Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
spaces, and practices, between the production and consumption of these images where
meaning is (re)produced'. He underscored the necessity for ethnographies of the lives of
actual gay white men to understand the question of the intersection between patriarchy and
capitalism.
This ethnographic work has begun with different social groups in different destinations.
For example, Natalie Oswin (2005: 583) conducted an ethnographic study of three Cape
Town organisations that are central to the fashioning of 'gay Cape Town', South Africa. She
focused on how 'gay Cape Town' acts as 'a productive social force in the queer cultural/
political/economic landscape of Cape Town and South Africa'. She contends that the current
debates around homonormativity are inadequate to explain 'gay Cape Town'. Oswin (2005:
583) concluded in relationship to tourism marketing that 'though commodifi cation is ines-
capable, it should not be read as eviscerating traces of queerness'. 'Gay Cape Town' was far
more than heteronormativity seeping into the city through a range of consumption-led
events. Consumer-orientated gay tourism in Cape Town is ambiguous. It is neither main-
streamed - that is, fashioned along normative trends found in Western 'gay cities' - nor does
it resist classifi cation of sexual orientations through tourism marketing.
Conclusion: sexed and sexualised tourism geographies
Queer perspectives are provocative. Queer perspectives have raised questions to deliberately
challenge the ways in which geographers think about the connections between the spatial,
sexuality and tourism. Two strands of this are outlined in this chapter. The fi rst queer perspec-
tive began as a spatial project. Central to this perspective was disrupting foregrounding expe-
riences of people travelling to destinations pitched by the gay tourism industry confi gured
within the spatial imaginary of the closet/gay ghetto binary. The spatial imaginaries of gay
tourism as an 'escape' not only reconfi gured heterosexuality as the norm, but also denied how
sexual desire intersects with age, class, race and gender. Analysis of the gay tourism industry
that foregrounded the closet/ghetto dichotomy inadvertently ran the risk of aiding the
agendas of both homophobia and heterosexism. The intersection of queer and feminist
critical social theory on embodiment worked against the casting of sexuality along pre-
confi gured spatial lines.
The second queer perspective began as a representational project. The geopolitics of
oppression is its core, connecting tourism marketing to heteronormativity and nationalism.
The aim was to make visible how certain sexualised bodies became welcomed in cities and
nations through gay tourism marketing campaigns. Examining marketing campaigns of
Western national tourist organisations and municipal authorities, this strand illustrated how
the relationship between capitalism and sexuality is folded into paradoxical (re)generations of
national homonormativity. The Western 'gay tourist' was fashioned by marketing campaigns
to sell events, venues, cities and nations in the fi gure of the stereotype of the affl uent gay
white male to appeal to normative decency. The paradoxical result was that, for those who
buy into the stereotyped fi gure of the gay white male, it enabled a process which sustains a
commitment to racial, gender and class profi ling, devaluing those bodies off the normative
grid. If this is the case, the representational project of making visible normative grids of
tourism marketing is still important.
The second strand began as an effort to uncover the paradoxes of the connections between
homonormativity, tourism marketing and national imaginaries. However, critiques of this
approach called for alternative queer perspectives investigating the role of the Western gay
tourism industry in defi ning, validating and placing bodies. Interest turned to living bodies,
