Intersecting the right to the city: sexuality and space - Ignacio Espinosa

Cities are not neutral objects. Urbanization is a process that not only reflects power relations, but produces and reproduces these relations as well, ultimately reinforcing and perpetuating them at the same time. As Henri Lefebvre argues, the city is an oeuvre, a piece of art in continuous creation and appropriation by its producers, its inhabitants. To understand cities more radically, it is essential to ask by who and for who they are produced and appropriated. When cities are produced by only some inhabitants, they will naturally only respond to specific needs and realities. Therefore, in order to democratise cities, diversity must be emphatically addressed in the social production of urban space.
The social production of the city was first analysed in 1968 by Lefebvre in his work Le Droit à la Ville (The Right to the City), where he argues that capitalist market relations suppress the use value in cities and the notion of the oeuvre while intensifying the exchange value in them under an economic and productive rationality. For him, the use value in cities consists of a) the right of appropriation (the right to live, use, and circulate the space) and b) the right to participation (the right to control the process of decision-making in the social production of space). 

When analysing who is able to appropriate and participate in the production of the city, the concept of The Right to the City nevertheless tends to focus on exclusion based on class. In other words, exclusion based on employment status and relation to the labour market and economic activity. A class analysis is flawed and problematic because it understands exclusion solely based on income, assuming that “the working class” and “the poor” are a homogeneous group without internal inequalities. In other words, class relations superimpose and relegate multiple diverse urban inequalities and identities based on gender, sexual orientation, race, and ethnicity. For a radically democratic appropriation and participation in the production of space, diversity must be a central issue.

Feminist theorists such as Bell Hooks and Patricia Hill Collins have made important contributions challenging a class-based understanding of society. They argue the importance of incorporating notions of gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, class, and other identities. For instance, the sociological concept of privilege argues that some groups of people have advantages in comparison to other groups (e.g. white privilege, male privilege, heterosexual privilege, cisgender privilege), which can be expressed both materially (e.g. access to housing, health, education, work) and emotionally/psychologically (self-confidence, comfort, sense of belonging). This allows us to question urban privileges and disadvantages that are reflected in both the material and emotional access to the city. On the other hand, an individual’s unique world perspective (their standpoint), involves viewing knowledge differently, as something unique and subjective, according to the individual’s position, and reality. This can raise questions about whose urban standpoints are reflected and considered in the social production of the city. It is not possible to talk about a democratic city without visibilising, giving voice, listening, and empowering diverse marginalized and intersectional urban standpoints. 

The feminist concept of intersectionality argues that sexism, homophobia, racism and other forms of oppression do not work independently but rather interact, forming a system of interlocking oppression consisting of multiple forms of discrimination of varying intensity. Intersectionality is a challenge not only to class-analysis but also to the view of identity as singular and homogeneous, contending that to understand someone’s position in society it is necessary to look at her/his multiple identities based on gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, class, etc. For example, this view challenged the homogenised view of “women”, recognising that it is not the same to talk about a white woman as a black woman, or a black lesbian woman. Possessing multiple subordinate group identities is different than possessing a single subordinate group identity. While categories are essential in recognising and documenting different dimensions of inequality, they can be problematic if they are seen as static labels that simply reinforce stereotypes. Hence, while intersectionality acknowledges diverse identities and categories, it is essential to transborder these categories and see them as fluid. Approaching the right to appropriate and to participate in the production of the city through intersectionality can recognise invisibilised urban dwellers, including those most marginalised not only within “the working class” and “the poor,” but also within specific diverse identities based on gender, sexual orientation, race, and ethnicity.

Sexuality and Space

Understanding the relationship between sexuality and space can challenge the right to the city’s assumption of a class-based primacy and address urban exclusion more accurately. The urban is the socio-spatial production and reflection not only of the capitalist ideology, but also of racist, sexist, and heterosexist ideologies, all of which are mutually reinforcing. Debate on sexuality and space is highly related to notions of urban participation, appropriation, and spatial distribution across multiple rights but also across intersectional identities. Several queer sociologists and urban geographers such as Marius Pieterse have analysed how cities have been controlled, designed and produced from a hegemonic heterosexist standpoint that is functional only for heterosexual urban needs and appropriation. This lack of consideration for excluded urban needs goes across multiple rights and diverse intersecting identities. Different work explores the lack of available psychological support and sexual health services outside central whiter “gay neighbourhoods”, as well as the lack of available retirement housing facilities for elderly LGBT members who often have no family or community support. Debate is also taking place on the right for trans people to be able to choose the restroom of their gender identity in public schools and public spaces, since most have suffered bullying in public toilets. Meanwhile, some (few) governments around the world are finally acknowledging the human rights abuses against trans people in restricted spaces like jails.

When LGBT representation increases in decision-making structures, there seems to be more will to acknowledge these issues. Crime and suicide rates are starting to be desegregated and mapped in some countries, revealing alarming data about homophobic hate crimes, safety, bullying, depression, suicide, access to safe healthcare and education, poverty, unemployment, unregulated prostitution, and homelessness within the LGBT population in specific areas. This data is particularly worrisome among trans individuals and ethnic LGBT minorities. Different analyses of sexuality and space reflect how not involving the needs, standpoints, and participation of LGBT populations in the production of cities further deepens their marginalization and limits their urban appropriation. It also reflects that LGBT rights are related to health, education, employment, crime and safety, housing, freedom of circulation, freedom of speech, among other rights. Finally, it shows that LGBT urban issues are not limited to just lesbian, gay, and trans issues, but also include women, black, immigrant, children, elderly, and class issues”. Urban dispossessions are feminised, racialised, and sexualised dispossessions. 

Work on sexuality and space also examines how concepts like urban use value and appropriation can become concepts and tools of hegemonic normative urban oppression and assimilation if they are not sensitive to the recognition of diversity beyond class. For instance, many LGBT individuals are motivated to pass as “normal” heterosexuals in public space in order to be able to appropriate it. This involves dressing according to gendered codes and limiting same-sex public displays of affection. This is especially harsh for trans individuals. A gay man in a public space will often pass as heterosexual and therefore maintain both a male and heterosexual privilege. He is therefore occupying a different place in society when compared to a lesbian or trans woman, especially in a patriarchal conservative society. Pieterse and other queer analyses of the de-sexualisation of public space look at how laws, social sanction, and spatial features in the built environment regulate for a domesticated (patriarchal, monogamous, coupled, emotional) heterosexuality. Mapping geographies of desire and their regulation consists of not only how spaces ignore the needs of non-heterosexual individuals, but also in how they push for their assimilation. It would also be important to consider how decision making spaces (such as neighbourhood committees, city councils, municipalities, etc.) are assimilationist too. All these concepts are highly related to the notions of use value, appropriation, and participation in the production of the city, but also prove that it is not enough to neutrally talk about these notions without asking for who. As Pieterse argues, queering pockets of space involves a queer production and occupation of spaces that is able to blur private and public boundaries and disrupt the heteronormative hegemony of space. Without recognizing intersectional identities, notions within the right to the city can simply reinforce and reproduce sexist, heteronormative, and racist productions and hegemonies of space. 

In order to dismantle and deconstruct structural spatial sexual inequalities that limit urban appropriation and participation in the production of the city, it is necessary to understand how diverse LGBT identities are denied various rights. This multiplicity of material and immaterial rights, which are spatially manifested and reproduced, is part of a systemic and institutional heteronormativity as much as it is part of systemic institutional sexism and racism. Understanding issues of sexuality and space can allow a more holistic illustration of the relationship between space, multiple rights, and multiple intersecting identities, ultimately strengthening the reach and relevance of the right to the city. Some of the critiques of sexuality and space are aimed at its Western-centric focus, so it is important to look at less studied places and spaces to decolonise the subject. This includes the case of Bianka Shigurova and many other invisible Biancas outside North America and Western Europe. Visibilising diverse standpoints, giving them voice, listening to their needs, and empowering the participation of diverse LGBT bodies in the social production of urban space (both formally or informally) is essential to producing radically democratic cities.

Based on the author`s MSc Urban Development Planning dissertation. Intersecting the Right to the City: The Case of LGBT Spatial Struggles in Ecuador. University College London, The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, 2015.