Homosexuality in Paris’s Public Space
For a number of decades, the city, the privileged space of sexual liberation, has given homosexuality the right to be visible. The public space, as a backdrop for meeting otherness allows us to pose searching questions about this right to a city for all. In this article, we analyze the practices and the perceptions of public space in the homosexual communities of Paris. Our objective is to understand how the various sexual orientations are received and expressed throughout the visible urban space – an adjunct to the theoretical debates on the very foundations of identity in modern cities. We have devised a specific type of methodology to ensure that our approach to our subject is truly spatial. Our research shows that sexual orientation is related to unequal access to a heteronormed public space and that this inequality is “naturalized” behaviourally. Naturalization underscores the role of gay districts as the primum mobile in the construction of homosexual identity and the importance of their appropriation. However, appropriation does not signify privatization of these spaces as much as a tool capable of heightening the visibility of a group of individuals who are stigmatized and marginalized on account of their sexual orientation.