Much of the body of literature on LGBT+ populations within the United States place urban areas and so-called gayborhoods as goals and eventualities, paralleling early US studies on immigration. Using a multistage, mixed-methods approach, consisting of secondary analysis of the Pew 2013 Study of LGBT Persons (N = 1197) and in-depth interviews (35 gay men, 2 trans-identifying individuals, 1 heterosexual woman, and 2 lesbians), we found that rural LGBT+ residents engaged in both short-term and long-term travel to mitigate feelings of being spatially segregated from the loci of gay social life—what Ghaziani (2019a) refers to as cultural archipelagos. However, rural residents also used their geographical location to resist dominant narratives about LGBT+ life. Some of our respondents felt that living in rural areas better situated them to be activists and advocates for LGBT+ rights, while others simply did not feel they could be comfortable within more urban contexts. These findings suggest that rural LGBT+ residents may have delinked their sexual selves with their cultural and political selves, thus illustrating the plurality of rural queer voices that exists. As we also argue, while residence category should be considered as influencing one’s experience, care must be used to avoid overly deterministic accounts. Finally, this article extends earlier work by Brekhus (2003), Mattson (2015), and Ghaziani (2019a) by presenting the meaningfulness of travel to and from queer cultural strongholds.

在美国，有关LGBT +人口的许多文献都将城市地区和所谓的同性恋者作为目标和最终目标，与美国早期的移民研究相提并论。使用多阶段，混合方法的方法，包括对Pew 2013 LGBT人群研究的第二次分析（N= 1197）和深入访谈（35名男同性恋者，2名具有变性身份的人，1名异性恋女性和2名女同性恋者），我们发现农村LGBT +居民从事短期和长期旅行，以减轻他们的被造感。在空间上与同性恋社会生活的场所隔离开来-Ghaziani（2019a）称其为文化群岛。但是，农村居民还利用自己的地理位置来抵制有关LGBT +生活的主流叙述。我们的一些受访者认为，生活在农村地区更适合成为LGBT +权利的积极分子和倡导者，而另一些受访者则根本感觉不到他们在更多城市环境中会感到自在。这些发现表明，农村LGBT +居民可能已将其性自我与文化和政治自我脱钩，从而说明了存在的多种乡村奇异的声音。正如我们还指出的那样，虽然应将居住类别视为影响个人经历的因素，但必须谨慎行事，避免过分确定性的描述。最后，本文通过介绍往返于酷儿文化据点的意义，扩展了Brekhus（2003），Mattson（2015）和Ghaziani（2019a）的早期工作。