The conditions of LGBT people in rural areas in the United States encompass a spectrum of experiences, influenced by geographic, cultural, and social contexts. The rural population of the U.S. exists across a wide geographical area, containing within it a broad diversity of cultural constructs and attitudes which in turn influence the varied experiences of rural LGBT people and communities within the United States. Contemporary scholars of the American South and Midwest have written studies and fieldwork on queer life in rural areas, challenging the perceived orthodoxy that rurality is inherently not conducive to queer sexual expression.
Rural queer lifestyle Masculine gender representations operate distinctly for women in rural areas because labor done by members of both sexes may be perceived outside of rural communities as masculine: rural women exhibit features and behavior that may be characterized as masculine, and enjoy acceptance within their rural communities. This masculine dynamic allows for some lesbians to blend in quite easily, where typical female attire can be wearing flannels and cowboy boots. However, deviations in style, such as short hair or wearing ties, can still result in judgment from the woman's surrounding community. Emily Kayzak notes that "the sexual identity of rural butch lesbian women is not invisible in urban lesbian cultures, their more butch gender presentations do not do the same work in rural areas because those gender presentations are also tied to normative (hetero)sexuality". Rural spaces have even been referred to as makings for "lesbian lands". For rural men, on the other hand, "publicly disrupting normative gender expectations arguably remains as, if not more, contentious than homoerotic desires". In many places, as long as a gay man subscribes to masculine representations and activities, such as wearing traditionally masculine attire and working in manual labor, acceptance comes much more easily. Queer individuals in rural areas face discrimination and violence. In small rural areas, perpetrators and victims are typically known to the surrounding community. Even police are known to commit crimes against sexually marginalized people. In contrast, queer urbanites have gained much more acceptance and visibility as a result of gay rights movements and the recognition of the potential of the queer economy. Higher urban acceptance of homosexuality, and urban institution of gay cultural centers (such as gay neighborhoods, bars, and other establishments) have led to an increase of the migration of queer people from rural communities to metropolitan areas. Research on migration patterns between urban and rural areas also challenges a binary view of the two categories as well as the common narrative that queer-identifying individuals 'escape' to the city over the course of their lives. In Coming Out and Coming Back: Rural Gay Migration and the City, authors Meredith Redlin and Alexis Annes find that the migratory flow between urban and rural is not unidirectional, but rather a series of movements over time between the two spaces. Their essay illustrates how queer individuals move within and between rural and urban areas in response to the ways that each space limits and/or enables their identity formation and sexual expression.
Rural queer farmers Rural queer farmers have been studied to complicate ideals such as feminine "labor of the home" and masculine "labor of the field", which mark the conventional standard for gendered agriculture, but expectations of masculinity and femininity do not directly correlate with a particular type of farm practice for queer farmers. Janet Casey's research provides an example of attention to the rural body and material conditions as they relate to predominant images—like "labor, health, childbirth, and childcare" Queer farmers grapple with these assumptions about a female laboring body, but they also grapple with assumptions about the nature-dominating male laboring body. Queer farmers often organize in family structures and labor structures based around community and ambiguous role-definitions. Some queer farmers have taken to growing food in urban environments, so that they can maintain their agricultural practices as well as queer lifestyles. Identity has been identified as an important component to the construction of queer farm life. Gender research on queer rural farmers has considered the role of space in queer identity formation. Berit Brandth, a sociologist and gender labor researcher, argues that attention to "identity and place and to the co-construction of rurality and subjectivity prompted more critical and theoretically informed approaches to the study of rural gender." In the 1970s, women began to move to agricultural communes where they could live and work with other "country women". In these communities, lesbian women built communes where they grew their own food and created societies away from men. They believed that living and working in nature allowed them to embrace their inherent connection with nature. Gay men also partook in similar activities; Bell and Valentine note how the Edward Carpenter Community in England hosts Gay Men's Weeks where they conduct events related to free-spiritedness and the embracement of one's sexuality. Farmers and Friends, a helpline for closeted gay farmers in England, was created to help farmers deal with discrimination and to provide emotional support.
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