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Many years ago when I should have been working on a musicology MLitt thesis, I happened to pick up a copy of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's book Epistemology of the Closet and read it through, enjoying it very much.  Basically, Sedgwick argued a systemic view of homosocial desire that recognises it as universal rather than simply something for a minority.  This theme is regularly picked up in popular media, from jokes about rugby players to films (a good example is threads of sexuality in that wonderful film American Beauty).  Sedgwick saw this as a result of separatism (not especially political either).

I have always found this an interesting view, moving away from sexuality as a binary choice to a series of different sensations, emotions, desires, experiences and visualisations. The ghettoisation of sexuality is something which clearly conflicts with a large proportion of fluid sexual beings such as bisexuals, swingers, polyamorous etc, which you inevitably encounter in large numbers in any "space" which is known or believed to be "gay friendly."  Yet this group are hugely marginalised, especially in the hugely regressive and oppressive womens communities, where organisational structures and even language are designed to marginalise politically unfavourable positions and people.  There is a particular fear within the womens community of categorising niche desire categories like there exists in the mens community - for example in bears, BDSM, uniform, practice communities  - I suspect which is a deliberate effort to retain the reins of power in community groups which inevitably have a strong degree of power over even commercial events where women go.  The main consequence of this has been the sanitization and desexualizing of womens events - the "bad wedding" model we've been all so familiar with - poor music, poor locations, often hardly any punters.

I notice that as commercial interests drven by wealthy girls with megalomania intent on branding the scenes for themselves continue to spread worldwide - like the Club Skirts and Girlbar "Dinahs", the L-Word, the Candy Bar brand, and burgeoning circuit events, this rapidly falls apart.  The almost immediate impact is that the sex comes back into sexuality, in the form of cage dancers, strippers, go-go girls, sauna nights and play parties - interestingly, mostly aimed at an "executive" audience, often deliberately priced so as to exclude lower income women.  In fact one London based promoter of one of these events recently quite openly described their high pricing as a deliberate means to exclude "chavs."  Inevitably the knives came out rapidly as the harpies descended upon this affront on the essential "diversity" of the womens community, but in reality it reaffirmed the "superiority" of the working class, butch, separtist feminist dyke over the "exclusive" pro model.  The reason I suspect, is the real fear of the massive disempowerment this is likely to have for the more traditionally social disadvanted of the womens communities.

A very good example of where this has already happened is in two of the larger gay friendly cities in the world - LA and Sydney.  The really very best events are priced well beyond the reach of low income attendees, and are often criticised as a deterrent to "keep out" the lower social rungs.  But the effects, particularly in Sydney, are astounding - a whole different kind of attendee emerges - one that doesn't bother normally with the scene, one that is often an "identity tourist" and increasingly, hungry for more of the same.  As a long time scene goer my first (and admittedly prejudiced) reaction was "but these are not gay people."  What I had managed to continuously forget over the previous 10 years was the deep marginalisation of considerable numbers of women and men from the gay "community" by the action of well-intended community groups who went out of their way to cater for very "niche" groups - the "hard" cases, rather than by trying to reach a wider demographic.  This has led to massive levels of marginalisation in the previously ghettoised communities that is now widely recognised by those who now realise there is a hugely lucrative "market" previously ignored doe to ghettoization.  This brings into play a conflict between traditional community based events and newer commercial events and businesses which cater to a wealthy, though argueably not powerful demographic who are less differentiated from the hetero community.  Sedgwick would have been proud.

To a large extent, this really is the ultimate break through of the narrowing effect referred to by Sedgwick, and a move back towards a more broad demographic.  This has reached massive knee-jerks within many traditional communities, most of whom have had their complaints muted by the fact that the "new money" in the gay family is now subsidising their institutions.  Indeed faced with massive cutbacks in funding due to the global slump many organisations are either dying or being forced to cater to more commercial tastes.  This ultimately means being forced to appeal to a broader environment than the group was previously comfortable with.  This may lose the support of polarised stakeholders who are unhappy with the changes.  However in the long term it offers the broadest involvement with the community, the greatest support, and catering for a broad church rather than a narrow and unrepresentative of minority who fall within the consensus group.