‘Staying bush’ – a study of gay men living in rural areas

This study explored the experience of what it is to be a gay man and to live in a rural community. It soughtto understand why gay men would want to live in places that are said to have a reputation for hostilitytowards them. The empirical data from the semi-structured interviews with twenty-one gay men living infifteen small-town locations across New South Wales, Australia, was analysed using a qualitative methodderived from phenomenology, ethnography and modified grounded theory.The distinctive findings of this thesis centre on these men's desire and determination to stay in the bush.They chose to stay in rural locations and effectively employed a diverse range of strategies to both combatthe difficulties of rural life and enhance its advantages. The bush was the place in which these men couldfind themselves, be themselves and also find others like themselves. The space and the isolation of thebush gave them the latitude and the scope to live gay lives. This is why they stayed. By staying, they werealso able to live out both the homosexual and rural components of their personal and social identity.Building on a brief look at the Australian rural past, the conceptual framework utilises notions of ‘thestranger’ and draws on resilience, agency and resistance theory to understand these men's ability to live inan unwelcoming place. Resilience allowed these men to cope and deal with the difficulties they faced.Human agency, the individual's capacity to exert autonomy over his life, is used to restore prominence toresistance theory. Agency is the catalyst to resistance and resistance fuels an individual's, and sometimesa collective's, opposition to the dominant social forces that inhibits one's agency. These men's desire to livein a rural place can be understood through theoretical considerations of place, the freedom of place andqueer theory. Their satisfaction with life can be theorised through the application of a concept new totheory in gay literature - thriving.This thesis documents a largely unreported aptitude and proficiency by rural gay men to live in the bush. Itsuggests that their close affinity with place gives them a sense of belonging that, when combined with theirconcept of a gay lifestyle, effectively queers the places in which they live. That gay men can live fulfilledlives in the very places they are said to have fled evokes an innovative perspective together with anappreciation of what it is to be gay in the bush