Gay scene , queer grid

Following Michel de Certeau’s theory of spatialising, tactical practices of the everyday, Bryan Reynolds and Joseph Fitzpatrick argue for a distinction between “subjective” and “transversal” kinds of territory. Transversality acts to cut across the gridded lines of hegemonic place which serve to bind intelligible subject positions. If the terms of transversal territory can be applied to the production of queer space as the mobile appropriation of place across and beyond normative bounds, how do we theoretically conceive the urban, gay community-imagined zone known as “the gay scene” in relation to sexual and gender norms? Moreover, as these social and sexual dynamics are increasingly located on websites such as Gaydar, to what extent is the utopian promise of cyberspace fulfilled in activating a queer ethics of identification? Taking evidence from both “scenes”, this paper concludes that Gaydar works to reinstall a normative grid of intelligibility of gendered, sexual and