IN Magazine: March/April 2021

CELEBRATING CANADA’S LGBTQ2

LIFESTYLE

MARCH / APRIL 2021

QUEER JOY HUNTING VIVEK SHRAYA HAS TURNED HER ONE-WOMAN PLAY INTO A BOOK CAN WE STOP WITH THE COVID JUDGING? 5 THINGS TO CONSIDER BEFORE CASTING A STRAIGHT ACTOR TO PLAY GAY 1

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make more exciting, lively, or attractive.

MARCH / APRIL 2021

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HIV changed my life.

I changed my perspective.

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inmagazine.ca PUBLISHER Patricia Salib GUEST EDITOR Christopher Turner ART DIRECTOR Georges Sarkis COPY EDITOR Ruth Hanley SENIOR COLUMNISTS Paul Gallant, Jumol Royes CONTRIBUTORS Tristan Coolman, Colin Druhan, Aram Eginliyan, Adriana Ermter, Sojourner Francis, Steven Greenwood, Bianca Guzzo, Karen Kwan, Paul Langill, Dean Lobo, Janine Maral, Ivan Otis, Emilia Schmidt, Fredsonn Silva Aguda, Doug Wallace, Casey Williams, Jaime Woo, Adam Zivo DIRECTOR OF MARKETING AND SPONSORSHIPS Bradley Blaylock CONTROLLER Jackie Zhao

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MARCH / APRIL 2021

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COVER ILLUSTRATION: GEORGES SARKIS

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CONTENTS

99 Issue 99 March / April 2021 INFRONT

06 | COMING CLEAN ABOUT GREEN BEAUTY AND GROOMING PRODUCTS (and organic and natural and botanical and eco-friendly and…)

08 | RAINBOW CROSSWALKS ARE MORE THAN SYMBOLS The (sometimes controversial) crosswalks provide an important message about inclusive values 10 | CONSIDER THESE STEPS TO GET YOUR CAR BACK IN SHAPE FOR SPRING Here’s our eight-step guide to getting your ride ready for spring 11 | THE PROGRESS PROJECT IS CHANGING LIVES Helping healthcare providers help HIVpositive patients 12 | DRINK LESS Expert advice on how to cut back on alcohol 13 | REXALL’S COMMITMENT TO INCLUSION AND DIVERSITY Caring for Canadians’ health…one person at a time 14 | MARSHA AIZUMI’S CO-WRITTEN MEMOIR OF ACCEPTANCE HAS BEEN REPUBLISHED An epilogue has been added to Two Spirits, One Heart, to chronicle the years following the book’s release

Ayatollah Abbas Tabrizian, a cleric from the Iranian city of Qom, has warned his followers not to get the COVID-19 vaccine, or go near those who’ve received it, because it turns people gay.

15 | THE 519: AN ARMY OF LOVERS THAT NEVER STOPS Through COVID-19, Toronto’s The 519 has been advocating for and responding to the most urgent needs of LGBTQ2S communities FEATURES 16 | THE IMPORTANCE OF PARENTAL SUPPORT DURING THESE CHALLENGING TIMES Pflag’s York Region president talks about the importance of the organization to LGBTQ families during the COVID-19 pandemic 18 | VIVEK SHRAYA HAS TURNED HER ONE-WOMAN PLAY INTO A BOOK The Canadian LGBTQ icon talks about her just-released theatre book, the future of live performances and her ultimate pop star 20 | FALLING IN LOVE ON A GIRLS’ HOCKEY TEAM Remember that feeling of falling in love for the first time 22 | A CAUSE FOR CELEBRATION Celebrating is a radical act that reminds queer Black folks how far we’ve come and the future we’re still fighting for 24 | QUEER JOY HUNTING Have you been longing for queer joy throughout the pandemic? You’re not alone 26 | PLEASE, NOT ANOTHER LESBIAN PERIOD DRAMA The lesbian period drama is currently Hollywood’s favourite way to tell sapphic love stories on screen. What’s with that?

28 | SHOULD STRAIGHT ACTORS STILL PLAY GAY CHARACTERS? Well…it’s complicated. Here are five things to consider 44 | HOW LGBTQ FOREIGN POLICY SPURRED A NEW COLD WAR The conundrum of “traditional values” politics 46 | COVID JUDGING Getting over getting “over it” 48 | TIME TO PLAN UP When all the pent-up stay-at-home angst finally lets loose, boy, look out. These travel trends are here to stay 52 | FLASHBACK: APRIL 10, 2012 IN LGBTQ HISTORY Miss Universe Pageant ends ban on transgender contestants FASHION 30 | FIELDS OF TULLE In 2021, masculinity is no longer about how macho a man can be but how honest he can be with accepting the feminine in his life 34 | TOUCH ME Meet Natalie Cuda and Yael Malkin THIS ISSUE OF IN MAGAZINE IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY

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LOOKING GOOD

COMING CLEAN

ABOUT GREEN BEAUTY A N D G RO O M I N G P RO D U C T S

(and organic and natural and botanical and eco-friendly and…)

By Adriana Ermter

Clean. It’s the buzzy cosmetics category and shopping label applied to lotions, shaving items, deodorants, makeup, shampoos and other products deemed healthy and safe to apply from head to toe. Yet, never has a five-letter word been so simultaneously popular and confusing. With many definitions, connotations and interpretations within the $60 billion beauty and grooming industry, it’s easy to wonder: what does clean actually mean?

MARCH / APRIL 2021

“It’s a catch-all term that can refer to a broad range of approaches for skincare brands,” explains Bill Baker, the president and founder of Consonant Skin+Care, a natural skincare company based in Toronto. “Formulations of green beauty brands can be everything from 100 per cent natural to not very natural at all, but clean. The problem with these descriptors in the beauty industry is that none of the terms are regulated. Each brand determines if their products are clean or natural or green, and that puts the burden on consumers to really understand how to read packaging so they know exactly what they’re buying.”

[women’s consumer] publications like US Vogue. That’s when the idea of all-natural, luxury lines started to take over the beauty space.”

Pioneers like 100-year-old Weleda, 50-year-old Dr. Hauschka, 40-year-old Neal Yard Remedies and 26-year-old Lush brands, which had previously owned the once small and under-tapped botanical, natural and organic skincare space, were suddenly being joined by handfuls of new, clean, indie brands. And their numbers increased with each passing year.

In 2019, the clean beauty and grooming category hit an all-time high with, according to the US-based market research firm NPD Group, a 39 per cent growth in the industry, earning approximately $22 billion per year. Current favourites like Tata Harper, goop, Drunk Elephant, Tatcha, SheaMoisture, Ilia Beauty, Bulldog and Province Apothecary, to name a few, are often credited with this seemingly overnight explosion. Their presence and domination on Instagram with its e-commerce sales has transformed them into household names, each one boasting upwards of five- to six-digit followers and counting, despite an ever-fluctuating market.

In the 1950s and ’60s, understanding what you were buying was fairly straightforward. Products such as Cheer laundry detergent, “Social media has helped level the playing field for these smaller Pepsodent toothpaste and Brillo Soap Pads used ‘clean’ as a literal indie brands, giving them the means to reach a larger audience,” descriptor in conjunction with the product’s function: to create affirms Bilodeau, an audience made primarily of Millennials and a pristine, spotless outcome. Advertisements, while sometimes Generations Z and Alpha. Renowned for their belief in purposeful goofy, typically left no room for interpretation courtesy of clear product consumption, this demographic – as noted by global messaging like, “Tide’s got what women want! No soap – no other digital measurement and engagement platform Khoros – is the ‘suds’ – no other washing product known – will get your wash as largest consumer of Instagram complete with its click-and-buy clean as Tide!” Or how about Spic and Span’s promise to make capabilities. Of the one million people worldwide consuming “Spring cleaning magic!” while Kolynos Dental Cream “Cleans Instagram each month, 51 per cent are women, 67 per cent are in between.” ages 18 to 29, 47 per cent are ages 30 to 49, and 60 per cent of each household has an annual income of US$100,000 per year.

During the early ’70s, however, the meaning behind a product being called clean shifted. No longer simply aligned with hygiene and homecare or even the hippy-dippy, patchouli-rich creams and fragrances favoured in the ’60s, clean was getting an upgrade. For example, bigwig beauty brand CoverGirl, with their “Clean Make-up” line of foundations and powders, defined clean as interchangeable with healthy, natural and fresh-looking skin, and they ran print ads featuring clear-complexioned models Lotte Dessau, Daniela and Cybill Shepherd to validate these claims. And just like that, the label stuck and a new marketing category for subsequent feel-good, do-good beauty products was born.

“Green or clean beauty has always been around – most people can remember looking at all-natural skincare and makeup at the health food store,” affirms Michelle Bilodeau, a writer, editor, and creator and curator of The Eco Edit.com on Instagram. “But the current wave of green/clean beauty started just over 10 years ago, when Tata Harper founded her namesake line and was featured in major 6

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YOUR GO-TO GLOSSARY

Lending a helping hand is Cruelty Free International with its universally recognized, third-party, gold-standard certification the Leaping Bunny seal. Beauty and grooming products that are awarded this approval must submit to a thorough, corporate audit of their internal standards and protocols inclusive of their supply chains and product ingredient lists. Other helpers are retailers like Beautycounter, Follain and The Detox Market, which are trying to create better clarity by publishing “dirty” or “hot” ingredient lists on their e-commerce sites, while the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) and Health Canada both showcase their prohibited and restricted choices on their corporate websites and in literature, as well.

However, according to Treehugger (a global, eco-driven hub for more than 120 million readers annually), nearly 90 per cent of the 11,000 cosmetic and skincare ingredients recognized by the FDA have not been evaluated for safe usage, with 1,300 of these ingredients named on Europe’s blacklist. So at the end of the day, no one list of ingredients is uniform, and all have the ability to leave consumers assuming the confused emoji position with their hands up and shoulders shrugged.

Organic: While the Canada Organic Regime requires mandatory certification to the Canadian Organic Standards for food to be labeled as organic, there is no current regulation for cosmetics. Currently, all lotions, lipstick and other cosmetics branding themselves as organic are operating under the good-faith policy and are, ideally, made of ingredients that are 100 per cent organic. These ingredients are typically grown without the use of genetically modified organisms, herbicides and synthetic fertilizers.

Natural: A product that is made of 100 per cent natural/ organic ingredients. “Some brands will hover close to 100 per cent and will say they’re 96 per cent natural, for example, with no synthetic chemicals or preservatives,” says Bilodeau.

Botanical: “Botanical is just a fancy way to say the product has plant-based ingredients in its formulation,” says Bilodeau.

Clean: A product that may use chemical ingredients but stays away from some of the big toxins, such as parabens, phthalates, sulfates, petroleum, etc., and any variation thereof.

Green: This is a broad term that can encompass any of the above terms.

ADRIANA ERMTER is a Toronto-based, lifestyle-magazine pro who has travelled the globe writing about must-spritz fragrances, child poverty, beauty and grooming.

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LOOKING GOOD

“These consumers are actually interested in purchasing products that “Different countries have their standards for cosmetics and natural work,” adds Bilodeau. “So with people purchasing in this category, health product regulation,” explains Gaillard. “For Health Canada, that means big conventional brands are now paying attention to all products must be registered and approved for sale either as a what consumers want: products with cleaner ingredients and more cosmetic or natural health product, and Health Canada reviews sustainable packaging.” ingredients and packaging to ensure they’re compliant for sale.

Unfortunately, many unsafe ingredients can still be found in Not to be left behind, powerhouse brands like Revlon, Kiehl’s beauty and personal care products, as there is little government and L’Oréal are upping their ante by adding freshly mix-mastered oversight. Synthetic fragrances, phthalates, parabens and other clean options to their existing skincare, body, haircare and shaving harmful ingredients can be avoided, but you have to make sure pillars, while seeking and creating sustainable packaging options. to do due diligence.”

Big-box retailers Amazon and Walmart have also stepped up with their eponymous, clean skincare lines, while Sephora has been And yet, despite (or possibly because of) the vast array of reading stamping an in-house seal of approval on some of the products they materials available to consumers online, at retailers, through sell based on the individual brand’s refusal to include some or all of government communications and beyond, clean is not going to a blacklist of 50-plus potentially toxic and/or banned ingredients. become a clear-cut category or descriptor any time soon. To believe or become a believer of clean benefits remains an individual choice.

Smaller retailers, like The Detox Market (in Los Angeles, New “We don’t know what we don’t know,” says Bilodeau. “It will York and Toronto), are also gaining notoriety in the clean game take years to know if these products and ingredients have had a by dedicating their shelf space solely to items with formulations detrimental effect on our bodies or not.” For those concerned with containing non-toxic ingredients and showing transparency in their what they are rubbing onto their bodies, Bilodeau recommends labelling. “We only offer products with pure, beneficial ingredients,” playing it safe and integrating organic or green products into their affirms Romain Gaillard, founder of The Detox Market. “Our teams daily regimes despite the current lack of information. Because of experts review thousands of products to ensure their safety and sometimes, “just knowing you’ve switched over [to products that efficacy. We review ingredient labels, test formulas and ask brand may be healthier for you] can certainly help. Or [try to use clean] founders hard questions.” products that cover the biggest surface area of the skin, like lotions and body washes. Most importantly, know that green and organic Yet some of these questions remain unanswered. A face serum beauty products are now leaps and bounds ahead of what we had containing one drop of a plant-based essential oil such as lavender 10 years ago. They work just as well as contemporary cosmetics or rose, for example, can be deemed botanical, while a night cream and beauty products.” can be classified as organic yet list a not-organic moisture-carrying agent like propylene glycol on its label. Furthermore, one retailer may highlight a product as clean, while another may not. In any of these circumstances, it can be challenging to know who is right. “The biggest challenge for brands now is breaking through this clutter and noise in the green space,” says Consonant’s Baker.

“Independent beauty is hot right now, and every brand that comes to market these days is either green or clean or natural. So brands “There are many different varieties within the clean and green have to answer the question, how is my green skin care better than categories,” says Bilodeau. “But generally speaking, here their green skin care?” is what they look like.”

PRIDE AT WORK MARCH / APRIL 2021

RAINBOW CROSSWALKS ARE MORE THAN SYMBOLS The (sometimes controversial) crosswalks provide an important message about inclusive values

By Colin Druhan

When I was in high school in the ’90s, I didn’t have any social media platforms on which I could share my views with others, because social media did not yet exist. However, I did have a few spaces where I could let people know who I was and what I stood for. For instance, my backpack was covered in pins to show which bands I liked and to make it clear that I wanted to “smash fascism” (I still do, by the way). One day, I got a one-inch button with a Rainbow Flag on it from a record store. It took me weeks to muster the courage to finally put it on my bag. I was out to some people, but this type of queer visibility felt like a huge step forward for me…until I realized that not many people in my school knew what the Rainbow Flag represented. What I had thought of as an act of radical queerness fell completely flat because there was no familiarity with the symbol I was using.

Now rainbow stuff is everywhere. It’s on T-shirts, ATMs and beer cans, especially around Pride. It’s becoming a permanent fixture in an increasing number of municipalities in the form of Rainbow Crosswalks. Like many of the most well-known symbols of our communities’ movements (Pride parades and the Rainbow Flag itself) that have been embraced by the dominant (i.e., cis, hetero) culture, the history of Rainbow Crosswalks is rooted in activism 8

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against state-sponsored oppression of queer people. For a while they were used to indicate a high concentration of queer-owned businesses. Now they are everywhere, often with the intention to show how inclusive and welcoming a community is of queer and trans people.

Great progress, right? Then why are there just as many news stories about their defacement as there are about their institution?

Chase Blodgett is a Yukon-based activist. He is the founder and president of All Genders Yukon Society, an organization that provides services to trans, two-spirit, nonbinary and questioning people and their primary supports. Blodgett has lived in Yukon for 10 years, but it took him two years to meet other queer folks in the territory because there weren’t always ways for people to connect: “Back then, we didn’t have any LGBTQ2S+ spaces. Now Queer Yukon Society exists, All Genders Yukon Society exists.”

Blodgett sees symbols like Rainbow Crosswalks as an incredibly important part of a broader strategy to bring queer and trans people together. “Someone who was to move here tomorrow wouldn’t have as hard a time connecting with the community now. Putting in those symbols was a big part of that.”

According to a recent Government of Canada Community Health Survey, almost six in 10 sexual minority Canadians (people who identify their orientation as something other than straight) said they had been sexually or physically assaulted at some point since age 15, and one in 10 said they had been assaulted in the past year. In the same time period, one in three experienced unwanted comments while in public. It would be irresponsible not to state that these metrics only get worse when other personal characteristics, such as race or religion, are factored in. Violence against trans and gender expansive people is consistently described as an epidemic, with Black trans women comprising almost 70 per cent of all victims of fatal transphobic violence.

It is understandable if the idea of Rainbow Crosswalks is familiar to you but these statistics are not. They are not cited in very many articles about Rainbow Crosswalks – none of the hundreds of articles from outlets across Canada and the US that I’ve read in the past few years has mentioned them or any similar information. Many pieces mention the cost associated with painting the crosswalks and how some people view them as an abuse of public funds. One or two concerned citizens often suggest Rainbow Crosswalks may pose a safety hazard (there is a hefty body of evidence to show they pose no threat). Then there are many, many articles that report the vandalization of Rainbow Crosswalks. Those usually include quotes from locals who are incredulous that such an act could happen in this day and age – Blodgett’s comment to CKRW could be considered an anomaly. Lots of talk about skid marks on some paint, not so much on the trauma endured by the human beings those symbols are meant to represent.

“A lot of people in the media say they are informed by public opinion.

Well, they can also shape it,” says Debbie Owusu-Akyeeah, executive director of the Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity (CCGSD). She says the media’s tendency to focus on individual acts of property damage ignores the bigger, more complicated threats to the personal safety and well-being of queer and trans people. This has the potential to give the public a skewed idea of the security concerns held by queer and trans people across the country. “The media does a phenomenal job of forcing public opinion to look at oppression against LGBT people as individual actions and not as decades, centuries of ongoing discrimination that is related to racism and colonialism.”

In the 2020 Conservative Party of Canada leadership race, some candidates announced that, if victorious, they would be the first Conservative Party leader to march in a Pride Parade. Noticeably absent from these statements were intentions or proposed measures to improve outcomes for queer and trans people in Canada, who experience significant barriers in employment, housing, social services and health care. Politicians who do not swiftly and decisively approve or support Rainbow Crosswalks are often maligned in the press by colleagues who have styled themselves as more progressive.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, these conversations tend to focus on the politicians themselves and not on the communities they allege to serve. “We need to challenge the fact that politicians can use what has been a symbol of resistance to win votes and then not follow it up with legislative change,” says Owusu-Akyeeah.

Rainbow Crosswalks should provide a backdrop for transformational change, not stand in for it. Blodgett says that when gender identity and gender expression were added as protected grounds to the Yukon Human Rights Act, territorial lawmakers were photographed on Whitehorse’s permanent Trans Pride Flag Crosswalk, the first of its kind in Canada. “The MLAs [Members of the Legislative Assembly] responsible got their photo taken on that crosswalk to make the announcement,” he says, adding, “That’s some good press. It’s essential. It’s important.”

Queer Yukon Society and All Genders Yukon Society are currently collaborating to open a Pride centre. After years of volunteer work, they have hired an executive director to work full-time on getting it off the ground. Such an institution will undoubtedly increase the number of connections between queer and trans people in the region, resulting in better social, health and employment outcomes.

However symbolic, a Rainbow Crosswalk on its own didn’t get the community to this point: hard-working community members did.

The crosswalk just provided a colourful way to get there.

Symbols like the Rainbow Flag are really important to me because I remember a time when they weren’t so common. A few years after my backpack pin fiasco, I went to see a guidance counsellor about being bullied for being queer. He had a rainbow sticker on his door, indicating that he had done some kind of allyship training.

His suggestion was that I try not talking about being queer anymore.

He said if I wasn’t “so obvious about it,” that might help with the bullying. I suggested he put that rainbow sticker somewhere other than his door. Regardless of this experience, my Rainbow Flag pin helped me find more people like me before the internet turbocharged our ability to connect with each other.

Now that rainbow stuff is ubiquitous and it’s easier for queer people to find each other online, I’m eager to see what the next generation does with symbols like Rainbow Crosswalks. Owusu-Akyeeah, who works with a lot of queer and trans youth, says, “The Gen Z’ers, the TikTok’ers, they’re beyond this. Some of them are coming out in elementary school and they are comfortable in their identities. These days they are asking for fundamental policy changes. It’s beyond a rainbow,” she says. “It is the most beautiful thing to witness.”

Like me, Owusu-Akyeeah has taken lots of photos of and with Rainbow Crosswalks. “I took my little picture. Cute. Put it on social media.” But, like Blodgett, she says these symbols need to be one part of a broader strategy to help more queer and trans people To me, that is an indication that young people are increasingly feel safer and more secure in their communities. “Safety for me is conscious of the fact that in a democratic country, safety should be beyond my orientation. As a woman, who is Black, other things are inherent, but it isn’t unless you work for it. That’s worth crossing going to impact my safety before my sexual orientation. I wish a the street for.

Rainbow Crosswalk could make me feel safer, but it really doesn’t.”

COLIN DRUHAN is the executive director of Pride at Work Canada/Fierté au travail Canada, a not-for-profit organization that empowers employees to foster workplace cultures that recognize all employees, regardless of gender identity, gender expression and sexual orientation. For more information, visit prideatwork.ca.

PRIDE AT WORK

Though he celebrates the positive impact Rainbow Crosswalks have had on the region, Blodgett says we need to stay conscious of the challenges that continue long after the paint dries. When someone purposely burned rubber across the first-ever Rainbow Crosswalk in Whitehorse in 2017, Blodgett made an immediate connection to the trauma he knows is endured and carried by many members of the community, telling CKRW Radio, “This incident really highlights the lived reality for people who are on the gender or sexual orientation diversity spectrum.”

WHEELS

GET YOUR CAR BACK IN SHAPE FOR SPRING Here’s our eight-step guide to getting your ride ready for spring

By Casey Williams

Many of us will emerge from winter in far from our best shape.

It’s also true for your car, which has been driven in all kinds of bad weather, endured teeth-rattling potholes, and had its climate control system abused. So before hitting the highways this spring, give your car a checkup.

“Now is the time to go to an established service centre to check everything over,” advises car care expert Pam Oakes, owner of Pam’s Motor City. “Have them check tire condition and pressure, look over the cooling system, and go through their checklist. Having a professional set of eyes looking at your car will provide an idea of repairs you may need going into spring and summer.”

Consider these areas of concerns:

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MARCH / APRIL 2021

Tires Low pressure can cause a blow-out, diminishes handling and will cost you fuel. Check the sticker in the car’s door jamb for the correct pressures and inflate your tires properly. It is a good idea to rotate tires about every 12,000 kilometres, so do that too. Uneven wear may indicate a wheel alignment is needed.

Fluids Vehicles do not proceed when they’re low on fluids. Drivers often find this out the hard way when the weather warms. Check your coolant level and dipsticks for oil and transmission fluid. Make sure the radiator cap and gas cap seal properly. Confirm the gaskets inside are not brittle; if they are, replace them.

Oil and filters Many cars now use synthetic oil, so the old advice of changing the oil every 4,800 kilometres is somewhat outdated. Consult your owner’s manual to be sure. Use the recommended viscosity for warm weather. Change the oil filter, too. This is also a good time to change the air filter.

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IN MAGAZINE

Climate control If you like cool air in the summertime, pay attention to your climate control system now. Check the compressor belt for cracks, fraying and wear. Turn on the air conditioner to make sure the compressor comes on and generates cold air. Have the refrigerant checked and, if it’s low, get it recharged.

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Hoses, belts and blades All of these deteriorate through use and age, but especially when temperatures vary. With the engine off, pull on the belts to make sure they are tight. When the engine is warm, squeeze the radiator hose. If soft, replace it. Toss wiper blades when they smear or leave streaks.

Battery Batteries work extra hard in the winter. Confirm connections are tight and free from corrosion. Have the charge checked at a qualified auto shop. Be especially careful if the battery is more than two years old.

Cooling system Many experts recommend flushing and filling your cooling system every two years or 38,600 kilometres. Use a radiator flush product to remove rust, grease and other contaminants. Refill with a 50/50 mix of coolant and water.

Thorough cleaning Wash the undercarriage to get rid of salt and sand. Treat the dashboard, seats and carpets with dedicated products. Go ahead and give the exterior a good wax, too. Or have your car professionally detailed as part of your spring ritual.

Keep working out and follow these tips so you’ll be ready to spring into summer clean, fully serviced, and ready for the drives of your dreams.

CASEY WILLIAMS is a contributing writer for Gaywheels.com. He contributes to the New York-based LGBT magazine Metrosource and the Chicago Tribune. He and his husband live in Indianapolis, where Williams contributes videos and reviews to wfyi.org, the area’s PBS/NPR station.

COMMUNITY

The PROgress Project Is Changing Lives Helping healthcare providers help HIV-positive patients

The PROgress project “Improving HIV Care Through the Implementation of Patient Reported Outcomes Within Routine Patient Management” is a ViiV Healthcare-sponsored program that was initially implemented at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto to help improve care at HIV outpatient clinics. To find out more, we spoke with Jean Bacon, executive director of the Ontario HIV Treatment Network, and Alexandra Musten, the senior lead, testing and clinical care initiatives at the Ontario HIV Treatment Network. Here’s what they had to say.

Tell us more about PROgress. How did the project come to be and how does it work?

We first heard about the potential for Patient Reported Outcomes [PROs] to improve patient care when Heidi Crane from the University of Washington presented on the system they had implemented in their HIV clinic at a conference organized by the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care (IAPAC). We were excited about the possibility of replicating the system in Ontario, so when we had the opportunity to join ViiV’s PROgress study, we jumped at it.

For us, it was a unique opportunity to implement the PRO in a couple of HIV clinics in Ontario, demonstrate its impact, and then scale it to other clinics across the province. We see it as a highly effective way for patients to communicate with their providers, and for providers to be aware of a range of issues that might not come up during an appointment.

What need does this project serve? And what are the main benefits of the project for healthcare providers and patients?

This project addresses the challenge we all face with having too much to discuss and not enough time with providers. And providers feel this as well. PROgress is a computer-based survey that includes a number of questionnaires that cover a range of issues including nutrition, housing, medication adherence, mental health issues and substance use. Patients complete the survey, and a report is produced and sent to the provider before they begin the clinic visit. The provider uses this report to help focus discussion.

How does this tool strengthen the care provider-patient relationship?

PROs not only help to prioritize issues, they also help identify some issues in the first place. Studies have found that patients tend to answer questions on the tablet more honestly than if they were asked in person. Providers often learn key things they had not known about their patient that may change the focus of their care or lead to better referrals. If the patient identifies an issue on the PRO, the provider can ask about it right away and start the conversation.

How can healthcare professionals utilize this tool or implement a similar practice?

Our hope is that healthcare providers will see PRO as an effective way to measure and monitor patient wellness. PROs have great potential to help consolidate a large amount of information on a patient’s physical, mental and social wellbeing in advance so providers can act on this information in real time. With the drastic increase in telemedicine due to COVID restrictions, we see great potential for PROs to be used as part of wellness checks. To support this, we’re moving PROs off the tablet at the clinic and sending them as a secure unique URL for patients to complete at home.

We would encourage any clinic that isn’t able to implement PROs to think about questions they might not be asking. Mental health is top of mind, especially after these lengthy lockdowns and periods of isolation. When difficult questions are asked with compassion, patients are grateful for the opportunity to discuss them.

How does this tool fit into conversations about stigma, treatment optimization and prevention?

PROs can be an important part of discussions about treatment optimization and prevention. It asks patients about how well they are adhering to their medications, and patients are more likely to acknowledge if they are missing doses. If they are, that creates an opportunity for the provider to reinforce that adherence is important – both for the patient’s health and to prevent onward transmission – and for the provider and patient to discuss factors that may be affecting adherence, and develop strategies to overcome them.

We are about to implement PROgress in a primary care clinic where all patients – not just the ones with HIV – will complete the survey. In that case, the PROs will help providers identify people at high risk of acquiring HIV and offer them PrEP. In the long term, can this tool help to improve the patient’s choice around their health?

Long term, we really hope that this tool will allow clinics to collect accurate information that helps providers talk more openly with patients about any issues they face and how to manage them, and that helps patients make more informed decisions about their health and health care. The more patients and providers talk together about health issues, the more empowered the patient will be.

For more information on PROgress, visit: https://progresshivcare.org.

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HEALTH & WELLNESS

DRINK LESS Expert advice on how to cut back on alcohol

By Karen Kwan

There’s nothing like cracking open an ice cold beer on a hot summer day, or kicking back with an expertly made old fashioned in the evening (and many of us have had a chance to perfect our mixologist skills in the past year of working from home). But if you find you’ve been reaching for a glass more often during lockdown life and are keen to dial back how much you’re drinking (if you need a reason, consider that alcohol is the leading preventable cause of cancer), this mindful approach will help you ease back into a healthier routine.

Start by assessing how much you are drinking Chances are, what you are serving yourself at home is more than the standard pour at a restaurant or bar. In Canada, a standard drink is a 341 mL (12 oz) bottle of 5% alcohol beer, cider or cooler; or a 43 mL (1.5 oz) shot of hard liquor; or a 142 mL (5 oz) glass of 12% wine. And keep in mind that a high-alcohol beverage will contain more than one standard drink.

Make note of your drinking habits Keep a journal (it can be as simple as a note on your smartphone) of when and what you’re drinking. Dr. Bryce Barker of the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse and Addiction says you should also write down a note on your mood and the situation when you reached for a drink. This can help you identify the triggers that make you feel a need for alcohol.

Consider setting no-drinking days You may find it helpful to establish certain days of the week as abstinence days (for example, Monday to Thursday), or you could approach it by scenario (for example, no drinking at lunch, if working from home has meant a tipple at lunch has become the norm).

Slow down your pace Dr. Barker recommends eating while you drink. This can help in two ways: it will help slow down the absorption of alcohol, and as you start to feel full, you may also drink less. Another way to slow down your pace: alternate your alcoholic drink with a non-alcoholic drink such as a glass of club soda or one of the growing number of non-alcoholic options on the market.

This may be especially helpful in social settings, where often we want something to do with our hands.

Seek help If, after taking a hard look at your habits, you discover you’re relying on alcohol more than you realized, speak to your doctor about it, especially as they may not be asking you about it at your annual checkup. There’s little in terms of Canadian stats on this, but an American survey found that only 30 per cent of doctors were regularly asking about alcohol use.

MARCH / APRIL 2021

Establish limits If you discover you’ve been drinking at least four drinks a night on a

pretty regular basis, set a max of one drink per night from now on. You may need to work your way down to that, so start out by setting a limit of three per night for a week and then cut out one more nightly drink each week for the following two weeks.

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KAREN KWAN is a freelance health, travel and lifestyle writer based in Toronto.

Follow her on Twitter at @healthswellness and on Instagram at @healthandswellness.

Caring for Canadians’ health…one person at a time

Rexall recently launched Inclusion and Diversity Networks that are ensuring a supportive place for their employees, as well as a comfortable place for their customers and an open environment for their patients. We talked to Rexall to learn more on their critical commitment to inclusion and diversity What are Inclusion and Diversity Networks (IDNs)?

Inclusion and Diversity Networks (IDNs) are a network of employees who are interested in a common theme or topic, and wish to share resources, activities, discussions, events and information about that theme or topic with participating colleagues at Rexall’s parent company, McKesson Canada, and their Canadian enterprise of organizations (Well.ca and Claimsecure). IDNs help create an inclusive and diverse workplace by providing equity-seeking groups with a formal structure within an organization to support their unique needs. Their main goal is to provide a space and place for people of similar backgrounds or interests to come together, share ideas, address potential gaps and support action. We’ve embarked on the journey of launching the following four IDNs: • ASPIRE: Empowering our diverse BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Colour) workforce to aspire to reach its full potential • OPEN (stands for Open the conversation & celebrate, Promote equality, Exposure and education and Networking): Advancing LGBTQ2+ and ally employee inclusion to strengthen McKesson • ABILITY: Empowering and connecting people with disabilities and caregivers • OWN IT: Outstanding Women Networking, Inspiring and Taking charge (OWN IT is already live within McKesson Canada; we’re extending it to Rexall, Well.ca and ClaimSecure) Furthermore, IDNs will provide professional development and growth opportunities, aid in the recruitment and retention of quality employees, support diversity awareness activities, and serve as a volunteer resource for relevant, positive events in local communities.

Why did we decide to create IDNs? At our first-ever Inclusion and Diversity town hall in June 2020, which was hosted by McKesson, we committed to doing our part to foster an inclusive and diverse workplace at McKesson Canada and subsidiaries. We are taking action on that commitment by launching IDNs that are relevant to our diverse workforce, and in line with the ERGs that currently operate within McKesson in the US. The IDNs that we launched are meant to serve as a starting point to get our McKesson in Canada enterprise community thinking about inclusion and diversity, and where their interests lie. We will follow the lead of our employees and listen to their needs.

We are actively listening and will ensure that employee needs are met with regard to IDNs.

What is the commitment to the IDNs and, specifically, to the LGBTQ community?

By joining our IDNs, our employees have the chance to share experiences and build support networks that can stay with them for a lifetime. Our teams become a part of a group that creates positive change and growth inside and outside of McKesson and the enterprise. Employees have the opportunity to unlock new ways of developing their personal and professional potential.

Our structure includes an Executive Sponsor, an esteemed member of our Executive Leadership Team who is empowered to advocate, support and champion the IDN they are aligned to. Some of our leaders share the same diversity characteristics as the IDN, and some are allies of the IDN. Specifically, to the LGBTQ community: Our OPEN IDN is an empowering network and resource for LGBTQ people in the McKesson enterprise. The team advocates on behalf of and supports the LGBTQ community, and educates the organization, its customers, partners and communities by promoting an inclusive environment and through a diverse talent base.

How is the new IDN empowering BIPOC? Our ASPIRE IDN aims to develop an inclusive and safe environment for those in the BIPOC community through education, allyship, and promotion of diverse talent and ideas across all corporate levels of McKesson Canada. Through ASPIRE, BIPOC and their allies will have the courage and support to challenge the norms and create lasting change.

What does Rexall and the rest of the enterprise hope to achieve through these initiatives in 2021?

Having self-awareness about our own journeys and being okay with some discomfort as we learn and grow will help us to seize this moment, where there has never been so much focus and support for inclusion and diversity, to create sustainable change.

As we launch IDNs in Canada now, we have the opportunity to chart our journey and blaze our own trail.

Brought to you by

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HEALTH & WELLNESS

Rexall’s Commitment To Inclusion And Diversity

BOOKS

MARSHA AIZUMI’S Co-Written Memoir Of Acceptance Has Been Republished An epilogue has been added to Two Spirits, One Heart, to chronicle the years following the book’s release

By Christopher Turner

Marsha Aizumi’s co-written memoir Two Spirits, One Heart: A Mother, Her Transgender Son and Their Journey To Love and Acceptance won universal praise when it was first published in 2012, for sharing the author’s compelling story of parenting a young woman who came out as a lesbian, then transitioned to male. The inspiring book chronicled Aizumi’s personal journey of growth in understanding as her son struggled to reconcile his gender identity.

Now the book is being republished with the addition of an epilogue from Aizumi as she shares how the original publication opened doors for both her and her son Aiden, and impacted their lives.We recently caught up with Aizumi and here’s what she had to say.

For those who haven’t read the original book, can you tell us about it?

Two Spirits, One Heart is about a mother’s journey from shame, sadness and fear to unconditional love and acceptance as she walks with her child, assigned female at birth, who transitions to be her son. Along the way, she decides that if the world is going to be safer for her son, she must stand by him and become a visible advocate.

Stepping onto this unknown path, this mother and son not only find their individual voices, but find a purpose and deeper connection to each other and the LGBTQ+ community.

What has been the best part of this journey for you?

I think one of the best parts of this journey was truly learning what words like courage, love, gratitude, hope and joy deeply feel like.

Before this journey, I thought I understood what those words meant.

Yet when you face fear but you move forward anyway, you truly feel to the core of your being what courage, love and hope are.

When your child, who barely graduated from high school, walks on stage to get his Master’s degree, and marries someone who loves all of who he is, you realize what true joy and gratitude can be. The feeling is more meaningful because you have faced adversity and come out the other side stronger and with greater understanding.

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What’s your relationship with Aiden like today?

Aiden and I are closer than we have ever been. We speak the truth to each other. I trust him, respect him and love him more than I ever thought possible. We have these conversations that move into my heart and never leave. Once I told him, … ‘Aiden, I love you more.’ And he responded, ‘That’s impossible, Mom.’

say and don’t say, apologizing when you make a mistake, taking responsibility for making your relationship what you want it to be, but most of all reassuring your child that you will always love them.

What do you hope transgender youth can take away from reading Two Spirits, One Heart?

I hope transgender youth understand that your parents are trying to figure out what all this means, just like you had to figure out who you are. Give your parents time to process through all their feelings. I felt so much shame, not about Aiden, but about being a bad mother. I basically went into the closet myself and somehow I had to find my way. Your parents might be sad, so give them time to grieve the loss of the child and the dreams they had for their child. Be patient and compliment your mom and dad when they do something right. It may be frustrating for you at times, so find someone that you can get support from, and take time away when you need to. If you are in a toxic situation, surround yourself with a chosen family that can love and support you. And in the end, just know that no matter what others may say, you are beautiful and deserve to be loved for all of who you are.

Anything else you’d like to share?

When Aiden was at his lowest point, he was withdrawn, depressed and suicidal. But even though I was struggling in the beginning, he knew he was loved. Research from the Family Acceptance Project shows that with even a small amount of parental support, harmful behaviours, such as turning to drugs or suicide, are greatly reduced.

I wish I would have told Aiden ‘I love you’ more often and hugged him every day. I was lucky that he never lost hope.

The memoir Two Spirits, One Heart: A Mother, Her Transgender Son and Their Journey To Love and Acceptance, by Marsha and Aiden Aizumi, is available in select bookstores now with downloads available at iTunes and Kobo. For more information, visit marshaaizumi.com.

What do you hope parents can take away from reading Two Spirits, One Heart?

I hope parents walk away knowing that coming out is not only a process for your child, but for you as well. You will have to face some of the negative emotions that you or your circle of family or friends may have. To navigate this journey, getting support from groups like PFLAG (a national organization for parents, friends, allies and LGBTQ+ people), and educating myself to be the best parent I could be, were so important. I hope parents realize that this can be the most amazing journey if you love your child with your whole heart – which means listening, really listening, to what they 14

CHRISTOPHER TURNER acted as guest editor for this issue of IN Magazine. He is a Toronto-based writer, editor

IN MAGAZINE and lifelong fashionisto with a passion for pop culture and sneakers. Follow him on social media at @Turnstylin.

519:

COMMUNITY

THE

AN ARMY OF LOVERS THAT NEVER STOPS Through COVID-19, Toronto’s The 519 has been advocating for and responding to the most urgent needs of LGBTQ2S communities

By Dean Lobo

For 46 years, The 519 has served as a valuable and vibrant hub for LGBTQ2S communities in Toronto and beyond, as well as for residents of Toronto’s Church and Wellesley neighbourhood. As Canada’s largest LGBTQ2S community centre and service provider, it has been an affirming first touchpoint for many queer, trans and two-spirit folks looking to find community. We had 546,767 visits between April 2019 and March 2020.

Our COVID-19 response In March 2020, The 519 building – usually a vibrant and busy space – had to close in keeping with public health measures. Though we could not offer our programs and services in the usual way, our Army of Lovers mobilized quickly. We built a response model that addresses and meets urgent community needs, and our commitment to service has remained firm.

Through the tireless, round-the-clock efforts of our staff, we: • prepared and served 35,148+ meals to improve food security for street-involved, homeless and marginalized folks; • distributed 24,895+ essential supplies including clothing, toiletries, hygiene and harm reduction kits; • addressed social isolation among older and vulnerable folks through 4,604 friendly check-in calls and referrals; • increased our communities’ access to justice through many virtual supports: The 519 Legal Clinic, Refugee Mock Hearing Program, Trans ID Clinic and other legal resources to 560 clients; • advocated for LGBTQ2S rights and elevated important issues pertaining to our communities, examples being our letter to the Prime Minister seeking solutions to the increasing LGBTQ2S abuse in urban communities across Canada, and our letter asking for immediate government action to save Toronto’s LGBTQ2S Village and queer/trans-owned local businesses; and • provided trauma-informed phone counselling for 214 community members.

are thrilled about the many programs and services we have planned throughout 2021 to ensure that our communities are supported.

• In keeping with the challenges of winter and the growing need around food security, we have adapted our meal service program to offer community members a weekly pick-up of frozen meals that can be reheated and enjoyed.

• During meal pick-up, our staff members continue to check in on the well-being and needs of community members for essential supplies, referrals or additional supports.

• We are keeping families, children, our trans communities and older LGBTQ2S adults engaged through a variety of virtual programs.

• We continue to advocate for LGBTQ2S rights and increase our communities’ access to justice through our anti-violence initiatives, public legal education workshops, The 519 Legal Clinic, Tax Clinic, new partnerships and more.

We are still on the front lines, every day, for equity, for justice, for love.

Support LGBTQ2S communities – support The 519!

Our much-needed community-based response does not have secure funding, but with your continued support, we can continue to support our communities during this time of great need.

Join us in our work! To support our essential work, you can donate online at The519.org/donate.

To a new year of equity, justice and love 2020 might be over, but the pandemic continues to impact the people we serve. While we look forward to a time of recovery, we The 519 building in Toronto’s Church-Wellesley neighbourhood.

The north façade bears the World Pride mural.

Dean Lobo (He/Him) is an experienced communications professional based in Toronto and the communications specialist at The 519. He reported extensively about important issues impacting queer and trans communities in India before immigrating to Canada in 2018. His interest in LGBTQ2S advocacy led him to work at The 519.

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FAMILY

THE IMPORTANCE

OF PARENTAL SUPPORT DURING THESE CHALLENGING TIMES Pflag’s York Region president talks about the importance of the organization to LGBTQ families during the COVID-19 pandemic

By Tristan Coolman

The past year in Canada has been tough for many of us. Some of us are isolated in our homes alone; some are living with family members and butting heads with them more often than a pair of mountain goats; others, also living with family, are avoiding those head-butts only because they have stuffed their queerness into the proverbial closet, waiting for the day when they can once again set themselves free.

access to chatting with us was still available – but the true power and essence of a Pflag meeting is the community. It’s being surrounded by affirming individuals who come not only to discuss their own challenges, but to support you with your own challenges in a judgment-free and safe peer-to-peer environment. We knew at the time there was no way to successfully replace the essence of in-person interaction and support.

Regardless of your lived experience, for queer people this has been a tough time – especially for those whose wellness relied on regular outings. Seeing friends in the flesh, going to a bar or club to feel that “thump thump” circa Queer as Folk reverberate through your chest, attending drag brunch, having a cup of coffee at your favourite local cafe or bookstore, and even accessing in-person or at-home support services…all that has changed.

Beginning in May 2020, despite the inability (or reluctance) of our elected officials to be up front about the anticipated length of the pandemic and its various restrictions and measures, we looked to history to provide a rough guide – and we knew we needed to pivot. We were not in this for a few months but likely a few years.

MARCH / APRIL 2021

Adaptation is the name of the game during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Individually, we have had to adapt to ensure our personal wellness needs are met, and so have community support organizations. That includes our organization, Pflag York Region. This is a charitable organization, similar to Toronto Pflag, that serves a large geographic and population area. We are autonomous from the national Pflag team, but collaborate to ensure the essence of Pflag.

Back in March 2020, before the federal advice and subsequent provincial shutdowns, my team at Pflag York Region had an idea of what was coming. At that time our volunteer-led organization knew we had a tough task ahead. Case counts were being reported regularly but a lot was not known about the novel coronavirus. We made the decision, in the interest of the safety of our community, to put a pause to our in-person “Coffee Night” support meetings.

We are lucky enough to have a support phone line and email, so 16

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We cancelled our in-person events for the year, including our Stand Proud York Region Gala – our biggest fundraiser of the year. We traded coffee carafes and cookies for a ticket on the Zoom train, and began to offer online meetings.

Our autonomy from the national Pflag team allowed us to get online quicker than some other Pflag chapters, and they could learn from our lessons.

The pivot online has allowed us and our attendees to remain connected with one another. We’ve done our best to create a safe online space for folks to join us twice a month, share any challenges they are experiencing, and find some form of comfort in the alignment we all have around the challenges the pandemic has brought us. Folks can join with or without video, with or without audio, customize their name or remove it completely, and provide their personal pronouns.

Our meetings continue to be attended by a wide variety of folxs: parents and friends of queer people – many of whom are just beginning to navigate the journey of supporting their kids, closeted and out queer people, folxs living alone and feeling isolated, and many more.

The online format has allowed us to experiment and has opened up the possibility for guest speakers to join our meetings. We’ve used the platform to amplify the presence and awareness of other agencies offering support, such as the Canadian Mental Health Association and LGBT YouthLine – both of these agencies have also had to adapt and move their offerings online. As well, we’ve invited different individuals within our community to share more about their lived experiences, speaking about topics such as bisexuality, and reconciling queer and faith-based lived experiences. And we’ve had prominent figures such as Prof. Tom Hooper speaking to topics like the ineffective decriminalization of homosexuality in 1969 and the 40th anniversary of Toronto’s bathhouse raids.

Our partners from Pflag Canada Durham Region have hosted varied presentations such as navigating the public school system, expectations of staff, and what students and parents should expect from staff and admin; or a history of drag as those partners use their online presence to continue their support meetings while arming our community with valuable information and a sense of identity.

The challenges folxs are sharing nowadays are incredibly varied, from a need to just connect with other people to issues with family.

Some are on the verge of changing their living situations, some have left home and are navigating the coming-out journey with their parents from a distance, some have taken in others from unaffirming households, some are continuing the journey of transitioning. There are no easy or cookie-cutter answers to these and the many other challenges out there that have yet to be heard, but we make every effort to listen, to empathize, and to offer whatever support we can.

Sometimes the most cathartic experience you can have is just allowing your thoughts to breathe and linger in the air rather than keeping them cooped up in your mind.

The space has also been a place for us to explore topics we might not have spoken about at length during an in-person meeting.

The ability to talk about what was happening in the United States led to discussions about racial inequity and the continued attacks, terrorizing and murder of Black people; the inequities and discrimination faced by our Indigenous peoples through the Mi’kmaq fisheries crisis and the inaction of the RCMP; the anxiety many of us experienced during the leadup to and the aftermath of the recent US election.

Admittedly, the online format has its own challenges. Those of us who live in the shadow of large city centres often take for granted our access to high-speed internet, but it is a major infrastructure issue in Canada. For a country of our size, there are logistical challenges – but for a country with our wealth, there should not be.

Some folks join our meetings using their cellular devices and data, which does not provide the best experience for participating if they wish to do so. In addition, some folks have travelled anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes from their home in order to join our meetings from an office or another place that has a reliable Wi-Fi connection.

For our team, we’ve tried to check in on each other and support one another when possible and have been transparent with our attendees. We’re a surprisingly small team with everything we accomplish. We’re currently a group of just six individuals (with a few vacancies) who run everything: manage our social media, facilitate our two support meetings, answer support emails and phone calls, and continue to attend and facilitate presentations on everything LGBTQ2. All the work we do with Pflag is on our own time, on top of our “day” jobs. We are folks who work retail full-time, who work on the front lines in our hospitals and counselling and psychotherapy services, in law enforcement, education, accounting and financial services.

We are folks who during the pandemic have been working at home cut away from our own supports, students who continue to work and study full-time respectively, who are isolated from partners and family, parents living away from their queer kids for the first time – and during a pandemic at that. Our core team and team at large, and their families, have been impacted directly by COVID-19 infections and, tragically, loss. Burnout is a reality for us even in the best of times. Through it all, it’s a team I am incredibly proud and honoured to work alongside.

Like many who are on the front lines or who, like us, are trying to support others in any way they can, there are moments where we are left wondering if we are doing enough; if we are having a positive impact. We all take solace in knowing that despite our own personal challenges during the pandemic, we have the time, the capacity and the privilege to assist. For anyone who is looking to get involved and assist with any passion or community groups – you will likely find it online, and we highly encourage you to lend any resources you can. Empathy and time are the most valuable resources you can lend, and if you are willing to help anywhere, organizations like ours are likely to have a spot for you in some manner. There are so many options for you to make a difference: Pflag chapters across the country, The 519, Glad Day, LGBT Youthline, Rainbow Railroad, online GSA groups, CAYR Community Connections, AIDS Committees ( in Toronto, Ottawa and beyond), Egale Canada, PWA and many others.

As easy as it is to see the negative in our communities with the news of the day, and with comments and actions on social media from folks who choose to live in an alternate reality, it’s community groups and the people who work and volunteer with them that give us the hope and the drive to move forward That’s been our year…how has yours been? Join us and share.

TRISTAN COOLMAN is based in the suburbs of York Region north of Toronto. He works full-time in retail by day, volunteers with Pflag York Region in his spare time, and desperately tries to keep his succulents alive in between. Follow @pflagyorkregion on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook; follow Tristan at @iamcoolman on Instagram, @tristancoolman on Twitter.

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BOOKS

VIVEK SHRAYA HAS TURNED HER ONE-WOMAN PLAY INTO A BOOK

The Canadian LGBTQ icon talks about her just-released theatre book, the future of live performances and her ultimate pop star

By Christopher Turner Photo By Heather Saitz

Early last year, Canadian LGBTQ icon and multidisciplinary artist Vivek Shraya brought her solo show How To Fail As A Popstar to Toronto’s Berkeley Street Theatre for a limited run. The show, which chronicled the disappointments and small victories of a struggling brown-skinned performer in a white music world, opened to rave reviews from press and theatregoers. Shraya was hailed for seamlessly blending storytelling and music in a show punctuated with humour.

“This is my story growing up in Edmonton as a brown, queer kid and being obsessed with MuchMusic and wanting to make it as a pop star,” Shraya said at the time.

The show was intended to play across North America throughout 2020, but ultimately only ran for a few dates in Toronto before the COVID-19 pandemic forced theatres and performance venues to shut their doors. Since the pandemic-prompted lockdown, small theatres have remained empty in darkness, and Shraya had to rethink the future of her deeply personal musical journey. One of the solutions was the release of a paperback theatre book that includes the play, colour photographs from the show’s 2020 production in Toronto

by Dahlia Katz, a foreword by its director Brendan Healy and an afterword by Shraya herself.

Just before How To Fail As A Popstar: A Play was released, we caught up with Shraya (a former IN cover girl) to talk about the theatre book, how the pandemic affected her life both personally and professionally, her ultimate pop star, and much more.

MARCH / APRIL 2021

Tell us about How To Fail As a Popstar.

The book features the play but is structured like short stories, so that any reader can engage with the narrative. This was also how the play was originally written.

The play and the book really dig into what it’s like for a young person who is trying to break into the music industry. Can you tell us a bit about your own personal experience?

Without giving away too much, my story is similar to the classic music biopic, except I was a small-town queer person of colour with a big dream.

In your opinion…who is the ultimate pop star?

My teenage self says Madonna. My present self says Beyoncé.

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The intended North American tour of How To Fail As a Popstar was cancelled in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. Do you have plans to pick up the tour again in the future?

We have received some exciting invitations from Germany and in the GTA, but I’m trying to not get my hopes up so that when these shows happen, they will be pleasant surprises!

That being said…what is the future of theatre and live performance for the next year?

My sense is a lot of writing and development is happening right now in the theatre world. And I know that some companies are continuing to find creative ways to virtually pivot, like how Canadian Stage, Evergreen Brickworks and I collaborated on an extended music video version of the final scene from the play [watch it at https://vimeo.com/475282865].

How do you think we can be supporting our LGBTQ artists right now?

The best way we can support queer artists right now is buying their work, but for many this might not be feasible. Social media following (and sharing) is another form of currency and can help not only to build audiences for artists but lead to opportunities.

Did you find that the COVID-19 pandemic has changed you or affected you in other ways?

For one, it’s made me incredibly grateful for public presentations of art like theatre and even music live shows which, at times, I used to dread. Now I dream of being in crowded, sweaty, smoky, loud rooms!

Were you able to find a creative outlet through the past few months? What can we expect next from Vivek Shraya?

Creatively, I spent most of last year doing some form of writing, as this can be done from the safety of your home. I was excited to receive support from CBC to work on writing a pilot script based on the play, and I’m crossing my fingers to hear about potential next steps...

How To Fail As A Popstar: A Play is available online and in bookstores on March 1 in Canada and April 1 in the USA.

CHRISTOPHER TURNER acted as guest editor for this issue of IN Magazine. He is a Toronto-based writer, editor

IN MAGAZINEand lifelong fashionisto with a passion for pop culture and sneakers. Follow him on social media at @Turnstylin.

BOOKS

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ESSAY

FA LLING IN LOV E ON A GIRLS’ HOCK EY TEAM Remember that feeling of falling in love for the first time

By Emilia Schmidt

I was 13 when I first fell in love with a girl; just like any 13-year-old, I had no idea how to handle such emotion. The girl, let’s call her Carol, was one year my senior and scored the most on my hockey team. She was the run-of-the-mill, black-skinny-jeans-and-plaidshirt type of pubescent lesbian. I was infatuated with her. Every time I passed a recycling bin, I would fantasize about writing “I love Carol” on a piece of paper and tossing it in – my declaration lost forever, yet still existing. Once, Carol said she was upset, so I made her a stress ball out of a disposable latex glove and baking flour. In order to cover up my want to ease her pain, I also made a candle for another girl on the team…who, as it turns out, was secretly dating Carol.

MARCH / APRIL 2021

Later in the hockey season, at a tournament in London, I found myself laughing in the rain with Carol as the two of us ran through the unfamiliar town in search of soy sauce. We planned to pour it into a Coke bottle and trick our teammates into drinking it. The fun of our adventure seemed promising; I thought it could be the start of something. When we returned to the hotel, Carol went straight to Candle Girl’s room. In that moment, I finally understood my insignificance to Carol. It was the first time I had felt the sensation of knowing someone doesn’t love you back. It was excruciating.

The following year, I started high school. I had stopped fantasizing about gifting Carol the soy sauce bottle as a romantic gesture and convinced myself I was straight. On my second day, I saw Carol’s bike locked up to the school’s perimeter fence. I knew it was hers because I had once stood in her sunroom for 20 seconds and absorbed everything the space contained. Including her matte black fixie bike. When I recognized it, I got so overwhelmed that I ran home and cried. I had lost autonomy over my body.

I was 17 when I fell in love with a girl for a second time; just like any other 17-year-old, I thought she was the one. The girl, who I’ll call Marianne, was born 13 days after me, to our hockey coach and her husband. We’d been on the same team for four years but didn’t become friends until the third. That year we were always the last to sleep and the first to get up, often drinking coffee together, talking, at six in the morning. In moments like those we grew 20

IN MAGAZINE

slowly towards inseparability. By the beginning of the 12th grade we were calling each other and talking for hours most weeknights and having drunken fun every weekend.

One Friday in October we met up, bought spray paint and vandalized trains. As we walked along the tracks, Marianne told me she wanted to be a psychologist who specializes in helping teenagers with eating disorders. She said her personal experiences made her passionate to help kids who struggled with similar issues. On the way back to my place, Marianne gave her change to a homeless woman standing outside a 7-Eleven, and the woman kissed her on the cheek as a thank you. Marianne pretended she didn’t mind, but after we left, she obsessively wiped the left side of her face with the wrist of her sweater. A few minutes later we decided to buy a pumpkin, and carved it when we got back to my house. The noise that came from cutting the hollowed orange shell was so absurd that we laughed so hard that we both peed. That night I realized I was in love with Marianne.

In mid-November, Marianne, two teammates and I got drunk and high before watching the Frozen sequel in a theatre. Marianne and one of the other girls – call her Bobbi – laughed obnoxiously throughout the whole movie. I was embarrassed to be associated with them. After the movie we went back to Bobbi’s place and drank more. Bobbi felt up Marianne, whose body language seemed to encourage the attention. I lay three feet away pretending to be asleep. I wanted to run home and puke. I felt the same sensation from years ago in London, only amplified.

Two weeks later, Floyd and I drunkenly wrote our initials, joined together by a plus sign, on the wall of a bar downtown. We headed to her house at 3 am and, as we rounded her street’s corner, we laughed at ourselves for mistakenly lighting the wrong end of a cigarette. Later that night she read me a diary entry she’d made from October. It followed her time at a school party, where she’d made out with a boy but thought of me after. With our faces inches apart, we whispered words of adoration. Then Floyd kissed me again. She kept getting out of breath, which made her coy. I told her I didn’t mind and traced my fingers up and down her upper arm. She asked me how I wasn’t a narcissist. I loved her for that.

In the morning we sat on her porch and talked through the entirety of the Mamma Mia soundtrack.

The first weekend of December, at a tournament in Pittsburgh, both Bobbi and Marianne took to separately talking to me about their want to make out with each other. I indulged them both and genuinely tried to put aside my own feelings for Marianne. In the end, Marianne was too timid for Bobbi’s aggressive confidence. I found out many months later that Marianne was in love with me too and in our conversations about Bobbi she was really fishing for hints of reciprocation. Instead, she led me to cry in my hotel shower and admit to myself a need to get over her.

It wasn’t long after when I fell in love with a girl for the third time; just like any other 17-year-old, I thought she was the one.

The girl, who we’ll call Floyd, was just over a year younger than me. The coaches played her at the end of close games when they needed someone on defence who could make sure no goals were scored. Four days before Christmas, after a dumpling dinner, a mutual friend of ours sat me down on my own bed and professed Floyd’s feelings for me. I hadn’t thought about Floyd much until then. But she was so beautiful and clever that I began to fall for her immediately, with all my energy.

Three days prior to Christmas, the morning before the team holiday party, I bought Floyd a mermaid flask knowing she identified in some semi-ironic way with mermaids. I casually gave it to her that evening, saying it was on sale for $10, in a way that I hoped to communicate “How could I not get it if it was just $10?” It cost $35. In my attic later that night, she said (among other flattering things) that I was the reason she thought she was bisexual. We should have kissed. We didn’t; it was too dark to see her and I was anxious. She called me two weeks later, crying. She said she wasn’t physically attracted to women. I reassured her and told her friends sounded great.

A month and a half after Christmas, Floyd told me she had liked it when a man earlier that day thought we were a lesbian couple.

She called me a week after, saying she was straight.

Less than a month after that, I rode my bike to Floyd’s house at four in the morning. We cycled all around the city and snuck into an empty amphitheatre where the Strokes had performed 10 months earlier. In front of 9,000 empty seats we talked about our feelings for each other one last time. She had written a speech of sorts so she would say the right words. It was about how she couldn’t properly be with me but ended with “I love you.” I told her I wasn’t angry, that she was just trying to do what she thought was best. We left shortly after 10 because a security guard told us to. On the way home, her tire popped and the rubber caught in the bike’s machinery. I found an empty beer can and twisted it until the metal ripped, creating many sharp edges. Together we sawed at the rubber until it released easily from the gear’s teeth. We’ve never been the same around one another since.

The following Christmas, I found myself standing in front of a mirror trying to dress nicely and thought, “Would Floyd like this?”

She is still a character in my life, dictating my decisions ever so slightly. I still live near her grandparents, and whenever I walk a few blocks north and am near their house, I adjust my gait to look confident in case she’s close by. When I write, I think of her reaction to my words, wondering if they are good enough to impress her. A small part of me probably still loves her, but we’ve both changed so much that the remaining love feels like mourning for someone who no longer exists.

I am 18 now, and not currently on a hockey team. Carol is living with her girlfriend. Marianne and I barely speak. Floyd ended up sleeping with Bobbi. With time came change, and change is either love’s steroid or kryptonite. Thankfully, for me it was the latter. Time lessened the power that those girls had over me. Still, I question whether love’s ability to consume us whole is destructive or love’s true beauty. I assume it’s both at once, bookending a scale that all people are placed upon. Everyone scattered, moving constantly.

EMILIA SCHMIDT is a Toronto-based ethics student, poet and prose writer. This is her first published piece.

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ESSAY

Minutes later, she asked to kiss me. I nodded yes. We made out for a while, pressed together against my bathroom sink. Afterwards, she lay on the tile floor, staring up at me as I sat fully clothed on the toilet reading a poem I had written about her. She told me, as if it was a compliment, that her confusion surrounding me often made her cry. We smiled the rest of the night and tried to watch the sun rise from the back of my family’s van. She fell asleep in my arms with her head on my chest. She called a few days later and said she had feelings for me but that we shouldn’t kiss again until she understood her sexuality. I agreed.

PERSPECTIVE

A Cause For Celebration Celebrating is a radical act that reminds queer Black folks how far we’ve come and the future we’re still fighting for

By Jumol Royes

How do you celebrate a birthday when the whole world has come to a standstill?

It’s a question I asked myself around this time last year at the onset of the pandemic, when Ontario declared a state of emergency on the same day as my birthday. With restaurants and bars only open for takeout and delivery and zero possibility of getting together with friends, plus all the fear and anxiety swirling around in the atmosphere, I wasn’t in much of a celebratory mood.

My friends and family would tell you that I’m an eternal optimist who sees his glass as half full and who exudes positive energy and good vibes everywhere he goes. And on most days, that’s true.

But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit there have been periods over the past 12 months when I felt drained and overwhelmed and had a difficult time managing my emotions and holding my own heart. In those moments, celebrating was the furthest thing from my mind.

A few months ago, I starting listening to Being Seen; it persuaded me to reconsider my position and helped me reframe the act of celebration in a whole new light. Hosted, narrated and produced by Darnell Moore, in partnership with Harley & Co. and ViiV Healthcare, the weekly podcast focuses on the gay and queer Black male experience by offering an in-depth exploration of culture’s role in resolving the tension between how we are seen and how we see ourselves.

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One of the episodes features internationally acclaimed activist and humanitarian Eddie Ndopu, who plans to be the first physically disabled person and the first Black queer disabled person to travel into space. During the course of the conversation, Ndopu says something so profound that I can only compare it to a light switch being flicked on and illuminating a dark room: “As a Black, queer, disabled man, I defy gravity every single day of my life by virtue of my existence.”

For LGBTQ2+ folks, and queer Black people in particular, managing to survive – let alone thrive in the world today – is cause for celebration. Too many members of our community have been lost to HIV/AIDS, suicide, accidental overdoses and acts of violence for us to take our lives for granted and not be grateful that we still have breath in our bodies.

But then the question becomes, how do we make room for celebrating in the face of so much grief, loss and pain? The answer might lie in the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, and the stories the world tells us about who are and who we can be.

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I struggled with my fair share of shame and stigma surrounding my sexuality and racial identity growing up, and I’m quite sure I’m not the only one who felt this way. I didn’t see the faces and stories of people who look and love like I do reflected in the pages of magazines or on my television screen. I didn’t have anyone to model for me what it meant to be Black and gay or how to successfully navigate through the world as a gay Black man. As a result, my personal journey towards healing and self-acceptance continues to this day.

When our stories do take centre stage, they rarely if ever are told through a lens that captures us in a positive or uplifting light. If we only see Black trans women in the news when they’re victims of assault or murder, or gay Black men in movies and porn having sex with men on the down-low, our self-image becomes skewed.

Seeing is believing, after all. While these lived experiences ring true for some in our community, they’re not all-encompassing or fully reflective of the totality of who we are.

Now is as good a time as any for us to reclaim the narrative and challenge the notion that the queer Black experience is inextricably linked to trauma and tragedy. Our stories are nuanced, complex and complicated – and we have a duty to demonstrate, and more importantly celebrate, our creativity and artistry, storytelling and storymaking, love and joy, indeed our very existence.

Instead of allowing old, limiting beliefs and the powers that be tell our stories and dictate who we are and who we’re capable of being, we need to ask ourselves how we wish to be witnessed, and then have the courage to show up in the world with all the beautiful and heartbreaking facets of ourselves on full display for all to see.

When my birthday rolls around again this March, I still won’t be able to spend a night on the town sharing a meal with my friends in a restaurant or going dancing at a club, but celebrating will definitely be on the agenda…it’ll just look a little different this year.

I’m thinking of turning it into a day of self-care: starting out with saying a series of positive affirmations while looking at myself in the mirror, then a bit of journalling, a guided meditation and maybe an emotional freedom technique or tapping exercise to relieve anxiety, followed by a walk around the trails in my neighbourhood, and then eating dinner at home with my family before capping off the day with a warm bubble bath. Because I now know that I need to fill my own cup first before I can offer what flows over to others.

PERSPECTIVE

Whatever I decide to do on my special day, I’ll be sure to reflect on the highs and lows of the past year and remind myself that I’m still here, queer, safe, guided and loved. If that’s not worthy of celebrating, then I don’t know what is.

And if I need a little musical pick-me-up to keep the celebration going, I can always count on singing along to one of my all-time favourite songs by Love Inc.:

JUMOL ROYES is a Toronto-area storyteller, communications strategist and glass-half-full kinda guy. He writes about compassion, community, identity and belonging. His guilty pleasure is watching the Real Housewives. Follow him on Twitter at @Jumol and on Instagram at @jumolroyes.

Photo: clay-banks

Reach for the sky And hold your head up high For tonight and every night You’re a superstar And don’t you be afraid Think of all the friends you’ve made Like any other night You’ve got your name in lights You’re a superstar

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Queer Joy Hunting Have you been longing for queer joy throughout the pandemic? You’re not alone

By Jaime Woo

This year, I went hunting for joy. That feeling of joy can be elusive, even in more ‘normal’ times. The definition of ‘normal’ is up to you: while the pandemic comes to mind first, it’s arguable that we haven’t experienced a recognizable form of normal since 2016 – yet it’s the pandemic that has most sharply curtailed familiar joys.

I’ve missed working from my favourite table at a coffee shop. And watching Netflix can’t replace the collective feeling that comes from sitting in a cinema, laughing and crying and gasping simultaneously with others. My body has been grounded for too long, whether it be 38,000 feet in the air on a plane or 15 feet on a bouldering wall.

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Thankfully, we haven’t completely abandoned joy, having found it in other and often unexpected places. I revived my love of baking, gambled with keeping plants alive, and discovered the pleasure of reading during the daytime while walking in laps around my neighbourhood. I deepened my love of jazz by listening to the biographies of the greats, marvelling at how so many packed so much impact within such a short time.

But what I’ve longed for most, specifically, is queer joy. I’ve seen joy defined as positive experiences related to feelings of freedom, safety and ease; for me, then, queer joy is that exhilarating feeling that comes from being able to express our queerness clearly and with force. It is a state of both attitude and space, and, sadly, for many of us, the ways we found queer joy have been temporarily shuttered.

I’ve missed hanging with my friends at Drag Race screenings. I miss the energy, and sometimes I will transport myself back to Disgraceland where Vicky Lix, Selena Vyle and Hillary Yaas of the House of Lix would stomp the house down. I follow their (physically distanced) adventures through Instagram and their Squirrel Talk podcast, and it’s a nice little amuse-bouche for when we can meet again.

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One thing I’ve learned during this pandemic, though, is that you cannot just try to transfer experiences from in-person to online.

Zoom calls, with their staccato audio delivery, are a great example.

We’ve adjusted our speech patterns to match Zoom, and I’ve found you lose the join that can come from piling onto one another, voices on top of voices.

Instead, we must adapt to change, as so many drag performers have expertly done. Something I’ve learned to appreciate more this past year has been the pleasure of nonsense. We live in deeply serious and troubling times, and to give yourself a moment of nonsense isn’t gluttonous – rather, it is a breath of fresh air so you can recharge before reentering the waters.

The spelling bee I watched on the Speakeasy Twitch channel was a great example of the joy of nonsense. Two teams of local drag performers competed to answer words correctly, and nothing mattered in all the best ways. The host, the stunning Bom Bae, wore bobby pins for eyelashes, one of which would later be used to help fix a technical difficulty.

And there were technical difficulties: the sound didn’t work, people cut in and out, at one point the feed had to be replaced with a Simpsons-esque “please stand by” card. You’d be forgiven for thinking the audience would be frustrated, or irritated. Instead, it was the complete opposite. Every glitch was a recognition that we’re all human, and that we are all in this together. After all, a glitch only matters if the audience thinks it matters.

The pandemic has taught us that while we like to think we are in control of our lives, life will go in the direction it wants. We can either sneer at how things aren’t going as we expected, or we can try to transform what we can into something joyful. When technical difficulties happened, the audience jumped into the chat to discuss

FINDING HAPPINESS

how amazing the performers looked, and oddly but charmingly began to riff on toe-related puns. It reminded me of how you can spin gold out of hay, from here toe eternity.

It’s a reminder that while joy can come unintentionally (although it also seems like the world is intent on crushing it), it’s far better to create joy. We must do what we queer people have done since forever: we must create our own joy, especially when there is none visibly, obviously around us.

We show love in new ways. My friend Russ, unable to return to his hometown for the Christmas holidays, instead transformed it into time with his chosen family. He performed days of holiday baking, filling beautiful, iridescent boxes with red velvet cookie sandwiches, marshmallow squares and Oreo cookie bark, and then delivered them to friends’ doorsteps on Christmas Day. Most people were by themselves that day, and yet through his gesture they were reminded that they were not alone.

We lift ourselves out of this situation, yes, by being honest with our experience through it, and also by remembering that we are not alone, whether or not we have someone physically around us.

We can end up taking a microscope to our own suffering and dive so deep it seems like nothing else exists. This isn’t true. There are others in the same position as you.

It can feel selfish almost to hunt for joy when the world is in such a gloomy place. Beyond the tragedies, the climbing number of deaths from the pandemic, we have a year where governments at home and around the world have willfully ignored those who are most needy. No paid sick days. No universal basic income. Instead, we have told people they are “essential” and repaid them with a handclap, while the “non-essential” wealthiest doubled, tripled, or more their wealth. Finding queer joy is not to accept any of those injustices. In fact, it is a chance to remind ourselves that we have worth, while also demonstrating that act as a clarion call that change must happen.

As the wise Thich Nhat Hanh notes in his The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching: “The ocean of suffering is immense, but if you turn around, you can see the land. The seed of suffering in you may be strong,

but don’t wait until you have no more suffering before allowing yourself to be happy. When one tree in the garden is sick, you have to care for it. But don’t overlook all the healthy trees. Even while you have pain in your heart, you can enjoy the many wonders of life – the beautiful sunset, the smile of a child, the many flowers and trees. To suffer is not enough. Please don’t be imprisoned by your suffering.”

We can build it for ourselves, even when we are in a situation we weren’t planning for. One final example: I live alone, and I have recognized that instead of my place being somewhere just to inhabit, now that I have been here around the clock I must make it reflect myself more fully. Finding queer joy meant reimagining each occasion as one that celebrates not just how we survive but how we thrive.

The artificial Christmas tree that normally comes down after the holiday has refound life as a joint Valentine’s Day and Lunar New Year tree. It will be an emblem for Valentine’s Day, when I will spend the time making myself a beloved meal (fried chicken, gumbo and cornbread), spend the time to beat my face, put on something fancy, watch Crazy Rich Asians, and then settle into a nice, long bath. I will centre on the idea of love, and will remind myself of the love that I have for myself, and for the ones around me. Then, over Pride, it will become a Pride tree, wrapped in rainbows and glitter and other items of fabulousness.

The tree is a reminder that things do not have to follow convention, especially in these unconventional times. We create the world we want to live in, and so if the Pride tree sparks your joy, the idea is all yours. We don’t know when this pandemic will end, but the practice of crafting queer joy can stay with us long after it eventually does disappear.

JAIME WOO is a writer based in Toronto, focusing on the intersection of technology and culture. He’s best-known for his Lambda Literary-nominated book, Meet Grindr, dissecting how the design of the infamous app influences user behaviour.

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MOVIES & TV

PLEA SE, NOT ANOTHER LESB IAN PERIOD DRAMA The lesbian period drama is currently Hollywood’s favourite way to tell sapphic love stories on screen. What’s with that?

By Bianca Guzzo

MARCH / APRIL 2021

We need to talk about Hollywood’s current obsession with lesbian period dramas. While it is incredible (and long overdue) that sapphic stories are being told in mainstream media, it’s become increasingly noticeable that these films are all starting to fall into the same pattern. Of the handful of popular lesbian romance films that have been released in the past five years, most of them are period dramas, and they all seem to end in tragedy. There are so many stories to tell about queer women, so why does it feel like Hollywood’s only choosing to tell the same stories set in the past?

It’s no surprise that queer storylines are highly under-represented in mainstream Hollywood. Movies revolving around lesbian storylines make up an even smaller portion of the already small selection of queer entertainment currently available. So, when the trailer for Ammonite dropped in 2020, queer movie fans rejoiced. While there was no doubt that people were excited about the upcoming period drama starring Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan playing lovers, movie fans couldn’t help but notice that Ammonite looked eerily similar to another critically acclaimed fan favourite, Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Both films feature a woman hired to do a job for the other. Both films take place near the sea, both couples feature a blonde and brunette, and all of the women involved are white.

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The first half of the film is a slow burn; secret glances turn into close-up shots of hands touching…then, by the middle of the movie, the glances and innocent touches turn into electric passion. Even though the sexual tension builds the audience up to a fiery climax, the movie usually ends with the couple separated, their love just a fleeting memory of a time spent by the sea once long ago.

The plots of these films usually follow the same pattern. The slow burn, enemies to lovers to strangers story. If they’re going for historical accuracy, it usually means the love is secret and forbidden. It exists far away from society, hidden behind closed doors. This creates a certain tension to keep the audience invested in the characters, and the story. These films also tend to have the dark and moody aesthetic we’ve come to expect from lesbian period dramas. Dark, dull and dim lighting adds to the mystique of the hidden and forbidden relationship unfolding before our eyes.

Scenes that drag with little to no dialogue, and tender close-ups of hands gently touching, which have long been a staple in queer storytelling, are also prevalent in these popular period dramas.

There is nothing inherently wrong with these films: most of them are fantastic, gaining critical acclaim and scooping up numerous

MOVIES & TV

2019’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire (original title Portrait de la jeune fille en feu) starring Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel

awards. But the sudden fascination with them means we’re not getting the stories of today. And that’s kind of a problem.

The end of 2020 did give us two films set in modern times that focused on a lesbian relationship. Both The Prom and Happiest Season were highly anticipated, but upon their release fell short of the hype, and received plenty of criticism for the way the relationships were portrayed on screen. When it came to The Prom, the protagonist’s relationship was used only to drive the story forward for the other characters and to give them purpose. It’s slightly different from what we saw in Happiest Season, where the relationship of the main characters remained a central plot point in the movie. While it can be argued The Prom was more about the other main characters, (the ones played by Meryl Streep and James Corden), the focus of the movie was a coming-of-age coming-out story. Happiest Season was marketed as a feel-good queer holiday movie. We were finally getting something to cut through the oversaturated market of Christmas Hallmark movies that revolve around heterosexual couples. But it ended up leaving a lot of viewers feeling triggered, having watched an out and proud lesbian be shoved back in the closet because her fiancée hadn’t come out to her family yet. While both films had redeemable moments and characters, they also both centred around coming out being the whole story, which we see so much of in queer stories set in our modern world.

In lesbian period dramas, most of the time sexuality is rarely discussed between the characters, but rather in the subtext of the movie.

They talk with their stares, touches and actions. The stories aren’t about coming out, but instead about coming to an understanding about their common infatuation with each other. They’re about pure, raw attraction and acting on instinctual passion. It’s another layer of the often-complicated relationships that are outside the margins of a carefully calculated society. The relationships in these films almost all take place within an affair. Take 2015’s Carol, for example, which tells the story of two women forming an intimate relationship in the early 1950s, while one of them is trapped in an unhappy marriage. The multi-layered forbidden nature of the relationships in these movies can sometimes overpower the fact that audiences are watching a queer romance unfold on screen.

These movies almost always end with the main couple broken up, or far apart. That’s because the threat of the man one of them is supposed to be marrying, or the man one of them has already married,

2020’s Ammonite starring Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan

is always lurking just outside the main storyline. The plot twist is always just close enough for it to still be sexy and scandalous.

Their passion-filled romance just ends up being a memory from the past, and sometimes not even a significant one. I know that real life isn’t always happily ever after, but is it too much to ask to have a couple of movies that allow us to escape for a while, that let us leave feeling fulfilled by the way the characters end up at the film’s conclusion? It’s not asking for a lot.

What’s more to the disappointing truth of the way sapphic stories are told on film, is that they are almost always between two cisgender, very conventionally attractive white women. Bisexuality or pansexuality is never really mentioned, and the possibility of somebody in the relationship being transgender, or a person of colour, is also rarely seen on film. We’re starting to see these stories being told on television with shows like HBO’s Euphoria and Netflix’s Sense8, but they aren’t being explored in film. It adds to the under-representation of queer stories that are currently being told in Hollywood. It also completely excludes marginalized groups of the LGBTQI+ community from these stories in order to maintain a sexy, cool and marketable product that will sell to heterosexual audiences.

These period dramas are aesthetically beautiful. Watching Portrait of a Lady on Fire feels like looking at a painting for two hours. The problem with major Hollywood studios choosing to tell sapphic love stories in a retrospective way is that it feels like a product of the past. However, even though it seems the lesbian period drama is the only way we’re getting stories about queer women on large screens, that won’t stop people from going to see them, even though we’re kind of tired of them. The slow-burn buildup to an eventual sex scene underneath corsets and petticoats is sexy enough to sell to straight people. The often-tragic endings make the story look more like a cautionary tale, and what we are left with is a queer story that’s been produced in a way that straight people would be comfortable watching.

Although queer stories are being told, it feels like they’re not being made for queer people to enjoy. It looks like for now, the lesbian period drama is what we have to work with of the crumbs we’re already given. We’ll continue to watch them, and maybe even enjoy them. But we shouldn’t stop asking for more diverse and current stories to be told in extraordinary ways.

BIANCA GUZZO is a writer based out of the GTA. She spends her free time watching Trixie Mattel makeup tutorials, though she has yet to nail the look.

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5 THINGS TO CONSIDER BEFORE CASTING A STRAIGHT ACTOR TO PLAY GAY Should straight actors still play gay characters? Well…it’s complicated

By Steven Greenwood

James Corden’s recent appearance in Ryan Murphy’s adaptation of The Prom stirred a lot of discussion about the ethics of casting a straight actor to play a gay character. When issues like this arise, a lot of opinions tend towards a binaristic approach: either people argue that an actor’s sexuality should have absolutely no bearing on casting decisions whatsoever, or they argue that only gay actors should be cast as gay characters. People often choose one extreme and stick to it.

Queer culture is, of course, deeply invested in disrupting binaries and complicating prescriptive sets of rules. It is, therefore, my goal in this piece to avoid an absolute answer or clear-cut set of rules about whether or not “gay for pay” casting is okay. As Rachel Giese says, “Perhaps setting hard-fast rules isn’t the best way of framing the issue.” Rather, I present a set of questions that might help people better reflect on the impacts and implications of casting choices, without settling on a prescriptive answer about whether it’s right or wrong.

Asking and reflecting on critical questions – rather than simply trying to follow rules and guidelines – can be one of the best ways to understand the deeper reasonings and impacts of an artistic choice.

Taking a step back to consider these five questions can be a first step towards developing a more informed, thoughtful stance on what happens in different scenarios where a straight actor is cast as a gay character. Rather than judging the situation as purely “right” or “wrong,” these questions can provide a more complex picture of the murky, complex waters of representation.

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How does the project relate to celebrity culture and public figures?

Whether you like it or not, filmmaking is not simply the business of making films, but also the process of creating celebrities, public figures and (in the case of young peoples’ media) role models. Young people don’t simply watch Riverdale; they look up to actors like Camila Mendes and Madelaine Petsch. They follow these stars on social media, read their interviews, and learn more about them in Entertainment Weekly. While adults are less frequently invested in this “role model” approach to celebrity culture, they also often see celebrities as aspirational figures – or at least people they can enjoy following both on and off screen – and it is important for people to have public figures they can relate to.

Casting a straight actor as a gay character may be improving representation on screen, but it does nothing to improve representation off screen. While fans may get a new character they can relate to, they don’t get a new queer celebrity or public figure they can relate to, look up to, or even simply follow on social media. They see themselves on screen, but not in the real-life world of Hollywood; when this happens, the message that comes across can be something along the lines of “you matter as a story or an idea, but not as a reallife person who can live and work in the entertainment industry.”

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This can be particularly harmful for youth: queer teen fans of Riverdale may get a plethora of new queer characters appearing in the realm of fiction, but their options for celebrity role models are much smaller (although Riverdale does feature some queer actors such as Lili Reinhart). Queer folks don’t just need characters we can relate to – we also need public figures and real-life artists. This is particularly important for people living in small towns or areas where they may have no access to queer role models in their everyday lives: someone like Lili Reinhart may be the closest someone has to seeing a real person who shares their experiences. Filmmaking can be as much about the public image and performance of the artists involved as it is the fictional world that is being created within the film.

It is important to reflect on the way a film exists well outside the world of the film itself. A film produces public figures, and also literally employs people and gives them jobs; a film set is, after all, a workplace. Diversity in the fictional story being told doesn’t always translate to diversity in the workplace culture where the film is being made: like any other modern workplace, film sets also need to consider equity and diversity initiatives and issues in how they create their workplace culture.

How much of the humour is self-deprecating?

Queer folks love to make fun of ourselves. Anyone who follows queer meme groups like “Sounds Gay I’m In” is likely aware that a huge portion of queer humour is self-deprecating. Queer culture often involves playing with and poking fun at our own stereotypes. For example, the queer classic But I’m a Cheerleader (1999) includes a scene where protagonist Megan’s (Natasha Lyonne) parents can tell she’s a lesbian because she eats tofu and likes Melissa Etheridge, and there are several scenes where gay characters try to engage in masculine activities like chopping wood, only to end up ineffectually running around screaming. While straight people often use these types of jokes to attack, demean or belittle queer folks, But I’m a Cheerleader plays with them in a way that resonates as empowering and relatable because they’re being reclaimed by the community.

The lines become blurred, however, when the person delivering a self-deprecating line isn’t actually a part of the group that the line is making fun of. If a gay character makes fun of himself for stereotypical gay traits, it’s funny because the joke is coming from within the community; however, having a straight person speak these jokes suddenly makes the situation a lot more complicated.

Tristan Coolman recently pointed out that James Corden’s casting in The Prom isn’t necessarily homophobic: while his character happens to be extremely feminine, his femininity is not used as the butt of jokes. However, when a character’s proximity to queer stereotypes does become a punchline, having someone who is not part of the community voice this humour complicates the scenario. This isn’t

For example: one of my biggest issues with The Prom isn’t that James Corden is homophobic: rather, he seems to be trying so hard to not be homophobic that he often seems uncomfortable and restrained lest he accidentally let his character’s femininity become the butt of a joke. An openly gay actor would not have to tiptoe around this tension in the same way: casting a gay actor gives them the freedom to be self-deprecating without having to worry about the fact that they’re not actually part of the “self” that is being deprecated.

How do the characters treat each other?

Simon Gallagher points out how audiences are often shocked by how mean the characters in Boys in the Band are to each other, and one of the most popular challenges from RuPaul’s Drag Race is the reading challenge, where the performers jokingly point out each others’ flaws.

While often derided as a simple gay stereotype of being “catty,” this way of relating to each other has historical importance to queer communities. It goes beyond simply “being mean” towards a historically significant way of processing trauma, oppression, community belonging and identity, and can be a valuable form of community interaction. However, as Dorian Corey says in Paris is Burning (1990), this sort of interaction works because it happens between queer folks – the dynamic changes when someone from outside the community joins in. Corey points out: “If it’s happening between the gay world and the straight world, it’s not really a read, it’s more of an insult: a vicious slur fight.”

Drag Race fans, for example, seem to think that they can “read” the contestants on the show – since the contestants regularly read each other – by tagging them in mean posts on social media. However, when this sort of comment comes from someone who isn’t a drag performer (and who doesn’t know any of the performers on the show personally), it isn’t reading; it’s bullying (and, in the case of Drag Race fans, often racist).

When a gay man proudly calls himself a “fag,” the situation is very different from when a straight person calls him one. When fictional gay man Brian Kinney from Queer as Folk repeatedly says “fag,” it’s empowering; when straight actor Gale Harold (who plays Brian) is the one saying the line, the situation becomes more complicated, and it’s harder to feel quite as empowered by the moment. As with all of these points, I’m not saying that the situation is wrong (I personally love all of the performances in Queer As Folk, even if most of the actors aren’t gay): rather, the situation is complicated and warrants consideration and reflection.

On a similar, but slightly different, topic: deeply rooted shame, selfhatred, internalized homophobia and similar topics are frequently explored topics in queer cinema. These areas can be extremely sensitive and hard to navigate. If characters are ashamed of their sexuality, it is important to consider the impact of casting a straight actor to portray this shame.

What is the makeup of the creative team?

When I initially heard about Andrew Garfield playing Prior Walter in the 2017 National Theatre production of Angels in America, I was hesitant. The characters in Angels in America constantly throw around slurs, make fun of themselves and each other for issues related to their sexuality, and experience extreme forms of shame and self-hatred; throwing a straight celebrity into the middle of all this tension and complexity seemed like a recipe for disaster.

However, learning that playwright Tony Kushner himself wanted Garfield to take on the role eased my skepticism: behind anything that Garfield did onstage was a queer voice guiding the choice.

The performing arts are inherently collaborative, and having diverse voices behind the scenes is just as important as having queer actors. I’m a lot more comfortable with a straight actor playing a gay character if I know there’s a gay director behind the scenes overseeing the project to make sure it’s accurate and well-informed.

As with my note about a film set as a workplace: considering who is making a film – beyond the actors you see on screen – can give a lot of perspective on the intentions and possible impacts of the choices being made.

Conclusion As I stated in the introduction, it is my hope that this article is Representing this sort of “cattiness” on screen becomes more able to stir a more nuanced conversation about representation complicated when the actors who deliver the lines aren’t themselves and performance in media. Rather than resting on an extreme queer. If a lesbian makes a U-Haul joke about a friend, it’s playful; statement of either “anyone can play anyone, it’s just acting!” or if a straight woman starts making U-Haul lesbian jokes, however, “gay people should only be played by gay people!” I hope that these it’s harder to see the joke as being in good spirits. When a straight five questions can help generate conversation that’s somewhere actress is playing a lesbian who makes these jokes, it’s more in between. complicated; the situation is neither strictly right nor wrong, but one that needs careful consideration.

I also want to note that this article primarily addresses the issue of casting straight actors to play cisgender gay, lesbian, bisexual What are the characters calling each other? and pansexual characters; the issue of casting cisgender actors There was a period of time in the 1990s when gay men were to play transgender characters carries a complicated history of working really hard to reclaim the word “fag.” From Queer as violence and misrepresentation that warrants further discussion.

Folk to Will and Grace, the word was used extremely frequently, The documentary Disclosure (2020) addresses how the repeated both as a slur and as a reclaimed, prideful statement of identity. casting of cis men as trans women perpetrates harmful myths that While this usage has died down since the turn of the 21st century, trans women are “somehow men in disguise,” and how casting cis LGBTQ2IA+ people have a complicated history with a lot of terms actors to play trans characters has a particularly harmful and violent (including the now-commonplace “queer”) that have been both history. For an insightful analysis of this particular casting issue, self-proclaimed terms of identity and offensive slurs. check out Disclosure (it is now available on Netflix).

STEVEN GREENWOOD is a PhD candidate at McGill University, where he researches the relationship between queer communities and popular culture. His dissertation explores queer reception of musicals, focusing specifically on how this reception has changed (and hasn’t) since the turn of the 21st century. He also writes and directs for stage and screen, and serves as the artistic director of Home Theatre Productions.

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MOVIES & TV

to say that they’re being homophobic by saying these lines; they are, after all, playing a fictional character. However, the tension created when self-deprecating humour is acted out by someone other than the “self” that is being deprecated is an issue to consider.

FASHION

Fields of Tulle

Tulle, a fabric typically associated with the feminine, is juxtaposed here by aspects of traditional masculinity, like body hair, in a representation of what masculinity is today. In 2021, masculinity is no longer about how macho a man can be but how honest he can be with accepting the feminine in his life and living with the harmony and coexistence of the two.

MARCH / APRIL 2021

STYLING AND CREATIVE DIRECTION: Aram Eginliyan PHOTOGRAPHER: Janine Maral MAKEUP: Sojourner Francis MODEL: Aren Adamian

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FASHION

TULLE HOOD: L’Uomo Strano SHOES: Dr. Martens ACCESSORIES & GLOVES: Stylist’s own BRIEFS: Calvin Klein

JUMPSUIT: Queenlordjord SHOES: Dr. Martens BRIEFS: Calvin Klein SOCKS: Stylist’s own 31

FASHION

JUMPSUIT: Queenlordjord BOOTS: Dr. Martens BRIEFS: Calvin Klein SOCKS: Stylist’s own

MARCH / APRIL 2021

TULLE AND LACE TOP: L’Uomo Strano NECKLACE: Stylist’s own WRIST HARNESS: Petrol

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FASHION

DRESS: Queenlordjord BOOTS: Dr. Martens NECKLACE: Anice Jewellery HAIR ACCESSORIES: Hilary MacMillan

JUMPSUIT: Queenlordjord BOOTS: Dr. Martens HAIR ACCESSORIES: Hilary MacMillan

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FASHION

Touch Me MARCH / APRIL 2021

Meet Natalie Cuda and Yael Malkin. They met six years ago in Yorkville at a popular ice cream shop and have been happily married now for 3½ years.

Residing in Toronto, they share their home with four cats, a bulldog and an aquarium full of exotic fish.

PHOTOGRAPHER: Ivan Otis FASHION DIRECTOR: Paul Langill WARDROBE STYLIST: Fredsonn Silva Aguda HAIR AND MAKEUP: Paul Langill MODELS: Natalie Cuda and Yael Malkin Special thanks to Studio311.ca

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FASHION

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FASHION MARCH / APRIL 2021

Natalie is the definition of “that sexy girl next door.”

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FASHION

After a quick visit to Natalie and Yael’s beautiful home, we paired a few of their favourite fashions with a few pieces from genderless fashion brand The House of Dwir.

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MARCH / APRIL 2021

FASHION

FASHION

Natalie and Yael enjoy travelling the world, with recent trips overseas to Turkey, Italy and Serbia. When they’re vacationing, you can almost always find them soaking up the sun on some of the world’s most beautiful beaches.

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FASHION MARCH / APRIL 2021

Yael loves all types of fashion, but one of her go-to places to shop is Oak + Fort. Her favourites include wearing head-to-toe black and tight body-hugging cocktail dresses in velvet and lace.

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FASHION

Another one of the couple’s passions is tattooing their bodies from head to toe.

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FASHION MARCH / APRIL 2021

Natalie is an executive chef and is presently looking for new employment adventures for her culinary talents. When it comes to fashion, she tends to shop at Zara; she always loves the fit of the men’s collection. She also has a passion for unique one-of-a-kind hats and killer boots. On this page Natalie is wearing a black tux that she had made for her wedding.

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FASHION

Yael is a hard-working PMU (permanent makeup artist) specializing in microblading. She owns her own salon, where she leads a team of artists.

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POLITICS & CULTURE

HOW LGBTQ FOREIGN POLICY SPURRED A NEW COLD WAR The conundrum of “traditional values” politics

MARCH / APRIL 2021

By Adam Zivo

Something big happened in the early 2010s. International LGBTQ advocacy, which had been around for decades without much government support, was suddenly incorporated within many Western states’ larger umbrellas of human rights projects. This was epitomized by a memorandum issued by US President Obama in 2011, which declared that advancing LGBTQ rights would be a foreign policy priority. Through that memorandum, US departments and agencies were instructed to fight against the criminalization of LGBTQ rights, and to provide support for human rights advocacy where possible. It was an enormous victory. Two years later, the European Union also formalized its support for integrating LGBTQ advocacy and foreign policy, through its “Guidelines to Promote and Protect the Enjoyment of All Human Rights by LGBTI Persons.”

frictions. However much the US and the EU advocated for LGBTQ inclusion, it could not suddenly undo local prejudices in developing countries. Their citizens resented being forced to accommodate sexual minorities, which they considered deviant, and especially so when this accommodation was implicitly coerced through foreign influence. Seeing an opportunity here, Russia led the retaliatory charge, pioneering a new kind of politics based on “traditional values.” Sodden with religiosity and nationalism, this worldview was explicitly antithetical to Western liberal secularism, turning instead to patriarchal conceptions of family and church. Western commitments to human rights were reframed as a homosexual conspiracy, a testament to the corrupting power of decadence, and a perversion to be defended against.

The vast diplomatic and financial resources of the US and EU were finally being put towards supporting LGBTQ rights advocacy.

The importance of this policy shift cannot be overstated. Rights advocacy needs funding to thrive. The funds that can be provided through a government patron go far beyond what can otherwise be raised by civil society. Similarly, the tools of foreign policy – public condemnation of errant states, the threat of sanctions, diplomatic manoeuvring in multilateral fora – simply cannot be duplicated by activists working on their own. For the first half of the 2010s, it seemed as if the tides were moving decisively in favour of LGBTQ acceptance.

Concurrently, Russia worked hard to portray LGBTQ populations as illegitimate agents of foreign influence. As the country clamped down on LGBTQ rights, it also clamped down on foreign nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) within its borders, drawing an explicit connection between the two. Abetted by the Russian Orthodox Church, Russia rejected the notion that its citizens could be naturally queer, and, in doing so, stripped its queer citizens of the basic protections that come with being a part of the body politic.

The deep reservoirs of Russian homophobia were called upon to wash away Western “moral corruption,” putting an end to the brief window of LGBTQ progress that had begun in Russia in the 1990s. As an authoritarian state with a meagre history of liberalism, Russia’s fusion of homophobia and anti-Western nationalism was easily accomplished.

However, by the mid 2010s, the West’s adversaries took note of the fact that global LGBTQ advocacy ran up against important cultural 44

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Unfortunately, while this toxic mix of homophobia and antiWesternism was cresting in Eurasia, the United States detoured into Trumpism, which had the disastrous effect of hollowing out America’s international commitments to human rights. Though on paper the Trump administration committed to defending LGBTQ rights abroad, in practice the resources put towards advocacy were marginal. The tragic result was thus: the LGBTQ community, by receiving the patronage of the United States’ government, accidentally invited organized state opposition in Eurasia, and was then promptly abandoned to fight its new foes on its own. Though now the Biden administration has restored LGBTQ rights as a diplomatic priority, the hard-learned lesson is that state allies are often more intransigent than state enemies.

So what now?

With things being the way they are right now, what can LGBTQ people do? If the LGBTQ community is being used as a token in a cultural neo-Cold War, inextricably tied to the cold-blooded realities of international relations, then how ought it to manoeuvre?

The big question here is whether anything can be done at all. At least in Eurasia (East Asia is a whole separate matter), the frontiers of LGBTQ inclusion have largely been wrought through the last

In practice, this means making the case that LGBTQ advocacy is truly integral to foreign policy, not just because of universal moral principles but because of the security interests of Western states. An unexpected analogue can be found in the original Cold War, in battles over art. The United States poured inordinate sums of money into the development of abstract expressionism, as a way to wage cultural war against the Soviet Union, which, for ideological reasons, championed the Soviet realist style. Through its inclusion within an international culture war, something “soft” like art gained new significance and consequently received outsized investment and support. In the same way, if LGBTQ people can position themselves similarly, the international advocacy for their rights may receive more robust, enduring support, which may foster rights development in parts of Eurasia where the US and EU still have enough influence.

Some may argue that aligning LGBTQ rights to a specific political bloc may be dangerous, undermining the universality of human rights and reinforcing the othering experienced by LGBTQ populations in other countries. The fact is that those harms are already here, owing to the rise of “traditional values” politics. If we’ve been unwillingly pulled into a global culture war, then we need to make the most of it.

ADAM ZIVO is a Toronto-based social entrepreneur, photographer and analyst best known for founding the LoveisLoveisLove campaign.

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By the late 2010s, Russia started leveraging its “traditional values” gasps of American hegemony, with substantial aid from the EU, rhetoric to reassert influence over its Eurasian neighbours, with which is in similar decline. Both used their economic and political mixed results. Countries like Hungary and Kyrgyzstan, eager to might, and their spiritual push for liberal democracy, to protect ingratiate themselves with the former superpower and cognizant vulnerable LGBTQ communities in homophobic countries. of the social conservatism of their own citizens, adopted their own versions of “traditional values” politics. Kyrgyzstan adopted However, the US and EU simply cannot influence certain areas Russian-inspired laws against “homosexual propaganda,” while also as well as they used to, and we may have to admit that this loss of expelling foreign NGOs. Through this it hoped to show solidarity influence leaves us a little helpless sometimes. With the unfortunate with Russia and better reap the benefits of its membership within end of Western hegemony, we now must contend that there are the Eurasian Economic Union (a cheap, knock-off EU dominated regions where we have limited power to push for good, constrained

by Russia). Meanwhile, Hungary, a member of the European Union, as we are by the evolving contours of global power. Such is the chaffed at Western Europe’s tut-tutting of Viktor Orban’s rising case in Chechnya, where the most Western activists can do is spirit authoritarianism. Doubling down on its growing illiberalism, it refugees to safety. Another example would be Ukraine, a country also copied Russia and began unravelling LGBTQ protections that is copying Kremlin-style homophobia, including a proposed where it could, which has most recently manifested via a bill that “homosexual propaganda” bill. If it were 10 or 20 years ago, Ukraine legally erases transgender people. Not incidentally, Hungary started could easily be pressured to tone down its rights abuses. Today, framing queerness as a vague, external threat aligned with the far Ukraine is at risk of once again becoming a Russian client state, right’s other favourite boogeyman: liberal mega-financier George and so, even though it is technically an ally of the West, there Soros, who seems to haunt Orban’s imagination like an evil ghost is limited capacity to pressure it to adopt better rights practices. and who, according to Hungarian far rightists, conspires to make Fundamentally, power is the key to righteousness, and without Hungary super gay. power, there can be no change. If mighty states can’t effectively advocate for change, then how can civil society actors, let alone However, Serbia stands out as a curious outlier. As a Balkan country, average citizens, hope to? it sits at the crossroads of East and West, split between European and Russian influence. Serbia has an aggressively nationalist and One idea is to push Western states to take more control over the homophobic culture, and sees itself as Russia’s “little brother” neo-Cold War narrative about LGBTQ rights. As of now, Russia due to their shared heritage (Slavic, Eastern Orthodox Christian). has been dominating the conversation, treating LGBTQ issues Yet, despite this, Serbia has made some improvements on LGBTQ with incredible seriousness, hallucinating them into an existential acceptance in the past decade, including the inauguration of Ana threat. In contrast, the West often sees LGBTQ rights as a soft Brnabić, a lesbian, as prime minister. Serbia’s concessions on issue, and invests accordingly. To illustrate, in 2019, Canada LGBTQ rights are often understood as part of its broader attempt made a pioneering investment of $30 million in LGBTQ advocacy to “Europeanize” and fast-track its acquisition of EU membership, over five years, which sounds great but is in fact a drop within a long-standing goal for the country given its underdevelopment its annual international development budget (about $6 billion). If and hunger for EU funding. One can take Serbia as a case study LGBTQ rights are already being pulled into a new narrative of of how “traditional values” politics can be stymied when countries civilizational clash, and hurting for it, then it may be time for us feel an ongoing need to maintain good relations with, and even to invert that dynamic and use that same narrative to secure the appease, Western political powers. funding and support we deserve.

INSIGHT

D I V O C GING

D U J

Getting over getting “over it”

“Disgusting you give us gay people a bad name,” wrote one commenter on a sexy Instagram photo of a West Hollywood nurse who posted photos from the New Year’s parties in Puerto Vallarta.

For decades, gays have been known for craftiness with hair, makeup, “You’re truly nothing more than a plague rat.” fashion and décor. In the digital age, gays have also demonstrated a craftiness with memes…and the memes mocking a defiantly This quote struck me as something that might have been uttered non-socially distanced cruise loaded up with 60 partying gays that in the early days of the AIDS epidemic. Back then, it might have capsized off the coast of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, were delicious. been said by a homophobic straight person who saw gay sex as disgusting, but it might also have been said by a gay man who, My favourite was a comic strip featuring a cartoon hand labelled without fail, was celibate, monogamous or practised safe sex, and “Social Media” that, in the first panel, looked like it was reaching to severely judged those who didn’t exercise the same self-control. grab the hand of a person submerged underwater but then gave the For this “good gay,” anyone who did not exercise unfailing selfdrowning person a high five. Every shirtless gay on TikTok had an control was engaging not only in self-harm, but in a greater attack opinion. “I’m just confused how people can travel to Puerto Vallarta on the gay community. during a pandemic,” said @ericwillztt, “but meanwhile if I go to the grocery store and someone gets too close to me in the cereal aisle, I’m all like: [clip of hysterical Charlotte York-Goldenblatt pulling Carrie Bradshaw away from Mr. Big in the first Sex and the City movie].”

By Paul Gallant

The ill-judged cruise was part of a series of New Year’s parties organized by Los Angeles-based Jeffrey Sanker, sometimes referred to as “the high priest of gay parties,” specifically circuit parties.

Though the roots of circuit parties go back to before Sanker set up shop, he can be given credit for helping define the circuit aesthetic: pounding music in huge rooms filled with buff, shirtless men who rely on the music, and often drugs, to strip away sexual inhibitions and transport themselves to another state of being. The peer pressure to have a gym-built body, plus the high cost of tickets and travel, means that circuit boys tend to be in their 30s or 40s, with good incomes and the freedom to jet off on long weekends.

Because circuit boys mostly tick all the privilege boxes, and because of the conformity of their hedonism, they are often the bête noire of the LGBTQ community, easy targets used to symbolize what’s deplorable in gay life. At least for the “good” gays. Because if Puerto Vallarta’s boating accident has taught us one thing, it’s that LGBTQ people can be more reckless – but also more uptight – than straights. We can be kinder but also meaner, more accepting but also more unforgiving. The global pandemic turned up the volume on this Jekyll and Hyde nature of gay culture. You’d think both sides would know better.

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I know, the differences between COVID-19 and HIV/AIDS are too numerous to list. One is usually spread in situations where consent can be more readily discerned than someone breathing contaminated air. One disproportionately affects certain groups (gay men, drug users), while the other affects anybody who breathes, though it is more deadly for certain groups (the elderly and those with pre-existing health conditions). One can be mostly prevented by using condoms and clean drug paraphernalia, while the other is transmitted though the most casual of social contact.

One is a chronic illness, while the other, for most people (though sadly not all), goes away in a few weeks. But when you compare attitudes about HIV/AIDS in its early days to these early days of the COVID-19 epidemic, there are echoes: bogus theories about how it’s spread, bogus theories about how to prevent it and cure it, blame, confusion, denial and, most importantly when it comes to meme production, anger.

Recalculating the risk factor After almost 40 years of the disease, we’ve gotten better at

thinking about HIV/AIDS – analyzing risk factors, preventing it, improving quality of life for people affected by it, seeing how it affects the LGBTQ community as a whole. People internalize all this learning. So it’s possible that gay men who have taken risks during the COVID-19 pandemic – who have embraced forbidden means to socialize, have sex and feel connected – are not such carefree scofflaws. Perhaps because they’ve been wrestling with HIV/AIDS for so much of their lives, they’re deeply engaged in harm-reduction strategies. They’re sophisticated in getting what they want while minimizing, if not eliminating, risk. In fact, they’ve become too savvy for public health experts, who, stumbling through a fast-changing crisis, must give every person the same, simple advice: “Stay home, wear a mask, wash your hands.” By contrast, gay men of a certain age have come to think of risk as personal, something that can be negotiated.

There’s a problem with this. While one-size-fits-all rules are often unfair, creating unhappiness without discernable public health results, personal calculations do open up a margin of error that can be frightening. A 2018 paper out of the University of Siena, by Gianmarco Troiano, Isabella Mercurio, Mauro Bacci and Nicola Nante, found that HIV prevalence among men who attended circuit parties is very high, ranging from six per cent to 40.8 per cent. For some, in the era of PrEP and medications that ensure HIV-positive men can’t transmit the virus, these numbers don’t look so bad, even if a forgotten pill causes a new case once in a while. But to apply strategies about sexual health to a still-mysterious airborne disease is a failure to read the room.

Judgy “good gays” scoff at the circuit boys’ compulsion to take off their shirts and dance in crowded rooms, suggesting that they are too shallow to be capable of passing the time in other ways (presumably by reading novels and baking cookies). But you can’t expect someone who’s built a particular lifestyle – even if it’s one focused on drinking, drug use, casual friendships and casual sex – to reinvent himself overnight as a homebody. Particularly when that lifestyle was adopted, in many cases, as armour against oppression and the insecurity that can come from growing up gay in a homophobic society.

Which isn’t to say that circuit boys are victims – or at least bigger victims than other LGBTQ people. But there’s no sense in condemning the party lifestyle as unsustainable in a pandemic because, well, which human being born since the 1918 Spanish flu lives a lifestyle that’s sustainable in a pandemic? If we don’t blame the grandmother who dies of COVID-19 because she couldn’t resist going to a party to see her grandchildren, then isn’t it homophobic to blame a gay man who can’t resist seeing his friends? Are only wholesome people, people who have spouses and children, allowed to assuage loneliness without shame?

“I’m already staying at home. I can’t stay at home any harder,” complained one of the “good gays” on Twitter. But if the shoe was on the other foot, and a virus went after those who failed to regularly stay out past midnight, could this “good gay” manage to haunt the clubs any harder? Just like blue-collar workers have had a tougher pandemic than white-collar workers, certain people have had to make bigger sacrifices – and sometimes dangerous compromises – to get themselves through this awful time. Calling them rats doesn’t make the virus go away any faster. And it probably won’t make them smarten up.

PAUL GALLANT is a Toronto-based writer and editor who writes about travel, innovation, city building, social issues (particularly LGBT issues) and business for a variety of national and international publications.

He’s done time as lead editor at the loop magazine in Vancouver as well as Xtra and fab in Toronto.

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INSIGHT

This urge to assign blame attached itself to HIV/AIDS right from the start, and through the years HIV/AIDS organizations and educators around the world have dedicated resources to fighting this stigma and shame, including trying to change the behaviour of gay guys who treat HIV-positive peers as something to be avoided.

Shaming not only harms the quality of life for people with HIV/ AIDS, but various studies suggest that it hurts health outcomes – it doesn’t make people behave differently, it just drives the behaviour underground. “Individuals go to great lengths to avoid or circumvent acute shame and potential instances of shameful exposure, even when this avoidance might mean harming the self or others,” Barry Lyons and Luna Doleza wrote in a 2017 paper out of Trinity College Dublin and the University of Exeter.

TRAVEL

TIME TO PL AN UP When all the pent-up stay-at-home angst finally lets loose, boy, look out. These travel trends are here to stay

By Doug Wallace

MARCH / APRIL 2021

Bora Bora, arguably the most famous island of French Polynesia

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Looking past ourselves and our privilege and those curbed travel plans, the collapse of tourism has brought vulnerable communities and conservation projects to their knees, desperate for the return of travel dollars. Get yours ready to spend when there is once again foreign land underfoot. Wherever you’re headed in the hopefully not too distant future, it’s time to lock onto the trends that matter most.

Bring on the bucket list The first thing that will have to change is your mindset. It will take a while to cycle off staying at home and feeling confident enough to travel again. As we will very likely travel less frequently in the beginning, each trip will need to be more purposeful, yielding maximum benefit.

Meaningful travel will be at the top of everybody’s list – a you-onlylive-once treat for being made to stay put for so long. Plan it hard and live it large: French Polynesia, Thailand, Uruguay, Greenland.

It’s almost as if you should put your finger on a spinning globe with one eye shut.

Travel will be more sustainable, too, with tour companies looking for innovative ways to lessen the giant travel footprint. Think: train travel, cycling adventures, more hiking, less polluting.

Get out the cooler In addition to the “travel less, travel better” credo, the slower method of travelling we’ve been enjoying combing through various parts of the province is here to stay. Rural Ontario could still be your

oyster. Last summer, it was like we had forgotten how fun road trips are. Those who aren’t ready to fly yet this year will be back in the car, this time with more purpose. Your road trips this year will be better planned and better executed, capitalizing on all the practice from last year.

TRAVEL

Few could argue how strong the urge to travel is when it’s not booked on the calendar. I find that I always need some kind of adventure to look forward to, save for, anticipate and then embrace. Buy the T-shirt. And while we can’t go much of anywhere right now, there’s nothing like some armchair travelling to get you in the mood for the journeys down the road. After all, planning is part of the fun.

Those who are reluctant to revisit the airport when it opens will take baby steps – adventures across town, more city green space exploration, overnights in local hotels for the hell of it. I haven’t been on Highway 400 for so long I’ve forgotten where it is, but the lake district is brilliant fun. Prince Edward County and Niagara are always awesome; there’s always something new to see. Ever been to Lake Erie’s north shore? Neither have I, but it’s on my list. For those looking to book RVs, get on that now to avoid disappointment.

The number of campers available for rent in Ontario is finite.

Hunker down and party on Privacy is the new luxury. Those who have saved their pennies will be eager to spend them once again on isolated beaches no one’s ever heard of, private villas with two dishwashers, remote islands, desert, forest, wilderness – basically, wherever everybody else isn’t.

Private marine adventures and small-hotel buyouts will become the norm for family get-togethers, special occasion celebrations and the like, as multigenerational travel groups and gangs of BFFs let loose in their controlled bubble packs. Hotels themselves will be creating their own bubbles, offering different tiers of privacy depending on how comfortable their guests are about sharing public space.

Connect with the relatives Get out the vacuum, because quality family time is about to amp up. Everyone you missed seeing last year – kith and kin, from the grandparents who aren’t getting any younger on down to the new babies you haven’t yet kissed – will be near the top of this summer’s list.

St. George’s, the capital city of the Caribbean island of Grenada

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Familiarity is calming in times of chaos, and your family – and friends who are like family – will be the soothing balm. Eightieth birthday, wedding anniversary, annual family-cottage weekend, postponedfrom-last-year wedding – all will be in line for reacquainting. Better make sure your suits fit. Mine sure don’t.

The Strait of Georgia, which lies between Vancouver Island and the British Columbia mainland

Rethink the workplace Now that so many have gotten used to working from home – your boss included – the digital nomads will start to roam. What if it turns out your office only needs to see you once every two months?

Or not at all? See ya! You’re working remotely from San Miguel or Bermuda, Jasper or Fogo Island.

If your office no longer has a downtown address and everyone is at home, what a great opportunity to create a work bubble somewhere else. Okay, this isn’t really travel, but it could be a life experience worth investigating, one that doesn’t have to be expensive. Hotels have already cottoned on to this and are making big plans involving longer-term rates and programs to entice this yearns-to-wander market.

Travel doesn’t have to be resortified all the time, either; I could live in a shack on the beach if the Wi-Fi was good. Apartment in Berlin?

Sure. Condo in Costa Rica for a couple of months? Absolutely.

Don’t be afraid to wing it While I realize this flies in the face of planners everywhere, and planning is often extremely important, sometimes you just have to say what the hell. Just like the finger-on-the-spinning-globe mentioned above, winging it has its sexiness. Pending quarantine reductions and such, last-minute may be not just a frivolity but a necessity, as travel restrictions change so rapidly and randomly.

Whistler in British Columbia

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I’m not really a winger, but I could try it if the company was good (and it always is). Who hasn’t wanted to just go to the airport, look at the departures board and decide on the spot where to go? Sounds like a movie waiting to happen and you’re the star.

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DOUG WALLACE is the editor and publisher of travel resource TravelRight.Today.

KAYOOT

t a h t t ’ n Is

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Let’s just say that these will boost your outfits up at least 3 levels of chic, get no less than 5 mentions a day, and all of the attention in the room. hehe ;-)

These earrings are constructed using high precision laser cutting. Being only 3 mm thick, they are super lightweight. They are made from high quality acrylic and 925 sterling silver.

KAYOOT.ca 51

FLASHBACK Miss Universe Pageant Ends Ban On Transgender Contestants (April 10, 2012)

The Miss Universe organization ended its ban on transgender contestants on April 10, 2012, announcing that transgender women would finally be allowed to compete for the crown in its beauty competitions.

result of our ongoing discussions with GLAAD and not Jenna’s legal representation, which if anything delayed the process,” she said. “We have a long history of supporting equality for all women, and this was something we took very seriously.”

The decision came following weeks of headlines and scrutiny after Jenna Talackova, a Canadian competitor, was disqualified on March 24 because she had been born male.

Ultimately, Talackova was welcomed back to compete in the 2012 Miss Universe Canada pageant and if she had won, eligible to go on to the Miss Universe Pageant. At the Miss Universe Canada pageant on May 19, 2012, Talackova made it into the Top 12, but failed to reach the Top 5. She was, however, one of four contestants awarded the title of Miss Congeniality.

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At the time, Miss Universe officials insisted that the sudden change was in spite of, not because of, legal threats from Talackova’s lawyer Gloria Allred, a prominent women’s rights lawyer. According to a statement made by Miss Universe president Paula Shugart at the time, credit for the policy change must be given elsewhere.

“We want to give credit where credit is due, and the decision to include transgender women in our beauty competitions is a

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All competitions under the Miss Universe Pageant became open to all transgender women beginning at the start of the Fall 2013 pageant season.

C O M M U N I T Y

R E S I L I E N C Y

2-SPIRITED PEOPLE O F T H E 1 S T N AT I O N S 2-spirited people of the 1st nation is a non-profit AIDS service organization that was founded over 25 years ago for indigenous, two-spirit folks. 2-spirits provides prevention education and support for Two-spirits, including First Nations, Metis and Inuit people living with or at risk for HIV and related co-infections in the Greater Toronto Area. We base our work in Indigenous philosophies of wholistic health and wellness.

2-spirits offers a variety of support services, cultural programming, HIV education, harm reduction services, Traditional and counselling support, and put on various events throughout the year. We meet people where they are at and give space for our community to define their own identity,

family priorities and their needs. We currently offer a wide range of programs and supports such as, two bi-weekly talking circles – one for youth and one for all others 2-spirit members, food support – with fresh and non-perishable food, we run a posi+ive Living program for individuals living with HIV, a health and wellness body movement program where we encourage community to move their bodies, and have various alternating programs – such as Cooking programs, Beeding Regalia making, Bingo, and Social Hangouts. To participate in any of our programs or become a member of the organization reach out to us on Facebook, Instagram or visit our website.

This is community, this is resiliency, this is 2-Spirits. Let’s reclaim our place in the circle, together.

145-105 Front Street East Toronto, Ontario, M5A 1E3

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