"Be Nice to My Shadow": Queer Negotiation of Privacy and Visibility in Kentucky

Abstract

L e x L a w s o n ’ s m o t h e r wa s w o r r i e d about what other people thought about her child growing up in Berea, Kentucky, in the 1980s. Lex, who is genderqueer, recalls their mother encouraging them to publicly conform to the feminine gender norms that aligned with Lawson’s assigned sex at birth to avoid discrimination from their community when Lex was a teen. Lawson resisted, continuing to wear the clothes that fit their punk aesthetic and their gender identity, eventually moving to Louisville and then to California, which, they note, their mother appreciated because “the grapevine is a lot further” from Louisville or California to Berea, minimizing the amount of information about Lawson that could get back to Berea.1 While Lawson’s story is not an uncommon example of queer teenage rebellion, it demonstrates how they remember negotiating the boundaries of visibility while keeping their sexuality and gender identity private to ensure their personal well-being and to comply with their mother’s desire to fit into their small town. Though everyone—straight or otherwise— must find a balance of privacy and visibility in their lives as Lawson did, that balance has been especially crucial for queer people, whose lives and livelihoods could (and still can) be endangered by unwanted disclosure of private information. In this article, I examine how some queer people and organizations in Kentucky balanced the desire to publicly share their sexuality or gender