Gay village

A gay village (sometimes called a gay ghetto or gay enclave) is usually an urban geographic location with generally recognized boundaries where a large number of gay and lesbian people, as well as bisexuals and transsexuals live. They usually contain a number of gay-oriented establishments, such as gay bars or pubs, nightclubs, bathhouses, restaurants, bookstores, and other businesses.

The "ghetto"

The term ‘ghetto’ is often used to describe gay communities in urban areas, though it is a term that was employed by sociologists to describe a city housing a segregated cultural community, and using this definition, it is not an entirely inappropriate term. Historically, it was a term applicable only to the Jewish community though it has, throughout the twentieth century, been used to describe a variety of groups that mainstream society deemed to be outside of the norm, including poor blacks, gay men and lesbians, and “moral deviants” (such as hobos, prostitutes, and bohemians).

Related Topics:
Ghetto - Sociologists - Jewish - Blacks - Hobo - Prostitute - Bohemian

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It is not surprising that these neighbourhoods often arise from zones of discard—that is, crowded, high density, and often deteriorated inner city districts. Indeed, many of these inner city districts were the only spaces where alternatives to identity and community based on the nuclear family could be constructed. These spaces—and the institutions of which they are comprised—are critical sites where gender and sexual identities coincide and where political discourses constructed and disseminated by an often homophobic heterosexual community create places of marginality.

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