| Abstract: | The Australian home is a crucial site for both normalising and contesting acceptable modes of sexual identity, desire and behaviour. Social norms and government policies have imbricated the detached suburban dwelling with the heterosexual nuclear family form, consequently heterosexualising the ideal Australian home. But this discourse is simultaneously challenged by the domestic practices of gay men and lesbians, who use their homes to consolidate gay/lesbian identities, relationships and communities. As such, they unsettle the normative heterosexuality underpinning dominant, ideal conceptions of home. In this paper I present four vignettes which illustrate how some gay men and lesbians queer the ideal Australian home, generating domestic spaces which affirm sexual difference. In doing so, I highlight two key ways in which this process of ‘queering home’ works. First, through certain uses of home—activities taking place within domestic space. Second, through changes to the materiality of domestic space itself wrought by some homemaking practices, effectively embedding gay/lesbian identities and relationships within the physical environment of the home. |
