Out but unseen: queer life beyond the city

Beyond Australian cities, people feel the strain of living in communities where queer inclusion is limited. Courtney Black reports.

Walking through the green landscape of her rural town, a proud queer woman holds her partner’s hand, but as soon as she hears a neighbour call out her name, she lets go.

Dr Cliff Lewis heard this story while researching rural and regional LGBTIQA+ identities at Charles Sturt University, and as a member of this community, he understands it all too well.

“This is a person who is ‘out’, but she is still concerned about being ‘outed’… in rural and regional areas, the moment you have a public, stigmatised identity, that’s all you’re known for,” Lewis says.

‘She did it because she’s a lesbian’, ‘he got the job because he’s gay’. These identities can be tarnishing; they can really hurt, he says.

A rainbow Pride ffag ffies in front of a rural landscape. Photo: Courtney Black.

Lewis’s 2024 study on rural identity concealment finds that historical prejudice in rural areas stigmatises queer identities, leading openly LGBTIQA+ people to conceal their identity.

In Gippsland, regional Victoria, almost 60 per cent of queer people are ‘out’ but only 30 per cent feel welcomed and safe sharing their identity, according to a 2023 report.

“We want to be part of this community and sometimes the only way we have agency to do that is by hiding our authentic self… [then] we have agency to not be a victim … to not make others uncomfortable,” Lewis says.

Queer adults who live in areas beyond the city feel significantly lower levels of acceptance, according to the largest Australian LGBTIQA+ study, Private Lives 3 (PL3).

“In the city… there are diverse expressions of LGBTIQA+ identities… you’re suddenly not bound by people watching… you can be anyone you want to be,” Lewis says.

Lewis says queer people get advised to “go to the city and live [their] gay best life”, but what they hear is, “you can’t be yourself here, go to the city, you don’t belong".

“The beauty of rural and regional living is that everyone is family. [We] don’t want to lose that connection… [or] become a talking point… so we’re mindful about not being too flamboyant, too camp, too whatever,” Lewis says.

“I’ve even heard stories about people who would abuse others who were openly gay while they were gay themselves because that helped them fit in… [it’s] twisted, but it’s normal.”

Lewis says identity concealment has a significant negative impact on queer people’s psychological wellbeing.

“We do what it takes to fit in, even if it’s at the cost of our mental health. We don’t have time to just be ourselves and breathe,” Lewis says.

According to the largest Victorian study on LGBTIQA+ healthcare, queer adults in rural areas are twice as likely to experience high mental distress as their non-queer neighbours.

La Trobe University researcher Dr Ruby Grant explores LGBTIQA+ wellbeing across different residential areas and finds that for queer adults, mental health doesn’t just worsen the further out they live.

“Mental health and wellbeing are the best in the inner suburbs … they’re decent in regional and rural areas… it’s actually in the outer suburbs where we see this real spike,” Grant says.

Grant’s study of PL3 data finds that LGBTIQA+ adults in outer suburbs consistently report the highest levels of mental distress and suicidal ideation of any residential location.

We often focus on how hard it is to be queer in the country, but that’s not the only story, she says.

Grant says queer people may move to suburbia when it’s the only area they can afford, leaving behind a safer, more inclusive environment.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics reflects this migration to suburbia, showing more people moving out of inner Melbourne and into outer Victoria.

Grant calls queer people’s experiences of settling in suburbia “unhomeliness”, as they struggle to fit within its “nuclear family project”.

“[Suburbia] stands for this sort of normal life… a white picket fence… a great place to raise kids, but it can actually be quite haunting, or isolating… [especially] for LGBTIQA+ people,” Grant says.

La Trobe LGBTQIA+ researcher Ruby Grant. Photo: Courtney Black

For young queer people, mental health fares worse in rural areas, not suburbs. They also report consistently higher rates of distress than adults, according to La Trobe’s 2020 Writing Themselves In 4 (WTI4) study.

“It’s likely because of a lack of parental or family support… especially in close-knit communities… it’s really upsetting,” Grant says.

Merrin Wake, who works with queer youth across Victoria, says increased stigma and discrimination contribute to their greater mental distress.

“These young people grow up knowing or thinking that their identity is a shameful thing, something to hide or something to joke about… that’s why we see skyrocketing mental health [issues],” she says.

An analysis of WTI4 finds that rural and regional queer youth are also the most likely to experience homelessness.

Grant says young people from rural areas often become homeless because they come out to their parents, who don’t support them.

“It’s concerning because we don’t see housing support for young people in those areas,” she says.

According to the 2020 Queer Out Here report, four in five rural and regional queer youth feel unsupported by their community.

Wake says community support improves mental health outcomes for young people in rural and regional areas.

“If they do have the support, no discrimination and access to healthcare … those [mental distress] statistics just fall away,” she says.

“But healthcare is more than just medical… it’s finding a safe place, it’s getting a binder if they want to, it’s getting a haircut… and a lot of them have to travel quite far to find that,” she says.

Wake says she used to travel with her transgender son to the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne for his gender-affirming care, but now that he’s an adult, they are struggling to find care elsewhere.

“It’s people who have the knowledge and skills that are going to keep him safe to continue his affirming care. If there’s someone [with that] in these small towns, they’re usually booked out,” she says.

Ruby Grant says healthcare is limited for anyone in rural and regional areas, but particularly for queer people.

Training and education on LGBTIQA+ inclusion for healthcare practitioners is not prioritised, she says.

According to a 2024 BioMed Central study, almost 90 per cent of Australian medical students do not learn LGBTIQA+-specific healthcare.

Even as a leading queer identity researcher, Cliff Lewis says he hesitates to bring up his sexuality with rural and regional health practitioners.

“I’ve gone to regional clinics for sexual health checks… and more often than not they won’t ask me if I’m gay… do I tell the doctor that? If I tell him, is he going to be comfortable?” Lewis says.

“One of the most fundamental pillars of our society, the medical system, cannot get it right,” he says.

Lewis says rural and regional LGBTIQA+ pride events make sexual health testing visible and accessible to queer people.

“This is actually the first time a lot of people have been tested, although they’re participating in unsafe sex… they just haven’t been exposed to the normalcy of it,” he says.

Grant says LGBTIQA+ events also provide community connection that protects against queer mental distress.

PL3 affirms this for adults, as queer people who value and have been involved in LGBTIQA+ activities report lower mental distress.

“Lots of us have been told that we’re unnatural, that we don’t belong… people creating families and communities in certain places is a real pushback against that,” Grant says.

The director of the regional 2025 Bendigo Pride Festival, Em Ireland, says she’s proud of how over 2,500 people attended.

“We’re all feeling in the modern climate the pinch of time, money, mental health issues, so I brought it into one fabulous weekend for everyone… it [was] like getting the family together,” Ireland says.

“The youth event filled our hearts the most… it was a gift to the youth of Bendigo… it was just magical,” she says.

WTI4 finds that rural queer youth have the lowest LGBTIQA+ event attendance.

“There are a lot of youth in regional towns who don’t get to be their authentic self. The more we empower and give them safe spaces to connect and be together, the better it is for our future,” Ireland says.

Grant says communities should come together across all residential locations to support and include LGBTIQA+ people.

“It’s important for queer people to know that wherever they are, they have a right to be included, and they have a right to belong,” she says.