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women and men who claimed a lesbian and gay identity, Holcomb and Luongo (1996: 711)
offered insights into 'the emerging geography of gay destinations' as a market segment. In the
context of the United States of America, they called attention to the spatial imperatives and
place-based meanings of this market segment in their defi nition of 'gay destinations' as:
places with concentrations of gay residents. The gay neighbourhood of New York
(especially Greenwich village), San Francisco (the Castro), Miami Beach (South
Beach), Los Angeles and Washington DC, together with resort communities
with long-standing gay reputations (Provincetown, MA; Fire Island, NY; Key
West, FA).
(Holcomb and Luongo, 1996: 712)
Moreover, they called upon particular spatial imaginaries to account for the motivations of
the lesbian and gay tourist: 'Since gays live in dominantly heterosexual milieux most of the
time, vacations offer the chance to be oneself and to enjoy the possibilities which a gay social
setting offers' (Holcomb and Luongo, 1996: 712). Here, the spatial framework that informs
the world of the lesbian and gay tourist relies upon the binary notions of 'the closet' and 'the
gay ghetto'. Travel from the closet to the ghetto becomes understood as a temporary 'escape'
from heterosexuality, offering possibilities to become oneself.
Holcomb and Luongo were not alone in foregrounding binary notions of the closet and
the ghetto in confi guring the experiences of lesbian and gay tourists. For example, Pritchard
et al.
(1998: 274), in their discussion of the emergence of gay tourism, also called upon the
closet/ghetto dichotomy: 'They [homosexuals] are marginalised, relegated to gay ghettos and
privatised spaces.' When the social relationships that comprise public spaces are understood as
pre-confi gured by heterosexuality, then explanations for lesbian and gay travel emphasise the
role of oppression and marginalisation of homosexuality to 'underground' private spaces and
the key role of US cities in consolidating visible collective and individual gay identity.
Alternatively, Ivy (2001) employed the spatial metaphor of 'islands' in his discussion of gay
tourism destination marketing. The spatial imaginary of gay tourism destinations as islands
equally relies on the homosexual/heterosexual and closet/ghetto binaries. As islands, gay
tourism destinations are imagined as pre-existing gay spaces, surrounded by a sea of pre-
existing social relationships informed by heterosexuality. Emphasising the role of oppression
and marginalisation of both heterosexism and homophobia, such a spatial imaginary neces-
sitates the logic that travel to a 'gay ghetto' often in the US or elsewhere is essential to consoli-
date a collective and individual gay identity. Indeed, for Howe (2001), gay tourism become
positioned as a 'pilgrimage' and the Castro district of San Francisco as a lesbian and gay
'homeland'.
Indeed, Ivy (2001: 343) uncritically accepted Hughes's (1997) assertion 'that the gay man
may only express his gayness in a gay space'. While queer perspectives would agree that sexu-
ality is always lived spatially, queer perspectives have helped move away from accounts of gay
tourism, foregrounding binary notions that pre-confi gure space along the lines of the public
and the private, the closet and the ghetto, heterosexual and homosexual (gay). This is a reduc-
tionist account of sexuality in tourism geographies. In this account, sexual identities are
ascribed by space. Queer perspectives acknowledge that sexuality is embedded in space, but
the relationship between sexuality and space is co-constituted or reciprocal. Such thinking
moved thinking spatially about sexuality and spatiality beyond applying dualisms within a
pre-existing sexual order that 'fi xes' sexuality in gay ghettos. Sexuality, along with other
identities, is negotiated in and through space, rather than sexuality-space relationships being
