ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the experience of safety and insecurity through the relationship between violence, sexuality and space. It draws upon data generated by way of a 30-month project undertaken as part of an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) initiative on violence. 1 Let me begin with three snapshots. The first is from the ESRC project data. It comes from the second in a series of six focus group discussions with gay men in Lancaster. In response to a question, posed by the group facilitator, ‘So what can and can’t you do and where? What about kissing another man?,’ one of the gay men replied:
I suppose I’d be comfortable kissing another man at my home or in their house or … possibly in a gay pub. I wouldn’t sort of feel comfortable at all sort of kissing someone in the street or anything like that, because you would always have in the back of your mind, ‘Are there any scallies coming to beat your head in?’ And you’re sort of encouraging [violence].
