ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an introduction to work in social geography on gender and sexuality. First, it explores the connections between space, place, gender and sexuality at a number of different scales. Second, the chapter emphasizes the importance of spatial divisions in establishing, maintaining and reshaping gender and sexual identities. Third, it highlights the multiplicity of gender and sexual identities, and the ways in which relates to other identities of class, age, race, ability and so on. Finally, the chapter encourages think about positionality, which has been central to both feminist and queer geographies. In many societies behavior outside heterosexuality, and individuals associated with it, have been marginalized, ignored or persecuted. Homosexuality has often been portrayed as abnormal, despite evidence of widespread practice from an enormous number and variety of societies, from ancient Greece to modern Islamic Africa, suggesting that it is every bit as natural as heterosexuality.
