Constructing Nature in the Performance of Rural Heterosexualities

In this paper I respond through an exploration of the construction and performance of rural heterosexuality to recent calls for a more nuanced examination of heterosexualities. Using the notion of ‘heteronormativity’, I argue that our understanding of the spatiality of sexuality needs to focus on ‘ordinary’, ‘benign’ forms of family-based heterosexuality, as well as on more deviant forms. I claim that rural spaces provide important sites for the examination of the coconstruction of conventional heterosexuality and place. I demonstrate aspects of rural heterosexuality in the expectations, values, and practices of sexual relationships. I argue that heterosexual relationships are reinforced and sustained through the distancing of the rural from the urban and through associations between rurality and the romantic positioning of nature as central to both of these tactics.