Urban spaces and their meanings are continually reinvented by daily life and representational practices. Public spaces provide an avenue to analyse the construction and contestation of political and social power in the city. The geography of Montreal's gay men's communities underwent profound changes during the 1980s. The traditional gay areas of the downtown core and the "Red Light" districts have disappeared in favour of a new gay quarter, the Village. This transformation raises questions about the exercise of power in space since the heart of the gay neighbourhood and the downtown area were one in the same. The accumulated symbolism of downtown Montreal was contested and subverted by the growing visibility of sexual minorities. This analysis of urban space reflects a transformation in public discourse that evolved from a tight control of morals, to the confinement of private morality to private spaces, and finally to the constitution of a discourse centered on human rights. A variety of qualitative methods including interviews and documentary sources, such as the community press, have been used to show the political dimension of public space and the manipulation of the symbolic economy allowing the establishment of rights to urban space. / Dominion Square is the spatial focus around which collective and social phenomena have been analysed. The impacts of these phenomena on our collective imaginations have been reconstructed. The transformation of central urban space by modernist architecture and urban functionalism, reconfigured public spaces in the downtown core, along with its definitions, its representations and its control. A mapping of gay geographic imagination shows the importance of sexuality, language, social class, religion and national identities in the development of a sense of belonging in space. It has been shown that gay geographic imagination is necessarily linked to other aspects of identity and diverse manifestations of power. This imagination questioned the privileged representations of hegemonic social values through the practices of daily life, the subversion of the meaning of space and political protest. Police repression showed itself to be only one of the strategies used by the municipal establishment in its censorship practices.

Syftet med uppsatsen är att försöka få en inblick i och förståelse för hur homosexuella män upplever fördomar, möjligheter att vara öppna och möjligheter att stå emot den makt som heteronormativiteten innebär. Studien är kvalitativ med hermaneutiken som vetenskaplig ansats, och jag har genomfört sex djupintervjuer med homosexuella män för att ta reda på hur synen på deras egna platser i tillvaron påverkas av samspelet med den sociala omgivningen. Resultatet visar att homosexualiteten som stigmat består av samt det offentliga samhällets struktur begränsar den homosexuella mannens livsmöjligheter, och hur väl den homosexuella mannen lyckas integreras i samhället beror på hur den sociala kontexten ser ut, men även på vilken relation den homosexuella mannen själv har till homosexualiteten. Ingen av respondenterna upplever dock ett omfattande utanförskap. Vidare visar resultatet att det finns flertalet olika strategier för att hantera sin öppenhet och att dessa varierar beroende på situation, och att männens band till vänner och familj i stor utsträckning inte påverkas negativt av stigmat. / The purpose of this article is by dint of using stigma theory try to get an insight into and understanding of how gay men feel about their place in the social environment. The intention of this paper is to try to get an insight into and an understanding of how gay men experience prejudice, opportunities to be open and opportunities to resist the power that heteronormativity means.The study is qualitative with a hermaneutic scientific approach, and I have conducted six in-depth interviews with gay men to find out how the perception of their own places in life is influenced by the interaction with the social environment. The result shows that the homosexuality that the stigma comes from and the public social structure limits the gay man's life chances, and how well the gay man succeeds in integrating into society depends on the social context, but also on what relationship the gay man himself has to homosexuality. None of the respondents, however, experienced a widespread alienation. Furthermore, the results show that there are several different strategies to deal with openness and that these vary depending on the situation, and that men's relationships to friends and family to a great extent is not adversely affected by the stigma.

Exegesis (MA--Art and Design) -- AUT University, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references. Also held in print (65 leaves : col. ill. ; 30 cm. + 2 discs) in City Campus Collection (T 700.453 WOO)

Thesis (M.A. History)--University of Waikato, 2007. / Title from PDF cover (viewed April 9, 2008) Includes bibliographical references (p. 127-140)

Thesis (M.S.W.)--Smith College School for Social Work, Northampton, Mass., 2007 / Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment for the degree of Master of Social Work. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 91-94).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of California, San Diego, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed July 18, 2008). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Includes bibliographical references (p. 88-94).

Thesis (M. Soc. Sc.)--University of Waikato, 2007. / Title from PDF cover (viewed April 30, 2008). Includes bibliographical references (p. 149-156)

Thesis (M.S.W.)--Smith College School for Social Work, 2008. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 42-44).

Thesis (M.S.)--Texas A&M University, 2003. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Apr. 25, 2006). "Major Subject: Recreation, Park and Tourism Sciences." Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 114-124).

Thesis (M.A.)--West Virginia University, 2004. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 115 p. : ill. (some col.). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 53-60).