#pride to

Friday Reads: June 23, 2017

This weeks #fridayreads is all about pride, and celebrating all things LGBTQ. Check out what our office is reading to show their pride colours, and maybe you’ll find your next diverse read. 

Andrea, Digital Associate: This week’s read is actually a re-read. I first read The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo while it was still in manuscript form, but I love this book so much that I wanted to read it again once it was properly published (who can resist a cover with gold foil embossing?). I have read very few books where a character feels as real and tangible as Evelyn Hugo (you’ll find yourself wanting to google her name). She’s fierce, ambitious, sexy and independent; I especially love the fact that she refuses to be labeled based on her sexual preferences and doesn’t let her numerous husbands define her. Seven Husbands is a glamorous and heart-wrenching read. I highly recommend it!   

Alexandra, Marketing Assistant: This week I’ve been kicking back with Becky Albertalli’s Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, a YA coming-of-age novel that follows Simon Spier, a 16-year-old gay teenager. Still firmly in the closet, Simon is trying to navigate his way through the ups and downs of high school. Simon vs. delivers on so many levels: a diverse cast of characters, a love story that makes the teenage heart inside me go pitter-patter, and a protagonist that is all too relatable–and that justifies my eternal love of Oreos. 

Jordyn, Sales Representative: My favourite romance writers have come together once more to write Autoboyography, a teen novel coming out in September 2017. Tanner Scott has just moved to Utah with his family, in addition to being back in the closet at his new school, he’s also falling for Sebastian who is helping him write a book for a class. This book touches on so many timely topics including bisexuality, religion, morality, and the struggles of being an LGBTQ teen in a conservative school. Christina Lauren always manages to cover so many topics without sounding preachy, and this teen romance will definitely pull at your heart strings.

[Continuation from my last post regarding BLM at Pride Toronto]

Its roots going back to the Stonewall Riots, in 1969, where the community pushed back against discriminatory police raids that targeted LGBT gathering places. Violence ensued for days. It was the first time that the community banded together and fought back. Activist groups formed and the community banded together. On the anniversary of the riots, several cities organized marches in solidarity, which later became annual Pride marches.

So what's wrong with bringing politics, sit-ins, and peaceful protests to commemorate a riot? Whether or not you support Black Lives Matter's demands, I hope you did not think they were a 'disruption to the celebrations'. Pride has always had political roots. In the recent years, Pride has become more and more about corporate advertisements than a true display of a minority community standing up together and voicing their dissent. For the queer community, it has been a time to give a big 'fuck you' to a hateful world by displaying our love (hence, the celebrations). It is NOT just an excuse for people to just 'come and party'. By inviting BLM as part of Pride, Pride TO gave them a spot for their voices to be heard as part of the protest. BLM decided that enough was enough and protested Pride itself, which I thought was a little fucked up and funny at the same time. In my opionion, their demands could have been changed to achieve their goals better, such as making clear they wanted the police organization to address LGBTQ issues or apologize for the bathhouse raids before marching in the parade. Individual police officers should be able to march on their own time, with banners or flags but not in uniform, until organizational issues are addressed.

The police have no place in the Pride parades of the nation. This is a hotly contested proposition ever since Black Lives Matter brought Toronto's Pride parade to a halt to draw attention to the racism within LGBTQ communities and to demand no more police presence in the parade.

As someone who teaches the history of sexuality in Canada, I've been especially interested to watch how activists and their detractors have mobilized two competing versions of the queer history of policing in Canada. What are they, and who's really got history on their side?

Those who argue for allowing the police -- and, like BLMTO, I'm referring to police organizations, not individual queer police officers -- to participate in Pride is that it somehow creates better understanding and improved police relations with queer communities. They point to the supposed improvement in policing, particularly since the 1981 Toronto bathhouse raids and the massive pushback against police they inspired.

But I don't see it. Such an "it gets better" understanding of Canada's queer past is not supported by the historical evidence. Here is a very partial list of police actions against queer communities after 1981:

1987-1992/3: Police lay obscenity charges against queer publications, from the The Joy of Gay Sex to the lesbian magazine Bad Attitude, and the bookstores that sell the material, from Toronto's Glad Day to Little Sister's in Vancouver.

1990: Montreal police bust the Sex Garage, a popular queer party, and arrest 48 people in the subsequent protest.

1994/1995: Julian Fantino's fabricated kiddie-porn panic in London, Ontario results in over 500 charges.

1996: Police raid Remington's, a Toronto gay strip club, and lay charges against 19 staff, dancers, and customers

1999: Police raid the Bijoux, a gay porn bar in Toronto, and 19 patrons are arrested for committing "indecent acts."

April 2000: Police visit the Barn and lay charges against members of Totally Naked Toronto, a men's nudist group.

Sept 2000: Police raid the Pussy Palace, a women's night at the Club Baths.

November 2000: Police visit the Toolbox, an S/M bar, and lay charges related to liquor license infractions during a naked-night party.

Dec 2002: Police raid Goliath's, a bathhouse in Calgary, arresting 15 men.

Aug 2004: Police raid the Warehouse, Hamilton's bathhouse, and arrest two men for committing "indecent acts."

And the list goes on. What it reveals is that in the decades following Trudeau's 1969 decriminalization of homosexuality, which allowed for a limited legal zone of toleration -- keep it in the privacy of your bedroom, be over 21, and make sure there are only two of you present -- what we've seen is an ongoing policing of queer sex in the so-called public sphere: bars, bookstores, backrooms and bathhouses.

Those who argue for the inclusion of police forces as Pride participants ignore how policing tends to target those whose sex lives fall outside Trudeau's charmed circle of privatized, monogamous homosexuality, as the above list makes abundantly clear. I'm talking about the sex workers, the porn users, the bathhouse frequenters, the sex-party goers, the nudists, the strippers. And we should note how the most marginalized and policed of these folks -- sex workers, for instance -- are often people of colour and transgendered.

Yet this history hasn't figured in the current debate over Pride and policing. It's as if many queer people in Canada, perhaps especially white queer people, have forgotten even their most recent past. It's why during their demonstration BLMTO shouted out to remind us that "We fought for you. We threw bricks for you. We got locked up for you. We made Pride political....Don't you ever forget your queer histories. Don't you ever forget who made this possible."

There is no historical evidence to support the notion that inviting the police to "sit with us" (Pride's thoroughly anodyne slogan) creates better policing. Such a belief is based on the idea that the problem is simply one of ignorance and bad attitudes among the police, and that if we just let them join the parade, they'll be educated and sensitized and ultimately nicer to us.

But this is not about an individual's attitudes. It's about an institution with systemic practices, past and present. Then as now, the only thing that has forced change in police practice is the collective resistance of queer communities -- just like we witnessed with Black Lives Matter at Pride.