A pair of researchers are targeting straight, largely white women for allegedly invading LGBT "safe spaces" during bachelorette parties in a phenomenon labeled "hetrification."

“Hetrification" is apparently a combination of the terms "heterosexual" and "gentrification." In an op-ed for the Boston Globe, researchers Vincent Jones II and Laurie Essig coin the phrase and specifically target bachelorette parties being a primary driver of "hetrification."

Bachelorette parties are often attracted to queer spaces like gay bars and drag shows and for good reason," the researchers write for The Boston Globe. "These mostly white women are trying to escape their straight world. They don’t want to deal with the male gaze or sexual harassment while they’re trying to dance with their girlfriends. They plan on being very inebriated and are reasonably afraid of sexual assault."

But based on our research in Provincetown, their presence often destroys those spaces for the LGBTQ+ people who created them in the first place. We call this process 'hetrification.' Like gentrification, hetrification occurs when people feel privileged to take over the spaces of others," the researchers explain."

Jones is the director of the Health Promotion Center at York College, and Essig is the director of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Middlebury College. Both claimed to have researched examples of "hetrification" in Provincetown, Massachusetts, an LGBT haven on Cape Code and top destination for bachelorette parties.

The researchers claim to have talked with drag queens who revealed that their "main source" of income is, in fact, bachelorette parties.

"Hetrification, like gentrification, is about money," the researchers say. Just like the "gentrifier" is able to "seduce a seller," the "hetrifier" is also able to buy their way into LGBT spaces, the researchers contend.

Many gay and lesbian spaces were the result of white gentrification of neighborhoods that were primarily Black and Latinx. But hetrificaiton, unlike gentrification, is an appropriation not just of space, but of culture," the researchers claim. "According to our LGBTQ+ interviewees, the women suffer from a 'Will and Grace' complex. They think they can shout Cher lyrics and yell 'Yaaaasssss, Queen!' because they are welcomed into gay culture. Our research shows otherwise."

Bachelorette partygoers interviewed by the researchers, all "college-educated, well-off, and almost exclusively white," were sympathetic to LGBT causes and issues, and many wished to be respectful, according to the researchers.

It’s just after several drinks, many may grab the butt of a cute gay man or take selfies in front of the leather daddies as if they were exhibits in some queer zoo," the researchers say of those bachelorette partiers."

Hetrification "weaponizes heteronormativity," the researchers claim, adding it "breaks down" LGBT spaces. While these bachelorette parties only "temporarily invade" LGBT spaces, researchers say that the frequency of the parties is "incessant" and the behavior and misconduct perpetuated by those straight women "slowly diminishes the integrity of the space."

Some of the partygoers reportedly didn't know if anyone in their group was LGBT, acting stunned by the researcher's questioning, leading the researchers to conclude that, in those groups, "women's queerness was a topic best not broached." Researchers called this abrasion to the questioning and topic "worse than [the bachelorette parties'] post-homophobic homophobia."

To come into queer spaces and actually believe that we live in a post-homophobic world is a kind of hostile occupation," the researchers claim. "Asking bachelorette parties to occupy less space is only a Band-Aid for the toxic masculinity that makes straight party venues uncomfortable and even dangerous."

Like gentrification, we witness a cycle of displacement where those with the least resources are left with nowhere to go," the researchers conclude. "The women are displaced by rape culture and seek refuge in queer spaces, but the queers are faced with tolerating the heterosexual gaze or not showing up at all. We know the end of this story because we know how gentrification works. Follow the money. Hetrification will destroy queer spaces and maybe even queer culture itself."