There and Back Again: Trains to a Queer Emancipation

Abstract

This chapter explores the juxtaposition between queer leisure, travel, and the journeys to get there. It uses an autoethnographic lens exploring the juxtaposition of queer identities and travel. The act of travel, namely trains, involves both anticipation and coming down from delirium while also forging deviant identities. It touches the intersectional nature of deviance, that queer emancipation and assimilation are an intricate balance, and that over the last twenty years the gradual inclusion of queer deviance within the mainstream has complicated questions of queer assimilation.

Travel has always been an essential part of queer, deviant, experiences, and as a trans queer woman trains played a fundamental role in emancipation from heteronormativity. By using an autoethnographic lens this chapter seeks to harness both intensely personal queerness and show that queer deviance is more complex than simple assimilation or exceptionalisation.

The chapter is split into three parts:

• Looking at the Preston/Blackpool/Manchester triangle circa 2000–2007

• London club scene circa 2012–2019

• The empty space left due to Covid