‘What is up with my sisters? Where are you?’ The origins and consequences of lesbian-friendly place reputations for LBQ migrants

Place narrative

Scholarship across the social sciences and humanities suggests that place narratives provide a crucial conceptual framework for how people come to apprehend a place. In discussing how folk legends operate, Bird (2002) looks at how stories about a place allow those who tell the stories (and those who hear them) to understand where they live and how it connects to who they are. Moreover, the way people understand where they live can impact how they interact with where they live. In a paper discussing “neighborhood narrative frames” (2002: 22), Small (2002) discusses how narrative frames “affect centrally whether and how [residents] become involved” (2002: 20), meaning that place narratives have real effects on actors and the places they live. ¹³

That said, place narratives are not necessarily singular. Small argues that different residents have different neighborhood narrative frames. Similarly, Wynn (2011) finds heterogeneity when exploring a very literal form of narrative: tour guides’ storytelling in New York City. Although guides occupy a different category from ordinary community members dispatching folk wisdom, Wynn’s insight into how tour guides in a single city tell different stories about the same place reminds us that place narratives need not be the same for all who share a city. Notably, though, place narratives are primarily framed as stories internal to a place; that is, as stories locals tell to themselves and one another about where they live. These may be shared with others (e.g. a tourist), but extant literature conceptualizes place narratives as (primarily) locally produced.

Place identity

Place identity has been conceptualized in two ways: as a collection of attributes or an identity assigned to a place, and as a collective self-understanding that rests on a particular locale. Importantly, it can emerge out of and mutually reinforce a place narrative. Scholars have shown how identity can emerge along dimensions of authenticity (Brown-Saracino, 2009), ethnicity and race (Pattillo, 2007), art (Lloyd, 2010), music (Grazian, 2003), and region (Griswold, 2008). Cuba and Hummon (1993) define place identity as “an interpretation of self that uses environmental meaning to symbolize or situate identity,” arguing that “from a social psychological perspective, place identities are thought to arise because places, as bounded locales imbued with personal, social, and cultural meanings, provide a significant framework in which identity is constructed, maintained, and transformed” (1993: 112). ¹⁴ While this definition turns on the way place is used to help form individual identities, the way we use it is concerned with the identity of the place itself. Indeed, scholars often suggest that places themselves have identities (e.g. Cuba, 1987; Grazian, 2003; Griswold, 2008; Lloyd, 2010; Zukin, 1995) – collectively held meanings about a locale – although relatively few offer an explicit definition thereof. Of course, as Cuba and Hummon assert, these shared meanings about place are in turn relevant to residents’ identities.

Cuba and Hummon argue that studies of place identities rarely simultaneously examine places of different scales, and Hidalgo and Hernandez (2001) echo this in their discussion of place attachment. Cuba and Hummon find that different qualities matter for different scales, while Hidalgo and Hernandez find that place attachment develops to different degrees on different scales. Both underline how a conception of place at one spatial level is not necessarily the same at every level. There is potential relevance in this point for the cases we look at, as there is disconnect between reputation at the level of region and actual lived place identity at the level of city. Place identity might mask fine-grained details at the level of the city if the place one is looking at – even if one is looking at it with an unjaundiced eye – is at a higher level than the place one inhabits and finds surprising.

Place branding

Place branding also reflects and impacts how people understand place, borrowing from and advancing narratives and identity. Unlike place narratives, which emphasize the way stories about a place allow people who live there to make sense of their connection to it, or place identity, which is the ascription of a common set of attributes to a locale, place branding scholarship focuses predominantly on how institutions attempt to form the impression that a city is a certain kind of place, often for instrumental reasons. (Greenberg, 2008).

Place branding focuses largely on those on the outside, especially those whose patronage might be financially remunerative. ¹⁵ For example, when New York undertook a massive branding effort, “the standpoint of the out-of-towners and the imagination of the average tourist became overwhelming preoccupations for the established and emerging leadership of New York City” (Greenberg, 2008: 8). Branding can be done at the level of a city, as in New Orleans (Gotham, 2007), or at the neighborhood (Deener, 2007; Hyra, forthcoming; Wherry 2011; Zukin, 1982) or state level (Griswold et al., 2003; Kaufman and Kaliner, 2011).

Branding emphasizes any number of place attributes. While Deener (2007) attends to branding that made African-American residents feel less welcome – a process found elsewhere as well (Shaw and Sullivan, 2011) – others have found neighborhoods that explicitly brand themselves based on African-American culture and history (Boyd, 2008; Hyra, forthcoming; Pattillo, 2007). Reed (2003) explores how cities pursue branding based on sexuality – in this case, Chicago’s Boystown neighborhood – in much the same way they brand a neighborhood based on ethnicity (see also Nash, 2013).

Of course, scholars have critiqued place branding, and the effort to bring LGBT populations into its fold. Hubbard and Wilkinson (2014) discuss how portraying a place as LGBT-friendly as part of a branding effort can erase subsets of LGBT populations in an effort to spotlight an “acceptable” LGBT persona for those consuming the brand. Using the 2012 Olympics in London as an example, they argue that certain segments of the LGBT population deemed unacceptable to the Olympic audience got erased in a “gay friendly” branding effort that was intimately related to money-making (2014: 599). Similarly, Kanai “discusses the ways in which urban entrepreneurialism appropriates cultures of artistic tradition and sexual tolerance to promote urban redevelopment in Latin America” (Kanai, 2015: 652). That said, Kanai also demonstrates the possibility of resistance to this appropriation (2015: 653), and others detail how branding sometimes fails (Kaliner, 2014).

A variety of actors engage in branding. While Greenberg attends to public–private partnerships and Zukin (1982) documents the way living lofts became part of a symbolic economy in Soho with the help of municipal actors, Cucchiara (2013) details how a school rebranding effort marketed Philadelphia’s central city. Cucchiara reminds readers that branding can rely on a single city feature meant to communicate something larger about place. This parallels the emphasis reputational actors place on “lesbian friendliness” – which at once communicates something about life in a city for LBQ residents, but also is sometimes intended to stand in for something larger, such as a city’s progressive politics.

Ithaca

Ithaca, population 30,515, is located in the rural Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. It is home to Cornell University, Ithaca College, state parks, Cayuga Lake, and the influential Moosewood Collective – a progenitor of vegetarianism and the broader health food movement. Most Ithaca informants articulate a “post-identity-politics” or integrationist orientation (Brown-Saracino, 2011). Perhaps best capturing this sensibility, one woman said: “In all practical terms I’m gay; I’m a lesbian but I don’t actually identify.” Some, such as a woman in her 20s who was preparing to marry her transgender partner, provided explanations for their eschewal of sexual identity labels and categories. She said, shyly, “I’ve noticed that it’s mostly a seasonal thing where it’s like I never like women and men both at the same time – it’s like different seasons. I like different people.” Likewise, a middle-aged professional said: “sometimes you can take sisterhood and shove it.” Uniting these various explanations is desire to be recognized for facets of the self that LBQ Ithacans regard as unrelated to sexual identity; to be known not as someone who belongs to a sexual identity category, but rather as, for instance, a doctor, mother, artist, runner, or environmentalist.

Balancing this desire to downplay sexual identity is desire to be “out” about one’s sexual difference – a driving force behind the desire to live in a place like Ithaca where LBQ residents presume they can be fully out. An attorney said: “I always talk about my partner … I tell them right away because I am proud of it.” Another said, “I don’t want to have to educate or defend or explain myself. So I just assume you know, this is me and this is you and if you like it, fine. If you don’t, leave me alone.”

Paralleling this dual commitment to emphasizing facets of self that they regard as relatively divorced from sexual identity and to being out, LBQ Ithacans nurture ties with heterosexual and non-heterosexual residents alike that are predicated on mutual beliefs, interests and activities, such as running clubs, activist groups, and shared occupation – if they can be “out”. Despite the high proportion of lesbian households in Ithaca, Ithacans express minimal desire for LBQ neighbors. One said, “I think about ‘oh it should be half and half’ [LBQ and heterosexual] but in some ways I like being not part of the mainstream.” Likewise, an LBQ-owned bar resists identifying as gay, and the 2011 Ithaca Festival Parade contained zero floats explicitly geared to LGBTQ populations – despite the inclusion of many dozen floats devoted to other groups, from preschools to environmental groups to a Volvo ballet. LBQ individuals appeared with countless groups, but, mirroring their everyday lives, few walked with other LBQ residents. Thus, while LBQ Ithacans celebrate their ability to be “out”, and sometimes rally around GLBTQ rights issues, such as marriage equality, in their self-understanding and self-presentation other dimensions of the self loom larger than sexual identity and they wish for those around them to recognize them as multifaceted individuals, and to find a place among their heterosexual neighbors.

San Luis Obispo

San Luis Obispo is located on California’s Central Coast, nearly equidistant from Los Angeles and San Francisco (each is approximately a three and a half hour drive away). The city of just over 46,000 is home to California Polytechnic Institute (CALPOLY), wineries, and volcanic peaks. It is adjacent to smaller coastal towns – many of which are popular tourist destinations – as well as to agricultural communities. Almost universally San Luis Obispo informants identify as “lesbian” or “gay”. The names of local organizations, SanLezObispo, LezMingle, and Lesbian Chips ‘n’ Chat, reflect the widespread local assumption that non-heterosexual San Luis Obispo women identify as lesbian. Indeed, some go out of their way to distance themselves from the possibility of another identity label, such as a middle-aged, white mother who had recently come out after marriages to men. Without hesitation, she said: “Lesbian, yeah. It just took me a hell of a long time to come around to it, the realization – staying up way too many nights late … watching the L Word.” ¹⁹ Thus, most deploy an either/or framework, and regard sexuality as innate and life defining. This orientation was underlined at a potluck for “older” women, where one said: “It is about sex. It is physical for me; about desire. If I could have been with men I would have. And I tried. I thought it was a matter of practice. I practiced and practiced. It is not.”

Most had come out to family and friends, but are somewhat guarded about being broadly out in the local context. A 30-something white banker said, “I don’t feel the need to really tell people. On my desk at work I have pictures of … me and my girlfriend … I don’t hide it, but … I don’t introduce myself by saying, ‘Hi, my name’s [redacted]. I’m a lesbian.’” Another, a woman in her 60s, explained that she refrains from putting any stickers indicative of her sexual identity on her car, for fear that it will out not only her, but also by association the lesbian business owners whose establishments she supports. ²⁰ Yet another said: “There is a very underground closeted element to a lot of people [here].” Despite this, when push came to shove many stepped forward to fight Proposition 8, a ballot measure that sought to define marriage in California as between a man and a woman. LBQ residents leafleted at the evening Farmer’s Market, appeared at downtown rallies, and spoke to the local news.

The existence of a common, uniform lesbian identity and a sense of caution about the degree to which they are welcome in the public sphere, together nurtures notably strong within-group ties among San Luis Obispo lesbians; beyond family connections, few sustain ties with local heterosexuals. Many answered a question about their “ideal town” by stating desire for a place in which lesbians constitute a majority, and their sociality rests on myriad lesbian-only events, from potlucks, to dinners, desserts, Chips ‘n’ Chat meetings, nights of pool, dance parties, and bonfires.

Portland

With a population of just over 66,000, Portland is the largest city in the state of Maine. Located on the Atlantic in the state’s southern region, the city boasts cobblestone streets, coastal parks, a lively culinary tradition, the University of Southern Maine, SALT Institute for Documentary Studies, the Portland Museum of Art, and longstanding shipping and fishing industries. For their part, Portland informants of a variety of ages and backgrounds celebrate their own and others’ hyphenated and hybrid sexual and gender identities, and believe that sexual identity is neither static nor singular. While they acknowledge that the identities one celebrates may evolve over the life course, they nonetheless present sexual difference as innate and life defining. However, their self-understandings rest less on membership in a broad sexual identity category (e.g. “lesbian” or “queer”) and more on membership in a micro identity category, such as alongside other “queer-dykes”, “masculine-dykes” or others who conceive of themselves as “poly[amorous]/punk”.

The predominance of micro-identities and commitment to being out and open about them is difficult to miss. One woman, who works in the fashion industry, introduced herself as a “queer kinky poly high femme dyke”, another, a waitress, as queer, punk and a sex-worker. Many emphasize gender alongside sexual identity, and/or speak of themselves as “queer” (plus something else). That said, residents do not limit themselves to a narrow set of common identity labels. Instead, the notion that identity is individual and idiosyncratic is widely embraced, as is intellectual engagement with questions of identity. In 2011 Dyke March organizers selected the theme: “Celebrating our Dyke Identities” (our emphasis). In so doing they aimed to celebrate the “multiple experiences [of dykes], especially of those who identify in more than just one way.” In the same spirit, in 2009, two 20-something white women hawked t-shirts at a number of events; a banner reading “Individualized Visibility for Your Identity” marked their booth. For many, notions of identity as individual or idiosyncratic and as a facet of the self that is worthy of intellectual engagement are deeply entangled. As an example, one said: “if someone starts a conversation on … on like butch/femme identities, I can have that more academic conversation, but … what I shy away from is [from] making it specific to my idea of what ‘butch’ is … [because] that takes away from someone else’s ability to define [what butch means for them].”

LBQ individuals in Portland are content with networks primarily composed of other LBQ individuals. One said she’d favor a place in which LBQ women constitute “like 80%, 90%,” and another, “I think that 50% to 75% would be good. I like dykes.” However, most maintain at least three overlapping networks: a core group composed of those with whom they share a micro-identity (e.g. other femme identified individuals), a looser but oft-utilized umbrella network of LBQ individuals that spans micro-identities, and, finally, isolated networks composed of queer and heterosexual residents oriented around common interests and tastes, such as a political orientation or engagement with the arts.

Many Portland residents frame their interests and politics as disconnected from or even contrasting with those of most national GLBTQ organizations. For instance, their annual Dyke March aims to counter the exclusion of women from most Pride parades (Brown-Saracino and Ghaziani, 2009), and in a political moment emphasizing traditional marriage, several visible LBQ residents publicly espoused the virtues of polyamory. Yet, when in 2009 Maine prepared for an electoral referendum on gay marriage many residents volunteered or worked for organizations promoting a major agenda of national GLBTQ organizations: the right to marry. Still, a few were wistful over perceived loss of outsider status even as they fought for the same rights and responsibilities of other citizens.

Greenfield

Greenfield, a city of 17,456 individuals, is located in northwestern Massachusetts, less than a half-hour drive from Vermont and New Hampshire, and two hours west of Boston. Situated in the Pioneer Valley, a portion of the Connecticut River Valley popularly associated with Amherst and Northampton and their Five Colleges, as well as with organic foods and progressive politics, the former factory town is an increasingly popular place of residence for LBQ individuals attracted to the broader “Happy Valley”. In Greenfield, Massachusetts, LBQ residents constitute two distinct, co-existing identity cultures: integrationist newcomers and identity-politics old-timers. Membership correlates with migration-wave and parallel differences in orientation to neighboring Northampton (“Lesbianville, USA”) (Forsyth, 1997), rather than with generation or other demographic traits.

Most Greenfield informants who moved to the town in the 1970s and 1980s describe themselves as “lesbian” or “lesbian-feminist”. They also celebrate close proximity to Northampton, on which they depend for formal and informal engagement with other lesbians. Like those in San Luis Obispo, they conceive of sexual identity as innate and life defining. For instance, a 50-something white woman who has lived near Greenfield for 25 years said: “I’m a lesbian … I grew up not in the slightest bit interested in boys and my sister was like dating and being all into boys and I was like, ‘I don’t think so.’ ….I was very much, you know, doing softball and riding horses … I’m about to have my 35th anniversary of being a lesbian, and I intend to have my lesbian anniversary party – [a] sledding party.” Like other longtime Greenfield area LBQ residents, she regards shared sexual identity a crucial impetus for forging ties; she referenced softball, potlucks, an archive, and an event designed to “get the lesbians together” at which a performer celebrated the crowd for being “constituted by lesbian identified women”. As this suggests, this cohort of women belongs to rich and intimate networks of other local lesbians.

More recent migrants emphasize integration and downplay sexuality, echoing Ithaca residents. One said, “I usually don’t really launch into labels or whatnot, but I would just identify as queer … I think that I like queer just because it feels very inclusive of all the ways that people can identify, and, also, to a certain extent, a fluidity of identification.” And another: “You know, it’s kind of funny, ‘cause I don’t, really. I don’t really identify I think that humans are humans, and the sexuality spectrum is really broad, and, at different times, we fall at different places, and I feel like most people are kind of in the middle somewhere. It’s kind of a funny thing.” A middle-aged social worker echoed this: “I guess I’d identify as a lesbian but I forget sometimes, which is nice. I like to think of myself as a person.” Such residents conceive of themselves as notably distinct from Northampton’s lesbian population, which they perceive to be lesbian-identified and focused on within-group ties. One said: “[in] Northampton there’s been a lot of visible lesbians for a long time and [they are] out. Greenfield lesbians were everywhere and they were in key roles and doing different things, but not as overtly. You know it’s like [they were] sort of just doing their thing and lesbian wasn’t the focus.” ²¹

This identity orientation impacts the weight that Greenfield LBQ newcomers place on living alongside others who share their sexual identity. A typical response: “[It is] less [important] that people share my sexual identity, more so that they are understanding.” Likewise, another described local ties by saying, “I really have no idea of their orientation.” Another said, “Certainly a number of friends are [lesbian], but that’s not why primarily we connect … it’s been really nice that we connect through activities … It’s not one of those, ‘I’m gay you’re gay we should be friends.’ You’re friends because you’re friends.” Still another, a 30-something small-business owner, said: “the gay thing is not that important to me … I mean the percentage would be more important to me if it was like people who like dogs. Even like liking dogs would be more important to me.” Paralleling this, newcomers’ ties, like those of migrants to Ithaca, tend to be interest and taste based, rather than predicated on shared sexual identity. LBQ residents who farm, for instance, tend to socialize with other farmers – irrespective of sexual identity.

Some informants are quite cognizant of how their identities have shifted as they’ve moved from place to place, even as they expressed surprise about the identity culture on first moving. A Greenfield woman, for instance, says that Greenfield has allowed her to adopt a post-identity politics orientation: “To me it’s a reflection of more openness and acceptance within the community because earlier when I lived in Boston I very strongly identified with a lesbian community because I felt like I had to. I had to for safety, and I’m glad that I don’t have to here” (our emphasis). ²² Likewise, a 30-something professional who identifies as “queer femme” found Portland’s identity culture liberating: “Femme identity/butch identity [are] very strong [in Portland] and that was new to me coming from Boston where there, it seemed to me, [there was] more of this gender fluid, gender queer, androgynous.” Revealingly, she described the prominent place of femme identities in Portland as a welcome surprise, not as motivating relocation. Another spoke of how Portland’s identity culture is distinct from those she encountered in Ithaca and Providence: “Ithaca [and Providence] there’s like a different kind of queer … Providence … I couldn’t really escape being around like student groups and there’s always kind of like an ‘outy’ feeling … that feels different than like queer here.” In this manner, migrants articulate awareness of how identities take different shape in different cities, yet they also over and again express surprise about the identity culture they encounter in their new home. It never occurred to Joan, for instance, to interrogate how LBQ identities and ties in Providence and Portland might be distinct, given their common location in coastal New England, as well as their universities, and vibrant art scenes. By, prior to moving, taking note of these general traits and how in many cities they seem to correlate with lesbian-friendliness, she believed she could anticipate what LBQ identities and ties would be like in Portland – only to find, after moving, that this assumption was erroneous.

Dominant regional identities

All of the sites are situated in specific US regions that LBQ informants perceive as having lesbian-friendly reputations: western and coastal New England, upstate New York, and coastal California. When contemplating moving some attend to regional reputation, missing the heterogeneity of places within a region. ²³ This mechanism works because prospective migrants essentially gloss over the particulars of the city to which they move, favoring instead an assessment of regional reputation that they assume encompasses the city to which they plan to move. Some express surprise about the fact that San Luis Obispo is less progressive than other coastal California cities, such as Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz. Others presume that Portland, as a coastal New England city, will surely fall in line with Providence and Provincetown in terms of the identities of LBQ residents.

This mechanism is especially apparent in Greenfield where prospective migrants often mistake Greenfield for a mini-Northampton or “Lesbianville, USA” (Forsyth, 1997), mistakenly assuming that Northampton’s lesbian-friendliness and LBQ identities extend throughout the Pioneer Valley. One recalled, “I was interested in the area because I knew about Northampton, you know, the ‘Provincetown of the West’ or whatever they call it … I just knew that there were a lot of lesbians in the Pioneer Valley [and that] [they] called it the Happy Valley’”. Another, a white woman in her 20s from an affluent family, moved to Greenfield to attend community college, assuming the entire “Happy Valley” would serve as a seamless “haven”. She said: “I absolutely knew nothing about [Greenfield], to be honest … and I trusted that I trusted the area. I knew that I felt comfortable in the surrounding area, [and] that I would be in a haven.” After relocating, she recognized the degree to which she had underestimated Greenfield’s distinctiveness.

A young writer who is partnered with a Smith College graduate relied on her partner’s recollections of college years in Northampton before renting an apartment in Greenfield: “[She] went to Smith College, so she is familiar with the area, and she’s familiar with Northampton. We had been here [to Greenfield] once or twice. I mean … I had only been here a couple of times. So, I didn’t really know that much about it.” Yet, she knew enough about Northampton to actively rate Greenfield higher than other options.

An educator, who is white, in her 40s, and the mother of two children, reported that she hadn’t thought to differentiate between Greenfield and the college towns of Northampton and Amherst where she had previously lived. She said, “all of us feel that being in the Pioneer Valley is what the safe space is … And wanting to be here – within those borders – is a notion that lesbians can, you know, have a voice and are important.” Yet, she was later surprised by the degree of difference between the orientations of Greenfield’s LBQ women and those in Amherst and Northampton: “with the lesbians that I knew in Amherst, I don’t know, many … were … professionals teaching in the local schools or lawyers … And [they were] maybe slightly more sporty, more you know, caught up with … wanting to drive a nicer car, wanting to you know, sort of be slightly more straight-laced middle class. And then the Greenfield folks … they really are looking for some sort of connection to the whole, you know, ecological or green side of things … [In Greenfield] there’s an assumption that you want something different. You care about something other than … aspiring to be materialistically middle class.”

Another educator, who is also white, in her 40s, and a mother, thought of Greenfield as a northern extension of Northampton, only to find that Greenfield was less hospitable: “[One thing] I thought about [when I moved here] was I’d never seen so many pro-life stickers. There’s a very conservative Christian family two doors down … And [the mother] blushed a deep red when I told her I didn’t have a husband, I had a partner. Before she knew that the kids were allowed in our house. After she knew, the kids weren’t allowed in our house.” Thus, prospective migrants may misread the distribution of lesbian friendliness within a region or overestimate the power of a regional lesbian-friendly anchor.

After moving, disappointment, to the degree that it arises, can be partially abated by seeking out the nexus of the regional reputation. In Greenfield’s case this is, indisputably, Northampton. For Susie, a single woman in her 40s, this means dining in Northampton. Another answered every question about where she shops and dines by listing Northampton businesses. A 30-something bartender/farmer, found a way to bring Northampton to Greenfield by spending time at a Greenfield-area café that residents of Northampton frequent: “there’s the Greenfield and Amherst and Northampton coffee scenes kind of mixed up in that. So, that definitely provides a good jumping-off point socially. I can just hang out with a lot of people.”

They also actively engage in this work by promoting Greenfield’s reputation. For instance, LBQ residents echo a boosterish narrative that seeks to ensure Greenfield’s revitalization by framing the city as the next Northampton. One insists that Greenfield shares traits with Northampton that give each city equal claim to “Happy Valley” status. She said, “This area is called Happy Valley not for no reason … There’s a lot of ex-hippies who live here, people who are disenfranchised one way or another – either through economics or education or orientation or politics … [We] form a body.”

This blurring of lines between nodes within a region, and the latching on of a city to another’s dominant reputation, is of real consequence as women make residential choices. A prospective resident staying at an inn in Greenfield’s most upscale neighborhood with its tennis courts, skating pond, and forest trails, could likely affirm the perception that Greenfield is a mini-Northampton – a notion that the inn promotes on its website. If that same prospective migrant doesn’t walk on the uneven sidewalks that run beside poorly kempt rental properties near downtown, she can easily imagine that Greenfield, with its co-op, LBQ-owned restaurants, and brewery is a more affordable Northampton. This is not an accident, nor the accomplishment of just LBQ women or inn owners. Instead, it relates to a broader reputational project that many engage in, from the owners of businesses with Northampton outposts (an upscale coffee shop, bar, and food co-op), to the developers of a downtown Arts Block. Such actors do not explicitly market Greenfield as a lesbian mecca akin to Northampton, but by linking Greenfield more generally to Northampton this implication is readily available for prospective LBQ migrants to adopt and interpret in the manner we have already described. Given that many LBQ-migrants to Greenfield had extensive knowledge of Northampton prior to moving, the extension of lesbian-friendliness to Greenfield is built on the use of Northampton as a proxy for the whole area and the attendant assumption that identities and ties will be constant throughout the Valley – an assumption recent migrants report to be quite erroneous.

It is, of course, not coincidental that the impact of regional reputation is most powerful in Greenfield as neighboring Northampton is among a select set of places that LBQ informants in all sites highlight as unparalleled in their LBQ-friendliness. These also include Brooklyn’s Park Slope, San Francisco neighborhoods, and Boston’s Jamaica Plain. Of these, Northampton is most like the sites in terms of size, economic base, and natural amenities, and it is therefore unsurprising that its reputation casts a formidable shadow (or ray of light) over prospective migrants’ perceptions of Greenfield.

Numbers can lie: Misperception based on facts and figures

While many LBQ migrants conduct extensive research about a prospective city before relocating, they focus their attention on facts and figures related to lesbian-friendliness, such as the proportion of lesbian couples, out politicians, and domestic partnership ordinances. This may distract from indicators of local identity culture. Population numbers, counts of institutions and organizations geared to LBQ women, indicators of general political orientation associated with lesbian-friendliness, and expert analyses provide advance indicators of lesbian-friendliness.

Ellen's extended quote on page 2 indicates that some feel that they were overly attentive to LBQ numbers, and inattentive to how LBQ residents make sense of themselves and organize ties in a city. Echoing this, a woman in Portland who is white and in her late 20s described how third-hand knowledge about LBQ population size encouraged her move. Indeed, she relocated without interacting with any LBQ residents. A friend, a gay man, used facts and figures to convince her to move, saying “‘You know, this magazine says that there are this many lesbian per capita’ … and I was like ‘oh my God fine I’m coming’”.

Prospective migrants don’t just count LBQ individuals. They also turn to organizations and businesses. One, a gender-queer individual who works in higher education, described how a friend introduced him/her to Ithaca, emphasizing its lesbian-friendly reputation via a portrait of local organizations: “A friend would write me letters about this mythical Ithaca place and how there were … nine different softball teams … I would be like, ‘You’re full of crap. This place does not exist.’ She was like, ‘There is a women’s bookstore.’”

Of course, the women’s bookstore has long since closed, so in some cases migrants draw on “old” data to gauge lesbian-friendliness, and this can lead to disappointment when contemporary reality contrasts with the portrait of the past they relied on to assess a move. In other cases, the data they access is simply incorrect. Portland, for instance, incorrectly states on a tourism website that it has the third highest proportion of lesbian couples in the US (Portland Area Chamber of Commerce website, 2012). In this case, desire to boost lesbian-friendly reputation provides migrants with bad data.

Others suggest that the facts and figures they rely on to evaluate lesbian-friendliness are not necessarily those oriented toward lesbians. Specifically, some rely on more general markers of local political orientation. Ithaca promotes itself as a tolerant/leftist bubble and some interpreted this as another indicator of lesbian-friendliness. Informants frequently mention a bumper sticker that brands Ithaca along these lines. Margaret said, “There’s a bumper sticker that says, ‘Ithaca’s 10 square miles surrounded by reality.’ Sometimes that’s a little true.” Her partner, Jane, added, “I think when we’ve gone on vacation we’ve often been struck by how different the world really is.” Margaret elaborated:

[Ithaca is] refreshing … For me it feels very comfortable … Living in Southern California I felt assaulted all the time. I was asked in my old neighborhood to take down some of my presidential signs [for John Kerry] that were on my front lawn. Somebody said it best earlier in the week. They were talking about a peace rally, a rally for peace [in Ithaca] and a very Ithaca comment was, “If we had a rally for war that would be a statement in this community.”

These migrants speak to how this reaffirms their choice to be in Ithaca after having already moved, but one can easily imagine the power of such imagery before a move, too. A San Luis Obispo couple described how political symbols helped them find an appropriate niche within the broader San Luis Obispo area: “[A realtor] took us around … We actually drove up to a really nice house, looked around and saw all the Confederate flags and said, ‘We can’t live here.’ It was a great house, corner lot, in our price range. But it was like, ‘Um, no.’ We both were like, ‘No, not going to happen.’” This redirected their attention to an area closer to San Luis Obispo-proper. There, the relative absence of indicators of intolerance served as evidence of San Luis Obispo’s lesbian-friendliness.

The absence of positive indicators of lesbian-friendliness can also be key. In Ithaca, some suggest that as prospective movers they were so busy attending to general markers of a political character that they associate with lesbian-friendliness that they missed the absence of another kind of indicator pertaining to life on the ground for LBQ residents. Others noted – and initially puzzled over – the absence of explicit, formalized affirmation of or guideposts marking lesbian-friendliness. They wondered where the lesbian community center is, or the (explicit) lesbian bar. How, they wondered, should they reconcile the absence of explicit guideposts with evidence of lesbian-friendliness, such as a 2003 non-discrimination ordinance, welcoming heterosexuals, and marriage equality initiatives? With hindsight, many recognize this mismatch – between talk of lesbian-friendliness and the absence of lesbian-oriented businesses and organizations – as a first indicator of Ithaca’s post-identity politics orientation. That is, after moving they came to interpret this absence of information as not only an indicator of lesbian-friendliness – which was how most understood it before moving – but also as indicative of a post-identity politics orientation. For instance, one noted that a realtor did not mention anything about what it would be like to be LBQ in Ithaca; this, in combination with other indicators of lesbian-friendliness, provided a nascent sense of confidence about Ithaca’s lesbian-friendliness. Later, though, she came to interpret this as a preliminary indicator of how sexual difference is ancillary in Ithaca and as an early signal (which she’d missed) that integration dominates.

Some suggested that published accounts provided background information on facts, figures, and frames, convincing prospective migrants of lesbian-friendliness (see Kaufman and Kaliner, 2011; Kearns et al., 2013). In a sense, this leaves the interpretation of lesbian-friendliness to an outside expert. One, who was living in another part of Maine before relocating to Portland, relied on secondary sources: “at the time there was a newspaper in the state called Our Paper, and it was a gay/lesbian newspaper, and I had access to that for a few months, and so I knew that, you know, Portland was, you know, the friendly part of the state to be in.” Another engaged in very explicit online research before deciding to move to Portland, again with an eye for the degree of lesbian-friendliness there:

I made sure that I did really thorough online research because I wanted to make sure that it would be a welcoming environment for me … Because the places where I grew up were not necessarily and I’m pretty selective about where I live now. And one of the things that did convince me to come here was I read an article, I think it was in Curve magazine, and it was called “The Other Portland” … And it’s all about how Portland is a great place for lesbians. And it was like check out, you know, this lesbian owned business and the Dyke March and this band that’s all lesbians and like these queer-friendly venues.

Experts don’t only appear in print media. A Greenfield resident, a 40-something healthcare worker, reported that she first moved to the area – specifically to Northampton – because of Barbara Walters. The first author asked, “So how did you get from [the South] to western Massachusetts?” Without pause she said, “Barbara Walters.” Thinking that she might be joking, the first author said, “Really?” She replied:

20/20. Lesbianville, America … So I was in [a Southern city], my partner and I were both there working … on the same evening shift and I was in somebody’s room and the television was on and 20/20 was on and they started talking about [Northampton as Lesbianville, USA] and I quickly ran out of the room and called [my girlfriend] and said, ‘turn on Channel Seven!’ And that night we were like let’s move there. I was finishing up some college and so as soon as I finished up I started applying.

This mechanism reveals the degree to which lesbian-friendliness matters to prospective informants, as well as migrants’ heavy reliance on facts, figures, and (often distant) experts as indicators of that friendliness. It also suggests a very particular way that we come to know a place that extends beyond this specific mechanism. Molotch suggests that “hard features” such as demographic traits and “soft” factors such as narratives together constitute place (2002). Clearly, prospective migrants’ background research privileges “hard features” over and above “soft factors” that more closely relate to identity culture. Beyond this, the disconnect between informants’ research activities pre-move and discovery of an unexpected identity culture post-move indicate that while population counts and election results (“hard features”) may be good indicators of lesbian-friendliness, in isolation they are not great predictors of identity culture or of the character of LBQ ties. This underlines how lesbian-friendliness, which LBQ migrants suggest can be accurately assessed pre-move via facts, figures, and experts, is more readily identified/signaled from afar than is advance understanding of identity culture. Moreover, it also underlines how lesbian-friendliness stops short of providing the full information that LBQ migrants desire.

Blanket categories

While all of the foregoing examples encourage “lesbian-friendly” to emerge as the dominant reputation (for an LBQ audience), a final force is the belief that a certain set of cities belong in a “lesbian-friendly” category. ²⁷ For some, the knowledge (accurate or not) that a city belongs in this category is enough information to permit a move or to stand in for additional research – especially if additional factors such as work, school, or family, motivate the move. ²⁸

A few informants realized, after moving, that they had assumed that small lesbian-friendly cities, at least within a region, were more or less the same. One assumed that Burlington, VT, and Ithaca were synonymous – until she moved to Ithaca.

In Burlington we had the Peace and Justice store. They had all kinds of like rainbow stickers and that was the place you would go for the little Pride jewelry and … for books. And there was a … monthly, Out in the Mountains … so doctors and lawyers and realtors would advertise in there so you would know who was kind of gay friendly. Events and stuff would all be listed in there. It was nice. But there is nothing like that here.

There are multiple subsets of places under the “lesbian-friendly” category. On the one hand, there are the Ithacas and the Burlingtons – college towns with lefty reputations – and the more populous Portlands and Providences. On the other hand, there is a subset that includes select large cities with progressive and LGBTQ-friendly reputations. As an example, over and over again LBQ individuals in Portland described the city as the “San Francisco of the East”. By this they mean lesbian-friendly and progressive, despite their acknowledgement of feelings of insecurity in Portland and the sense that their inclusion in Portland is somewhat more precarious than in some other cities.

How and why do they do they describe Portland as belonging in a class with San Francisco even as they also describe experiences in Portland that might mark it as the opposite of “lesbian-friendly” or as a non-San Francisco? Repeatedly offering bumper stickers as evidence, they participate in a broader local project that highlights Portland’s progressivism or the work of signaling to themselves and others that Portland is as they hope it would be (a San Francisco). One woman said:

I like to call Portland the San Francisco of Northern New England. It seems to me that it’s pretty liberal; it’s pretty open-minded whatever that means. Just judging by the bumper stickers on cars I think it’s pretty rare that I’ll see something that seems more conservative and it’s much more often that I’ll see Obama stickers now and [Human Rights Campaign] stickers and rainbow stickers and all kinds of you know more left leaning political organizations … so I think you know there are signals like that.

Three of these women caught and corrected themselves as they were about to offer evidence that contradicts the frame of Portland as belonging to a cluster of cities with uber-progressive reputations, further evidence of their commitment to presenting Portland in a certain light. One said: “What frightens me about Maine, but not Portland, is that there’s an incredible movement to take away rights right now. And it’s really hard to watch people petition to have my rights taken away. It’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. It’s one thing when you don’t have them. It’s totally a different thing suddenly to have them and have them try to take them away.” Here, she “saves” her claim to Portland’s membership in a category inhabited by San Francisco by underlining the fact that in Portland she’s lucky to have rights that are at risk, and remembering that Portland and Maine are not synonymous.

Another said, “Portland’s a pretty liberal place. And people … there’s definitely, like, more, like, political involvement, I think, than … I was gonna say than other places that I’ve lived, but that’s not entirely true. More liberal political involvement than other places that I have lived” (our emphasis). And another: “but there’s no doubt there’s still pockets [of conservatism]. You know, you’re still gonna see a McCain/Palin sticker. You’re gonna see a Green [Party] sticker. You’re still gonna see other people, not because there’s lots of them, but because we’re welcoming to them. You know, you can have whatever view you want …” Thus, LBQ migrants who were themselves surprised by the content of local identity culture and the character of ties nonetheless engage in discursive work that underlines their city’s membership in a broader lefty and queer-friendly category – even when this contradicts first-hand knowledge. In this sense, they articulate greater commitment to communicating a general, positive frame about their city than to describing it in more complicated or “authentic” terms.

This inconsistency or incoherence of narratives about what life is actually like on the ground in Portland (is it just like San Francisco or is it not?) is revealing in two additional ways. First, LBQ individuals in Portland try to express something about what they hope Portland will become by using a class of places – “San Francisco” or “West Coast” – to communicate aspirational visions for their city. What is interesting for our purposes is less the aspirational quality here (although it may be an important mechanism driving their narrative choices). Instead, we highlight their turn to specific cities and places to accomplish this work. Portland belongs in a category, which exempts them from telling a researcher more about what life is actually like on a daily basis in Portland. We can imagine – and they report that they use this kind of shorthand in other interactions – how this could be deployed in conversations with prospective migrants and others and, in so doing, provide a partial portrait of life in Portland that contributes to the sense that Portland is of a kind with San Francisco. In other words, having a category of place to fall back on not only serves as a kind of shorthand, but also allows them to engage in a boosterish narrative about their adopted city; a narrative that highlights lesbian-friendliness without going into great detail about what precisely that means in Portland.

Second, the inconsistency in their narrative may enhance the power of categorical references. For the prospective migrant, in the absence of a clear place narrative, the clearest message they might hear from a current resident is about how Portland is like San Francisco, Ithaca is like Burlington, Greenfield is like Northampton, and San Luis Obispo is like Santa Barbara. The rest might be tuned out. Thus, aspirational place reputation building, which relies heavily on shorthand by presenting a city as belonging to a category or cluster, can mislead – about the vibrancy of the local economy, or the safety of LBQ residents – while simultaneously taking up discursive space that might be devoted to more complex and accurate portraits of local LBQ identity culture.

After all, as the opening pages suggest, it does not take long for a new resident to recognize that Portland is not Providence (in Providence, they report, hyphenated identities are less prolific), and that Ithaca is not Greenfield or Park Slope. In this sense, appeals to category or typology fail LBQ women who wish, before relocating, for a robust sense of the LBQ residents they will encounter.