Spaces of Queer Citizenship: The Emergence of Queer Urbanism in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1964-present

Spaces of Queer Citizenship examines the physical environments where social struggles by queer and transgender people have historically taken place in San Francisco and Oakland from 1964 to the present. By analyzing cultural artifacts and historical records, and complementing these with ethnographic fieldwork at existing sites, I found that inhabitants of these environments articulated distinct cultural and political identities through urban occupations, appropriations, and alterations of physical spaces. In the process, they instrumentalized citizenship as a framework for the pursuit of particular rights to consolidate their gains on the ground. I argue that although urban economic restructuring in the San Francisco Bay Area from 1964 to the present prioritized white middle class gay and lesbian spaces and dispossessed other queer and trans people on the basis of class, race, and ethnicity, transfer of knowledge occurred through insurgent spatial tactics embedded in the physical environments of groups with otherwise competing political priorities.My argument is based on a series of chronological case studies. I begin by examining a network of spaces in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood between 1965 and 1970, where a group of gender and sexually nonconforming people, most of them young adults, created shared cultures, articulated political demands, and built coalitions with other queer and non-queer organizations. The waning years of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society Programs provided the historical backdrop for this group to consolidate these specific identities to seek adequate healthcare and secure federal anti-poverty grants. As a result, they became visible subjects claiming rights and assuming responsibilities, based on the spaces that they inhabited. Second, I examine the binary logic in the development of gay and lesbian spaces in the 1970s, a period of intense politicization of sexual identity and scrutiny of publicly visible gay and lesbian lifestyles. The feminist group that spearheaded the Women’s Building of the Bay Area sought to consolidate the gains of the lesbian feminist movement through a “permanent” home in the predominantly Latinx Mission. Meanwhile the Castro emerged as a paradigmatic – if problematic – symbol of what a gay neighborhood could look like, one that was widely emulated in the US and abroad but maintains the binary logic of “the closet” that separates public and private life. Third, I analyze how AIDS resulted in what I call the “desexualization” of San Francisco by pushing sex to the margins of urban life, reversing the gains in visibility, sexual, and social experimentation made during the previous decade. This occurred at the same time that urban reforms in San Francisco forcefully displaced minority populations away from the neighborhoods and the institutions that had previously supported them. The study concludes with a description of the current state of queer and trans urban habitation in the context of advanced gentrification. The final part of my analysis focuses on the modes of operation of a queer and trans community land trust established in East Oakland in 2017. This case study, along with other forms of urban activism, suggests new ways that collective housing can inform future spaces of insurgent queer citizenship.

Advisor: Crysler, Greig
Holston, James