Honky Tonk Angels

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Informed by feminist theory and critiques of masculinity, this narrative ethnography focuses on how gay men come to understand and negotiate the meaning of masculinity in a country- western gay bar. Gay bars, specifically designed to wall out straights, remain a central social institution and leisure context for a number of gay men. To understand the space as a leisure context, this project thoroughly documents the bar’s relationship to the community, its physical location, design, decor and ambiance, its inhabitants, its historical existence, and how it varies according to different nights of the week. Moving beyond this description I also focus on the social practices of dance, dress, patterns of migration, and competing discourses about Lesbian Night. These factors elucidate how organized social space can allow non-heterosexuals to both resist and reinforce compulsory heterosexuality and hegemonic gender ideologies in and through leisure.