Blog – LGBTQ2S+ Histories of Violence

December 13, 2022

Hamilton’s Only Gay Bar: An Exploration of the Loss of LGBTQ2SIA+ Spaces in the Steel City

Amanda Ayer and Kellie McCutcheon

From 1969-1989, there were very few areas in Hamilton where the gay and lesbian community could safely and comfortably meet and socialize with each other. Having a space to gather is incredibly important as spaces “allow 2SLGBTQ+ people to meet one another, form connections, and build community” (3). Not to say there were none, but “some men who spend their evenings here have grown disinterested in the local bar scene and don’t want to make a nightly journey to the gay bars and steam baths in Toronto.”¹ In Hamilton, the handful of options of nightclubs, bars, and bathhouses included Club 121, The Warehouse Spa and Bath, The Werx and Billie’s Place (5). None of these establishments are open today.

There isn’t one unified reason why all of these nightclubs, bars and bathhouses closed, and it is not very well documented. Among the list of reasons for their closures are the safety of the patrons, who were threatened when “someone called the Hamilton Spectator threatening to blow up the bar which they referred to using the f****t slur, which resulted in the evacuation of patrons in both Billies and the Windsor” (5). The bathhouses were under incredible scrutiny by law enforcement who once “raided the Warehouse, ticketed several men, charged two others with indecent acts, and collected the information of many others who were there. The owner, Jamie Bursey, stated that because of the police raid, many patrons would not return, so his business is at risk of being shut down as a result. “(5) These acts of violence and discrimination, as well as the overall gentrification of Hamilton’s downtown core, resulted in the closure of these businesses.

December 12, 2022December 13, 2022

No Fats, No Femmes: a Personal & Archival Exploration of the Racist, Femmephobic, and Fatphobic Facets of Gay Culture.

For those unfamiliar with the gay “dating” app, Grindr, think of it as a classic gay cruising spot, but digitized. As with most social platforms, there’s an added hurdle or benefit (depending on who you ask) of anonymity. For those not out to their families, this is part of the appeal; perhaps there is an argument that this could even be seen as a safety precaution. However, for others, anonymity acts as a shield for hateful/predatory behaviour.

My inspiration for writing this blog post comes from my interest in how queer archives operate as evidence of a community’s collective history and ways of knowing and doing. Though much of my work thus far in the archives has provided a rich queer history, much of it has also shown the problematic side of the mainstream queer community–mainstream here refers to white gay men and lesbian women. I am struck by how much of the content in the archives seems to mirror ideologies that I have personally experienced on Grindr.

August 18, 2022December 13, 2022

Imagining Queer Futurities: The ‘Right’ to feel Queer Joy in the Pasts and Presents of Canada

The Legal Reform: May 4^th, 1969

To be free to live in your body and love who and how you wish has been a contentious topic in Canada for a long time. Among those who became marginalized and punished on these grounds were LGBTQ2S+ people in Canada. For a little over the first hundred years of the settler colonial nation-state of Canada, people perceived as queered from the norm in their sexuality and gender were persecuted for simply being alive. It was not until May 4^th, 1969, that homosexuality was decriminalized in Canada through the Criminal Law Amendment Act. Now, while this hard-won legal change meant you couldn’t be imprisoned for certain ‘homosexual acts,’ the fight for the acceptance of people’s right to love and freedom to choose who and how to do so was far from finished. The prejudice that had created the practice of imprisoning people for being queer did not disappear overnight, nor did people gain the right to love freely in Canada. That was a long battle ahead. While many remember the legacies of these moments of resistance through the demonstrations of outrage and anger at the injustice, there is often a less remembered form of resistance that was practiced daily, and it is the right to find joy in your desires. As the reality of the decriminalization of homosexuality set in, queered people across the nation came together to create pockets of acceptance for themselves. This is the future they were fighting for, and in those dance halls, parties, and pubs, it was the embodiment of hope for safer queer futurity that was being expressed – not despite their sexualities/genders but rather in celebration of them.

January 20, 2022June 15, 2023

The Women’s Bookstop and Sites of Queer Relational Resistance

Figure 1. The Women’s Bookstop, The Hamilton and Region Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual,
and Transgender Community’s *PROPHILE Magazine*, vol. 1, no. 1, September 1997.
Michael Johnstone Fonds, Hamilton Public Library Local History and Archives

The Women’s Bookstop, the first and only feminist bookstore in Hamilton, Ontario, opened in 1985 on 333 Main Street West. In the midst of the AIDS epidemic and in the beginning of resistant Queer Nation politics, The Women’s Bookstop offered a new space – outside of mainstream commercialization – for women and queer folks to gather, theorize, and celebrate. Renee Albrecht, the founder of The Women’s Bookstop, defines the early stages of the bookstore as an “explosion of learning” once the shelves and sections began to reflect some of their queer clientele, specifically lesbians and lesbians of colour. Lesbian and queer bookstores, specifically, offered “real and fictional” voices “whose words” could “provide comfort, encouragement, and guidance.”¹ These bookstores were a relative safe haven for queer folks to explore, validate, and justify their identities by reading others’ experiences with gender and sexuality.

If unnoticed walking through the doors, a bookstore can be the perfect place to understand your queerness without “outing” yourself to a wider, perhaps heteronormative, community. Albrecht remembers one queer woman who almost “tiptoed” into the store but eventually gained courage as she saw the entire section dedicated to queer women authors. The Women’s Bookstop was also a social, intimate space, as past employee Cole Gately defines, where “people would come in, they would buy books but really they wouldn’t be buying books. They’d be coming in to try and meet other lesbians.” While books could be the focal point, The Women’s Bookstop was ultimately a place for folks “to feel at home,”² to build communal relations and kinships, and to resist the heteronormative mainstreaming of culture by supporting a small, queer business.

December 3, 2021December 20, 2021

“Operation Jack-O-Lantern”: Community Organizing in Toronto Against Homophobic Violence

On October 31^st 1977, the lesbian and gay community in Toronto organized “Operation Jack-O-Lantern”: patrol teams consisting of community members, lawyers, and first-aiders. These patrols were formed in response to the lack of protection from the Toronto Police on every Halloween, when the gay community was faced with queerbashing and organized homophobic protests.

Protestors would gather across the street of the St. Charles Tavern and hurl insults and eggs at gays celebrating festivities. Operation Jack-O-Lantern was organized by GATE (Gay Alliance Towards Equality) and MCC Toronto. When concerns about Halloween queerbashing was raised with the Toronto Police, the response of the police was advising people to not go out on Halloween night.

November 24, 2021November 24, 2021

The Revolutionary Act of Enjoying Tea and Bannock

The poster you see above is simple yet elegant in many ways. Firstly, the aesthetic is basic – it’s clearly handwritten in marker. The text is a little slanted, the illustrated Thunderbird at the top slightly askance. It’s in black and white – straight to the point. Here is the thing we are doing, here is when and where it is, here is who is hosting it.

But there’s something a little deeper to it than just the look. This poster is an invitation to a “Tea and Bannock” social gathering hosted by an Indigenous-run LGBTQ+ group local to Tkaron:to (Toronto). Tea and bannock – a simple but inviting menu. Tea is almost ubiquitous all over the world. People have been boiling leaves in water for many centuries, even as far back as 2700 BC, as legend tells. Bannock, on the contrary, is a food specific to Indigenous people of Turtle Island (North America). It came here from elsewhere, but many Indigenous people agree that bannock is an Indigenous food. In concert, however, these two edible items construe a different meaning that reflects the nature of Indigenous gatherings and the idea that community and activism don’t always have to involve grandeur and festivity. Sometimes, you can get together with your queer Native friends and just have some tea and bread, and that’s all you need.

August 25, 2021August 25, 2021

Utopia is Somewhere Else

Scott Symons (Photographed by John McConnell, Scott’s lover)

Reza Baraheni (from the Archive of The Institute for Cultural Research and Studies)

Being multi-faceted, violence is hard to define and distinguish. Sometimes it is overt like raid, confiscation and beating; sometimes it is subtle, covert and soft. Some consider an experience as violent, while others understand that very experience in a different way. Here is a story of two novelists and their books. One has experienced violence with his soul, psyche and his skin and flesh, and the other experienced it in the form of a restless mind in a more subtle way.

Reza Baraheni and Scott Symons were born almost in the same year, and both wrote their first novels in the same period. One wrote one of Canada’s first homosexual novels, and the other authored the first modern Iranian novel with homosexual themes and references. They had similar political concerns and were engaged in similar literary activities besides story writing. Both have gained a prominent reputation in their society’s intellectual circles, although they were finally forced to abandon their homelands.

February 20, 2021March 1, 2021

Radical Erotics: Lesberado Productions’ 1987 Lesbian Erotic Show in Vancouver

I first came across the poster for Lesberado Productions’ lesbian erotic show in Vancouver 1987 while searching the ArQuives collection. I was taken immediately by the woman in the illustration; her hair wild, the shades, leather bodice unzipped. However, my research to find more archival material regarding the show was a short-lived venture: I found only two brief reviews from Angles, a Vancouver-based gay and lesbian magazine.

I almost abandoned this research, thinking that I was analyzing an event that was too small to be significant. After all, it was not a protest, police raid, or any form of violent suppression against queer life. Rather, it seemed like a fun night, the type to elicit pleasure and joy. Is this why I did not see it as important? Was I giving into the idea that grief is “the proper ticket into historical consciousness” (Freeman 59)? How deeply have I held the belief that the work of pleasure was secondary to the work of grief? Audre Lorde would argue for the erotic as an “open and fearless underlining of [one’s] capacity for joy” (89). Doesn’t queer joy deserve a podium in queer history?

When considered against such a vast landscape of pain, what is one night of queer pleasure?

I assert: It’s everything.

December 7, 2020December 8, 2020

Community, Joy, and Collective Resistance Through Dance: The Gay Community Dance Committee Presents…

On Saturday February 5, 1983, the Gay Community Dance Committee (GCDC) held “Soap: A Remembrance of the 1981 Bath Raids” (Jennex and Eswaran 187). Exactly two years earlier, on February 5, 1981, the Toronto police raided four bathhouses in what was called “Operation Soap.” Over 300 men were arrested in the raids, with 286 charged for being found in a common bawdy house and 20 for operating a bawdy house.

Canada Refuses to Acknowledge State Violence, We Refuse to Forget

*1981 Bathhouse Raids, Toronto.* *Photo by Frank Lennon, Toronto Star File Photo*.

In a time where the Canadian government loudly proclaims its tolerance and acceptance of 2SLGBTQ+ people, it can be hard for those of us who didn’t live through these raids to understand the hatred and malice expressed towards queer people by the state. Canada has a shining image to keep up—the government and patriotic public don’t want us to remember the state-sanctioned violence performed against queer people (or to recognize ongoing violences, for that matter). The “Equality Dollar” was rolled out in 2019, marking 50 years since homosexuality had been decriminalized in Canada (Jennex and Eswaran 231). This celebration of decriminalization ignored the fact that the men arrested in the 1981 bathhouse raids were charged with being found in a common bawdy house, a bawdy house being a place “kept for the purposes of prostitution or for the practice of acts of indecency” (Jennex and Eswaran 158). With no incidents of sex work found in these raids, we’re left to assume that consensual sex between adult men was still considered an indecent act over a decade after “decriminalization.”

Add this onto the pile of reasons we must remember—not only remember the violence, but also queer resistance.

May 2, 2019May 3, 2019

I Enjoy Being An Activist: Lesbian Protest in Canadian History

“I have heard that I was courageous. In retrospect, and in the present, it has always been an issue of basic survival – physical, emotional and spiritual. Maintaining one’s own integrity and a desire to positively influence the present societal circumstances in which I find myself and others.” – Pat Murphy (Pat Murphy, Toronto, 2000)