Spatial Transversals: Gender, Race, Class, and Tourism in Cape Town, South Africa.

This paper examines the circulation of gay capital within gay and lesbian tourism in Cape Town, South Africa. Using participant observation of a gay shebeen tour as an example, I describe new forms of gay and lesbian tourist-activism emerging in Cape Town and analyze their impact on the racialized spatial economy of gay leisure space. Taking the complicity with capitalism inherent in tourism for granted, I demonstrate that capitalist impulses mediated by activist motivations can create radical, even anti-colonial, social moments and argue that in the context of South Africa it is particularly noteworthy that emerging forms of "queer capitalist tourism" are disrupting class and racial boundaries in ways not accomplished through the political activism that resulted in the inclusion of constitutional protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation. Amid increasingly visible and violent homophobia, queer capitalist tourism is making important contributions to building a grassroots movement that can unite the previously fragmented gay and lesbian communities in South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]