Anyone who’s spent much time in Provincetown, especially in the summertime, has seen them. High spirited groups of young women in bachelorette drag whopping it up and down Commercial Street and attending the actual drag shows with great enthusiasm. For some, they’re just part of the merriment; but for others, especially in the gayest of gay spaces, these groups can feel like a straight guerrilla takeover.
Two researchers—Vincent Jones II, assistant professor of community health and director of the Health Promotion Center at York College (CUNY), and Laurie Essig, professor and director of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Middlebury College in Vermont, liken this “hetrification” of gay spaces to gentrification, where ‘people feel ‘privileged to take over spaces of others,'” as the Boston Globe recently reported.
Reports Boston.com:
Jones and Essig pointed to their research in Provincetown to illustrate how bachelorette parties, made up mostly by white women “trying to escape their straight world” and avoid male harassment during their celebrations, are often drawn to queer spaces, such as gay bars and drag shows. Drag queens told the researchers that bachelorette parties are their main source of income, with fewer members of the LGBTQ+ community attending the shows.
“Just as a gentrifier is able to exercise their financial prowess to seduce a seller, a hetrifier is likewise able to buy space in a queer venue,” the researchers said. “Many gay and lesbian spaces were the result of white gentrification of neighborhoods that were primarily Black and Latinx. But hetrificaiton, unlike gentrification, is an appropriation not just of space, but of culture. According to our LGBTQ+ interviewees, the women suffer from a ‘Will and Grace’ complex. They think they can shout Cher lyrics and yell ‘Yaaaasssss, Queen!’ because they are welcomed into gay culture. Our research shows otherwise.”
Even though the bachelorette party-goers only temporarily “invade” the spaces that were not created for them, the researchers said through the “incessant” visits, “hetrification weaponizes heteronormativity and breaks down queer spaces.”
The researchers said none of the bridal parties interviewed in P-town knew they were “hetrifiers.”
“The bachelorettes — all college-educated, well-off, and almost exclusively white — understood how hard the fight for gay rights is, and wanted to be respectful,” the researchers said. “It’s just after several drinks, many may grab the butt of a cute gay man or take selfies in front of the leather daddies as if they were exhibits in some queer zoo. Many of the bridal party participants believed that homophobia (they never discussed transphobia) was a thing of the past, something older generations had to deal with, but now that there was gay marriage, it just wasn’t a problem.”
Read the complete Boston Globe article here.
Not a subscriber? Sign up today for a free subscription to Boston Spirit magazine, New England’s premier LGBT magazine. We will send you a copy of Boston Spirit 6 times per year and we never sell/rent our subscriber information. Click HERE to sign up!
