(Un)holy Toledo: Intersectionality, Interdependence, and Neighborhood (Trans)formation in Toledo, Ohio

Research article by Christopher G. Shroeder about Toledo, Ohio's LGBTQ+ community in the 1950s through the 1970s. The article explores themes such as intersectionality, interdependence, and gentrification in the formation of a gay-friendly neighborhood in Toledo's Old West End. The article was published in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Volume 104, Issue 1, in 2014.(Un)holy Toledo: Intersectionality, Interdependence, and Neighborhood (Trans)formation in Toledo, Ohio Christopher G. Schroeder Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Research on largemetropolitan areas dominates understandings of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) urban lives. Investigating cities further down the urban hierarchy can nuance accounting of LGBT and queer place-making, neighborhood formation, and cultural politics. Comparative analysis can further illuminate the local foundations of place-based logics. Through the conceptual lenses of intersectionality and interdependence, this article looks at the appropriation and formation of Toledo’s LGBT neighborhood, the Old West End, and its relation to another central-city neighborhood, Vistula; the development of the local LGBT and queer community more broadly; and the interrelation of these gay and queer neighborhoods with other social sites and spaces. This qualitative study involving oral histories and archival research demonstrates that community organizing and neighborhood (trans)formation depend on a host of socio-spatial conditions. Although LGBT neighborhood transformation is often conflated with gentrification, my findings suggest that intersectionality and interdependence play a large role in LGBT neighborhood transformation. The critical quality for development of the neighborhoods I investigated was an emerging arena for local lesbian and gay cultural politics, which relied heavily on an intersectionality and interdependence between and among religion, sexuality, and class. Key Words: interdependence, intersectionality, neighborhood transformation, religion, sexuality. , (LGBT) , LGBT , , LGBT “ ” , “ ” ; LGBT ; , ( ) — LGBT , , LGBT , , , : , , , , La investigaci´on que se realiza sobre grandes ´areas metropolitanas concede notable importancia al tema de las vidas urbanas de lesbianas, gays, bisexuales y transexuales (LGBT). Al investigar en las ciudades de arriba abajo en la jerarqu´ıa urbana es posible establecer conexiones de LGBT con la aparici´on de lugares raros, formaci´on de vecindarios y pol´ıticas culturales. El an´alisis comparativo puede ayudar a iluminar los fundamentos locales de la l´ogica basada en lugar. A trav´es de los lentes conceptuales de la inteseccionalidad y la inderdependencia, este art´ıculo concentr´o sus observaciones sobre la siguientes cosas: la apropiaci´on y formaci´on del vecindario LGBT de Toledo, el antiguo West End, y su relaci´on con el V´ıstula, otro barrio del centro urbano; el desarrollo de la LGBT local y de la comunidad homosexual en t´erminos m´as generales; y la interrelaci´on entre estos vecindarios gay y homosexuales con otros sitios y espacios sociales. El estudio cualitativo, que involucra historias orales e investigaci´on de archivos, demuestra que el proceso de organizar comunidad y la (trans)formaci´on de un vecindario depende de una multitud de condiciones socio-espaciales. Aunque la transformaci´on de un vecindario LGBT a menudo se asocia con aburguesamiento, mis descubrimientos sugieren que la interseccionalidad y la interdependencia juegan un papel importante en la transformaci´on de un barrio LGBT. La calidad cr´ıtica para el desarrollo de los barrios que investigu´e era un escenario emergente de las pol´ıticas culturales locales de lesbianas y gays, que se apoyaba fuertemente en la interseccionalidad e interdependencia entre religi´on, sexualidad y clase. Palabras clave: interdependencia, interseccionalidad, transformaci´on de vecindarios, religi´on, sexualidad. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 104(1) 2014, pp. 166–181 C 2014 by Association of American Geographers Initial submission, July 2012; revised submissions, May and August 2013; final acceptance, August 2013 Published by Taylor & Francis, LLC. Intersectionality, Interdependence, and Neighborhood Transformation in Toledo, Ohio 167 Research on urban gay neighborhoods lacks a strong emphasis on intersectionality and in-terdependence of individuals—and individuals working within and across groups—constructing those places. Through a case study of early neighborhood transformation in Toledo, a medium-sized city in the U.S. Midwest, this article investigates socio-spatial interconnectivity through the conceptual lens of in-tersectionality and interdependence. Although social categories intersect in myriad permutations,my primary interest settles on the intersections of sexuality with class and religion, because, as McCall (2005) noted, “it becomes necessary to limit other dimensions of the analysis . . . for the sake of comprehension” (1786). Fur-thermore, the intersection of these social categories has received far less attention in intersectionality research (M. Brown 2011). By coupling intersectionality with interdependence (J. Smith, Clark, and Yusoff 2007; G. Brown 2009), I further focus on interactions whereby groups and individuals, seemingly at odds, come to-gether in meaningful ways, most notably in mutual co-operation to resist oppression and inequality and in how these relationships construct space and place. Because urban gay neighborhoods have long been conflated with gentrification, this article also addresses interrelated gaps in the gentrification and sexualities literatures. Similar to gentrification scholars’ calls for looking at cities “down the urban hierarchy,” scholars of sexualities have called for investigations of cities out-side the core of major metropolises in the Global North to provide broader perspective on the local specifici-ties of processes of neighborhood formation (G. Brown 2008, 2009). This article expands the temporal and spatial dimensions (D. P. Smith 2002; Phillips 2004; Dutton 2005) of gentrification and sexuality research by exploring neighborhood transformation in Toledo’s central city from the mid-1950s to the late 1970s. In addition to its economistic viewpoints, the literature on gentrification provides rich accounts of the social dynamics of neighborhood transformation. Geographies of Gentrification and Neighborhood Transformation This article focuses on gentrification from the per-spective of Warde’s “collective action” as differentiated from the largely economic perspectives on production and consumption, which are most commonly associ-ated with the work of N. Smith (1986, 1996) and Ley (1986, 1994). Others have sought to bridge the pro-duction and consumption divide (Galster 2001), and still others have attended to the social geographies of gentrification (Butler and Robson 2001; Butler 2007). The work of Caulfield (1989) and Butler and Robson (2001) illustrates that the processes of gentrification are nearly as diverse as the cities that experience it. Butler and Robson’s (2001) comparison of three Lon-don neighborhoods, in particular, exemplifies signifi-cant differences among locales of gentrification as well as gentrifiers’ socioeconomic backgrounds. Noting this diversity of gentrification, Lees (2000) has argued for a quasi-discipline devoted to the geography of gentrifica-tion, much of which focuses on supergentrification in global or world cities. Consequently, the study of gen-trification and its gentrifiers in cities further down the urban hierarchy or at other points in time is likely to be neglected in this new geography of gentrification. Likewise, research on the largest cities of the global north dominates sexuality research, in which scholars have mapped various gay enclaves, paying close attention to the ways in which sexual minorities ap-propriate, create, or identify with their neighborhoods. Geographers and other scholars of sexuality continue to explore the ways in which sexuality organizes urban space, and many explicitly address the role of sexuality in processes of gentrification. Initially, the work by Levine (1979) or Castells and Murphy (1982) sought to locate and investigate the underpinnings of concen-trations of gay men in certain urban neighborhoods. Additionally, Knopp (1997; see also Lauria and Knopp 1985) has further investigated the role gay men play in urban neighborhoods.While contributing to gentrifica-tion, this territorialization provided an important base for political, cultural, economic, and social formation. Researchers have paid less attention to lesbians’ en-gagement with urban space, more or less conceding to Castells’ presupposition that lesbians are more private or home-centered and, therefore, less involved in processes of gentrification (Castells and Murphy 1982). Rothenberg’s (1995) study of Park Slope illustrates lesbians’ involvement in gentrification and how the neighborhood provides an important site for social for-mation and subsequent visibility. In West Hollywood, Forest (1995) investigated how gay men used media to further a strategy based on an “ethnicity model” to cohere a place-based gay image. Nash (2005) identified a similar minority strategy employed to conceptualize gay and lesbian identity, which activists linked politically and symbolically to Toronto’s gay ghetto. Few studies have investigated wider modes of interdependence and intersectionality in the formation of urban neighborhoods. The lack of intersectionality reflected in most studies would indicate that sexual 168 Schroeder minorities live in discrete nodes and only rarely inter-act or intersect with other social categories, although Podmore (2006) suggested that gay and lesbian neigh-borhoods are more dynamic or fluid and less isolated from other communities than other neighborhoods. This is especially so in light of current shifts in gay and lesbian visibility and status (G. Brown 2004), tenuous as these shifts might be. Gorman-Murray and Waitt (2009) illustrated one of the shifts in the character of queer neighborhoods, that of the “queer-friendly neighborhood.”Most impor-tant, they analyzed the ways in which social cohesion between heterosexual and same-sex attracted persons was fostered and sustained. Social cohesion is not lim-ited to queer-friendly neighborhoods (Butler 2007), but social cohesion in queer-friendly neighborhoods indi-cates little, if any, social conflict. Focusing on issues of homonormative modes of consumption in gay neigh-borhoods, G. Brown (2009) linked the economic and social lives of gay men and lesbians while illustrating the levels of interdependence between and among gay men, lesbians, and others. These studies illustrate an emergence of research on interdependence and intersectionality, and they further suggest the importance of such inquiry to understanding the significance of collective action in shaping neigh-borhood spaces. The dominant foci on queer consump-tion and domesticity, however, occlude the role that various institutions, especially religious institutions, play in the formation of queer neighborhoods. Earlier research by Paris and Anderson (2001) provides an ex-ception through their case study of a Washington, DC, neighborhood. Although they attended to the intersec-tions of religion, sexuality, and neighborhood, they con-clude that the presence of a Metropolitan Community Church, largely composed of sexual minorities, threat-ens to negatively impact the neighborhood at large. Al-though they acknowledge the importance of a spiritual space for those whom most mainstream religions have marginalized, ultimately their concern is how this con-gregation induces gentrification. Consequently, the au-thors render the neighborhood as not socially cohesive, not queer friendly. Because the authors obfuscate ho-mophobia, one assumes perhaps that it is the queers who are unfriendly. At any rate, the study also illustrates in-directly the difficulty of decoupling marginal gentrifiers, or first-phase gentrifiers with moderate incomes (Rose 1984; Caulfield 1989), from processes of gentrification (Smith 1987), especially when marginal groups com-pete against each other for space. Although not named outright, intersectionality weaves throughout these examples of neighborhood transformation. The works suggest scholars must be more attuned to the ways individuals and groups, inhabiting differing so-cial categories, intersect and how this constructs neighborhoods. Locating modes of interdependence, furthermore, can help explicate how some individuals and groups (trans)form neighborhoods through mutual cooperation, even in the face of opposition or tensions. Intersectionality and Interdependence: Sexuality, Religion, and Class In this section, I bring together two concepts, intersectionality and interdependence, to examine how individuals and groups claiming various identities cooperate meaningfully at the neighborhood scale. Geographers and other social scientists attend to the intricacies of various modes of interconnectivity, but geographers have focused less on intersectionality (Valentine 2007) and interdependence (J. Smith, Clark, and Yusoff 2007). Feminist scholars first de-ployed both terms, the former originating in critical race studies with a focus on the complexities of gender and race (Crenshaw 1991). The latter emanated from psychological development theories, focusing on differences between women and men in relation to ethics, morality, and care (Gilligan [1982] 2003). Building on Crenshaw’s initial work, McCall (2005) outlines three frameworks for investigating intersec-tionality: anticategorical, intracategorical, and inter-categorical. An “interest in relationships among groups underlies” (McCall 2005, 1785) all three approaches. All three approaches also recognize that categories are fluid, not fixed. Intercategorical “begins with the observation that there are relationships of inequality among already constituted social groups” (McCall 2005, 1784–85) and “focuses on the complexity of relation-ships among social groups within and across analytical categories” (1786). To concentrate on the complexi-ties of intercategorical intersections, this framework is less concerned with the dynamics within a single group but nonetheless acknowledges the relationship between individual and social groups insofar as it requires clas-sifying individuals into analytic categories. The inter-categorical approach to intersectionality attends to the simultaneity of advantage and disadvantage. As such, this perspective can address Valentine’s (2007) con-cern that researchers have not fully investigated inter-sectionality in relation to “how privileged or powerful identities are ‘done’ and ‘undone’ ” (14). Intersectionality, Interdependence, and Neighborhood Transformation in Toledo, Ohio 169 Geographers have only recently begun to em-ploy theories of intersectionality (Valentine 2007; Valentine and Waite 2011). Like most other scholars researching intersectionality, they have relied on the intracategorical perspectives, examining ways in which social identities and categories intersect on the body and how individuals produce their lived experiences or “identities of the self” (Fernandes 1997, 309). In a recent special issue of Sexualities, geographers and other scholars of sexualities examined the intersections of sexuality and class (Taylor 2011) while acknowledging the relative neglect of such intersections. S. Jackson (2011) highlighted the need for research on sexuality and class to explore classed identities among sexual minorities and how heterosexuality intersects with class and (uneven) class privilege. Theorizing inter-sectionality contributes to understanding the processes through which social categories are produced, although it “has paid scant attention to the significance of space in processes of subject formation” (Valentine 2007, 14). That attention, moreover, has focused on the sites in which intersecting subjectivity is lived or experienced by the individual and less on how intersecting identities and categories construct space—and even less on how groups and individuals representing different social categories and subjectivities intersect to construct space. In one recent exception, Binnie and Skeggs (2004) examined how consumption patterns inManch-ester’s gay commercial scene exclude on the basis of class. Recently, geographers have explored the intersec-tion of sexuality and religion, primarily in what McCall (2005) might call specific points of intersection within a single group—emphasizing individuals’ religious and spiritual practices. For example, Vanderbeck and col-leagues (2011) focused on lesbian and gay Anglicans’ activism over their status within their religion, and Rouhani (2007) has looked at queer Muslim religious activism. Queer Spiritual Spaces (Browne, Munt, and Yip 2010) showcases the ways in which LGBT and queer individuals navigate and negotiate the shifting contours of diverse religions, emphasizing aspects of faith and spirituality more so than direct activism. Although social scientists have given considerable attention to the Christian Right in the United States and its engagements with the state (Sharp 1999; Fetner 2008), Sziarto (2008) pointed out that scholars have paid less attention to more progressive religious orga-nizations and that they often share “progressive stances on issues of gender, sexuality, and economic justice” (410). She examines how religion and associated modes of spirituality intersect and lend legitimacy to labor movements. Conversely, Valentine and Waite (2011) investigated how competing interests within the “equality strands” are managed and negotiated, namely, between religion and sexuality, including het-erosexuality. Importantly, their research demonstrates how individuals from potentially competing groups intersect and navigate everyday spaces to avoid conflict. Valentine and Waite (2011) examined “banal en-counters,” but interdependence offers a lens through which to explore further the ways in which already-constituted social groups, and individuals constituting such groups, interact and intersect. Interdependence involves interactions that rely on mutual care, go-ing beyond everyday friendliness. The term originated in feminist psychological scholarship to identify the “growing comprehension of the dynamic of social in-teractions” (Gilligan [1982] 2003, 74), namely, with concerns about care, ethics, and morality. As Gilligan ([1982] 2003) stated, “This ethics, which reflects a cu-mulative knowledge of human relationships, evolves around a central insight, that self and other are inter-dependent” (74). This framing is particularly apt for in-vestigations of religion and sexuality, as many religious institutions continue to grapple with ethics of caring for sexualminorities and aspects ofmorality therein (Moon 2004). Lately, some geographers have deployed the term interdependence as a way of thinking about social, cultural, and ecological interactions (J. Smith, Clark, and Yusoff 2007). G. Brown (2009) used the term to examine gay men’s alternative economic practices and performances in relation to their spaces of consumption and domesticity. “In mobilizing the term ‘interdepen-dence,’ ” he furthers an understanding of “unexpected social relationships” and interconnections “that engender hope and nurturing” (G. Brown 2009, 1500). Although Blokland (2003) evokes the term in relation to social interactions at the scale of the neighborhood, her examples limit interdependence to quotidian in-teractions between and among neighbors, which does not convey the high level of mutual care demonstrated in Gilligan’s conceptualization of interdependence. Interdependence differs from other terminology re-searchers use to harness various forms of social and spa-tial interconnectivity, such as social/cultural cohesion, social mixing, and social preservation. Governmental agencies in the developed world have promoted social mixing with a goal of social cohesion particularly among differing income groups in a neighborhood, thereby theoretically ameliorating so-called ills associated with 170 Schroeder concentrated poverty (Forrest and Kearns 1999; Lees 2008). Many scholars have critiqued social mixing as merely state-sanctioned gentrification (Lees 2008). Through her empirical research on social mixing, Rose (2004) offers ambiguous findings, echoing Butler and Robson’s (2001) findings that social mixing does not inevitably result in integration or even significant in-teraction. Butler and Lees (2006) suggested that actual social mixing might be more pronounced among early, or pioneer, gentrifiers, whereas Rose provided a typol-ogy of gentrifiers’ (un)willingness to socially mix: “the ignorant/indifferents,” the “Nimbies,” the “tolerants,” and the “egalitarians” (Rose 2004). The latter two share a propinquity to Brown-Saracino’s (2009) conceptual-ization of social preservationists. Brown-Saracino does not ignore the destructive forces of gentrification; in-stead, she analyzes the lived experience of both old and new residents as they seek to preserve a perceived au-thenticity threatened by neighborhood transformation. Even when social mixing induces social co