The Gay Pastoral in QL
“In the city, your main reference point is people.
You tend to think that everything that’s holding you back or moving you forward had something to do with other people.
When you make your living dealing with the cycles of nature
You know that there are other reference points outside human society
and that you can’t control everything.
One of the fundamental characteristics of farming [and rural life] is that it deals with living, growing things and with the cycles of nature.
The lack of human diversity in the social experiences of many of these boys appears to have been offset to some extent by their rich experience of the diversity of the nonhuman world.
The often subconscious message that many of them seemed to get from observing the inherent variability in animals and plants, both on the farm and in the wild
Was that being different was unusual, sometimes strange, but very much a part of life nonetheless.”
— from Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest by Will Fellows
