Here, There, Everywhere: The Ubiquitous Geographies of Heteronormativity

From its first tentative forays into questions of gay and lesbian residence, the discipline of geography has made increasingly important contributions to literatures on sexual identities, practices and politics. In this paper, I seek to highlight the breadth and depth of recent work on sexuality and space by exploring the contributions made by geographers to the theorisation of heteronormativity. Specifically, this paper explores how heterosexual norms are constructed ansd reproduced spatially, noting the increasing corpus of work which moves beyond examination of heterosexuality's Other (i.e. homosexuality) to consider the multiple desires and bodies that can be accommodated within the category ‘heterosexual’. Moving from urban to rural contexts, this paper hence reviews literatures detailing how particular heterosexualities are rendered normal and concludes that the literature is usefully shifting from a focus on identity and community to questions of practice and performance.