ABSTRACT
Queer youth on Australia's Gold Coast are subject, by their very presence in the city, to often rampantly heterosexual public spaces such as Surfers Paradise, or one of the many family-oriented suburbs that constitute the GC'. The Gold Coast plays an important role in structuring the kinds of attachments that young queer people can develop to other queer young people and adults. The former is an analytic tool, while the latter is a vernacular category that incorporates gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (GLBTIQ) individuals. Queer youth are simultaneously drawn together by the fact of their sexual dissidence, and factionalised' by their age, sex, gender, sexual orientation and sexual identity. Kelly's friend transgressed gender dress codes in order to identify more closely with the lesbians she had observed on the scene, while Thomas described another form of transgression by gay men that acted to proclaim membership to a sexual culture.
