Re-Analysing the Geographical Metaphor of the Closet throughTrans Experiences of Public Space
Milan Bonté, Senior Lecturer at Lille University, ULR TVES (France), Associate Researcher at UMR Géographie-cités (France) proposes in an article published in ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies to employ the well-known metaphor of the closet, prevalent in both lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) popular cultures and in the geography of sexualities, as a prism through which to interpret the experiences of transgender individuals in everyday public spaces.
By juxtaposing quantitative findings from two questionnaire-based surveys conducted in France and the United Kingdom with results from an ethnographic investigation into the daily practices of transgender people in public spaces across Paris, Rennes (France), and London (UK), the article argues for the closet to be viewed as both a methodological and a conceptual tool. Despite the challenges posed by the closet metaphor’s spatially contradictory range of implications, which defy simple cartographic representation, the closet metaphor facilitates the conceptualisation of the spatial dimensions of transphobia when applied to transgender lived experiences.
Using geovisualisations based on the participants’ life stories, the article highlights the coexistence within the trans closet of forms of rejection or avoidance, which can jointly exclude or confine, sometimes in the same place. The movements of exclusion and confinement inherent in the trans closet emerge as potent forces that limit access to space, impacts amplified by the intersection of multiple forms of discrimination.
“The specificities of facework for trans people in public spaces contribute to a general fatigue which makes them feel safer in places that are controlled, private and where they are alone or with people close to them. We can assume, as trans Marxists have shown (Raha 2021), that the importance of this emotional work is amplified in the experience of trans women and ‘femme’ queer and trans people of colour. For the majority of the participants, the difficulties of facework lead them to stay in their homes or even in their private rooms. I maintain that this movement of enclosure is one of the spatial manifestations of the trans closet.”
Milan Bonté
The closet in the everyday life of Ludo, 18, high school student, Ecouen (northern suburb of Paris) © Milan Bonté
