Final Thoughts

Is it always true that small pockets of culture within nature are highly sexualized areas that encourage gendered behaviour? Do big cities present gender and sexuality in a more authoritarian manner or does it allow more freedom for expression? Does the presence of water in the landscape change how people interact within the city? My search has uncovered many differences of Saskatoon, New York, Banff and Thunder Bay that seem to show an influence of environment to the presence of gender and sexuality of the identities.

As I state earlier, I believe this study is biased in it’s explorations but I also believe it represents a true relationship between place and identity that I was seeking when I began this project. The landscape and weather will influence how people exist, comparing Thunder Bay’s accessible waterways to Saskatoon’s guarded waterfront, the construction of the architecture changes things as well, whether the architecture is escapable like Thunder Bays forays or confining like New York’s invisible wall at the shore, preventing interaction with nature.

All of the differences in the cities, whether natural or human made, influence how the social body interacts in a gendered and sexual manner. The subtle influences such as access to swimming areas changes how most people display their body in the public space. There must be a much larger trend within the cities that I did not access that causes further differences in gender performance and expression of sexuality.

The commonalities between the cities presents to me another big question. Why the Western gendered uniform? Why does gender present itself differently in clothes so consistently, even to those who don’t believe in the binary? How does culture influence what I experienced?

These differences and influences both get over looked by most identities traveling through, despite being participants in the gender and sexual construction of the cities. How does the transient nature of a city add influence to the existing structure? My search of the gender and sexual construction in these cities has only opened up questions about the influences I have seen; I look forward to continuing my search of influence wherever I go and will definitely be on the search while in Halifax delivering my presentation of this project.