Queer Exposures: Anti-Gay Violence and the Landscapes of Wyoming

Given Beth Loffreda’s provocative suggestion that Wyoming is a site of struggle between Old West myth and queer permutations of its traditional regional identity, I draw on New West fiction and landscape theory to argue that through this struggle Wyoming’s landscape communicates the potential deadliness of exposure: to Wyoming’s harsh climate and topography, and the dangerous homophobic gaze. Figured paradoxically as an appealing bucolic refuge haunted by anti-gay murder, Wyoming’s landscape cultivates violent resistance to sexual diversity and attempts to foster sustainable communities, but it is also an effective site to examine the conditions that enable such violence.