Gay tourism is commonly studied through pride events in cities. While imagining Sydney or Australia as part of Asia is itself no guarantee of productive politics or of decentring epistemologies, the article argues that some of these worldings do provide an occasion and a provocation to think elsewhere and otherwise in ways that are responsive to the specific character of White Australia's colonial pasts and presents, while also generatively (dis)locating Sydney beyond the 'West'. These worldings are shown to be an important aspect of queer activisms and urbanisms in Sydney, and I argue that attention to this worlding can productively complement a renewed focus on place and specificity in queer urban literatures. Specifically, the article examines how Sydney is variously worlded as or against 'Asia' in public debate around LGBTQI +politics and in the imaginaries of activists living in Sydney. Accordingly, qualitative research based on the interview method, focus group discussions, and geosemiotic analyses are more frequently used than quantitative research.īuilding on recent work in postcolonial urban studies that has developed more genuinely plural approaches to urban theorising, this article poses the problem of 'worlding' in relation to urban LGBTQI + activism in Sydney, Australia. A central issue is the lack of a public list of LGBT persons, which makes it virtually impossible to have any form of probability sampling. Research of pink consumption spaces shares a common methodology with this issue. Purchasing systems, including consumption management called rainbow washing, has also been well studied, though studies on culture and health related to this area are strongly lacking. However, entertainment remains the dominant domain and the most research attention has been focused on this area. Night clubs have been identified as the starting points of pink consumption, but pink consumer spaces are becoming increasingly diversified with the liberalisation of social relations in the Western world. Research of pink consumption first arose in the 1990s and took place in an urban context almost without exception, and was largely geographically limited to Anglo-America and Western Europe. Pink consumption areas are a collection of places that were created and/or stand out for their openness towards the LGBT community. Therefore, it is important to consider the relationality of local manifestations of homonormativity while avoiding the essentialism or dismissals of de facto ‘homonormative subjects, spaces, or events’. These events have homonormative aspects but defy reductive labeling or accusation. The success and sponsorship of these events is due not only to the popularity of Miami Beach with tourists, and the large local Hispanic population, but also the scarcity of similar events elsewhere. For instance, the entrepreneurial, tourism-centered government of Miami Beach targeted both lesbians and Hispanic LGBTs for these events. For example, the naming of gay white men and gentrified gayborhoods as the homonormative subject/spaces/places ignores how others can make use of homonormativity elsewhere.
However, I challenge the a-spatial essentialisms that characterize the literature.
It describes the commercialization and mainstreaming of LGBT populations as potentially oppressive and normative. I utilize the homonormativity critique as a framing. This behind-the-scenes study on their planning challenges the invisibility of intersectional LGBTs as consumers and demonstrates that they can be targeted as a profitable niche market. Miami Beach is home to a women’s circuit party called Aqua Girl and a Hispanic LGBT Pride called Celebrate Orgullo. Scant academic attention has been paid to intersectional LGBT events.