Looking Back Queerly, 1996: Space for Gay Men = Pleasure _or_ Danger

Gavin Brown’s 1996 research on the spaces of gay men found they described and marked their spaces in Tower Hamlets, London, as those of “pleasure” or “danger.”  How far have we come to mind the gap to create spaces in between for gay men, and for all lgbtq people?

My research builds on the pioneering work of early lesbian and gay oral historians, but by attempting to record gay men’s cognitive maps of the area – how we negotiate routes between sites of pleasure and danger and how these have influenced our decisions about where to live, shop and cruise – attempts to chart the changing ways in which we respond to and adapt the urban landscape for our own ends. (Brown 2001, 50)

CITED

Brown, G., 2001. Listening to Queer Maps of the City: Gay Men’s Narratives of Pleasure and Danger in London’s East End. Oral History, 29(1), pp.48-61.