Women Within doesn't really parse with the gay bar scene, and it doesn't parse with Barbelith either. Women Within implies it has specific functions (safe space when issues of safety are there, for example) and Barbelith is meant from my understanding to be social, not a sealed shelter.
My purpose in citing the Women Within tent was not primarily a comparison with Barbelith, but to address GGM's question of queer/gay-identifying mixed-sex couples who feel at their most comfortable in a same-sex 'safe space' (a gay bar). I appreciate that the Women Within tent at Pride does not = Barbelith or a gay bar. It is, however, an example of gay-identifying people being excluded from a 'safe space' on grounds of their sex. In that sense, I think it's at least partly analogous to mixed-sex couples being viewed as unwelcome in gay bars - not because they are or aren't gay-identifying but because they're mixed-sex. In the same way, men are excluded from the Women Within tent not because they're gay or straight but because they're men.
I'm bothered by the "priority users" element in there - if the example of the gay bar is your queer safe space is it so starved for space that there's a wait list of who gets to go in and suck air? No.
Frankly yes, sometimes it is. See Manchester's Canal Street for an example of a formerly gay 'safe space' having become less of a 'safe space' because heterosexuals have moved in to suck air.
It bothers me because it presumes that (a) the safe space is there only for gay sexual desire to play out with nothing else going on in the way of dancing, drinking, socializing, networking
I think it presumes nothing of the sort. The 'safe space' is there for all of the above, but expressing affection (which is not, you might wish to note, necessarily the same thing as "sexual desire") is an important part. If I do something as 'non-sexual' as holding hands with my partner in public in London, I'm likely to attract questioning stares at the very least, very probably verbal abuse, possibly physical abuse. I've experienced all these to some degree, and I'm very much more comfortable doing so somewhere where the likelihood of violence is reduced. Ditto kissing or hugging same-sex friends. It ain't necessarily about the sex.
and (b) that all queer people are super best friends forever and that by going to a gay bar we're saying that straight hetereo-bio people are icky and scary.
No. We're saying that some hetero-bio people are icky, scary and not unlikely to kick our heads in. Others simply stare or giggle or point or shout abuse. Others still are perfectly fine with displays of same-sex affection. When I put an arm around my partner's waist or kiss him hello, I don't want to risk the hetero-bio person next to me turning out to be the first kind.
And yeah, gay people not uniformly pleasant to gay people. There's arguably not the same risk of abuse, though, certainly not physical.
Sharing a sexuality or location on the gender sphere does not mean we get along any better than I get along with my straight friends.
Nooo, but it's the straight people who aren't my friends that I'm worried about.
If I want to go out to a club where it's safe for me to do saucy things with my boyfriend's lips, I still want all my friends to be allowed and allowed to do saucy things with their partners' lips as well, regardless of the gender dynamic within their relationships. I want inclusive, I don't want to trade one kind of exclusive for another.
Good for you. 'Mixed' clubs are your friend, then, as they are mine. They are not, however, in and of themselves, an argument against the existence of more exclusive 'safe spaces' for gay people. I don't think so, anyway. |
