Queering the Map
Theoretical
Reflections on
Spatial Methods
Jen Jack Gieseking
American Studies
Trinity College
jgieseking.org
@jgieseking

What the map cuts up, the story cuts across.
- Michel de Certeau (YR)
What stories cut up, the maps cut across.
- Jen Jack Gieseking (2015)
@jgieseking

…“scientificity” between mixed datasets, including qualitative and
quantitative data, when placing them in conversation.
…choosing tools for digital humanities (DH) and/or social data sciences
(SDS) project by working in conversation across multiple platforms.
Queer
In(ter)ventions
…multiple intelligences of data collection and analysis to afford more
expression in conversations with participants.
Holding tension between…
@jgieseking

An Introduction: Mapping, Queer and Otherwise
I: Mental Mapping
II: GIS & Spatial Statistics
III: GeoWeb / Interactive GIS Online
Discussion: Queer Interventions in Mapping
Case: Lesbian-Queer New York
Methods & Analytics:
An
Outline
@jgieseking

An Introduction to Theories of Mapping,
Queer and Otherwise

>> Gardner’s Frames Of Mind: The
Theory Of Multiple Intelligences (1993)
From Hayden (1997): “Cognitive maps of Los Angeles as
perceived by predominantly Anglo American residents of
Westwood” from the LA Dept of Planning 1971
Spatial
Cognition
• Tolman’s “Cognitive Maps in Rats & Men” (1948)
• Lynch’s The Image of the City (1960)
• Wood’s Power of Maps (1992)
Mental mapping as the representation of a individual
or group’s cognitive map through hand sketching or
computer-based design, including information,
emotions, and ideas associated with them, whether
real and/or imagined. -Gieseking (2013)

Critical
GIS
• The reproduction of political, social, and economic inequalities through
spatial information technologies and the practices associated with them
• Related to and/or inclusive of conversations regarding geodata, spatial
temporal modeling, participatory GIS, feminist GIS, mapping 2.0,
neogeography, volunteered GIS
@jgieseking

Queer
Geography
• Successful and imperfect maps that “attempt” to represent unrepresentable
(Brown & Knopp 2008 “Queering the Map”)
• Social, political, and economic limits on what women can say and show
(Women’s Ways of Knowing 1986; Bagheri 2014)
• Beyond “antinormativity” (Weigman & Wilson 2016) > hold binaries in tension
examples: global v. local >> intimate imbricated in global (Pratt & Rosner
2012); queer in/stability of history making (Gieseking 2015)
Images: © Green Monkey, LHA, Vanity Fair, Tattooinque

Case: from Living in an (In)Visible World to
Queer New York

• 1979 “ghettos” --> 1983
“neighborhoods”
• Gays linked to patterns of
gentrification
• LGBTQ people are most often
associated with places such as bars,
neighborhoods, and cities
• Consistent claim to territoriality and
publics as pathway to LGBTQ
liberation
Urban Geographies of
Sexualities
Castells (1983)
@jgieseking

• “Invisible”
• Possess less capital and power
than men / rent longer and buy
later heightens dispossession
• Associated with a narrative of fear
of the city and fear of public space
• Lesbian neighborhoods are more
identified as “spatial
concentrations” LesbianHerstoryArchives.org. 2012.
Urban Geographies of
Women
@jgieseking

1983-2008
NYC
Images: © Levine Roberts, Keith Haring, n/a, GO, gonyc.gov

• 47 self-identified lesbians & queer women
came out between 1983-2008, 1/3 women of color, 1/2
from NYC
Alison Bechdel 1987
Methods
• 22 group interviews
mixed-methods: within & across generation interviews, mental
maps, artifact sharing
• Archival research (Lesbian Herstory Archives)
382 organizational records, 25 years of publications

• Participatory online focus group
1/3 of participants, all generations
• Group Interviews, Mental Maps, Artifacts,
Thematic top-down, bottom-up coding
• Archival Research
Thematic coding, statistical analyses, critical GIS
• Mixed Analytics
Trace summary & individual stories across data, compare/ contrast
across datasets > reiterate, reiterate, reiterate the tension
Methods &
Analytics
Image: © Shutterstock
We too often obscure knowledge production by highlighting methods alone

Neighborhoods
Bars
City
& Bodies
What do contemporary lesbians’ and queer women’s
everyday, urban spaces say about their history and culture?

Methods & Analytics I: Mental Mapping &
Across Generation Group Interviews

Lesbian-Queer
Neighborhoods
Desi ‘91’s Map Sally ‘95’s Map
@jgieseking

Lesbian-Queer
Neighborhoods & Places
…it’s funny—I almost never go to Park Slope. I feel like it’s not a lesbian
neighborhood [in 2008]. …my girlfriend’s aunt lived there in the ‘70s and
when we moved there in 1989 she was like, “Oh! It’s not a lesbian
neighborhood anymore! All of the Columbus Avenue [implying wealthy,
predominantly White elite] people have moved in.” …we [lesbians and queer
women] all talk about Park Slope as this sort of Shangri-La of lesbian safety.
…all of the like institutions, like, The Rising [Café and Bar]—they’ve
disappeared. [Pause.] But, I guess it doesn’t really matter I suppose because
if people feel like something’s a lesbian neighborhood then by dint of their
believing it, it is. - Sarah ‘85
Images: © New York

I don’t go [to Manhattan] anymore. …
Brooklyn is really busy. Ginger’s [Bar] is
sort of at the center…and I have lesbians
radiating out from Ginger’s [makes
starburst motions with hands], ‘cause,
you know, that’s kind of how I saw
Brooklyn.
But…it’s not like, “Oh I go home to my
queer neighborhood.” Like, we don’t
have that. …it’s like we’re constantly
moving in and out of queer and straight
and lesbians spaces and mostly we’re in
kind of, like [sighs]…spaces that are
heteronormative or whatever you want to
call it. So I wouldn’t say I really have a
queer community. And I felt like it’s kind
of failing on my part. - Sally ‘95
Lesbian-Queer
City

Lesbians and queer women’s spaces are less territorial and instead
fragmented and fleeting.
Lesbians and queer women carry their spaces in and on the body.
I call these productions of lesbian-queer spaces constellations.
The processes and practices underlying the production of
constellations inform my new research of the Queer Public Archive.
Queer New York
Queer New York:
Geographies of Lesbians, Dykes, and Queer Women, 1983-2008

Methods & Analytics II: GIS & Spatial Statistics

Color = Participant Year of Coming Out
Red = Cassie ’83 (Latina, middle class, from NYC)
Blue = Susan ’92 (white, middle class)
Green = Sally ’96 (white, upper-middle class)
Brown = Shawn ’98 (black, middle class, from NYC)
Purple = Holly ’03 (white, working-middle class)
Orange = Beth ’06 (white, working-middle class)
MANHATTAN
QUEENS
BROOKLYN
West
Village
East
Village
Park
Slope
Bed-
Stuy
Central Park
WilliamsburgChelsea
Lesbian-Queer
Gentrification
@jgieseking

60000
65000
70000
75000
80000
85000
90000
95000
100000
105000
1983
1985
1987
1989
1991
1993
1995
1997
1999
2001
2003
2005
2007
Couple'Male*
Male'
Couple'
Female*Male'
Couple'
Female*Female'
F(3) = 433; p > .001, R2 = .946
$13,392 +/- per couple type
US Median Annual Earnings by Type of Couple
$13,392 +/- per couple type
Source data: Hegewisch, et al. (2011), Institute for Research on Women
Lesbian-Queer
Economies

Lesbian-Queer
Activisms

Range of
GIS Tools
Level of difficulty
Google
Maps
Non-proprietaryre:access/controlofdata
CartoDB MapBox
OSM
ArcGIS
QGIS
Note: colors just to make more readable

QGIS
Is…
•Quantum GIS @ qgis.org
•F/OSS is free & open source software - accessible by and for public
•Fills gap between ArcGIS and GMaps
•Free and smart GIS practicum: http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/geoportal/
practicum/ ℅ Frank Donnelly - taught in six 1.5 hour classes
@jgieseking

QGIS: Mapping
Whiteness
1980 2010

QGIS:
Bachelors+
1980 2010

Opaque is
Being Polite
• Spatial statistics, stats, and data
visualizations, et al., can…fail
you
• On the left: regression analyses
between census property values
and number of lesbian-queer
places per tract reveals
“groupings”
• For more, see http://
jgieseking.org/opaque-is-being-
polite/
@jgieseking

Methods & Analytics III:
GeoWeb / Interactive GIS Online

Mapbox
Is…
•Mapbox Studio (was TileMill) can be found at mapbox.com
•F/OSS is free & open source software with pay as you go storage
•Interactive geoweb tech - fills gap btw QGIS & GMaps
•Heavy design component in CartoCSS & code for participatory qualities
•Training: TileMill’s “Crashcourse” in one day + learn CSS as you go

Queer Public Archive
at WorkLesbian Herstory
Archives

Queer Public Archive
at Work
1983 1998
@jgieseking

Discussion: Queer Inventions, Intentions, &
Interventions in Mapping

…“scientificity” between mixed datasets, including qualitative and
quantitative data, when placing them in conversation.
…choosing tools for digital humanities (DH) and/or social data sciences
(SDS) project by working in conversation across multiple platforms.
Queer
Inte(rve)ntions
…multiple intelligences of data collection and analysis to afford more
expression in conversations with participants.
Holding tension between…
@jgieseking

Friendships between 7,188
users of the Facebook group
“Queer Exchange” over one
year. 2013.
Relationships between one
users’ 1,512 friends on
Facebook. 2013.
Moment of
Big Data

Friendships between 7,188
users of the Facebook group
“Queer Exchange” over one
year. 2013.
Relationships between one
users’ 1,512 friends on
Facebook. 2013.
Moment of
Big Data

Friendships between 7,188
users of the Facebook group
“Queer Exchange” over one
year. 2013.
Relationships between one
users’ 1,512 friends on
Facebook. 2013.
Moment of
Big Data

Seeing Our
Voices

Geography as More
than GIS
Geography reveals and is revealed by history, culture,
political economy, and so on.

…“scientificity” between mixed datasets, including qualitative and
quantitative data, when placing them in conversation.
…choosing tools for digital humanities (DH) and/or social data sciences
(SDS) project by working in conversation across multiple platforms.
Queer
Interventions
…multiple intelligences of data collection and analysis to afford more
expression in conversations with participants.
Holding tension between…
@jgieseking

What the map cuts up, the story cuts across.
- Michel de Certeau (YR)
What stories cut up, the maps cut across.
- Jen Jack Gieseking (2015)
@jgieseking

Questions & comments:
@jgieseking
jgieseking.org
peopleplacespace.org
jack.gieseking@trincoll.edu
All papers available on jgieseking.org/publications.
Thank you.