Comfortable and safe spaces? Gender, sexuality and 'race' in night-time leisure spaces

Held, N

Abstract

This article aims to contribute to the fields of emotional geographies and geographies of sexualities by exploring the relationship between emotions and gender, sexuality, and ‘race’ in sexualised night-time leisure spaces. By drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Manchester's Gay Village, the article highlights the importance of taking into account intersections of social identities when exploring how people feel in certain spaces. It explores how relations of ‘othering’ work through emotions, in particular how people are othered through feelings of comfort and safety. Whilst these feelings are triggered by a particular reading of bodies and spaces, they also produce bodies and spaces that are gendered, sexualised, and racialised (and classed). The article offers a rethinking of comfort and safety as not just feelings individuals have but as being constitutive of sexual, gender, and racial subjectivities and spaces.

Citation

Held, N. (2015). Comfortable and safe spaces? Gender, sexuality and 'race' in night-time leisure spaces. Emotion, Space and Society, 14, 33-42. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2014.12.003

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Dec 18, 2014
• Online Publication Date: Jan 9, 2015
• Publication Date: Feb 1, 2015
• Deposit Date: Oct 26, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 26, 2021
• Journal: Emotion, Space and Society
• Print ISSN: 1755-4586
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Volume: 14
• Pages: 33-42
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2014.12.003
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2014.12.003
• Related Public URLs: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/emotion-space-and-society/