Wild Abandon:
A Documentation of Wyoming Lesbians

By Katy Morris, 2011
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Wild Abandon is sixty-minute documentary film that showcasing the complexities of rural lesbian history. I interviewed women in their late fifties and early sixties who have been in the Wyoming area since at least 1980. In the documentary, we explored stories of identity, love, isolation, place, relationships, feminism, gay rights, homophobia, and Western culture. Above all, the project looks at how women have chosen to stay in their rural homes and forge lesbian lives in the Rocky Mountain West. It is a project about unexpected communities, everyday love, and the struggles and freedoms of being a lesbian in the most rural state in the country.

Katy Morris is a fourth-generation Wyomingite and a graduate of Smith College where she majored in the study of women and gender with a concentration in race and culture. She studies the history of sexuality in the United States with a particular focus in sexual geographies and rural spaces. As a displaced country girl, Katy is interested in understanding the intersection of lesbian and rural Westerner identities. For the past few years, she has been traveling around Wyoming interviewing lesbians in their 50s and 60s about their experiences of love and hardship in the Cowboy State. While at OHMA, she continued her research on Wyoming lesbian history and produced a 40-minute documentary featuring the stories she has collected.