MA, Kent State University, 2023, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Sociology and Criminology

Historically, rural America has been branded as a dangerous and unaccepting locale for minority populations, including queer people and people of color. This framing is borne from decades of knowledge production about queer lives that adheres to metro-centric and urban-rural hierarchies presenting metropolitan areas as “gay-friendly” and rural spaces as the opposite, but some research suggests otherwise. Much of the literature on social connectedness and community connectedness among and between lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people seeks to understand how social and community connectedness impact LGBT people's mental health and well-being, but the measurements of social and community connectedness often lack inclusion of the role of geographic location. It is the goal of this research to identify how and if rurality moderates the relationships between LGBT people's feelings of connectedness to the LGBT community across variables such as involvement in LGBT groups, outness, race, and gender identity. Multivariate analysis revealed that being a rural resident had no significant impact on social connectedness, nor did it moderate how involvement in LGBT groups, outness, race, or gender identity impacts individual experiences of connectedness to the LGBT community. This is consistent with a small number of LGBT studies that show that LGBT people in rural space are not necessarily experiencing less social connection to the overall LGBT community and sets a foundation for more research that explores how metronormativity might be obscuring important information that can only be found in rural queer space.

Committee: Carla Goar (Advisor); Tiffany Taylor (Committee Member); Austin Johnson (Committee Member); Susan Fisk (Committee Member) Subjects: Sociology