Queering Edgework

Abstract

Drawing on evocative autoethnographic accounts of cruising for sex in public, this article examines the cruising subculture within gay culture as a voluntary risk-taking leisure activity and thereby a form of edgework. Moreover, this article seeks to push the theoretical conceptualization of edgework beyond the gendered interpretations associated with the theory by using queer theory to re-examine the order/chaos binary along the heterosexual/homosexual edge of sexual identity. By queering edgework, cruising becomes a voluntary risk-taking leisure activity that both shatters and reifies sexual identity along this heterosexual/homosexual edge.