ABSTRACT
Lesbian and gay commercial districts existing in the major urban centres of North America, the UK, Australia and Northern Europe have been understood since the late 1960s (see Achilles 1967; Levine 1977; Castells 1983 etc.) as providing places of shelter from a hostile and violent heteronormalised society and as providing sites of consumption, community, and political action. However, since the mid 1990s, a number of social, cultural, economic and political developments within metropolitan centres, particularly in Western countries, have had significant consequences for the position of lesbians and gay men within society and for the lesbian and/or gay scene. Consequently, which lesbians and gay men are to be either desirable or wanted – and, conversely, which are no longer to be desired or wanted – within contemporary gay and/or lesbian urban scenes (which can be characterised through their intense commercialisation) is increasingly problematic. So, too, is the related question of who positions them as desirable or not, wanted or not. This chapter draws upon data from 23 interviews1 undertaken with lesbians and gay men living in Newcastleupon-Tyne, UK,2 and will explore the experiences of those lesbians and gay men deemed to be ‘undesirable’. The chapter will also discuss how claims to inclusion and visibility within contemporary gay and/or lesbian commercial sites are mediated by age, gender, the complexities of disability and by ideas concerning what is considered ‘sexually shameful’. Underpinning the discussion will be the key themes of (new) inclusions and exclusions, with the chapter borrowing from Binnie’s (2004) theorising of the ‘queer unwanted’.
