. While they explained that the loneliness and the homophobia of the bush were not matters that preoccupied them, it was necessary to draw attention to those issues in order to understand that these men’s initial response to difficulty was to call on their resilience demonstrated by their living skilled, robust and authentic lives in rural communities. They went to some lengths to explain that, while the bush presented some tribulations for gay men, they were more than able to cope.

They were able to cope with difficulty and deal with those who caused them trouble.

They were also able to take concerted action to stand firm against the unspoken calls for conformity. In doing so they were able to exert control over their own lives, live them as they wished, silence those who would denigrate them and stay in the bush. They stayed for reasons that overrode the importance and impact of any problems or animosity towards gay men that may pervade rural communities.

However, these men chose to stay in the bush for far more positive reasons. They stayed because they wanted to. This is clearly evident in their everyday life experiences detailed in Part Two of this thesis. What this chapter will show is that these men were

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also capable of complementing their agency with skills of resistance to bear on what

they saw as the advantages of rural life. They were able to take action and resist, not

only to give them the self-emancipation to live as they wished but to even more

effectively oppose the social forces and ‘countrymindedness’ of rural communities that

would seek to prevent them doing that.

As has been detailed in Chapters Two and Eight, agency has been conceptualised as the

ability of an individual to take action to improve his life. In this thesis, a distinction has

been made between resilience and agency. Resilience refers to a capacity to cope with disadvantage. Agency is the individual’s capacity to act on the advantages of his situation so as to better his life. Resistance, on the other hand, is essentially about opposition, usually to the superiority of the societal status quo such as, in this case, the dominance of heterosexuality and the subordinate position accorded gay men.

Resistance is an extension or outcome of agency in that it is the ability to act in the interests of one’s self-emancipation and in the exercise of power from a position of

powerlessness. The use of agency and resistance theory is an especially useful concept

to explore how these gay men construct their lives in rural areas.

Resilience, by its very nature, is a response to adversity and once it is understood that

adversity was not, for these men, a defining aspect of their lives, staying in the bush has

to be reconceptualised or re-situated. This chapter will situate staying – because of the

advantages of rural life – within a framework of agency and resistance. As Chapter

Four of this thesis showed, these advantages were interlinked and multifaceted. There

were advantages related to place in that the bush was where these men had lived most

of their lives. It was a place that they knew and felt safe in. The geographical isolation

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of the bush gave their lives an element of social isolation that suited them. But

additionally, the bush was also a place of remarkable beauty. These men were able to

apply features of agency and resistance in giving shape and substance to place. The

bush was where their friends and family were and these men brought agency and

resistance to these relationships. They emphasised that the city life was not a viable

alternative and this drove their determination to stay.

These men were aware not only of the benefits of a rural lifestyle but also of their

ability to be able to bring significant freedom and autonomy into their lives. They did it

partly by lessening the impact of the disadvantages of living in the bush but also by

enhancing the advantages. They positioned themselves in such a way that was largely

oppositional to the social order. These men resisted the mindset of a presumed

heterosexuality and took action against the discriminatory actions or attitudes that arose

from such a presumption. They resisted leaving and in so doing resisted the dominant

social forces that preferred and expected them to do so. However, there is more to it

than that. Their undertakings to improve their lives and the very act of staying in the

bush itself can also be conceptualised within a framework of agency and resistance and

this chapter is about exploring and theorising that proposition.

Resistance by these men to the hegemony of heteronormativity that they encounter in

their communities has little to do with what that hegemonic position would see as the

deviance and the abnormality of the subordinant gay man. This conceptualisation of

resistance suggests that precisely because of the ongoing agency and resistance of the

subordinate, domination is never absolute (Giroux, 1983a: 108), and it is this

incomplete subjugation that makes resistance possible. However, Giroux fails to

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mention that while the subordinate remain so, resistance also is never complete. Perhaps

Foucault realised this and so modified his earlier notion (Foucault, 1978) that resistance

was only a reaction by the inferior to power of the dominant. Foucault’s later

conceptualization saw resistance as not only a positive reaction in itself, but also an

indication of power by the inferior. For Foucault, resistance is a ‘recalcitrance’ and ‘a

permanent provocation’ to the dominant social order (Foucault, 1983a: 139).

One of the factors emerging from this research is that these men had the capacity for

agency and resistance that drove their determination to improve their lives and live

them the way they wanted. They used this confidence in their own ability to control

their own lives, to improve their quality of life and to grow at a personal level. This has

already been demonstrated in the way these men confronted the loneliness and

homophobia they encountered and the way they were able to use silence to silence

others who may disparage them. This belief in themselves, a realisation of their own

strength of character and knowing that they could take actions to shape the social and

physical environment in which they lived led them to understand that they could

fashion a personal autonomy that has been untold in previous stories of rural gay men.

It gave these men a sense of self-empowerment and personal liberation that might well

be seen as thriving. The idea that gay men living in rural areas are able to thrive, on

their own terms, has been overlooked and uncharted.

Determined to Stay

Finding gay men living in the bush who were both happy within themselves and happy to stay living in the bush was not a predictable outcome of this research. The strength of their determination to stay in the bush was even more surprising. They were able to

305 pinpoint the reasons for wanting to stay and these have been dealt with at some length in previous chapters. This desire and a determination to stay is exemplified by Jim’s comment at the beginning of this chapter. Jim was one of the younger and more openly gay men in this study and his determination to stay sprang from what he saw as the desirable and positive aspects of living in the bush. Similarly, Chris’ statement that,

‘… I have no desire to pack my bags and move … I’m happy where I am …’ [6/118] is an unambiguous statement of his desire to stay because of his overall delight and contentment with rural life.

However, such contentment is not enough to explain or understand why they were so keen to stay. These men knew they had to act on, or do something about it, if they wanted to be able to create a satisfying lifestyle for themselves and continue to live in the bush. However, it is one thing to understand that one has this ability and it is another to enact it, just as it is one thing to want to stay and entirely another to ensure that one can and does. These men knew that the actions they took in order to stay would have to reposition them outside the community and in some opposition to it. For example, they maintained a small but close circle of friends on whom they could rely for support and acceptance. When such support and acceptance could not be relied on, friendship did not ensue and any contact was kept at arms length. They brought into their lives a spirit of freedom to be gay and they achieved this in a number of ways … travelling out of town, being part of a support group, meeting other gay men, living out of town, not always disclosing their sexuality and, in the case of some men, even publicly disclosing it. These strategies were actions designed to facilitate their desire to be gay and involved a disconnecting from the community in which they lived. Even the

306 silence and silencing discussed in the previous chapter has shades of disengagement about it.

Resistance arises from agency. In extricating themselves from the heteronormativity of the community, they strategically resisted the hegemony of it as well. These men realised that if they were going to stake a place or take their place in the bush they were going to have to free themselves from the hegemonic structures (such as marriage and children, community involvement, conformity - and leaving if you do not) of the bush and the heteronormativity that supported them. To use Giroux’s words, they realised they had the ability to step outside the dominant structures and ideologies to act on their desire for, among other things, ‘… an aesthetic sensibility, eros and emancipatory freedoms’ (Giroux, 1983a: 288). This relates to Durkheim’s previously canvassed idea that when there is no room in a community for the different to actually be different, then those different individuals see themselves as overregulated and choose to act outside the

‘collective conscience’ of that community. These men chose to live apart from the community in which they resided.

These actions that set themselves apart from a greater social integration with the community can be conceptualised within Giroux’s interpretation of resistance. An act of resistance, by Giroux’s definition, is a deliberate action taken in the interests of ‘social and self-emancipation’ (Giroux, 1983a: 290). For Giroux, the greater these men’s determination to live outside the constraints of the hegemony of the local social order, the more their desire to stay and the actions they take to do so can be considered as acts of resistance. While the countrymindedness of rural communities seems to be all pervasive, and in this case specifically regarding attitudes towards gay men and

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homosexuality in general, this is not to say that conformity and adherence to such

hegemony was unquestioned. This research has shown that these gay men questioned,

defied and resisted the dominant social attitudes. Furthermore, the data has also shown

that others in the community also questioned its countrymindedness. That some people

objected to the treatment of John and his partner in Wobegon by members of the church

can be interpreted as counter-hegemonic practice by members of the community. The

reprimands handed out by others in the community to those who made snide remarks to

Cleever and Gerry in Barrappa is evidence that not all people in rural communities adhere to the prevailing social conventions and not all are prepared to be subservient to the dominance of those conventions. To an extent, these gay men were not the only ones who resisted convention, even when it came to attitudes towards gay men.

Earlier in this thesis, it was noted that theorists like Foucoult and Giroux argued that individuals could act from a position of powerlessness. The communities in which these men lived saw gay men as a maligned, isolated, invisible and marginalised minority, made so by those communities’ own ‘conscience collective’. That ‘conscience’ through attitude and action deliberately attempted to position gay men as powerless. However, this was not the observation of the gay men themselves. They did not see themselves as powerless and it was not from a sense of powerlessness that they were propelled into action. These gay men fit Giroux’s typology of being a subordinated group. While they are subject to the dominance of the countrymindedness of rural culture, they are not

‘simply passive’ in response (Giroux. 1983a: 108). Not only has their subordination not made them socially impotent, but, in actual fact, has made them more upbeat in their resistance to it. In their case, it must be argued that it is the realisation of their own capacity for action to improve their lives and to live them as they wish – for agency –

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that is the springboard to resistance. Resistance is the outcome of the men’s agency in

their own lived experience. This study has demonstrated that subordinate groups can

express counteractions to the hegemonic ideology, in this case represented by the

countrymindedness which underlay the structure of social domination in rural

communities. Out of this resistance, these men have comprehended the possibility of a

good life that involves courses of action necessary to overcome or step aside from the

countrymindedness of rural communities that would suppress them. But these gay men

did not act as a group. The actions they implemented and the resistance they put up is

undertaken by each as an individual and as part of everyday life.

Not every action needs to be conceptualised in terms of resistance. Therefore, when the

gay man decides not to accept an invitation to the Show Ball he may simply prefer not to go without necessarily conceptualising his action as some sort of resistance against the heteronormativity of the community. However, when he refuses to discuss his unmarried status or the details of a recent visit by a male friend from outside the district, such silence and resultant silencing of the inquisitive, may well be constituted as a deliberate act of resistance. The bush is at once both a place of domination and contestation of that domination. These men’s resistance is not necessarily only a response to the power and self-conviction of the traditional mores of rural communities.

While Giroux suggests that resistance is about social emancipation (Giroux, 1983a:

290), these men did not see their actions in terms of retribution or about changing country culture and values. In taking these actions, these men did not set out to penalise those whom they felt had put them in a subordinate position. For them, the purpose of their action was to limit the effects of that supposed superiority and

‘countrymindedness’ on themselves. It was about improving their lifestyle. It was about

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self-emancipation. As Goffman has shown, most people attempt to exercise some measure of autonomy in their everyday lives (Goffman, 1959: 247). However, while

resistance looks towards some transformation of one’s personal life, it does not follow

that there has to be a desire to transform community attitudes and values as well. It is

sometimes sufficient, and easier, to simply ignore or refuse to acknowledge the

hegemony of heteronormativity as reinforced by countryminded attitudes.

Isolation and the Making of Strangers

While the previous pages ranged across a number of the advantages of rural life in its

discussion of agency and resistance, this section reflects on these theoretical ideas from

the specificity of one advantage – isolation. Some of the attributes of bush life that have

often been portrayed as disadvantages are, for these gay men, a distinct advantage. This

is particularly so in the case of isolation. As Hillier has shown, isolation is often cited as

the main disadvantage of rural life, especially for gay men (Hillier, 1996, Hillier and

Walshe, 1999; Hillier, Turner and Mitchell, 2005). This study found that these men

adapted and modified the actual condition of disadvantage to soften its effect on their

lives. The isolation of the rural landscape was used not only to enhance the rurality of

their lives but also to better incorporate their gay persona into their rural lifestyle. Thus,

what is often described as the most unbearable feature of rural life for gay men was, for

these men, the very feature that allowed them to stay in the bush. It was, for them, its

most significant advantage.

What is even more striking is that they took actions to increase both the geographical

and the social isolation of their lives. These courses of action can be considered as

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agency – individual volition to improve one’s life. The infusion of a sense of seclusion into their lives was achieved through a number of mechanisms – some men withdrew geographically from the town. Others withdrew socially from the community. As has been discussed earlier in this work, part of this withdrawal from the community was not to disclose their homosexuality to the wider community. Contrary to expectations, their non-disclosure was not to achieve inclusion in the community, but, in fact, to facilitate some distance from the community. Non-disclosure was a deliberate and incisive strategy to resist the social values and silence those in the community who would condemn them. It was an act of socially isolating themselves. Non-disclosure was both agency and resistance. The act of being silent in order to enhance one’s lifestyle can be seen as agency but the deliberate silencing of inquisitive others is resistance. Again, agency leads to resistance.

Another use of agency and resistance by which these men created a sense of isolation in their lives was to restrict their socialising to a small circle of friends and family. Most did not involve themselves in the life of the town. They socialised in small groups and usually with gay or gay-friendly friends. Cleever and Gerry, for example, were men who did this. Other men took themselves out of town in order to socialise. Rex and

Petro come to mind in this regard. Others actually socialised very little and Chris and

Neville are such examples. It appears as if the geographical isolation of the place and the socially isolated nature of these men’s lives enhanced and strengthened the limited friendships they formed. As was shown in Chapter Six, these men fostered some social connections and maintained them. At the same time, they adopted a process of social disengagement. While these actions can be understood as positioning themselves in the

311 community to their own best advantage, they can also be conceptualised as agency and resistance.

The effect of this intervention and agency with respect to the social and geographical isolation that these gay men were able to infuse into their rural lives was that it gave them a sense of freedom. Paradoxically, the isolation in these men’s lives, whether natural or created, allowed them greater freedom to lead gayer lives. This sense of freedom was achieved by distancing themselves from insignificant others within the wider community. This desire for self-emancipation meant having to resist community expectations to conform. This isolation and disengagement from the community was not only enacting agency but also a deliberate strategy of resistance to the domination of rural social mores as well as to the expectation of rural communities that all people within it would want to belong.

It is through this mix of connections and disconnections, through agency and resistance, and, in all of this, their use of social and physical isolation that these men experienced the social aspect of their lives. However, in all of this, these men were not solitary and their lives were not ones of persistent solitude. These men were able to build into their lives times of personal solitude and times of geographical seclusion that came together in their everyday experience as time alone and moments for reflection and refreshment.

Sam’s comment that began Chapter Four and their reflections on place in Chapter Ten are indicative of such moments in these men’s lives. This social invisibility resulted in them living, at times, or in some circumstances, in ways that can be conceptualised as both a stranger and as a non-stranger.

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(i) Staying as a Stranger in the Bush

One of the characteristics of ‘the stranger’, according to Simmel, is

… the potential wanderer: although he has not moved on, he has not quite overcome the freedom of coming or going. He is fixed within a particular spatial group, or within a group whose boundaries are similar to spatial boundaries. But his position in this group is determined, essentially, by the fact that he has not belonged to it from the beginning, that he imports qualities into it which do not, and cannot, stem from the group itself (Simmel in Wolff, 1950: 402).

Another feature of Simmel’s stranger is what he calls the ‘objectivity’ of the stranger, in that ‘he is not radically committed to the unique ingredients and peculiar tendencies of the group …’ (Simmel in Wolff, 1950: 403). This conceptualisation accords with the position of these gay men in the community in that they felt they did not belong to it.

They felt that the community was essentially inhospitable. Therefore, they were of the opinion that the community made and treated them as strangers. To counteract this passive ostracism and to position themselves in the community to what they saw as their own best advantage, they also made strangers of themselves. They made it clear that they did not have the same sense of connectedness to other people or to the community in general as they did with friends and family. As was said earlier, they consciously disengaged from the community. They used agency to infuse their lives with a sense of social isolation and, for some, a sense of geographical seclusion. They used their resistance to free themselves from community constraint and set themselves apart from those who were of less significance in their lives. It can be asserted that they left their communities so as to stay in the bush.

One of the reasons they were made, and also made themselves, strangers in their hometowns was because they were of the impression that they could not be completely open about their sexuality and still be part of their towns. In order to be part of the

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community these men were expected to ‘sublimate’ their own sexual identity (Preston,

1991, xvi), so they chose to disconnect from the community rather than do so. They acted to infuse a sense of social isolation and physical seclusion into their lives to increase both the rurality of their lifestyle and the freedom and space to live out the sexual component of their lives. The foundations and satisfaction of their lives was based on the premise of self-emancipation and freedom by being strangers within the community.

These men could not sublimate their sexuality. In strongly resisting the countrymindedness of the community for them to do so, they knew they would never

‘belong’ (to use Simmel’s word) to, or within, it. Even those men who had ‘come out’ and disclosed their sexuality (or had it done for them) – such as Jim in Geriffi, Jason in

Keroboken, Jack in Wobegon, Noel in Galbern, Izak in Geriffi – tended to stay clear of any real involvement in the community. This is not to say that being ‘a stranger’ meant being a stranger to everyone. Clearly, Jim, like most other men in this study, did have a group of close-knit friends with whom he socialised. But, with few exceptions, they were unlikely to join community organisations, reflecting Lynch’s findings, in relation to suburban gay men. They ‘… expressed disinterest and disdain for such groups or activities’ (Lynch, 1987: 32).

This is not to excuse the attitudes of a number people in the rural communities in which these men lived. It was not always the gay men who chose to distance themselves.

When these gay men chose to distance themselves from the community, it was mainly because they thought that they would be unwelcome anyway. Anti-gay street talk, general rural attitudes and the ‘countrymindedness’ of the community and hearing of

314 others (and sometimes themselves) having to endure verbal attacks, all made for a feeling that gay men were not especially appreciated in town. At another level, it was not so much overt abuse as covert snubbing. Cleever and Gerry talked about being ignored in the street on occasion even by people who have known them for a long time.

Being seen to be talking to, or being friendly with, two gay men in Barappa was not the done thing. Michael spoke of being shunned by other Aboriginals, including extended family members, not only because he was gay but also because of his sexual relationship with a white man. Many men spoke of fearing ostracism if word of their sexuality became public knowledge, such was the general perception of anti-gay attitudes within most towns. Sometimes though, the community expressly excluded them. Sam’s virtual expulsion from one small town prior to settling in Dalgety is perhaps a more extreme example. Rex’s experience of homophobia in the workplace is another, though less extreme, example of the community choosing to put some distance between itself and a presumed gay man. Rural communities generally made these men feel like strangers in their hometown.

On some occasions, the community actually did make strangers of them. Canton-

Thompson takes up this point that ‘the stranger’ can be a problem for the community in which he lives. She suggests that,

Locals expect resident strangers to enter their communities, get involved and contribute, abandoning their own historically tested and proved ideas and practices (Canton-Thompson, 1988: 247).

When they do not, there are likely to be devious social repercussions. Certainly this was the experience of the men in this study. They reported expectations that they should be involved in the community, but it was involvement on the community’s terms. They assert that there was little place in the community for them as gay men. Certainly there

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was little evidence from their testimonies that the community went out of its way to

make a place within it for them even when, as in the case of Bobby, they brought credit

to the community because of their expertise and skills. None of them, apart from Jack

and Rudy, spoke of voluntary involvement with the community and none indicated that

they were invited by the community to join various organisations. There were the two exceptions. Jack was a university-trained auditor and so the Show Society and the

Historical Society in Wobegon asked him to do their bookkeeping. Rudy was an accomplished musician and music teacher and he was asked to lead his church’s choral group in Geriffi. Other than these two men, no one spoke of belonging to clubs, sporting teams or organisations in their communities. While many of these gay men were members of their local gay group, such groups did not qualify as a community group in the sense of being part of, or accepted by, the wider community.

Because these men chose a life of relative isolation from the community and with little commitment to it, they became relatively invisible. Distance from the community was, to an extent, a relationship with the community that these gay men could control themselves. It was often the gay men who chose the level of interaction, and it was usually less rather than more. To this extent, these gay men were not only outside the community, they were outside its control. Canton-Thompson suggests that locals within the community are

… greatly astonished that strangers are not able to accept their (locals’) ways as the ‘natural and appropriate’ ways of living life (Canton-Thompson, 1988: 249).

She goes on to quote a study by Schutz (1970) in which he proposed that

… locals expect strangers to immediately adopt the local way of life as the only right way of living. They become offended when strangers refuse to do to do this (Schutz in Canton-Thompson: 253).

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While these academics’ concept of stranger was that of the immigrant rather than the

local homosexual man, the expectations by locals of conformity to local values is highly

suggestive of the ‘countrymindedness’ of small towns referred to by Atkins (1985) and

Roberts (1996).

As noted previously, another attribute of Simmel’s stranger reflected in the gay men in

this study is ‘… that he imports qualities into it which do not, and cannot, stem from the

group itself’ (Simmel, 1950: 402). The most obvious ‘quality’, and Simmel’s word is

repeated just a little tongue-in-cheek, that the men in this study imported into their

communities was their own homosexuality. They also brought, perhaps even more so, their own forms of what Simmel calls ‘sociability’ – their networks, friends and

associates of like mind and self (Simmel, 1950: 44-5. See also Atoji, 1984: 145).

Simmel’s model contends that such an aberrant ‘quality’ is inherent to the (gay)

stranger, but because this quality is also strange to the community it causes the stranger

to become not so much designated as such, but treated as such. It made disclosure of

their homosexuality even more unnecessary.

Against expectations, non-disclosure of their sexuality was selective and was used not so much to find support and acceptance, but in fact to set them apart from the community. Non-disclosure was not used to find inclusion in the community. The self- imposed isolation arising from non-disclosure kept them away from the community’s scrutiny and reach. Against expectations, they used increasing isolation and disengagement from community to enhance the quality of their lives. Unlike the same- sex attracted women in Edwards’ study for whom a self-imposed invisibility in the community led to ‘intensifying psychosocial distress’ (Edwards, 2005:8–9), invisibility

317 was used to enhance these men’s lifestyle. However, it should be remembered that this reference to being a stranger applied only to these men’s relationship and interaction with the broader community in which they lived. This estrangement from community did not, however, apply to family and even less to the close circle of supportive and accepting friends these men were able to gather around themselves.

(ii) Staying as a Non-Stranger in the Bush

While these men saw themselves as something of strangers in the wider community, this is not to say that that these men were strangers everywhere. For example, a number of men said that their home was the very place where they could be gay and where they were not strangers either to themselves or to others. Perry spoke about ‘swishing’ around his house in a campy kind of way. Gary talked about ‘talking gay’ within the four walls of his home. Sam referred to his home on the farm being ‘my Ponderosa’ in which he could be the ‘queen’ (my word) of his domain. Home was away from the community’s reach. It was seclusion where these gay men could retreat to be by themselves or with supportive friends and family. It was a refuge where they could be themselves.

These men used agency to ensure that they were not a stranger to those who mattered to them. They used the advantage of having family close by to improve their own lives.

This research has not suggested that the families of gay men living in rural areas are unimportant. Families of gay men are important (Weston, 1991; Herdt and Koff, 2000;

Oswald and Culton, 2003) and they are in this study too. For many of these men, social relations with family were comfortable and the proximity of family was one of the reasons they chose to stay where they were. This is quite at odds with the accepted

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wisdom (Connell, 1992: 746). The evidence has been that many young gay men are

expelled from the family and the family home when they disclose, or it is discovered

that they are gay (Hunter, 1990; Irwin, 1994). Suicide literature would suggest that rejection and fear of rejection by family are reasons for the suicide of many young gay men (Remafedi, et al., 1998).

These men made considerable effort to maintain good relations with family and most had told family, including parents, that they were gay. However, this is in contrast to much of the literature around disclosure in which it is usually argued that gay men choose not to disclose their homosexuality with the intention of gaining the approval of, especially, those people that mattered. In this study, these men disclosed their homosexuality to family and friends expressly to foster greater connection and engagement and to garner support. This preparedness to use the disclosure their homosexuality to family as a form of agency by rural gay men is a matter that has been unreported in the literature. Additionally, it shows a level of acceptance of their gay sons by rural families that has been missing from much of the academic literature in

Australia. Whether this translates across to a wider community acceptance of gay men within rural communities is unknown. The men in this study had grave doubts in this regard so much so that their disengagement from the community was predicated on their sensing a palpable anti-gay sentiment in the community. But many gay men in this study were able to maintain viable relationships with their families following their

‘coming out’, so much so that it is one of the commonly mentioned reasons for them wanting to stay. This is evidence of these men’s use of agency to reduce the social isolation in their lives when that meant access to increased levels of support. However, as with the process of disengagement, these men did the unanticipated. Contrary to

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expectations, disclosure of their homosexuality was used to find support and inclusion.

Selective disclosure of their homosexuality allowed these men to position themselves within the scrutiny and reach of those with whom they wanted contact – family, friends

and men with whom they saw (or desired) a sexual opportunity. They became non-

strangers.

Nevertheless, family members were not, on the whole, confidants and did not provide

the same intensity of support as did friends (Kurdek and Schmitt, 1987; Kurdek, 1988;

Green, 2000). This was discussed at some length in Chapter Six where it was shown

that in not a single case did disclosure of their homosexuality bring about a stronger or

closer relationship between son and parent/s. Family may be a reason to stay, but the

desire to stay can be better explained by Thoit’s idea of ‘… an intimate confiding

relationship’ (Thoits, 1995: 64). The men in this study took conscious action to move

away from the mainstream community and instead to find avenues of support in

increasing that social isolation and by limiting their social activities to a small circle of accepting friends. Bech makes the comment that friendship is the most important social institution in a homosexual’s life (Bech, 1997: 117). He notes that friendship is more than conviviality and camaraderie. It is through friends and friendship that gay men

… find self-affirmation. … It allows one to learn in more detail what it means to be a homosexual: how to act, what to think, thus lending substance to one’s proclaimed identity. … [Among friends], being homosexual is normal here, [it] loses its negatively laden value (Bech, 1997: 116).

These men reported that close friendships, often with other locals was one of the

reasons that living where they did was possible and pleasant. This ability by gay men to

form such close bonds of friendship in the bush has usually been seen as one of the very

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things gay men were unable to do. It was this lack of friendships with others close by

that is often said to force men either to leave the bush or to become intolerably lonely

and drive them to suicide. These men had both the agency to improve their lives and the

capacity to resist and oppose social conventions that would otherwise stifle and prevent

them living their lives in the way they wanted. And their strategies are, as has been

discussed, to do the unlikely and the unpredicted. This confidence in their own ability to take charge of their lives and live them as they wanted may be conceptualised as thriving. The idea that gay men living in rural areas are able to thrive, within their own terms, is another way in which to explore how these men stayed in the bush.

Thriving

Overcoming adversity combined with the personal resources to effect positive change in their lives is a powerful combination of traits that are more akin to thriving. The idea that gay men might thrive in rural areas is novel. It is more usual to suggest that gay

men living in rural areas are plagued by the harshness of both the physical and the

social environment.

The literature on thriving is not wide-ranging and some conflates resilience and thriving

(Carver, 1988). But the literature on thriving appears mostly to imply that an individual uses his resilience to move on, such that ‘The person may not merely return to the

previous level of functioning, but may surpass it in some manner’ (Carver, 1988: 245).

Thriving generally refers to a ‘growth’ arising out of dealing with, or confronting and

overcoming adversity (Saakvitne, Tennen and Affleck, 1998; Park, 1998; Calhoun and

Tedeschi, 1998) and attaining a ‘better-off-afterward experience’ of life (Carver, 1998:

246). O’Leary (1998) explains it this way,

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Thriving represents the ability to grow vigorously, to flourish. …Thriving is contingent on a fundamental cognitive shift in response to a challenge… [such that]… it forces individuals to confront personal priorities and to re-examine their sense of self (O’Leary, 1998: 428).

It is argued that the response to adversity can bring an improved level of social

functionality and meaning to life for the individual and generally does so in the resilient individual (Affleck and Tennen, 1996; Aldwin and Sutton, 1996; Beardslee, 1989;

Masten and Coatsworth, 1998). Thriving is not the only way to explain a person’s

positive response to adversity (Massey, Cameron, Ouellette and Fine, 1998), but in its

current construction, thriving tends to place a person’s inner strength at the centre and

give a lesser importance to the social and other contextual factors (Park, 1998).

However, there is one matter in the literature of thriving that does not seem to have

been adequately addressed and that is the question of whether adversity is a prerequisite

for thriving to occur. Is there the implication that without the challenge of trauma, an

individual cannot thrive in life? This question is fundamental. It forces a reconsideration of the concept of thriving in correlation to its precursor – trauma. This question will be addressed in the next section of this chapter in the context of gay men’s experience of living in rural areas.

‘Trauma’ is usually conceptualised as a person’s reaction to a highly stressful event.

Trauma may result from physical attack or the death of a loved one (Calhoun and

Tedeschi (1989). Other researchers suggest that trauma involves life-threatening illness

(Affleck et al., 1987). Still other studies indicate that trauma might extend further in time and be more than a single event. Such studies talk in terms of war and imprisonment (De Jong, 2002), and their attendant adversities of facing death,

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bereavement, loss of family, poverty and so on. However, the main effect of trauma is

that a person's ability to cope is temporarily overwhelmed.

Nevertheless, not all people, when confronted with adversity or trauma, are able to find

the resilience to cope, let alone the hidden strength, to subsequently progress to a better

experience of life (O’Leary, 1998: 426; Carver, 1998: 245). There is also the possibility

that a person can thrive in the face of one traumatic situation and yet not deal with another. The research of Massey, Cameron, Ouellette and Fine suggests that thriving is

not ‘a static phenomenon, located in a type of person’, but rather is ‘a process by which

a person engages the particular stressors in his or her life’ (Massey, Cameron, Ouellette

and Fine, 1998, 243). O’Leary concurs and suggests that ‘the outcome is dependent on

the nature of the challenge as well as the individual’s response to it’ (O’Leary, 1998,

251).

Furthermore, the literature also suggests that some people with certain personal

characteristics are more likely to thrive in the face of adversity. Such characteristics

may include coping (Pearlin and Schooler, 1978; Plunkett, Henry and Knaub, 1999;

Thoits, 1995), hardiness (Kobasa, 1979; Kobasa, Maddi and Kahn, 1982),

connectedness (Resnick, Harris and Blum, 1993), competence (Masten and Coatsworth,

1998) and self-understanding (Beardslee, 1989). For an individual to thrive, the

literature would appear to indicate that a person will have the persistence to

continuously and positively engage with the fluctuations of life, and to continuously

resist the social forces that would curtail one’s efforts to create a better life. This may be

conceptualised as a combination of resilience, agency and resistance. Whether there

323 needs to be trauma of the nature described in the literature to act as a catalyst is less obvious.

Thriving by Staying

The concepts of resilience, agency and resistance when combined with thriving and its associated terminology could be a valuable, though unexplored, way of explaining the ability of gay men to stay and continue to live in rural areas. Though research into thriving is in its academic infancy (O’Leary, 1998: 438), there is virtually no research which examines thriving in the lives of gay men and the issues they face on a daily basis in a heterosexist society. Because there is so little research that refers to gay men being able to thrive, regardless of where they live, one is led to speculate that being gay and the ability to thrive might be considered mutually exclusive. As was noted earlier in this section, there is little doubt that the gay men in this study have encountered considerable adversity in their lives and that has been detailed in previous chapters. If their resilience on overcoming that adversity, their determination to stay in the bush and the success of their agency and resistance in doing so is any indication, they appear to thrive.

However, whether they display traits of thriving as described by O’Leary and other researchers in the area is open to question. Researchers put forward the idea of thriving as an almost linear one in that there is a ‘process’ of ‘positive change’ over time in the face of adverse psychosocial conditions. If this linear progression continues with a phase of ‘growth’, then, this can be understood as ‘thriving’. Massey and his colleagues refer to this as a ‘pure discourse in thriving’ (Massey, Cameron, Ouellette and Fine,

1998: 10) by which a person’s ability to thrive has enabled a ‘heroic response’ to

324 adversity which has brought about ‘transformative’ changes for the better in a person’s life (O’Leary, 1998, 429). This implies that the adversity is inflicted suddenly and unexpectedly and, in the thriving individual, he overcomes it such that it disappears from his life.

This, though, is not how it has been for the men in this research. Being gay and living in the bush is not a sudden infliction of adversity. The difficulties they faced developed and became apparent to them over a long period of time, although the knowledge of their homosexuality becoming public sometimes resulted in a more sudden onset of increased adversity and stress in some cases. If thriving is indeed about ‘growth’ in the face of adversity, then it also follows that this growth will be subject to periods of self- doubt and bouts of relapse and not coping. If indeed thriving is about dealing with and overcoming adversity and having a better life as a result of that process, then thriving itself is necessarily subject to the vagaries of life.

By staying in the bush, the men in this study have shown great resilience and they believe they have been able to have more fulfilling lives than if they had gone elsewhere. The adversity they faced concerned the attitudes and actions of others that in reality they had little real influence over. The overt and covert homophobia within their communities, and the always-present fear of its public expression, was an adversity these men had to cope with every day. Having made the decision to stay does not mean that the adversity they face has disappeared. In many ways it is never overcome. It can only be lived with. Is thriving possible under these conditions?

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It has been argued previously that these men have not only had the resilience to stay in

the bush, but have also used the difficulties of living in the bush to enhance their own

lives. It was further argued that this resilience allowed these men to use agency as a

means to address what they saw as the advantages of rural life and take steps to build on these and so further improve their lives. This agency facilitated their resistance to the inherent countrymindedness of rural communities; an all-pervasive way of thinking and behaving that would diminish the lives of gay men living in those communities. These findings might be read such that this trinity of traits possessed by these men – resilience, agency and resistance – has allowed them to position themselves in relation to the community to their own best advantage. From that position of advantage, they continued to deploy their strengths to initiate further growth (Massey, Cameron,

Ouellette and Fine, 1998: 9).

Thriving must be seen in the context of their individual lives. In much of the research literature, thriving is construed as an improvement in family relationships, as a better involvement with one’s community, often within a church context. But from the evidence of these men, their lives were not like that and yet they appeared to thrive. It was in loosening the dependence on family relationships and strengthening the ties with friends that these men bettered their lives. It was in distancing themselves from the local community and in creating a sense of isolation in their lives that they diminished what they saw as the effects of the community’s negative attitudes towards gay men. These men actively resisted and effectively retaliated against personal attacks when they occurred. These rural men disclosed their homosexuality to foster support. They withheld disclosure in order to silence and distance themselves from those they wanted less contact with. These men developed a robustness and toughness of spirit that gave

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them an autonomy over their lives. These are not the usual descriptions of everyday

lives of gay men in the bush. Nor are such actions the usual descriptors of what it is to

thrive.

As much as this experience of everyday life points towards these men thriving, there is

one factor missing. In the conceptual framework devised for this study, considerable

emphasis was placed on a consideration of the individual and the individual who was an

outsider and did not belong. Mijuskovic suggested that to ‘belong’ is to be with significant and desirable others (Mijuskovic, 1986: 946–7). It was Simmel who noted

that an outsider was essentially someone who did not belong, and presumably Simmel

would not have disputed Mijuskovic’s idea that belonging related to other people.

However, this thesis has shown that not only did these men not have a sense of belonging to the community in which they lived, but they actively disengaged from it.

As has been said, these men deliberately loosened family ties. They deliberately

shunned a wider network of friendship and relied instead on a small, close circle of

friends as their main avenue of support. Their primary sense of belonging was not with

family or community.

But they did belong and they found that sense of belonging in place. It was ultimately

because of place that these men stayed. It was their affinity to the bush itself that gave

them a connectedness. It was their ability to resist community and engage with place

that caused them to stay. These men repeated time and again in their narratives that it was their overriding fondness for and sense of belonging to place that kept them in the bush. Jim, Rudy, Izak, Gerry, Cleever, Sam, Petro, Rodney, Rex, Chris, Jason, Perry,

Noel Bobby and others all said in their various ways that it was that sense of belonging

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to the bush that prevented them from leaving. With the elements of resilience, agency

and resistance in play, it was this factor that allowed them to stay and in staying they

thrive. Place is the key to staying and thriving.

The notion of place will be considered in greater detail in the next chapter, but it is

sufficient here to flag the key role place played, not only in their narratives, but in the

theorising that gives understanding and explanation to that data. This leads me to

consider a reconceptualisation of what it is to thrive. In reading the results of this

research, to thrive rarely seems to be a linear process and not every step involves a

progression towards a better life. The process of attaining a more fulfilled life takes

many twists and turns including some regressive steps for these men. Perhaps thriving

pertains to ‘endeavor’. The bush allowed and provided them with the space in which

they could discover and comprehend the opportunity of a good life for themselves. This

is to say that, while they knew that the bush was the only place in which they could

have the lifestyle they wanted, the bush provided them with the freedom in which they

could explore how to achieve it.

It is only in the bush that these men could attain what others have called a ‘sense of

possibility’, whereby they could not only imagine and dream of a life for themselves as

gay men, but they could actively fashion it (Massey, Cameron, Ouellette and Fine,

1998: 9). This ‘sense of possibility’ ahead allowed them to move from the future to the present, and at the same time to continue dreaming about living the only life they wanted. These men did not have a ‘sense of possibility’ away from the bush. While their agency and resistance gave them a sense of autonomy and control over their everyday experiences, it was the bush that injected an optimism into their lives and gave

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them the hope for the future, the reason to strive, a purpose for resisting and the

determination to stay. This section has argued that these men had the capacity to affect

positive change in their lives and to resist the pressures from the wider community that

would hamper their efforts to continue their lives in the bush. This strength allowed

them not only to stay but also to live the lifestyle they wanted in the physical setting that they liked so much. It allowed them to succeed in having what they saw as the only viable life for them – being gay in the bush. This is to thrive. It seems as if they stayed

because of a combination of their social skills, their decisive determination and their

sense of belonging to and in the bush. They thrive because they stayed.

Conclusion

The willingness, the desire and the ability of these gay men to ‘stay’ in rural

communities to fashion fulfilled lives for themselves is the major finding of this thesis.

The previous chapter discussed how the men ‘stayed’ in the bush regardless of the

difficulties they faced. In that construct, it has been suggested that ‘staying’ is an

outcome of the resilience of the men in this study. However, this chapter aimed to

understand how this willingness and the desire to stay might be further conceptualised.

‘Staying’ in the bush can also be understood though other approaches. This chapter has

postulated that these men use their own resilience as a springboard from which they can

take action to make positive and enhancing changes to the way they live. This thesis

configures this as agency – an individual’s ‘capacity for willed (voluntary) action’

(Halsey, 1994: 7). Out of this action to improve their lives and better what they see as the advantages of the bush, they also resist those attitudes and values that would hinder that agency.

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These men’s use of agency and resistance cast them in the role of stranger and outsider.

The men felt that a sense of superiority and ‘countrymindedness’ were ingrained in the collective psyche of the rural community and these attitudes relegated gay men to the status of ‘stranger’ and ‘other’. Living their lives as ‘strangers’ was one way in which they found that they were able to stay in the bush. They did it by being resilient, affecting change and coping with the ‘countrymindedness’ of the social setting in which they lived. Their persistent determination was made possible by their knowledge of their capacity for agency – an ability to affect affirmative change to their own lives and an effective resistance to community hegemony. This knowledge evolved out of an intimate knowledge of the social milieu in which they live.

In the case of the men in this study, their categorical resolve to stay, their skillful social positioning, their agency and effective manipulation of the social milieu, their recognition of their own autonomy and control over their lives and strategic resistance and opposition to the social regulation of life all contributed to these men’s capacity to stay and thrive. But it was in creating in their lives and everyday experience a sense of belonging to and in the bush that these men could see the possibility of leading gay, fulfilled lives and not having to leave. These men, by ‘staying’, have resisted that world order. Furthermore, by modifying Giroux’s notion of resistance theory, this thesis suggests that ‘staying’ and not leaving challenged the community’s self-given privileged position from which these gay men were excluded. By staying, these gay men articulated their right to a presence and future in the bush. By ‘staying’, they achieved what they saw as their entitlement to live their lives their way – as rural gay men. Staying itself then becomes an act of opposition and resistance.

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As set out in the conceptual framework of this thesis, ‘queer’ is also a theoretical

construction that operates in opposition to the conventional social and sexual paradigm.

The next chapter will explore whether these gay men’s staying impacted on the place in which that staying occurred. Staying and living their lives as gay men may be

conceptualised as a queer act, but it might be that the place in which that that living was

done was also effectively queered.

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Chapter Ten

Queering Place

And … I don’t see that you have to live in a ghetto to be gay. And you don’t have to go to the Oxford Hotel (in Sydney) to get a drink….. I mean, you can … in actual fact, if you’re into eye candy ….. looking, then you’re probably better off in a country town than you are in the city. The men here are so innocent. They don’t realise … I mean they walk around here with baggy shorts and worn out tee-shirts and all sorts of things. And it’s just them. In the city it’s all contrived … whereas here they don’t see that a gay man would find them attractive ….and …some of them are so confident in their sexuality that they couldn’t care less anyway. [Chris]

Introduction

The theorising and conceptualisation of staying discussed in the previous chapter touched on the strong affinity these gay men had with the bush. There, it was put forward, pending further exploration, that place was the key to why these men stayed in the bush. However, just as place had an impact on these men’s lives, the men themselves had an impact on the places in which they lived. This chapter will examine the strength of these men’s affinity with the bush and the nature and extent of their sense of belonging to it. It will theorise whether the agency and resistance they brought to bear so effectively on the communities in which they lived was similarly imposed on place to make the bush a better location for them to live. This chapter will explore whether the space and the isolation of the bush also gave them the latitude and the scope to live gay lives. It may well be that through a queering of place, albeit unconscious, these men were able to both be gay and stay in the bush.

Casey states that the more a person feels himself to be culturally and socially isolated, the more he will tend to find his surroundings desolate (Casey, 1993: 197). However, affinity with place cannot be considered without some passing reflection on the notions of exile and placelessness. Earlier in this thesis, mention was also made that many gay men left the rural

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places in which they grew up with sense of loss and longing for the places left behind. They

were social exiles. This research has indicated previously that these gay men who stayed bush were also outsiders and social exiles from their community and, in that sense, had little consciousness of belonging to the people and the social structures of where they lived.

Place is not only about location. Implicit in this idea is the notion that one has one’s place and that behaviour has to be appropriate to, or be proper to, place. This hearkens back to

Durkheim’s thesis that a society’s expectations of behaviour in a certain place or situation are mechanisms of social control (Durkheim, 1952). When people do not comply with the social

expectations, even if there is nothing inherently wrong with the non-compliant behaviour,

then they transgress and are out of place and deemed to have no place. They become Becker’s

outsiders (Becker, 1963). They are socially placeless. As has been emphasised throughout this

work, these gay men felt that they belonged to the bush, but not to the community in which

they live. They belonged more to place and less so to people. But the men in this study were

aware of their lack of place in the community and their displacement from it was not of great concern. They accepted their social placelessness and instead developed an affinity with the physical place in a far more tangible and accepting way. This sense of place takes on an importance for these gay men, the conceptualization of which has been all but unexplored in

Australia.

Belonging to the Bush

It is said that people take on the some of the characteristics of places in which they live. Rural people are said to be able to pick someone from the city by the way he speaks, the way he dresses, the way he gestures. They can pick that he is out of place. That has also been seen in this study. These men described in detail how they felt they were out of place when they went

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to the city. They described how they were out of place even when they tried to blend into the

rural community in which they lived.

Relph refers to the idea that place is something that can be experienced as ‘the very

foundation’ of how place should be conceptualised (Relph, 1976: 55). It was to the bush that

these men had such a strong affinity and sense of belonging. The bush was the very setting in

which they did not feel they were strangers. Simon’s statement that, ‘…it’s [the bush] part of

my make-up’ [10/40] was typical of the responses of all the men in this study. He was

referring to the fact that the bush was not only part of his life, but it was part of his being. The

bush played a part not only in these men’s happiness and their satisfaction in life, but it was

part of who they were. They became aware of and even vulnerable to place in that they

created an intimacy with place. These men’s sense of place was the key to understanding why

they ‘stayed’. They described the bush in terms of its beauty and ruggedness. The isolation of

the bush sheltered them from the community gaze as much as it nurtured their freedom to be gay. The natural isolation of the bush that these men relished gave them a sense of place and bound them to it. These gay men’s sense of their own rurality and belonging to the bush was integral to their desire to stay and it reflected their joie de vivre in rural living. It underpinned their desire to stay where they felt they belonged and where they knew they wanted to be.

These factors made it easier to live there as well as easier to be gay.

This sense of belonging to the bush was, for these men, intensified because many of them continued to live in the same place in which they were born and raised and with which they had so many connections. It was the place in which they lived that held their life memories and histories. Their place in the bush was where these men’s experience of life occurred and was therefore the site that gave worth and emotional significance to their lives. For these men,

334 just as the bush was place located, then too place was experience located. It follows that it was only there that their life had meaning. The way these men revealed their attachment to the bush aligns well with Relph’s concept of ‘existential insidedness’ by which a person relates to a place as though he feels he is inside it, belongs to it and it is part of him and he part of it (Relph, 1976: 55).

However, these men also revealed a variation on this theme. A number of men noted that they wanted to live in the bush, but that they did not particularly want to be in the specific location where they were at the time. Though they did not want to be in that place, they still wanted to be in a place in the bush. Rex speaks of wanting to relocate out of Nurrupabri. Petro wants to move on from Inaway. Neville would like a place in the country that better serves his medical needs. Rudy wants to be closer to galleries and theatres. But none of these men wanted to live in an urban or suburban place.

If, therefore, ‘existential insidedness’ is the most intense positive sense in which a person can experience place, then the question arises as to how that connection with place is experienced.

The temptation is to suggest that such deep identification with a place is fundamentally a mental experience – that it comes from the inside and cannot be fully explained. However, this was not how these men rationalised their attachment to place. They gave explanation in terms of praxis – the priority of action over thought. They explained it in terms of experiencing place primarily through the body rather than the mind. Sam was happiest and most intensely felt connected to the land when he was ploughing the soil to grow a good wheat crop or on horseback looking over a mob of grazing cattle. As he said,

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thought, “This is all right”. …It was a lovely completion to a lovely day …and at the end of the day I didn’t have anyone to talk to. I mean the dogs were sitting there [waiting] for me to give them a biscuit, [so] I talked to the two working dogs [15/21– 22].

Similarly, Ben was happiest in the bush when he was at a rodeo or, in his words, on his farm

up to his armpits in horseshit mucking out the stables. Cleever and Gerry were happiest in

their garden and Rudy was in his element as he drove though the miles and miles of brightly

coloured Canola. These men and others in this study experienced place through the

interaction of their bodies with the bush. It was in this physical experience of the physical

landscape that these men connected with and belonged to the bush. Place for these men was

much more than a geographical spot. It was also a phenomenon experienced. In other words,

their deepest experience of the bush was phenomenological … it was felt bodily.

One of the ways in which the natural setting of the bush was physically experienced was

through the eyes. The rugged beauty of the bush was an important reason for their wanting to

stay, just as was their sense of their own rurality and belonging to the bush. These factors

enhanced their affinity with the place. It made it easier to live there. It was one of the aspects

of life in the bush that made them want to stay. This is reflected in other studies of gay men living in rural areas (Spiro and Lane, 1992; Davila, 1999; Dahir, 2000; Pavin, 2000; Kopstein,

1007; Precker, 1999; Plaster, 2000; Leonard, 2000; Kirkey and Forsyth, 2001; Boulden, 1999;

Maddux, 1996; Riorden, 1996; Fellows, 1996). Oswald sums up these studies with the

observation that ‘… many gay men and lesbians genuinely love living in the country and

wouldn’t consider anywhere else’ (Oswald, 1992: 48).

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These men also referred to other aspects of this rural beauty. The bush was not only a place of

considerable beauty, it was also a place of seclusion, isolation and freedom … freedom from

the prying eyes of others, freedom that space can give and a freedom to be oneself (Fone,

2000: 281). The men in this study mentioned these aspects time and again in their testimonies.

For example, Cleever’s hours by himself down by the creek, Petro’s walks in the bush,

Neville’s garden, Bobby’s equestrian pursuits and even Rodney’s ‘wild’ sex in the scrub all

point to using the outdoors, the rural as a place in which to find that isolation and freedom. It was the physical experience of the bush that was its most intimate. For the gay men in this study, the bush was no fantasyland. It was not imaginary and it was not a mental connection by which they experienced place. It was real. It was where they lived and wanted to stay.

Another aspect of these men’s experience of the physicality of bush that combined the

intimacy of their connection with place with the intimacies of their experience in place was

through what might be termed the praxis of desire. This relates not so much to the getting of

sex, but where they ‘did it’. These men spoke easily of sex and the ease with which most of

them got it. But they spoke little of where they did it. Nevertheless, it is understandable that,

like rural gay men the world over, much of the having sex was done in the physical landscape.

These men explained that most of the sex they had was out of town. They made their contacts in pubs, supermarkets, cattle yards on sale days, beats and at social gatherings put on by the

various gay groups. They generally traveled out of town for sex which meant that because

most of the doing of it was in places away from home, much of it had to be done ‘under the

stars’. Jason spoke of meeting men at an out-of-the-way waterhole. Ben told of having sex in

the outdoors. There was sex in the bushes at bush dances held in isolated community halls.

There was sex at beats, often by river banks, in parks and by the roadside. Howard, in

speaking of gay men having sex in rural Mississippi, says,

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Queer boys did it in abandoned cabins, beside streams, among trees, in haylofts, in the fields, in ponds, in cars and pickup trucks … (Howard, 1999: 123).

These ‘queer boys’ in rural Australia also did it and in much the same places as the men in

Mississippi did – bodily connecting with each other and with the physicality of place …

naturally.

However, they did not sexualise place. They did not see these activities as sex in the landscape. Their narratives reflect something deeper in that they attempted to authenticate their identity in the very place in which they felt they belonged. It was about being able to reveal oneself in the place in which they felt accepted and were not strangers. As in

Brokeback Mountain, it was the landscape, its isolation, its stark beauty and rugged physicality that both allowed and facilitated these gay men to express themselves in the totality of their being. Furthermore, it was only in the bush that these men felt they had the freedom to be who they knew they were. It was in their finding intimacy with the bush that they were also able to find intimacy and friendship with others who were important to them.

Their belonging to the bush enabled them to establish an intimacy with lovers, friends and family. As was said earlier, these men had a relationship with the bush that in turn connected them to those people who mattered to them. Their lives had a roundedness to them and their lives were not predicated only on their homosexuality. Rural life was, for them, as much about the praxis of friendship and love and belonging that gave them a depth and multi- dimensionality rather than a narrowness of sexuality alone. It was this integration of relationships with place and significant others that gave their lives a wholeness and holistic integrity. It was previously suggested that the bush for these men is place experienced. It was the site of their everyday experiences and had meaning for them. In this light, it might be further suggested that, for these men, the bush was life experienced.

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It is not intended here to indulge in what Shuttleton calls the ‘crass canonisation’ of the rural

(Shuttleton, 2000:128). Certainly, the pastoral idyll has been used just as extensively to

exclude and denigrate homoerotic desire16. Similarly, the reality of the Australian rural

landscape was not always an idyll of homoerotic desire for these men, just as it was not

always a paradise. Despite these men’s visualisation and physical experience of the bush as a

place of beauty and a place in which they felt they belonged, they did not ‘canonise’ it. They

described the bush with its unpleasant aspects, including the isolation and distance. But they

realised that it was the only place in which they could live.

However, these men’s connection with, and sense of belonging to, place – their ‘existential

insidedness’ – was not only experienced bodily. It was also attained in the mind. Gay theorist,

Bryne Fone believes that the homosexual imagination employs the rural landscape as a place

‘… where it is safe to be gay’ (Fone, 1983: 13). Another theorist argues that the desire for

space and place is closely linked to ‘The universal desire to be free, but safe …’ (Kellog,

1983: 4). In this study, the bush provided a sense of both the freedom and safety to be gay.

This freedom and safety was accentuated by the agency of the men. As has been discussed,

they used the natural isolation of the bush to give their own lives an element of social isolation that enhanced what they saw as a freedom ‘to be’ gay. But it was also a freedom that could, in part, be had by a sense of belonging to the physical landscape.

The bush was a place to which these men retreated and found refuge. It was a place in which they could be themselves and be with themselves and with others like themselves. It was a

16 The pastoral idyll also has dangerous historical precedents. Shuttleton cites one example of where this tradition was given a more sinister twist. The early German homosexual emancipation journal Der Eigene (1896–1931) was often illustrated with photographs of athletic youths posing naked in rural-like settings. But the text that accompanied such idyllic photographs was ‘… distinctly anti-feminist and often supportive of a nationalist, masculinist supremacism approaching Nazism’ (Shuttleton, 2000: 129).

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sense of belonging to place that made a belonging to significant others possible, others like

themselves as well as accepting and supportive friends and family. Some of this was

experienced also through a phenomenology of place, but in this sense, a mental experience more so than a physical encounter. This mental experience of place was part reality and part dream for many of them. Refuge from Barappa was what Cleever and Gerry appreciated most about their relationship and their lives together. They feared they would have to move to find more gainful employment and that their isolated life together in the bush would consequently be lost. Bobby loved his secluded life on the farm with his lover and their horses. It was the life of splendid isolation together that appealed to Jack and to Nick in their respective lives.

Other men dreamed of finding a partner with whom they could spend their lives in a place in the bush where they could be together and could be by themselves. It was Sam’s dream to find a man who would live with him on his cattle farm. It was living together in a remote village that Petro missed most after he broke up with his boyfriend.

So the men in this study created and dreamt of creating their own retreat from the heterosexual world. They made lives for themselves in isolated towns and rural environments.

They lived on properties away from the community in places and spaces they considered beautiful, peaceful and where they could be who they were. They went for drives in the bush to get away from the claustrophobia of their small-town surroundings. But more than anything, they dreamt of opportunities of living with their own ‘white knight’ in their own little Garden of Eden. Their dreams and aspirations were firmly linked to the bush. They were linked to place and not to community and social institutions.

Through this notion of the bush being a place of ‘existential insidedness’, the importance of place to these gay men can be explored and theorised and it is also possible to come to what

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Creed and Ching call a ‘theoretical middle ground’ in which a metaphorical place can be

‘grounded’ in a real physical place (Creed and Ching, 1997: 7). In the light of an emerging literature, this thesis questions the postmodern idea of social theory being aligned, and only

able to be aligned, with the city. As was stated at the beginning of this thesis, there are

reservations as to whether the cities are the only places where it is possible to be gay (Howard,

1999; Hodge, 1995; Boulden. 1999; Yates-Rist, 1992; Silverstein, 1981; Riorden, 1996;

Smith and Manskoske, 1997). D’Emilio and Weeks have suggested that by resisting

hegemonic social structures, weakening the influence of family and utilising the anonymity of

the city was the way to create a culture and a viable lifestyle for gay men (Weeks, 1977;

d’Emilio, 1992). Bech made similar comments and suggested that ‘being gay’ required that

one live in the city as that was the ‘proper’ place of the homosexual (Bech, 1997). However,

the narratives of these gay men have indicated that they, too, resisted the hegemonic

structures of rural communities. They, too, loosened their ties with family. They, too, utilised

the seclusion and isolation of the bush to create a satisfying gay life for themselves and to

form a strong and resilient identity for themselves. It could be that Bech is partly right when

he argues that being homosexual is a way of being. This study, in the light of these men’s

accounts, questions whether the city is the only ‘proper’ place to be gay and asks whether

being gay can be achieved in places other than the city. These men have shown that they can

accomplish being gay with as much aplomb and success in the bush as urban ‘boys’ do it in

the cities.

This study demonstrates that these gay men chose and did live fulfilled lives in rural

communities. Similarly, they saw their lives as healthy and happy. They had a wholesome

and integrated sense of self. They accepted their homosexuality and disclosed it to those who

mattered to them. These men were realistic enough to recognise that life in the bush was

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subject to some disadvantage. Nevertheless, despite such disadvantages, for these men, living

in the bush held out the only promise and possibility of living as they wanted to. This is a far cry from the usual depiction of the lot of most rural gay men. Bell and Valentine’s conclusion to their study of ‘queer country’, for example, is that ‘for many with same-sex feelings … the country-side offers nothing but isolation and loathing …’ (Bell and Valentine, 1995: 120).

This outcome was not replicated in this study. These men did see the bush as a place in which they could live a gay life. They did see the bush as a place in which they could be with and find happiness and contentment with another man away from the intrusive gaze of the community in which they lived. For these men, the bush was a beautiful place in which they wanted to stay.

It is in this way that these men thrived. They had a strong sense of belonging both to place and to people who mattered to them. It was the bush that gave these men the chance to explore themselves and their relationships with others. It gave them an optimism and a ‘sense of possibility’ in going after a good life for themselves. The bush had the space and provided the freedom in which these men could actively fashion the life that they wanted, rural and gay.

Their ability to resist the hegemonic forces put them in control of their everyday experiences and showed them that they could live authentic gay lives in the bush. Being gay in the bush was their experience of life. For them, exercising practices of freedom and comprehensively reinforcing and invigorating their sexuality in unique ways was to thrive.

While they did not consciously conceptualise the bush in terms of a gay sensibility, these men’s agency, their resistance and their staying gave it one. In an Australian context, little has been said or written linking the mythology of the bush to gay culture and homoerotic desire.

But it takes little imagination to see evidence of this linkage. This linkage of the mythology of

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the bush with gay culture and homoerotic desire was discussed at length in the Introduction to

this thesis. There, it was shown that there are elements of a gay iconography in much of the literature of this country, in the depiction of the stockman and the boundary rider and in the

social construction of mateship. It is present in the representation of the bush as being a place of isolation and of open space and the embodiment of those men who occupy that place as

‘strapping’, virile and manly. In this study of gay men living in rural areas, these cultural and

literary metaphors are reflected in their testimonies. This is not to say that these twenty-one men were aware of this tradition and they certainly did not consciously invoke it to explain their lives or their image of the Australian bush. But the way they expressed their desire and will to live in the bush can be explained and understood in terms of place and a queering of the bush.

‘Queering’ the Bush

Myers wrote, in reference to the Aboriginal people of the western desert of Australia, that ‘To

hear mention of a place is, for the Pintupi, to identify the persons associated with it and to

hear of people is to think of their places’ (Myers in Casey, 1993: 304). Far away from the

western desert regions of Australia and in another culture altogether, this also rings true. For

example, when one speaks of Oxford Street in Sydney, one associates that place with the

identity of many of the people who live in and socialise in that place. In this case, Oxford

Street is the centre of gay social life in Sydney. People who live in particular places take on

some of the characteristics of that place. Where we live is partly a reflection of who we are.

The twenty-one gay men in this study had, with one exception, been born and raised in the bush. Their determination to continue to live in the bush is a reflection of their affinity and

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their existential insidedness with that place. But as gay men, they gave the notion of ‘queer’ a

bush complexion. Chris explained the situation,

I suppose I always did [belong in the bush]. … even when I lived [a while] in Sydney. Certainly a lot of my friends … my friends in Sydney saw me as a country person rather than a city person… I think some of them don’t understand why … [given] you’re a gay man … . (6/54–55).

When Chris lived in Sydney for a period after leaving school, friends told him he stood out as

being different to many other men in the city. He was seen as a ‘country person’ by those

around him. While not being able to pinpoint the difference, that difference was noticeable

and it was put down to being of the bush. Chris’ difference was couched in rural terms rather

than gay terms. He brought a bush sensibility and a bush difference to his gay identity.

So did the other men in this study. They resisted and contested the gay stereotype. Just as they

confounded their rural communities with their gayness, they confounded the gay community

with their ruralness. They disconnected and isolated themselves from the urban gay

community and its lifestyle. They rejected life in the city as a viable possibility for themselves.

But in maintaining their gay identity, they infused it with a rurality that differentiated them

from their urban counterparts. At the beginning of this thesis, it was said that there was an

incorporation of the bush and its mythology into gay culture and numerous examples were

cited. It was also suggested that the homoeroticisation of the bush landscape has permitted

and chronicled the evidence of homosexuality within the history, culture and life of the bush.

This thesis has shown in detail that these rural gay men do it not in art and culture but every

day in their everyday experience of life as gay men living in the bush. These rural gay men

have sanctioned a bushing of the queer landscape.

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It is also more than a mere possibility that who we are has an impact on the place in which we

live. This study has demonstrated that gay men living in rural areas do have an impact on

where they live. Simply by refusing to be invisible and silent, or leave, these men resisted the

forces of countrymindedness that would make them different and ‘other’ and should be from

some place else. Or as Rex put it, if the community had had its way, they would actually be

from some place else. In staying, they query the moral superiority of the heteronormative way

of living. Whether their sexuality was common knowledge or otherwise, by staying in their

locality to form associations, have friends, live in relationships and selectively disclose their

sexuality, they resist the accepted way of life. By staying, they contest the hegemony of the

countrymindedness of the community.

‘Queering’ pertains to the sexual. It refers to either bringing a same-sex connotation to an

argument or the citing of the subject of discussion within a homosexual framework or context.

More particularly, it brings the matter of sexuality into the everyday activities of people.

Queering expressly exposes the presence and possibility of homoerotic desire in everyday life.

Increasingly, queer theory has been used to provide a perspective that covered all those

oppressed by the hegemony of heterosexual norms (Halperin, 1995). However, ‘queer’ is in

danger of being defined out of existence if it is merely about non-normative, non-hegemonic

representations of varying sexualities. ‘Queer’ runs the risk of being meaningless if it relates

to difference and not specifically about same-sex. While Gore Vidal may deny that there is

such a thing as a ‘gay sensibility’, the experience of growing up with an increasing

recognition that one is different leaves a lasting mark. Izak, Jim, Jack, Rudy and all the other

men in this study grew up knowing they were different. And their aloneness in the bush and

their aloneness in their head as they grappled with that difference gave them a perspective that was different to their heterosexual counterparts. It was a difference defined and

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predicated on their homosexuality. As was said early in this thesis, these gay men, like rural

gay men the world over, lacked the gay context by which to unravel the mystery of their

sexuality. They had to deal with that sense of otherness on their own until they started to live

out their desire. The dilemmas of dealing with their homosexuality in the bush coloured their

outlook on life. Gore Vidal might remark that the only thing that gay people have in common

with each other is that they fancy people of the same sex as themselves (Vidal, 1983: 161).

For me, and for the men in this study, that in itself is enough … same-sex desire changes

everything.

Therefore, this thesis has not adopted the position of theorists, such as Bersani (1990), who

argue that queer theory is universal and applicable to all who sit outside the mainstream. It

has not adopted the view of Berlant and Warner who postulate that ‘nor is the name ‘queer’

an umbrella [only] for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and the transgendered’ (Berlant and Warner,

1995: 344). ‘Queer’, at least within the context of this thesis, is about the identity of gay men

and it is about their resistance to an exclusion from, or suppression by, the mainstream.

‘Queer’ is about the particular and, unlike others who would universalise, in this work a

boundary has been drawn around its constituency (Berlant and Warner 1995: 345). However,

this thesis has also found common ground with Berlant and Warner in that ‘queer’ is also

‘about personal survival’ (Berlant and Warner, 1995: 348), or about ‘self-emancipation’ in

terms of resistance theory. According to Berlant and Warner, an application of ‘queer’

… puts tremendous pressure on emerging work, pressure that makes the work simultaneously conventional and unprecedented in the humanities and social sciences – traditional in so far as pedagogy has long involved the formation of identities and subjectivities, radical in the aspiration to live another way now, here (Berlant and Warner, 1995: 348).

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This thesis should be seen to be part of such ‘emerging work’ in that it has explored the personal survival and self-emancipation of a group of gay men living in rural communities attempting ‘… to overcome the resistance of the world in order to be here’ (Warner, 2000: 2).

For these men, staying was about personal survival, not only because the city was not an option for them, but because they could not envisage a fulfilled and contented life anywhere other than in the bush. They had to stay in the bush to survive. They also had to survive in the bush to stay.

However, their staying was about personal survival in another sense. In knowing the bush as they did and having the agency to exercise a remarkable and relatively unexpected level of control over their lives, they were able to ensure their personal survival in a way they were unsure they could do anywhere else. These men were able to use the physical characteristics of place to complement and enhance their own lives. They were able to bring to their place part of themselves. Myers said in relation to the Aboriginal people from the Pintupi tribe of western desert of Australia, ‘places are imbued with the identity of those who live there’

(Myers in Casey, 1993: 304). Similarly, the places that these gay men inhabit were also influenced by and imbued with their identity. But it was not only that place was permeated somewhat osmotically with the awareness that these men brought to place, but precisely because they stayed and did not go away, they imposed something of themselves on place.

The bush was queered because they were present and it soaked up and was imbued with that queer presence. But the bush was queered also because they stayed and took control over their own lives and over the place in which they lived.

These men were aware of the control they had over the living of their own lives. They knew that in conforming to the dominant forces of society, in passing and pleasing, they only

347 played into the countrymindedness of the community. And so they resisted such forces, and took on the Foucauldian notion of using their homosexuality as a technology of self- transformation (Halperin, 1995: 77). They were able to

… use one’s relationship to oneself as a potential resource with which to construct new modalities of subjective agency and new styles of personal life that may enable one to resist or even to escape one’s social and psychological determinations (Halperin, 1995: 76).

In queering their identity, these men were able to gain freedom, happiness and pleasure and a gay lifestyle that they yearned and worked for. Bobby’s statement referred to earlier in this work is worth repeating. In answer to a question from me on this point, Bobby was very clear,

These men acknowledged that they were gay and set out to live their lives their own gay way.

In this sense, these gay men have themselves articulated different voices from the bush. Their queer identity queered their lifestyle and the place in which they lived it.

This thesis has made the point that the act of ‘staying’ in the bush, along with the agency necessary to make or allow that to happen, is a resistance to the forces of hegemony and heteronormativity of the communities in which these rural gay men live. ‘Staying’ is a resistance to the forces and attitudes that would assume that gay men left rural places because they did not belong there. ‘Staying’ is a resistance to ideas that suggest that gay is solely an urban concept. Therefore, ‘staying’ in the context of this research may be conceptualised as a queer idea in that it not only contests ‘… the ways in which sexuality, sexual identity, sexual desire and ways of being sexual are socially constructed’ (Nagel, 2000, 3) but also in the way in which it resists and queries the ‘normal’. In this thesis, these gay men have had to take a stand and resist a ‘countrymindedness’ so as to make their place ‘in order to live another way

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now’ (Warner, 2000, 2). In imposing their identity on the place in which they live, they have

‘queered’ the rural. But queering is itself both agency and resistance. It is about opposition to

the normative and the hegemonic at a number of sites – rural, heterosexual and staying.

‘Staying’ is about challenging the portrayal of gay men as subordinate, invisible and placeless

particularly in rural places where such a depiction has previously been thought to be

incisively accurate. Instead, this thesis has conceptualised ‘staying’ as about the

representation and description of these rural gay men in terms of their having acute social

skills and ‘street-wisdom’, a wholesome sense of place and belonging, an integrated sense of

self and an understanding that the only viable place in which they can live a fulfilled gay life

is in the bush. Therefore, ‘staying’ is not only reactive and counteractive in the sense of

resisting forces and attitudes that would silence these men. ‘Staying’ is active. It is anticipatory. ‘Staying’ is, if not on the attack, certainly, it is on the offensive. Just as these men created lives for themselves, they also created places in which to live them. Just as they queered their lives and infused their everyday experiences with a gayness of their own making, so they did it with place. To ‘rethink’ the everyday lives of gay men living in rural areas is to queer them (Nagel, 2000: 3). To question and resist the mainstream perspective and instead re-focus on the homonormative in these men’s everyday lives is to queer them.

This ‘re-thinking’ also applies to the notion of staying. In this thesis, ‘staying’ is conceptualised not only in opposition to the accepted construction of rural gay men, but it is an act in opposition to the community’s expectation. These gay men stayed in the bush when the literature suggested they leave. These gay men stayed in the bush when the community expected and preferred them to leave. Staying bush is, paradoxically, in opposition to a strong queer identity because conventional queer theory posits the notion that a gay sensibility is

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essentially an urban phenomenon. Staying in the sense that it indicates a happiness and

contentedness with rural life is in opposition to the more traditional view that gay men who

remain in the bush are essentially unhappy and despondent … and want to leave. If Warner is

right and ‘queer theory’ is about a ‘…resistance to regimes of the normal’ (Warner in Crain,

2000: 3), then ‘staying’, in the way it is used in this thesis, contests and resists interpretations

normally given it. ‘Staying’, in this thesis, is a queer idea.

In order to stay in the bush, gay men take action to enhance what they see as the advantages of the bush. They improve their lives and live the lifestyle that they desire. Furthermore, these gay men were not ‘blow-in’s’ from the city. They were local men who had stayed. If Warner is right and queer theory is, to keep quoting him, about a ‘… resistance to regimes of the normal’ (Warner in Crain, 2000: 3), then these gay men in their determination to live rural

and stay in the bush must be seen as part of a regime of resistance. They too, like their city

cousins, implicitly acknowledge that being homosexual is a way of being. But rather than

accept that being gay necessitates going to the city, these men resist such queer [sic] ideas

with as much skill as they resist the countrymindedness of the rural communities. By staying,

these men living in rural areas are also being gay and can be seen to have queered the bush.

In experiencing the bush in these ways, they gave it a new meaning. They gave the bush,

perhaps unconsciously so, a gay complexion. To the extent that these men have brought a

homosexual imagination and practice to the bush, they have queered it. This thesis has

demonstrated that these men chose to and were able to incorporate the homosexual aspects of

their lives into their experience of everyday life in the bush. That they live in same-sex

relationships, form same-sex associations and organisations, resist and rebuke those who

abuse them, disclose their homosexuality, have sex with men in all sorts of places, dream of a

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boyfriend to share their life in the bush, and that they want to and do stay in the bush and live there as gay men, they have queered the bush. Part of this queering has been these men’s

claim to a positive and affirmative gay identity combined with a rural lifestyle in the bush.

Part of this queering has been to deconstruct the notion that life away from the metropolis

excludes a person from a gay life and identity. In being gay in the bush, it might also be argued that they have contested and resisted the ideas of Bech, Altman, d’Emilio, Weeks,

Connell and others about the urban-centricity of gay and instead demonstrated other lived experiences of being gay. Perhaps these rural gay men have contested the stereotypically urban-centric notions of the homonormative. Perhaps they have even queered ‘queer’.

To include the sexual, and especially the homosexual, as a proper dimension of society and

discourse around it is to make such discourse decidedly unfamiliar and contested. In

accepting that queer is about putting the homosexual back into everyday life, where of course

it has always been except that it has not been talked about, this thesis has ‘queered’ its

research and discourse. Therefore, if ‘queer’ means the airing of gay voices that have been

largely silent and silenced and attempting to assist in the filling of what Crain calls the still

‘large gaps in our understanding of lesbian and gay lives as lived in history and represented in

culture’ (Crain, 1998, 3), then this thesis, itself, is ‘queer’.

Conclusion

Bebout makes the point that much of what has been written about queer theory and its

application to human existence reads as little more than cerebral navel gazing (Bebout, 2000).

He argues that the language of being gay has been monopolised by the academy and made incomprehensible to those it considers as the uninitiated and the unenlightened rabble. This work attempts to unlock the language, actuality and meanings of being gay in rural areas. It

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has used the stories of the everyday experiences of twenty-one gay men living in the

Australian bush to explore and understand what being a gay man in the bush was to them. In

giving voice to rural gay men themselves, this study brings a rich description to their

everyday experiences and an authenticity and integrity to their lives.

This thesis has contested the urban-centric construction of what constitutes being gay

which implies that one simply cannot be gay without the accoutrements of the city – the

bars and the saunas, the theatres and the galleries, the cafes, the culture and the ever-

ready availability of sex. It has also contested the idea that, for those men who do not

avail themselves of such trappings, their lives are beset by discrimination and

recrimination, loneliness and sadness and an emptiness born of a social, emotional and

sexual deprivation. This thesis has attempted to reconceptualise what it is to stay in the

bush as gay men and theorises that their staying, while achieved through resilience,

agency and resistance, must be seen as evidence of their ability to thrive in that place.

This thesis links theories of place and queer theory to suggest that by staying, these men

queer the bush and that, in fact, the concept of staying, in this instance, is itself queered

and queer.

The idea that the lives of gay men living in the bush are dominated by repression and

emotional desolation are not the stories these men told. Instead, they revealed themselves to

be confident about the way in which they lived their lives and optimistic about their future in

the bush. They fashioned gay lives and brought a gay sensibility to the places in which they

lived. But they also brought a bush sensibility to their conception and experience of what it was being and to be gay. This thesis has demonstrated that these men have queered the bush,

but they would have insisted that they bushed queer.

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Chapter Eleven

Conclusion

I think Adam thought it would be a lot harder than it has been to live as a gay man in the bush. I think the country has got to put up with Adam whether they like it or not. He's a country boy. He loves his horses. He loves the land [and] he loves the sky. And I could never see him going anywhere else. (Neil McMahon, Australian Story, ABC TV, 2006b)

Jack: Tell you what, we could’a had a good life together, a fuck’n real good life. Had us a place of our own. You wouldn’t do it, Ennis, so what we got now is Brokeback Mountain. Everything built on that. It’s all we got, boy. Fuck’n alls I hope you know that if you don’t know the rest. Count the damn few times we’ve been together in twenty years. Measure the short lease you keep me on … You got no fuck’n idea how bad it gets. I’m not you. I can’t make it on a couple of high-altitude fucks once or twice a year. (pause) You’re too much for me, Ennis, you son of a whoreson bitch. (pause) I wish I knew how to quit you. (Brokeback Mountain Script, 1983: 82–83)

Introduction

This thesis has examined the lives of a group of gay men living in rural localities in Australia.

It sought to understand through theory, literature and empirical study why gay men would want to live in the bush when so many of their compatriots chose to leave families, friends and their rural heritage behind to go to the cities as soon as they were able to do so. This thesis wanted to understand what gay men were doing in these places and why would they have wanted to be there when much of the literature and anecdotal evidence indicated that rural communities made the lives of gay men so difficult. The question of why gay men would want live in the bush needed to be explored and understood. However, there are also other questions that this thesis has not addressed but are just as in need to be explored and understood.

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Unanswered Questions and Further Research

This thesis has attempted to air gay voices that have been largely silent and silenced. In doing

so, it has tried to fill what Crain calls the still ‘large gaps in our understanding of lesbian and

gay lives as lived in history and represented in culture’ (Crain, 1998, 3). However, this is not

to suggest that all the gaps have been filled. The lack of a comprehensive literature

concerning gay men living in rural areas, a factor commented on in the few major studies of

the topic, suggests many unfilled and new lines of inquiry. While this thesis is a contribution

to the subject, it opens up more questions than can be answered here.

Several men in this study had originally spent time in the city, only to realise their desire and,

indeed, their need to live in the small towns and the bush that surrounds them. Rather than

blurring their identity, their return to their roots clarified the fundamental rurality of it. These

men returned to the bush for various reasons. But the reason that overrode all the others for

them was a dissatisfaction with city life. There has been little research on why gay men would

want to leave the city. After all, it is the city, allegedly, where gay lives can be most fully

lived; where careers, education, health care, culture and sex are most available. Evidence is

that increasing numbers of gay men do leave the cities and make lives for themselves in the country (Gallon, 1993; Horin, 1994; Davila, 1999; Probst, 1998; Plaster, 2000), but there is little research on why this is the case. Similarly, there has been no research into the lives of those rural men who moved to the cities and choose not to return to the bush. There is some suggestion that while they may have been misfits in the bush, it is thought they were also misfits and placeless in the city. There have been few questions asked about their lives and the success of their adaptation to city life.

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Another area in which relatively little is known concerns how gay men living in rural areas

conceptualise their masculinity. Although this study barely touched on the matter, there is

much to be understood regarding how rural gay men’s notion of masculinity intersects with

that of the community and the wider society in which they live and interact. The question of

how gay men use concepts of masculinity in their own personal and social lives requires

further analysis. There is little research on whether there is a rural–urban divide embedded in

the concept of masculinity. For example, is the way a rural gay man thinks about masculinity

and enacts it in his life different from that of a gay man living in the city? Are there some

commonalities? Does geography play a greater role in the conceptualisation of masculinity

than has been given credence, or are gender and sexuality the determining factors in how men

see and represent their masculinity? Are gay men’s conceptions of masculinity all that

different from their straight counterparts?

‘Coming out’ is another area that needs additional research in the context of rural gay men.

While there is a plethora of studies and stories of coming out, they all but ignore young gay men living outside the confines of the cities and suburbs. ‘Coming out’ is a wonderful phrase and has a multitude of meanings. But embedded in all of them is that this unique act of disclosure is something akin to a ‘rite of passage’ whereby the gay man emerges from a cocoon of conjecture and indecision to an authentic self with others as witness. It is part of the process of identity formation. However, it is not a choreographed welcome into the community that other ‘rites of passage’ usually are. ‘Coming out’ is probably regarded as one of the most angst-ridden disclosures that a gay man will make in his lifetime. Again, this study only touched on this aspect of every gay man’s life, but the indications were that, for young rural men, the processes may be different and this needs further exploration than has been possible in this thesis. As was noted earlier, further work is required on whether

355

geography plays a greater role in the way gay men form their identities than has been given

credence, and one aspect of this is involves how rural gay men ‘come out’.

‘Coming out’ is sometimes the precursor to increasing suicidality, perhaps more so in young

rural gay men than in other cohorts. There remain gaps in the literature pertaining to suicide

among gay men living in rural areas. Suicide among gay men is an understudied subject in

this country. It is a subject that health and mental health authorities, especially at a national

level, appear to have decided does not warrant increased scrutiny. One only has to look at the

small number of programs under the 1997 National Youth Suicide Prevention Strategy that

directly addressed gay men to realise that authorities have decided that they do not want to

know.

Another area in need of further study, and underpinning the previous two unanswered

questions, is more theoretical and that is to explore the idea of whether gay is an essentially

urban phenomenon. Such work might well build on the work of Levine who examined the

masculinisation of gay men in the USA. In his work entitled Gay Macho: The Life and Death

of the Homosexual Clone, Levine noted that while

The men deeply desired lovers … [and] were tired of being alone and wanted more permanent relationships, … [they] lacked the skills for being in a relationship (Levine, 1998: 109).

This study has shown that gay rural men in Australia also deeply desired lovers, and, in fact, many of these men were in a committed relationship. This ability to establish and maintain a relationship appears to go against the accepted thinking that gay men living in rural areas are incapable of establishing and maintaining committed and satisfying relationships because of

the distance between communities and the isolation and smallness of many rural communities.

This aspect of gay life is thought to be only possible in urban places, but Levine’s research

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into masculine gay men in the cities suggests otherwise. Therefore, there needs to be a rethink

on whether gay life is limited to the cities and whether the life that gay men have in rural areas is ‘gay’.

This thesis has raised the issue of place and suggested that it is the bush itself that plays a pre-

eminent role in why these gay men stay in the bush and is also constituent of the success of

their staying. In fact, it is the bush to which these men sense that they belong and it is the

bush and their belonging to it that allows these men to thrive. However, there has been little

research into the phenomenology of place and how place is experienced in the everyday lives

of people. This is even more so in the case of rural places and rural people. In his seminal

work that has largely set the research agenda on place, Relph notes that ‘the importance of

place, both functionally and existentially, has not been reflected in examinations of either the

concept of place or of the nature of the experience of place’ (Relph, 1976: 1). While there has

been some work on the role of place in the creation of identity, it has been in the context of an

urban identity (Forest, 1995). There is virtually no work on the role of rural places in the

creation of identity, and little that focuses on gay men. John Howard’s Men Like That: A

Southern Queer History (1999) took up this challenge to look at the backwoods of

Mississippi and saw different, rather than backward, notions of gay identity, everyday gay life, gay sensibilities and homoerotic desire. In Australia, there is a need for more work like that.

Final Thoughts

Previous studies have depicted the lives of gay men living in rural areas in bleak and

oppressive terms. They record that gay men were subject to community ostracism and

rejection and that their lives were marred by such high levels of abuse that many left either by

357 going to the cities ‘to find themselves’ or by taking their own lives. The gay rural men in this study were not the suicidal, lonely, psychotic and violence-prone individuals that much of the current literature and the accepted wisdom portrays them as. Nor were they the laconic, unsophisticated country hicks that an urban-centric portrayal envisaged. They were shrewd and adept at manoeuvering their way within the social milieu in which they made their home.

These gay men knew how to conduct themselves in the bush. But they also knew how to be gay in the bush, detect gay others and lead gay lives of their own making.

This thesis has attempted to reveal the homonormative life of these gay men living in rural communities. It found that their stories are about disclosing affirmative and positive identities as much as describing difference and difficulty. These gay men could and did conceive and construct lives for themselves in the bush. They formed associations, friendships, lived in relationships, disclosed their sexuality to family and friends and, indeed, expressed and practiced their sexual desire for other men. As Adam Sutton said in a very recent story about himself of ABC TV,

There is a stereotype cowboy sort of person. That rough and rugged ready-to-go sort of type. And there's your stereotype gay person. And I know that I've now been able to combine the two and break both moulds (Mc Mahon, 2006b).

The gay men in this study lived gay lives and, because they did so, they queered the places in which those lives were lived. They queered the bush.

This new perspective meant that it was necessary to re-question those very conditions of isolation and loneliness and homophobia that earlier studies have indicated drove gay men from the bush. For example, the gay men in this study emphasised that isolation was not the withering factor that it had been depicted, but, in fact, was a factor that they used and even created to enhance their lives. They admitted that loneliness and homophobia imposed itself

358 upon their lives, but these impositions were neither constant nor so intractable as to be unable to be dealt with. These men also knew they had the skills to do just that.

These gay men had a strong affinity with the bush as a place in which these men could fashion and live their homosexual lives. It provided the isolation and solitude into which they could retreat. It gave them the freedom to be themselves. The bush was a place in which relationships and friendships between gay men could occur and this played a vital role in the making of a satisfying life. But more than all of this, the bush was a place to which these men had a sense of belonging. While they acknowledged that they could not belong in the community, they knew they had a place in the bush. These gay men had a sense of prospect and the art of the possible about their lives. They had an optimism that they could have the life and the lifestyle they wanted. Unlike Ennis in Brokeback Mountain, these men realised that a contented and largely happy life for them as gay men was possible. The bush was indeed the place in which these men could find themselves, be themselves and also find others like themselves. The bush was their sanctuary but they called it their home.

This thesis, in exploring the presence of these gay men living in rural communities discovered and uncovered lives thought to be previously hidden or essentially nonexistent. In staying and thriving, these gay men exposed the presence and possibility of homoerotic desire in everyday rural life. In doing so, they also resisted the dominance and heteronormativity of other everyday lives and disrupted the subordination of their everyday gay lives. These men queered their own lives and they queered the place in which they lived them. They queered the bush. Simultaneously, if ‘queer’ means the exploration of same-sex difference and the giving voice to those marginalised because of their homosexuality and thereby comprehend the homonormative in their everyday life and social connections, then this thesis itself is

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‘queer’. To again quote Nagel, if ‘queering’ is to lift the sk[h]irts (sic)17 and pull down the

pants of social life to reveal the workings in everyday of homosexuality’ (Nagel, 2000, p3), then this thesis, too, has ‘queered’ the bush.

This thesis has also shown that these men brought something of their bush selves and the bush itself to the concepts and praxis of gay and queer. Being a gay man in the bush was not about compromise, but simply about living their lives their way. As Sam, Bobby, Chris, Jack and the others would suggest, in a not so metaphorical sense, they brought the smell of horseshit, the etiquette of the cattle yards and the liberty of distance and isolation that epitomised the bush to what it was to be gay. It was about simultaneously queering the bush and bushing queer. They did both … and stayed bush.

17 In bush-speak, a ‘shirt-lifter’ is a ‘poofter’. The masculinisation of Nagel’s phraseology is both to orient the language to gay men and to also to incorporate Australian bush slang.

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Appendices

Appendix 1) SUBJECT INFORMATION STATEMENT AND CONSENT FORM

(Title of the Project: “Out in the Bush” – An Ethnographic Study of the Lives of Gay Men Living in Rural Communities.)

Subject Selection and Purpose of the Study

You are invited to participate in a study of the lives of gay men living in rural communities. This invitation results from your response (indicating a desire to be part of the project) to advertisements I placed when seeking participants for this study.

I hope that this study will enable me to learn something about gay men as an identifiable group and how they construct their lives in the bush. I would like to understand how the culture and the mores of the wider bush community affects and influences the behaviour of gay men living there. I would like to know how these men construct their masculinity and their identity. This study will look at how these men behave as ‘gay men’ and as ‘bush men’, and how both of these identities interact within the social structures and strictures of their rural community.

Description of the Study and Risks

If you decide to participate, I would like to conduct two in-depth interviews with you. I would expect that each interview will be about one hour in duration. The interviews will be audio-recorded, though no-one else will be present at the interview. These interviews will be audio-copied and then transcribed into print form.

The interview will be conducted along ‘conversational’ lines. It will be very informal and friendly. It will take you back over your life and recount episodes from the past. It will talk about family attitudes and beliefs, and those of yourself. There will be talk of your time at school and especially of your early adult years. The interview will cover ‘coming out’ and the implications of that for your life in this community. We will talk about how you see your own identity and the factors that have influenced this. I would like to talk about things like loneliness, friendship, life in the bush and your ideas about the place where you live.

In this study of gay men in the bush, there will be some talk of sex, of thinking of sex, of having sex and of being gay. If this story (looking at how gay men live their lives in the bush) neglects how gay men live their sexual lives, then it is no story at all.

Page 1 of 3

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SUBJECT INFORMATION STATEMENT AND CONSENT FORM (continued)

(Title of the Project: “Out in the Bush” – An Ethnographic Study of the Lives of Gay Men Living in Rural Communities.)

This interview will cover episodes that were funny and made you happy and proud. It will also cover sensitive issues and it may well recall instances from the past that were (and still are) hurtful and difficult. This is the only discomfort that I can foresee but it is not my intention to cause any discomfort in recalling the past. However, you are under no obligation to answer any particular question and you can withdraw from the interview at any time.

I cannot, and do not, guarantee or promise that you will receive any benefits from this study.

Confidentiality and Disclosure of Information

Any information that is obtained in connection with this study and that can be identified with you will remain confidential and will be disclosed only with your permission, except as required by law. If you give your permission by signing this document, I plan to discuss the findings in conferences and in published papers. The findings will obviously form part of my Ph.D. thesis. In any discussion or publication, the information will be provided in such a way that you cannot be identified.

Recompense to Subjects

It is not possible that there can be any recompense of any kind to you.

Complaints may be directed to the Ethics Secretariat, University of New South Wales, SYDNEY, 2052, NSW (Phone: 02-93854234, Fax: 02-93856648 or e-mail: [email protected]).

Your Consent

Your decision whether to participate or not will not prejudice your future relations with the University of New South Wales. If you decide to participate, you are free to withdraw your consent and to discontinue participation at any time and without prejudice.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. If you have any questions later, either contact me (phone: 02-93851968) or Dr. Richard Roberts (phone: 02-93851959) and either will attempt to answer them.

You will be given a copy of this form to keep. Page 2 of 3

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SUBJECT INFORMATION STATEMENT AND CONSENT FORM (continued)

(Title of the Project: “Out in the Bush” – An Ethnographic Study of the Lives of Gay Men Living in Rural Communities.)

You are making a decision whether or not to participate in the above study. Your signature indicates that, having read the information provided above, you have decided to participate.

______Signature of Subject Signature of Witness

______Please PRINT name Please PRINT name

______Date Nature of Witness

______Signature of Investigator

______Please PRINT name

REVOCATION OF CONSENT

I hereby wish to WITHDRAW my consent to participate in the research proposal described above and understand that such withdrawal WILL NOT jeopardise my relationship with the University of New South Wales.

______Signature Date

______Please PRINT name

The section for Revocation of Consent should be forwarded to:

Dr. Richard Roberts Senior Lecturer School of Social Work Level 15, Matthews Building University of New South Wales SYDNEY. 2052 NSW Page 3 of 3

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Appendix 2) Information Sheet

Interview Facing Sheet

Date: Time of Interview:

Place of Interview:

Interviewee: Identifer:

Personal Details:

Age - Religion -

Employment/Occupation -

Qualifications -

Length of Residence in ‘the Bush’ -

Other Comments:

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Appendix 3) Interview Sequence

NUMBER NAME PLACE

1 Jack Wobegon 2 Rudy Geriffi 3 Jim Geriffi 4 Perry Geriffi 5 Noel Galbern 6 Chris Galbern 7 Ivor Binandback 8 Toby Copper 9 Jason Keroboken 10 Simon Dunno 11 Michael Dunno 12 Izak Geriffi 13 Rodney Gunnawere 14 Petro Inaway 15 Sam Dalgety 16 Neville Glen Iris 17 Cleaver Barappa 18 Gerry Barappa 19 Gary Wide Creek 20 Bobby Wee Tree 21 Rex Nurrupabri

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