Xtra, Toronto's Gay and Lesbian News

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TORONTO QUEER DANCE TROUPE TAKES ON PRIDE

INSIDE

PRIDE

PRIDE IN THE BALKANS GAVIN CRAWFORD LARRY TEE COZMIC CAT DENISE BENSON JESSICA SUTTA DRAGONETTE HIFI SEAN ANNA WILLATS REMINGTON’S TRUCK STOP OUTSPORT

United in Anger documentary explores the history of AIDS activism ›XX Veteran activist Tim McCaskell looks back ›XX

+ VILLAGE CHANGES 11 JOHN AMAECHI 12 ELVIRA KURT 42

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EDITORIAL CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE

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Police protect marchers during 2011 Zagreb Pride in Croatia.

INTERNATIONAL

Global warning While Torontonians celebrate Pride, gay people around the world are increasingly under attack. Xtra looks at the criminalization of homosexuality in several countries, including those in the Balkans, the home of Goran Miletic, this year’s Pride Toronto international grand marshal.

›25

Editorial: Don’t forget to demonstrate ›6 Pride survival pack ›8 Xtra reporter named honoured dyke ›13 Political grand marshals ›13 Pride bites ›17 A Pride veteran’s unsung heroes ›19 Small steps forward in the Balkans ›25 Trans Pride ›28 Jessica Sutta ›29 Larry Tee ›29 OutSport Pride ›31 Ill Nana ›32 Cozmic Cat and Denise Benson ›38 Gavin Crawford ›44 And much more inside!

COVER PHOTO BY RYAN FAUBERT

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INSIDE

PRIDE

Organic Leaders for 27 Years!

NEWS

New life in the Village Two new Church St bars are rushing to open in time for Pride weekend. The managers of both promise to bring some excitement back to Torontoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s gayest strip. â&#x20AC;ş11

Olympic miss The British Olympic effort ran out of money for a Pride House at this summerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Games in London. Xtra talks with retired professional basketball player John Amaechi about why the Olympics must be more inclusive and welcoming for gay athletes. â&#x20AC;ş12

VIDEO

Pam Ann The funniest ďŹ&#x201A;ight attendant you will ever meet, Pam Ann, recently brought her witty barbs and beverage cart to Toronto. Xtra was there to clink a glass of champy and dish all kinds of juicy dirt. â&#x20AC;şxtra.ca

ONLINE

Pride Short Film Showcase The Canadian Media Guild is hosting its ďŹ rst ever Pride Week LGBT Short Film Showcase at the CBC Broadcasting Centre. Xtra chats with the organizer about some of the highlights. â&#x20AC;şxtra.ca

OUT IN THE CITY

Time to Fringe

REGULARS

Several Fringe shows offer a touch of pink this year. Xtra recommends 21 Days, Raw and Mum and the Big C. â&#x20AC;ş42

Comment â&#x20AC;ş6 Xcetera â&#x20AC;ş8 Xposed â&#x20AC;ş45 Index â&#x20AC;ş48 ClassiďŹ eds â&#x20AC;ş48

COVER STORY

Going gaga for Ill Nana The queer dance troupe just received the Spirit of Will Munro Award at the Ontario Youth Line Awards. Our cover guys and girl are also set to tear up several danceďŹ&#x201A;oors during Pride. Xtra chats with Ill Nana about their future plans for world domination. â&#x20AC;ş32

COLUMNS

Editorial â&#x20AC;ş6 Toronto at Night â&#x20AC;ş36 Porndoggy â&#x20AC;ş50 LISTINGS

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editorial › feedback › debate

Comment Don’t forget to demonstrate Editorial Danny Glenwright

M

Y FIRST PRIDES WERE during the 1990s in Winnipeg, where everyone marches in the parade. All the city’s magnificent queer people gather outside the legislative buildings in the centre of the city before walking as one vast group up Broadway Ave. Back then no one ever forgot Pride was a demonstration. We screamed, whistled, danced and protested all the way through the centre of the city and back to the grass outside the legislature, where we collapsed and commenced our party.

Here in Toronto such a possibility does not exist; the parade is already too long. Imagine if all one million of us marched?

For this reason I’ve often had to remind myself come Pride Day in Toronto that it’s a demonstration as well as a celebration. This year Pride Toronto had the same idea; they made it their theme.

There are other reasons some of us will have to remember to think political this year, not least because we’ve made so many important gains over the past months.

In last year’s Pride issue Xtra looked at the unfinished project of gay activism, noting 25 battles that remained to be fought. Over the course of the past year, several of these battles have been won, including the promotion of gaystraight alliances in all schools, safer labour environments for sex workers (although there’s still work to be done on this front), and the addition of gender identity and gender expression to the Ontario Human Rights Code.

Pride — gay Christmas — is a bit like the beginning of a new gay year.

And as the end of the last gay year draws to a close, there is a tangible sense of optimism, renewal and celebration in our community. And it is well deserved.

The end of this gay year showed us that politics matter at Pride, both before and after. Bad political leaders have got us engaged and our community has pressured more progressive political leaders to pass legislation that matters to us.

This year Xtra asked Pink Triangle Press staff members, past and present, to tell us their favourite thing about Pride. From mesh Tshirts to pornstars, the parades to

increased sex drive, readers will see that the responses were overwhelmingly fun, celebratory and optimistic.

As Lucille Ball once said, “It’s a helluva start, being able to recognize what makes you happy.”

Karim, an intern from Jordan, came to Canada recently because he recognized what makes him happy and the trouble it will cause him back home. Karim’s response to our question is especially touching when you know he’s about to be forced to return to Jordan because his Canadian visa will soon expire and our government will not let him remain here if he does not have an employer willing to sponsor him.

“My favourite thing about Pride is I am going to experience it for the first time and enjoy the beautiful people that will be part of the 2012 celebration,” he told us.

This year I’ll be demonstrating for Karim and the hundreds of other queer people like him struggling to remain in Canada so they, too, can be happy.

While I might sometimes have to remind myself about the political side of Pride, gays and lesbians all

THERE ARE OTHER REASONS SOME OF US WILL HAVE TO REMEMBER TO THINK POLITICAL THIS YEAR, NOT LEAST BECAUSE WE’VE MADE SO MANY IMPORTANT GAINS OVER THE PAST MONTHS. around the world (including many in Canada) are not allowed to forget.

They live in a permanent closet, worried every day about being found out, wishing for a day when they can fully embrace what it is they long ago decided makes them happy.

Promoting queer and human rights abroad and ensuring that gay refugee claimants get a fair shake in Canada are but two of many battles remaining to be fought. There are many more, including reducing state surveillance, ending the criminalization of HIV, creating a society free of violence and looking after aging queer people.

Take your pick.

But whatever you do this Pride, celebrate, for sure — just don’t forget to demonstrate.

Danny Glenwright is Xtra’s assignment editor.

“The outcome that we seek is this — gay and lesbian people daring together to set love free.” Xtra is published by Pink Triangle Press, at 2 Carlton St, Ste 1600, Toronto M5B 1J3.

INBOX Pinkwashing THE REALITY IS THAT ISRAEL is not perfect [“Pinkwashing and Israel,” xtra.ca, June 18]. It makes mistakes in foreign policy as well as domestic policy. To assume that everything good about Israel is a nefarious scheme to hide the bad goes so far beyond bias it borders on the delusional. Just today, 28 missiles have been launched from Gaza towards Israeli citizens by a regime that murders and oppresses gays and lesbians and promotes terrorism and radical religious extremism. Not a word from Xtra. Israel’s right to exist has nothing to do with its gay rights record.

Tomer Chervinsky Toronto, ON

PRIDE STARTED AS A POLITICAL FORUM — NOT A COMMERCIAL ONE — AND EVERYONE IS WELCOME AT THE TABLE.

Send your correspondence by mail to 2 Carlton St, Ste 1600, Toronto, M5B 1J3, email comment@xtra.ca, or log in to xtra.ca and comment directly. We may edit letters.

with being gay, saying that gayness is something undesirable and abnormal, unmanly or unacceptable. I would have hoped that this incident would serve as an opportunity, not only to denounce this incidence of stigmatizing speech, but also to educate the public on why the phrase “that’s gay” being used instead of “that’s stupid” is so demeaning and hateful. The casualness and pervasiveness of “that’s so gay” is extremely distressing. The very language we use can make us feel like we are unwanted or somehow inherently “wrong,” and until we address the systemic homophobia of language such as this, I cannot expect to feel welcomed as an equal.

Julien Buxton Burlington, ON

Pride funding IS THAT THE BEST MARTIN and Kulanu can do, suggesting to hundreds of straight Jewish people that Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) is not recognizing Israel has gay rights [“City Will Fund 2012 Pride,” Xtra #721, June 14]?

Kulanu has twisted QuAIA’s message.

This is about a human rights crisis in Palestine, not whether Israel allows a gay pride parade. Kulanu, stop marginalizing many of your other queer brothers and sisters, Jews or not. Your visibility has only drawn attention to your intolerance.

Lynne Ottawa, ON FREEDOM OF SPEECH IS not a carte blanche. If a group of people decided to hold up banners or march during the Pride parade saying such things as “Gays go home” or “Queers should be outlawed,” they would be severely condemned — and rightly so. This would be hate speech and would not escape criticism because of “freedom of speech.” So why is it okay to allow and promote hatred against Israel because of “free speech?”

Tony Craig Thornhill, ON

Zelda’s ZELDA’S WILL ALWAYS HOLD a special place in my heart [“Zelda’s Will Rise from the Ashes,” xtra.ca, June 18]. I had so many awesome brunches there at gay pride and on many trips to the Village. I live in Vancouver now, but I think of Zelda’s with so many fond memories.

Doug Stever Burnaby, BC

Rude radio THE OFFENSIVE NATURE OF the anti-gay comments is all plainly obvious in John McNab’s own statements [“Rude Radio and our Changing Language,” xtra.ca, June 17].

Equating being gay with being stupid is in itself a negative connotation towards gayness. Using “gay” in this context implies there is something wrong

comment As in every other century, the Catholic Church needs to be dragged kicking and screaming out of the Dark Ages and into a new century of human rights [“Catholic Doctrine Bullies Queer Youth,” Xtra #721, June 14]. One or two hundred years from now they will not only (have to) accept gays as humans, but the Church will portray itself as a leader in the fight for gay rights.

—Susan R Young Toronto, ON To comment, go to xtra.ca.

Church on Church SO THIS PLACE IS GOING TO “provide something different by being a community-focused watering hole. Co-owner Andrew Archer says the space will host regular dragking and -queen performances, hiphop nights and an industry night for the servers and workers in the Church St scene.” With all due respect, it just sounds like every other place on the strip with a prettier face [“New Bar to Open in Former George’s Play Space,” xtra.ca, June 18]. Don’t get me wrong: I’m glad the place won’t sit vacant but would love to see a single new idea, or at least see a night that covers something that is absent from the Village.

Regardless, good luck. I mean that genuinely.

JC Toronto, ON

Pride marshals I CAN’T BELIEVE THE LIBERAL government is being honoured this year, when they’ve just pushed through their own omnibus budget (Bill 55) that cuts supports and services that poor queer and trans people, par-

ticularly those with disabilities, depend on. They’ve just cut the Community Start Up benefit that helps people on OW/ODSP with moving, housing and emergency costs, and they’ve raised OW/ODSP by a miserly one percent (effectively a cut, with inflation at two percent or more). They’ve delayed the planned increase to the Child Benefit this year too. Broten’s government also plans to legislate wage freezes and privatize public services — also going to negatively affect queer and trans public servants. And we’re pretending none of this is happening because they were forced to adopt something that should have happened years ago. Sigh.

Anna Willats Toronto, ON

Kulanu complaint I STILL DON’T UNDERSTAND why this is an issue [Kulanu Withdraws Complaint Against QuAIA, xtra.ca, June 16]. Legitimate criticism of a government’s policies does not equal hatred, no matter what the religious and ethnic makeup of said government, and no matter how unpleasant the message may be to those who support it.

Casey McNally Toronto, ON

Queer education GREAT. THAT’S ALL WE NEED: a “queered” justification for putting creationism on par with science, evolution and progressive thinking [“Building an Alternative Education Movement,” xtra.ca, May 30]. Radical relativism is not the way to go. We’ve been fighting to free ourselves from magic and “the wisdom of the elders” for generations now. If this is where “education” is headed, count me out. People quickly become converts to icky Western medicine if it offers them a cure, or to forensics if DNA evidence exonerates them of a crime they did not commit.

Nadine Oberman Toronto, ON

Pride performers WHAT HAS COREY HART done recently, let alone for the queer community ever [“The Season Begins,” Xtra #721, June 14]? The fact that the best Pride can offer us is Corey Hart points to two very problematic things: there aren’t enough queer performers out there, or Pride has no idea how to find the queer performers who are out there. It’s pathetic, and Pride should do a rethink if they think this is what constitutes programming for a queer festival. Queer performers don’t get enough opportunities, and Pride has the time and money to showcase this washed-up dude instead of spotlighting the members of our community who work hard and get so little in return. Shameful.

Christine Lowellyn Toronto, ON

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Xcetera

Compiled

by Jeremy Feist

FIRST AID

PRIDE SURVIVAL

PACK Pride is here and it’s time to prepare for the onslaught of partying. And what better way than to assemble a Pride survival pack to help the week go smoothly?

MINTY GUM No one wants to make out with someone with dragon breath. Rest easy knowing you’re minty fresh at all times.

COMFORTABLY NUMB DEEP THROAT SPRAY If your gag reflex is acting up, a spritz of this mint-chocolateflavoured spray will get your throat under control. Maybe.

FROM THE ARCHIVES WATER BOTTLE Bottled water is a rip-off, so save money and the environment with a reusable water bottle.

SUNSCREEN It’s summer and you’re probably going to be shirtless for most of the week. Avoid sunburns and melanoma with a little SPF 15.

SEPTEMBER

Before Pride, before the pornstar parties, and before the blackout drunks sleeping off their booze on Church St benches, there was Doing It! Serving more or less as the precursor of modernday Toronto Pride, Doing It! was a weeklong celebration of all things queer in Toronto, complete with films, performances and conferences on some of the most important issues facing the community at the time: SM, porn, pedophilia and public sex. Doing It! also played host to the first ever international gay and lesbian history conference, Wilde ’82.

1982 THE BREAST MEDICINE

HAND SANITIZER You’re going to be shaking a lot of hands out there, so you’d better have something to kill the bacteria on your grubby mitts.

LIGHTER/MATCHES Even if you don’t smoke, someone’s going to ask for a light eventually.

Having one handy is a nice way to segue into a conversation.

Need a quick escape from an awkward encounter?

Team up with a friend who will send you a text to bail you out if you need an exit plan (and return the favour, of course).

CELLPHONE CHARGER All that time on Grindr is going to suck your phone dry, and fast.

CALLING CARDS Whether you’ve just met your new best friend or your future ex-husband, a calling card is a lot easier than shouting your digits over a noisy crowd or loud music.

CONDOMS AND LUBRICANT Chances are you’re going to get lucky, so be sure you’re ready with protection.

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Yes, we all know that dogs are man’s (and woman’s) best friend, but did you know they’re also your best wingman? According to a survey released by Klooff, an app for pet lovers, the type of dog you own can help get you a date. If you’re a man, get a German shepherd; they make you seem gruff and in control. For women, a golden retriever makes you appear sunny, loyal and loving to potential hookups.

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B R E A K I N G N E W S › O N TA R I O YO U T H R E C O G N I Z E D AT AWA R D S G A L A › PA M A N N C R O S S - C A N A DA T O U R T O U C H E S D O W N M O R E AT X T R A . C A I N T O R O N T O › R I A M A E G E T S U N D E R Y O U R S K I N › T H E W U VA B L E O A F I S H N E S S O F E D L U C E

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the heart and other organs. While awaiting a long promised Human Growth Hormone stimulator drug to reach market, which supposedly helps this condition (Tesamoralin) I decided to visit with Dr. Vicki Hagstrom to see if she would give the Zerona laser a try with me, even though there is no study that supports it would do any good for this condition.

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Upfront NEWS

MANY MEN GET HEADACHES FROM VIAGRA AND CIALIS — DUE TO INCREASED BLOOD FLOW TO THE BRAIN — AND SOME GET ERECTIONS THAT STAY UP LONGER THAN DESIRED. Sue McGarvie › 21

AIDS MEMORIAL

Kulanu withdraws complaint against QuAIA Jewish gay and lesbian group accuses Xtra of bias Andrea Houston KULANU TORONTO HAS WITHdrawn its complaint against the participation of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) in the Pride parade. Kulanu’s executive director says the integrity of Pride Toronto’s dispute resolution process was compromised when Xtra published her original complaint.

In a press release dated June 14, Justine Apple says she was under the impression the dispute resolution process is “private.” Apple says the group, a Toronto organization for gay and lesbian Jewish people, was “shocked” to see the full complaint and Apple’s contact information posted on xtra.ca.

“Xtra is considered highly biased and is referred to as the ‘mouthpiece for QuAIA.’ In our view, you cannot separate Xtra from QuAIA, and as such, the entire process feels biased against us,” Apple stated in the release.

However, on June 12 Apple had recommended the Xtra story that contained the complaint on Facebook, writing, “Please read this important article.”

The press release was removed from Kulanu’s website on June 15 and replaced with a second version that does not accuse Xtra of tampering with a legal process. In the second version, Apple maintains that the dispute committee tainted the process by releasing the document in the first place. “[It was] an enormous breach of trust.

It shattered our confidence. It violated our privacy, and it compromised our security. We feel deeply betrayed.”

Apple says Pride Toronto did not make it clear the dispute resolution process would be public. “We feel that real transparency means the dispute resolution committee should have contacted us first before releasing information to the media.”

Apple contacted Xtra on June 13 and asked that the document be removed, including her contact information. Xtra declined to remove the document but blocked out the contact information.

Apple says that after she took time to think about her original comments regarding Xtra, she

decided to remove them. The revised press release was sent to other members of the media with instructions to disregard the first statement.

“After sleeping on it, we realized that had to be removed.

This is about how we feel about the dispute resolution process.

We went into it with the best intentions, and we felt that our trust was compromised,” she says.

Lawyer Doug Elliott, who is leading the dispute resolution process, says it’s “false” to claim that releasing the document violates privacy. He says he had been clear that the respondent — in this case QuAIA — of any complaint would be alerted if a complaint were filed.

After Elliott received the complaint from Kulanu on June 8, he says, he sent it to QuAIA immediately, as he is required to do. “The complaint is no longer private once it is filed to the dispute resolution process because it has to be sent to the respondent. For her to have an expectation that the information contained in the complaint would be kept private is really beyond my comprehension. It stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the way the process works,” he says.

Likewise, he adds, it is a standard requirement to include contact information in any legal process, saying that there was nothing requiring Apple to include her personal phone number or address or even her real name. “They could have filed it through a lawyer.

“I’m not sure where they got the impression this would be some sort of anonymous complaint process. Once they sent it to me, it became a public document. QuAIA could have sent it to anyone they liked. They could have plastered it on billboards up and down Church St if they want,” he says.

Elliott says there have been two other complaints filed against QuAIA’s participation in the Pride parade, and he will likely use the same panel that was assembled for Kulanu’s complaint. Apple says Kulanu is not affiliated with the other complaints.

For more on this story, visit xtra.ca.

RAINY REMEMBRANCE As rain poured down, more than 200 people huddled under umbrellas at the annual candlelight AIDS vigil in Cawthra Park on June 21. The emotional event is the unofficial start of the Pride season. ANDREA HOUSTON For more photos from the vigil, visit xtra.ca.

NEIGHBOURHOOD

New bars open for Pride Rob Salerno & Andrea Houston THE MANAGERS OF TWO NEW CHURCH St bars are hoping to be ready to open their doors in time for the busiest weekend of the year.

Church on Church St is moving into the space vacated by George’s Play, at the corner of Church and Alexander streets. Co-owner Andrew Archer says he wants the bar to be a community-focused watering hole that will host regular dragking and -queen performances, hip-hop nights and an industry night for the servers and workers in the Church St scene.

Meanwhile, Keith Jalbert, one of the managers of Big Johnson’s, which is replacing the Village Rainbow Café at Church and Maitland streets, says he plans to make the new space “more modern, comfortable and welcoming.”

Jalbert, who is gay, says he is looking forward to a busy summer season and a bustling patio with a party atmosphere.

The food will be “all fresh and local,” says co-manager Tom Missios. Expect the menu to consist of creative pub fare: sandwiches, burgers, appetizers, dinner specials and brunch on the weekends.

“The kitchen will make everything from scratch as much as possible.”

The managers hope their “high-end” martinis will make them stand out from other bars on the Village strip. Comanager Chris Kay says there will be 15 televisions throughout the bar tuned to sports and other major events, but Jalbert stresses that it will not be a sports bar.

“We are smack in the middle of the gay village, so we want to be a part of that,” he says.

Keith Jalbert says Big Johnson’s patio will have a party atmosphere all summer. ANDREA HOUSTON

Kay says the managers plan to be active in the community. “We will be involved with the BIA, community groups, charities and area gay organizations.”

Across the street, Archer says the owners settled on the name Church while considering that the Old English meaning of the word meant “circle” or “community.”

“We wanted to be a place where people could come together and be a community,” he says. “We’re going to be sensitive to it being a religious word. We’re not looking to make fun of religion at all.”

Soundproofing the bar was a necessary element of renovations, as George Pratt, the owner of Play, said that the landlords were upset that noise from his bar would reach their apartment above the space.

Archer describes an ambitious renovation of the space, which won’t be complete until “late July or early August,” when the bar will officially open. The

bar will open for five days during Pride Week on a temporary liquor licence if the licence is approved.

“It’ll be high-end,” he says. “I wouldn’t say luxury, but the nicest bar on the strip.”

The bar will feature a dancefloor area in the back and quieter booth seating in the front, he says.

Archer, 25, already has a long resumé in marketing successful businesses, including work with teambuy.ca, a gokarting business, and a fashion label with Project Runway contestant Brandon Dwyer.

“I’ve lived in the Village for about six years now,” he says. “Where the real desire comes from is living in the Village and probably going out more than I should. I love the community feel.”

For more on this story visit xtra.ca.

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Toronto’s gay & lesbian news

XTRA! JUNE 28, 2012

SPORT

Inspiring a generation?

Olympic Games still far from inclusive David Hains THE OLYMPIC GAMES ARE FULL OF special moments for athletes who have battled for years to gain respect in their particular sports. For gay athletes, one aspect of the Vancouver Games that stood out was Pride House, an inclusive, positive space that provided a place for athletes and coaches to hang out and take in the Games regardless of nationality or sexuality.

London, the 2012 host of the Summer Games, hoped to duplicate that success, but in the absence of funding pulled the plug on a similar safe space last month.

Beyond Pride House, one prominent British lawyer doesn’t believe organizers are doing enough to uphold the values of the Olympics when it comes to queer inclusion.

“One thing I think the Olympics has never adequately addressed is discrimination on the basis of sexuality,” Mark Stephens tells Xtra in a phone interview. He says the argument that the Games are not an appropriate venue to make a political statement is silly; the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has explicitly gone after racial and gender discrimination in the past. He cites the ban of apartheid-era South Africa and the 2000 exclusion of Afghanistan due to its treatment of women.

A fundamental tenet of the Olympics is access to sports for any individual who chooses to play and a feeling of safety while doing so. The IOC doesn’t seem to meet this standard when it comes to the number of athletes who feel comfortable being openly gay — only 10 out of 11,000 participants in the 2008 Beijing Games identified as gay or bisexual.

Stephens, who is also WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s lawyer, argues that this is a product of the macho world of sports, which is far from the ideal.

“The onus is on the organizers to look to where the problems are,” he says.

“No athlete should fear their sexuality.”

Clearly some do. At the professional level, basketball player John Amaechi came out only after retirement. He received support, but it was not universal — upon hearing the news, former NBA all-star Tim Hardaway said, “I hate gay people,” adding that he wouldn’t want to share a locker room with a gay player. Hardaway has since become an unlikely ally.

Since coming out in 2007, Amaechi has been an advocate for inclusiveness in sports as a remedy to these problems. The founder of a youth basketball league in England, he feels that holding sports to its vaunted standards is worthwhile: “I see my job as helping people transform the promises they

Former pro basketball player John Amaechi, who has little love for the International Olympic Committee, is on the London Olympics diversity board.

make about sport — about how communities come together, Dad loves his kids — to drill down into these promises and deliver on them.”

Although Amaechi is on the diversity board for the London Games organizing committee, he has little love for the IOC. “The IOC is a dinosaur-ridden organization . . . They’re people who are just uncomfortable with the way the world has changed.”

While Amaechi tries to effect that change within Olympic structures, Stephens takes the critical outsider approach.

He suggests the London committee should make more statements asserting the importance of gay rights, as well as take tangible action to give those statements meaning: “Those athletes from countries that criminalize homosexuality should claim asylum on the grounds

of their situation back home.” Stephens is also highly critical of England’s historic treatment of gay people, adding that the Olympics Games provide an opportunity to show how the country has improved. He thinks banning countries that continue to discriminate based on sexuality is one way to make that change happen.

While Stephens’s approach is unlikely to be adopted, it is provocative enough to get people to pay attention to the issue and think about how the Olympics must evolve to maintain its brand.

Amaechi argues there’s an appetite for this, noting that the London 2012 rainbow pins are the best-selling Olympic pin souvenirs. He adds he doesn’t really care about the medal count; so long as values are met in meaningful ways, he’ll consider that a success.

Achieving that will be a marathon that goes beyond one Olympic Games.

Highlighting the difficulty of this goal was a recent court ruling in Russia, where Sochi will host the 2014 Winter Games; the Russian government rejected the proposed Pride House outright. A judge upheld the decision on the grounds that the Pride House mission “undermines public morals and is at odds with national policy on the family, motherhood and children.”

The motto for the 2012 Games?

Inspire a generation.

To watch Xtra’s video interview with John Amaechi, visit xtra.ca.

more at xtra.ca

XTRA! JUNE 28, 2012

PRIDE NEWS

NEWS

Xtra reporter named honoured dyke

Goodhandyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fighting copyright tariff

XTRA REPORTER ANDREA HOUSton has been named the 2012 honoured dyke for the Pride Toronto Dyke March on June 30.

Houston, who joined Xtra in 2010 after previously working for The Peterborough Examiner and Toronto Star, was honoured for her reporting on the issue of gay-straight alliances (GSAs), which culminated with the passage of Bill 13 on June 5.

Pride Toronto co-chair Luka Amona explained the selection: â&#x20AC;&#x153;[Houston] really leveraged her role as a reporter to ask the right questions, galvanize the community and provide support for youth leaders.â&#x20AC;? He adds that Houston ďŹ ts the criteria for an individual who â&#x20AC;&#x153;provides signiďŹ cant contributions to advancing or providing a service to the community or human rights to the community.â&#x20AC;?

Houston says she was â&#x20AC;&#x153;thrilled and truly honouredâ&#x20AC;? by the news. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a dream come true â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a dream I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t even know I was dreaming about. I would never have imagined a couple years ago, if you said to me I would be honoured dyke. I would have thought you were crazy.â&#x20AC;?

Last yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s honoured dyke was high schooler Leanne Iskander, the student who became the public face of the ďŹ ght to mandate GSAs in Ontario Catholic schools.

Pride Toronto honours Cheri DiNovo and Laurel Broten Andrea Houston NDP MPP CHERI DINOVO AND LIBeral Education Minister Laurel Broten have been selected as the 2012 coâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;grand marshals of Toronto Pride for their work championing two important pieces of legislation that affect Ontarioâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s queer community.

With the passage of Bill 13, the Liberalsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Accepting Schools Act, on June 5, and Bill 33, Tobyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Act, on June 13, Ontario took a progressive step forward. The bills will ensure safer schools for queer youth and the inclusion of gender identity and gender expression in the Ontario Human Rights Code (OHRC).

These are not small advances, says Pride co-chair Luka Amona, adding that queer issues, such as gaystraight alliances (GSAs) and trans rights, have been at the forefront of public debate all year. Pushed by the activism of students and trans leaders, he says, the two politicians helped ensure new laws were created to bring about change in the province.

DiNovo, who tabled Tobyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Act four times, is enjoying the hardfought victory. She calls the title of Pride coâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;grand marshal â&#x20AC;&#x153;a great honour,â&#x20AC;? saying she considers it a culmination of her lifelong commitment to queer rights.

Broten says she is very honoured to be chosen as a coâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;grand marshal and is looking forward to the parade, especially to meeting the hundreds of GSA students marching in the youth contingent.

For more on these stories, visit xtra.ca.

Bar owner says retroactive bills unfair to small businesses Justin Ling TODD KLINCK WONâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;T BE PAYING HIS bills, even if they ask nicely.

Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ready to face the music.

Klinck is on the hook for $2,200 for a levy he didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know existed. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s why he was so shocked when the bill arrived at his club, Goodhandyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s. The invoice was from Re:Sound, a governmentsanctioned music licensing organization that few people know anything about. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I would have been happy to pay it,â&#x20AC;?

Klinck says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I just donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t agree with the method.â&#x20AC;?

Klinckâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s club will rack up only about $400 a year in fees. However, after getting the tariff approved in 2011, Re:Sound is charging businesses retroactively back to 2006. That, Klinck says, â&#x20AC;&#x153;is not a way to treat small businesses in a recession.â&#x20AC;?

Goodhandyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, which styles itself as â&#x20AC;&#x153;Torontoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pansexual playground,â&#x20AC;? set up shop six years ago, just south of the gay village. While it has managed to stay aďŹ&#x201A;oat thus far, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not exactly a cash cow. â&#x20AC;&#x153;[Twenty-two hundred dollars], out of the blue, is not something I can afford to pay â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the margins are that tight,â&#x20AC;? Klinck says.

The original invoice came with a warning that if the bill wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t paid within a month, a collection agency would become involved. When Klinck complained, the best they would do was offer him better payment plans.

Re:Sound, a not-for-profit collective, has been around since 1998. Until recently, it concerned itself primarily with licensing music to radio. As new tariffs came online in recent years, however, the collective has branched out.

With newly approved tariff 6-A coming into place last year, Re:Sound now has the right to charge clubs, bars and gyms for playing copyrighted music. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Music is a competitive advantage for businesses,â&#x20AC;? says Re:Soundâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s director of communications, Matthew Fortier.

He says that the collective aims to work with businesses to ensure the music in-

dustry gets its due. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The money doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t go to us; it goes to artists and labels.â&#x20AC;?

This has left some, like Klinck, scratching their heads. Many business owners already pay royalties to the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) and canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t fathom why Re:Sound exists at all.

SOCAN has been around, in various forms, for about a century. It is the name most associated with paying royalties in Canada. The organization represents much of the music industry â&#x20AC;&#x201D; namely songwriters, lyricists and publishers.

Fortier admits thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s some â&#x20AC;&#x153;doubledippingâ&#x20AC;? when it comes to paying artists, but he says that Re:Sound also pays out to performers and record labels, which SOCAN largely does not. While some might sniff that paying labels is a handout to the big music business, Fortier says, there are some very small labels that depend on Re:Soundâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cheques to â&#x20AC;&#x153;keep the lights on.â&#x20AC;?

Re:Sound originally went to the Copyright Board of Canada with the proposed tariff in 2006. The process â&#x20AC;&#x201D; by all accounts, a very slow one â&#x20AC;&#x201D; drew testimony from both sides of the debate in a meeting open to the public. In 2011, the board approved the tariff and gave Re:Sound the option of enforcing it for ďŹ ve years, retroactively. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s exactly what they did.

Fortier points out that itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the Copyright Board of Canada that sets the timelines for the tariff. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We have to certify retroactively,â&#x20AC;? says Gilles McDougall, secretary general of the Copyright Board. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t mean [they] have to collect retroactively.â&#x20AC;?

After the tariff came into effect, business associations were saddled with the responsibility of informing businesses of the impending tariff. That memo, evidently, didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t reach some.

As bars and clubs faced the realities of paying those fees, there was some grumbling. In January, Montreal nightclub 1234 challenged the process, calling it â&#x20AC;&#x153;aggressive.â&#x20AC;? The club was on the line for more than $6,000. When they had

Todd Klinck is the co-owner of Goodhandyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s. He and Mandy Goodhandy opened the bar six years ago.

not paid the tariff by November â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a month after it was due â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Re:Sound set loose a collection agency. The board dismissed the challenge, as the actual collection process was outside its jurisdiction. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not clear whether 1234 paid the invoice, and requests for comment were not answered.

While Klinck agrees wholeheartedly that the music industry deserves its due, heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x153;pissed offâ&#x20AC;? at the way Re:Sound is handling the matter. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s agreeing to

pay this yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fees but is standing ďŹ rm on his refusal to pay the whole invoice.

Although the tariff has been in place for more than a year, many bars and clubs are just now facing the music.

Re:Sound is rolling out the fees slowly, as it sifts through the onerous task of contacting every club and bar affected by the tariff.

McDougall says that if anyone objects to the tariff, they have two months to send in their input on its 2013 renewal.

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ZELDA ANGELFIRE IS NOT GOING to let a little fire permanently close the doors to her landmark Yonge St restaurant.

Although, sadly, the fire that ripped through the legendary drag bar will shut down Zelda’s Living Well for the busiest week of the year: Pride.

The fire broke out after management closed the restaurant on June 15, at around 3am.

Later that night, Angelfire tweeted, “Like a broken heel makes you fall down in the middle of a number, we have every intention of getting back up and werking it!”

No one was hurt in the blaze and there was no structural damage, she says, noting that the fire is not suspicious and there is no police investigation. “It happened after we closed,” she says. “We will not be open for Pride, and that’s a total fuckin’ piss-off.”

There has been an outpouring of support from friends and regulars, Angelfire says. “I have had a ton of email and Facebook support from the community, which I really appreciate. That’s been wonderful, and it’s really helped me during this time.”

SOY wins big at Mayor’s Arts Awards Katie Toth QUEER GROUP SUPPORTING OUR Youth (SOY) received $15,000 at the Toronto Arts Foundation Mayor’s Arts Awards on June 21.

The Arts for Youth prize was developed in 2007. It celebrates “an individual, collective or organization that has demonstrated an outstanding commitment to engaging Toronto youth in the arts.”

After being nominated three years in a row, and shortlisted in 2009 and 2010, finally receiving the award was a “huge surprise” for SOY drop-in coordinator John Caffery. “We felt like the Susan Lucci of the Toronto Art Awards,” he jokes, noting that he was not expecting SOY to win.

Rita Davies, executive director of cultural services with the City of Toronto, calls Supporting Our Youth a group of “fabulous, energetic, creative, great community leaders.”

“Right now there’s a lot of media [attention] about LGBT youth,” Davies says, pointing to the recent provincial legislation in support of gay-straight alliances in high schools. “I think it was just a particularly good time to have SOY be the winners.”

SOY’s projects have included a youth-produced zine and a writing group called Pink Ink, the annual Fruit Loopz stage for youth performers at Toronto Pride, and sponsorship of the South-Asian Video Project.

For more on these stories, visit xtra.ca.

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Side effects affecting your plans?

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XTRA! JUNE 28, 2012

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Torontoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s gay & lesbian news

XTRA! JUNE 28, 2012

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3HERBOURNE 3TREET ND mOOR 4O REGISTER PLEASE EMAIL SOYNATALYN GMAIL COM OR CALL PINK INK is an informal creative writing drop-in for queer, trans and 2-spirit youth aged 14-29. It RUNS WEEKLY FROM PM ON 3ATURDAYS 2OOM 3HERBOURNE (EALTH #ENTRE You donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have to identify as a writer and you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have to worry about spelling. Everybodyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s story is important. Nobody can tell your story but you. LEARN solid writing, editing, performance and publication skills. Come have FUN, CREATE, WRITE, and CHILL! Snacks and tokens will be provided. &2%% #ALL OR EMAIL VPINKINK GMAIL COM FOR MORE INFO

FRUITLOOPZ PRIDE n 3ATURDAY *UNE 7ORKSHOPS PM PM 0ERFORMANCES PM PM Fruitloopz Youth Stage an event by SOY, by youth and for youth is running on its 12th year. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s an event that young LGBTQ artists look forward to for self promotion and representation. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s child friendly, completely accessible and free of drugs or alcohol. This year our Host MC is the artist Dainty Smith and there are 20 unique and powerful performances. Before the performances start, a groundbreaking ceremony will be led by the two spirited indigenous Eagle Woman Singerz. They will also facilitate a drumming and dream catcher creation workshop. 0LEASE DIRECT ANY INQUIRES TO FRUITLOOPZ SOY GMAIL COM

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LEGAL NEWS

Ontario Court of Appeal adjourns HIV cases Hearing for two accused hinges on Supreme Court decision Marcus McCann APPEALS FROM TWO MEN CONVICTed of sexual assault because they did not disclose their HIV-positive status before having sex were delayed by the Ontario Court of Appeal June 25.

At the centre of the cases is the issue of whether condom use negates the legal obligation to inform sexual partners of your HIV status before having sex.

The legal test for conviction â&#x20AC;&#x201D; which requires proof of â&#x20AC;&#x153;a significant risk of serious bodily harmâ&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x201D; is under review by the Supreme Court of Canada. That court is expected to speciďŹ cally address condom use and criminal prosecutions when it releases its decision in Mabior later this year.

The two Ontario Court of Appeal cases are unrelated, but because they raise the same legal issues, they are being heard together. The names of the accused are public, but Xtra has so far declined to publish them. The names of the complainants are protected by a publication ban.

One man was convicted on a number of charges, including sexual assault for nondisclosure even though he used a condom.

The other was convicted of aggravated sexual assault, and the trial judge

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ruled that condom use was irrelevant.

Sexual assault carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. The maximum sentence for aggravated sexual assault is life in prison. If the convictions stand, the defendantsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; names could be added to the sex offender registry permanently. Neither is currently in jail.

The Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and the HIV & AIDS Legal Clinic Ontario intervened in the Ontario cases and presented a joint submission.

Lawyers for the organizations argued that condom use reduces the risk of HIV transmission to 0.016 percent and therefore should be a complete bar to prosecution. They further argued that even when a condom is not used, in some cases the risk of transmission is too remote to constitute a â&#x20AC;&#x153;signiďŹ cant risk.â&#x20AC;?

The adjournment was a surprise to some HIV advocates. About 20 people packed into the courtâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s viewing gallery, wearing T-shirts with the words â&#x20AC;&#x153;HIV positiveâ&#x20AC;? written on them, expecting to hear the arguments of the appeal.

Instead, the judges acknowledged them, noting that the issue is important to many, but announced their decision to hold off on the hearing until the Supreme Courtâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s decision in Mabior is released.

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17

INSIDE

PRIDE

BIGGER THAN BRUCE

BEST PRIDE EVAH #1

“2010 has to have been my most memorable Pride, at least regarding the parade itself.

I can’t remember another time that our community was so divided.

Any concerns my business partner, Todd Klinck, and I had, deciding to be the Pride marshals, were totally dissolved as we turned that corner from Bloor St to Yonge St. Never have I seen such positive outpouring from people of all walks of life who believed in the parade itself and chose to put all politics aside and remember we have ‘come a long way, baby.’”

100

Pride bites

Miscellany as diverse as the celebration itself JEREMY FEIST SIZE QUEENS

TORONTO 1,200,000

RIO DE JANEIRO 1,500,000

SÃO PAULO 3,200,000

3rd

Ranking of Toronto amongst the largest Pride celebrations in the world, after São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. (Brazil is a very gay country, apparently.)

The number of “vagina puppets” created by the Hole-y Army that will take part in the Dyke March.

For more info and to enlist, go to facebook.com/ the.hole.y.army.

SOURCE: PRIDE TORONTO ATTENDANCE NUMBERS ARE FROM 2010

MONEY MATTERS

22 $213,700,000 $123,807

The amount of funding Pride Toronto has received from the city to put on the 10-day celebration.

Mandy Goodhandy, owner/operator of Goodhandy’s

622

The number of all-access Prism passes that could buy.

The number of city blocks taken over by Toronto Pride every year, easily upstaging the 2006 Bruce Willis thriller 16 Blocks.

BEST PRIDE EVAH #2

“My first Pride parade, in 2010, will always remain one of my fondest Pride memories. Nothing could have prepared me for the incredible feeling I experienced when we rounded the corner at Bloor and Yonge and the crowds of people were out there cheering! As I had only come out a year prior, the feeling of joy was overwhelming when I got to march publicly, hand in hand with my boyfriend.”

— Alex Canning, Mr Leather Toronto 2012

Total economic impact on the city and the country (including an estimated $89 million spent by locals), according to a 2009 economic impact study.

$1,475

The cost of attending every event in Xtra’s Ultimate Pride Guide.

2012

2002

LOOKING BACK

ATTENDANCE

YOUTH ISSUES

NUDITY

PORNSTARS

800,000 attendees celebrate Toronto’s Pride parade.

Marc Hall successfully sues to take his boyfriend to the prom.

Two complaints of nudity from Toronto Pride are dismissed.

Matthew Rush makes an appearance at Pride’s military party.

1.2 million people are expected to attend the parade this year.

Students successfully fight for GSAs in schools.

TNT! Men, a men’s pro-nudity club with more than 350 members, will march in the parade.

Next Door Studios’ studs Trystan Bull, Brody Wilder and James Huntsman will perform at Prism Pride events.

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INSIDE

PTP PRIDE

PRIDE

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE THING ABOUT PRIDE?

A Pride veteran’s unsung heroes

“My favourite part of Pride is the excitement and anticipation as the day gets closer.

I like the lights and decorations, the sense of celebration and the happy sense of community in the air. It’s one of my favourite times of the year.”

ADAM GLEN For many, Pride is a celebration of the queer community and all it’s accomplished over the year. Thos Those hou who’ve spent their waking hours marc down fighting for equal rights march he m Yonge St, cheered by the more than o flood the city one million people who for the celebration. But some activists att spend their time battling for rights ht and behind the out of the spotlight ert scenes. This is certainly the case of ho has carried on the Anna Willats, who ct and equality for more fight for respect than 30 years. X Xtra looked into some of ra accomplishments this Pride veteran’s and asked her to identify three other activists who h have made a difference.

19

Gillian Rodgerson, freelance editor and PTP board member

Anna Willats Many would not look back on the 1980s as a dark time, but Willats, who had just begun working with the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre (TRCC), remembers that the situation for members of the queer community wasn’t so nice. “At the time, nobody was talking about those issues,” Willats says.

“Most women had a hard time getting the police to believe that sexual assaults had happened. Governments at the time didn’t really fund these kinds of services. The centre really did a lot of media work, a lot of public education, a lot of work with survivors.”

It was at the TRCC that Willats found her voice as an activist. “I really enjoyed doing public education and media work. I’ve never been afraid to speak in public, so it was work I

really enjoyed. We had a very vibrant queer women’s caucus.”

Throughout the years, Willats has used her gift for the gab to marshal others into standing up for issues like sexual violence against women, poverty and education.

Thirty years later, Willats has her sights focused on eliminating poverty, which she sees as one of the biggest problems facing Toronto. In her view, the fight against poverty hasn’t seen much progress. “I think we’ve gone way backwards,” she says. “I’d say it was the ’90s, the time of [former premier] Mike Harris, the cuts of 22 percent to welfare, the almost daily attacks on people on welfare, women who were pregnant and on welfare, so he galvanized and radicalized a lot of people around the issue of poverty.”

Deborah Singh Toronto Rape Crisis Centre, Multicultural Women Against Rape In 1974, victims of sexual assault and abuse had few places to turn. The Toronto Rape Crisis Centre was founded by a group of women who were fed up with the lack of government support. Singh, a counsellor at TRCC, describes it as a grassroots collective meant to work as both an activist and frontline organization for victims of sexual abuse and violence. “Our mission is to eradicate all forms of violence for all survivors,” Singh says. “Often people think our work is totally about women, but it’s not. We know that everybody has been affected and touched by violence.”

PHOTOS: ADAM GLEN (WILLATS, SINGH, DOGRA), ADAM COISH (WARE/REDMAN),

Syrus Ware & Nik Redman Pam Dogra Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario We all had that great teacher when we were growing up who made learning fun. But what if that teacher had to hide part of who they were? What would that pressure be like? Dogra has been fighting to remove that pressure.

“It’s not safe for workers in general to come out in the workplace, and teachers are no exception to that rule,” Dogra says of the change in workplace attitudes over the years. “Teachers are still not coming out, they’re still afraid, and they still don’t feel safe in their workplaces.”

Blockorama “A lot of queers of colour were going to Pride but not seeing themselves reflected, so people came together and said, ‘Well, we’ll just make something,’” Ware says, reflecting on how Blockorama came to be. The annual block party celebration of queer people of colour has been running for 14 years and just keeps growing.

“For some people, it’s their only place where they can come and be out during the whole year.” Ware and his partner, Nik Redman, are coordinating committee members for the event, which is organized by the queer history and activism group Blackness Yes!

20

Toronto’s gay & lesbian news

XTRA! JUNE 28, 2012

MEDIA

Rude radio and our changing language Broadcast Standards Council decides it’s okay for something to be ‘so gay’ David Hains

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IN MARCH 2011, NBA STAR KOBE Bryant cursed out a referee for what he felt was a stupid call. By itself, this behaviour is unexceptional. But Bryant had chosen to ridicule the referee’s judgment by calling him a “fucking faggot,” and the response was severe.

The Lakers shooting guard was fined $100,000 — an extraordinary sum for player discipline. Bryant also publicly apologized for his ill-considered and offensive language.

A recent ruling by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC), the industry’s self-regulatory body, took a different approach.

The CBSC received a complaint following an October 2011 broadcast of The Dean Blundell Show on Toronto’s Edge 102.1FM. The show mocked the idea of “Jesusween,” a Christian alternative to Halloween, which Blundell called “very gay.” The show then used an extended riff to mock “Jesus freakos,” including a bit that played on the suffix “ween” and suggested Jesus and the 12 Apostles were gay, complete with fey voices and gay stereotypes.

The CBSC ruled on May 24 that The Dean Blundell Show had violated its standards, but only due to the offensive religious content, not because the station had used the word gay to imply something was stupid.

“The panel concluded that the word ‘gay’ has a variety of meanings, among others ‘stupid’ or ‘weak,’” states the CBSC report. “[Given the context] it did not constitute, in and of itself, a negative portrayal of an individual or a group based on sexual orientation.”

Essentially, explicitly mocking religion violates the standards but using language that implicitly mocks gay individuals as stupid or weak is not strong enough to be a violation.

CBSC executive director John McNab stresses that in any given judgment context is paramount. “Clearly [gay] can clearly be used in a negative connotation. In this instance it wasn’t related to sexual orientation at all; it was just ‘That’s a stupid name.’”

Professor Scott Rayter, the associate director of the Mark S Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto, finds the language offensive but cautions against thinking that censorship will solve the problem. “This guy could have said much more offensive things about gay people without violating any standards . . . I mean, just turn on CFRB and listen to Michael Coren.”

He adds that censorship laws cut both ways, and gay people have historically been among the first to be targeted.

Blundell equally offends many different groups and individuals. His show has been the source of the most complaints reviewed by the CBSC in 2012. He previously aired a 15-minute comedy segment stereotyping the participants in Canada’s first gay fraternity (and mocking frats more generally), derisively called Justin Bieber gay and has a periodic segment called “Gay of the Day.”

Complaints about Dean Blundell’s talk radio show have kept the CBSC busy this year.

THINKSTOCK

LANGUAGE CAN BE HURTFUL, LANGUAGE CAN BE POWERFUL, LANGUAGE CAN BE INSPIRATIONAL. WHEN IT’S USED IN A WAY THAT IS HURTFUL, PEOPLE NEED TO BE TAKEN TO TASK FOR THAT. —Bob Willette, Proud FM There have also been complaints that Blundell’s show is demeaning to women, offensive to ethnic groups and uses graphic language inappropriate for its morning time slot.

The CBSC ruling is similar to a 2006 decision at the BBC. A host had referred to a ringtone as “gay,” and the panel ruled that since this was the linguistic equivalent to “rubbish,” and not used to undermine any person or group, it was acceptable.

It’s language that Bob Willette, program director of Toronto’s 103.9 Proud FM, says his station avoids unless referring to someone’s sexuality.

In fact, the station’s employees were split when deciding whether or not to broadcast Katy Perry’s song “Ur So Gay.” “Language can be hurtful, language can be powerful, language can be inspirational. When it’s used in a way that

is hurtful, people need to be taken to task for that,” Willette says.

Like Rayter, Willette opposes censorship and doesn’t think public shaming works in the case of a shock jock like Blundell, who “thrives on it.” According to Willette, the difficult road of public education is the path to follow.

Recent efforts have been made to change the mindset of people who use language like “That’s so gay,” including the US educational campaign Think Before You Speak. Featuring celebrities Wanda Sykes, Hilary Duff and Whoopi Goldberg, the series of PSAs created in 2008 encouraged young people to think about how language frames individuals and how to change bad habits.

In 2010, US clothing company American Apparel tried a different approach. Its effort focused on reclaiming the language by selling T-shirts (all profits went to charity) with the slogan “Marriage is so gay.”

If the reaction to Bryant’s use of “faggot” is any indication, then these efforts to shape language in a positive direction may mark slow but incremental progress. After all, if the macho world of the NBA can acknowledge problematic language, there’s hope for the likes of talk radio, too. Even if language can’t be controlled, then it can be informed by social norms shaped by the wider public.

Or, as McNab says, while Blundell’s comment may not have violated the broadcast standards, “it’s certainly not language I would personally use.”

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XTRA! JUNE 28, 2012

21

INSIDE

PRIDE

Keep it up A Pride cheat sheet for boosting male sexual performance PETER BERTON DO YOU WANT TO IMPROVE YOUR sexual performance? If you’re male, chances are the answer is yes! That’s how we guys are. So Xtra prepared a cheat sheet for lasting larger and harder wherever you’re doing it this Pride season.

Having trouble getting it up or keeping it up as long as you want to? Increased blood flow to every man’s best friend (and no, I’m not talking about a dog) can help. This is where Viagra and Cialis come in, says renowned Ottawa sex therapist Sue McGarvie. “Both of these drugs improve the blood flow in the crucial areas of the penis that control a man’s erection,” she says. “But there’s a catch: many men get headaches from Viagra and Cialis — due to increased blood flow to the brain — and some get erections that stay up longer than desired.”

McGarvie emphasizes that men should never buy Viagra or Cialis over the internet. “You never know what you’re getting,” she says.

Once you get the blood pumping into the helmeted avenger, or thundering arrow of lust, or Waldo — hey, he’s your best friend, and you can name him whatever you want — keeping it there can be an issue. This is where cockrings can help.

“Cockrings work by constricting blood flow, keeping blood in the shaft of the penis,” explains Victoria BowmanSteinour, director of marketing and public relations with sex-toy maker Doc Johnson Enterprises. “When a wearer finally does ejaculate, the sensation is

more intense, since it took a longer time to come and because the penis is filled with additional blood.”

Not surprisingly, she recommends Doc Johnson’s Platinum C-Rings: “These cockrings are made of platinum silicone, which means that they are hypoallergenic, body-safe and very easy to clean.”

What if you suffer from premature ejaculation (PE), a condition that affects one in four men? Relax: there’s lots of ways to deal with PE, McGarvie says.

“Treatment can include Kegel exercises, desensitizing cream (which works in about 15 percent of cases), tantric sex techniques, deep breathing, focusing on your partner’s pleasure, certain types of erection rings, pressure-point pressure before ejaculation, and in very bad cases, some antidepressants help,” she says. That’s right: antidepressants can help with PE. But too much of them can also lead to weak erections, or none at all.

So when do you apply products like Doc John’s Power Delay Spray, Sta-Erect Pillow Pak Cream and Not Yet Delay Gel, all of which contain 7.5 percent benzocaine as a desensitizing agent? “We suggest five to 10 minutes before engaging in sex,” says BowmanSteinour, noting that men can safely apply these products twice daily.

Penis-size and -length reality check: “The medications do not work to increase size,” McGarvie says. “However, a very good quality pump will increase the girth, and products like the ‘yank’ or other stretchers can increase the length if used regularly. As I tell people, if they can move teeth in bone with a few months of braces, then a stretched

There’s no time like Pride to shop for cockrings and other fun paraphernalia.

tissue can happen for up to an inch.”

Has your sexual “get up and go” got up and went? The cause could be a drop in your testosterone level: see your doctor for a test.

The good news is that you can buy hormones to boost testosterone, but it is critical not to overdose. So get tested first, then find out how much you need.

“Be sure to have your levels tested afterwards, as well,” McGarvie advises.

“Too much testosterone is not good for you.” Note: testosterone requires a prescription.

Other performance enhancers: yes, you can increase the quantity of your

cum, but be sure to ask first if your partner actually wants you to. There are also products that alter the flavour to make it more palatable, such as Sweeten69.

Cutting back on booze, smoking, coffee, garlic and onions can also make a difference. And talk about a great excuse: “Honey, can you check if my cum tastes different today?”

Finally, remember that peak sexual performance is a matter of practice: “Use it or lose it,” McGarvie says. “Sex and masturbation are like food and water; everyone needs both. And the more you know about your own body, the more pleasure you can give and receive.”

YES, YOU CAN INCREASE THE QUANTITY OF YOUR CUM, BUT BE SURE TO ASK FIRST IF YOUR PARTNER ACTUALLY WANTS YOU TO.

SEX NEWS

Do you bareback?

New PSA directed at Asian gay men Katie Toth RICHARD UTAMA SAYS HE’S MET many Asian guys who are afraid to talk about HIV and safer sex. That’s why he and the men’s health team at Asian Community AIDS Services (ACAS) worked together to create a new video he hopes will get the conversation started.

SexQ! is an online PSA that follows two dudes who hook up for sex but ask some straight-up questions first, about drug use, gangbangs and fucking raw.

“We were just like . . . this happens, why should we be different than any other culture?” says Utama, the men’s sexual health coordinator at ACAS. “We’re all gay guys . . . the only difference is maybe our skin colour.”

Fellow ACAS worker Christian Hui says Asian men can be uncomfortable talking about sex for a few reasons, including internalized homophobia, family values and disrespect for Asians in the queer community.

“On the desirability totem pole, so to speak, I think Asian gay men tend not to rank high,” Hui says. “If someone comes up to you and says, ‘Let’s fuck’ . . . are you going to ask a lot of questions or are you going to do it? And are you going to be able to do it safely if you don’t know how to negotiate all these other things?”

Meanwhile, 4.8 percent of people in Ontario diagnosed with HIV in 2009 and 2010 were East or Southeast Asians.

But ACAS suspects the number of HIVpositive Asians might be higher, because many people don’t get tested.

Utama hopes the PSA will encourage guys to get tested.

For Hui, who is HIV-positive, making the PSA was a personal journey. Originally from Hong Kong, he moved to Canada in 1999 from the United States.

He didn’t get involved with the gay scene until he was 20 and had moved to Toronto.

“The first time I walked into a gay bar . . . it was pretty segregated,” he says, remembering a sea of white guys with a few Asians sticking to the corners.

On chat sites, Hui found many guys didn’t want to meet him when they found out where he was from. Hui was also trying to figure out his sexuality while surrounded by terms he’d never learned before. “Barebacking? I didn’t know what that was — I had to look that up,” he says.

“If I’d seen the PSA when I was younger, then maybe I would have done

Christian Hui and Richard Utama have created a video they hope will inspire fellow Asian gay men to talk about sex and drug use. KATIE TOTH

things a little differently,” he says. He wants Asian guys who see the video to be inspired to ask their partners questions and take control of their health in the ways that he didn’t.

Besides getting people talking, the video promotes M2Men, a new iPhone app and text messaging service cre-

ated by Toronto Public Health. M2Men helps hook guys up with nearby clinics, condoms and other health resources, and it blasts out alerts. It also promotes InSpot, an easy online outlet to tell a sex partner about an STI. Check out the video at xtra.ca.

22

XTRA! JUNE 28, 2012

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23

HISTORY

Lust in the lavatory Washroom sex and police surveillance have a long history

by Steven Maynard

A

pril 29, 1921. 10:45pm.

A man enters the public washroom in Allan Gardens. According to the police constable patrolling the park that night, here’s what happened next: “I was looking into the lavatory. I saw Thomas S and another man, Harold F. “Thomas S was sitting on the closet seat and peeping through a small hole in the partition. I saw Harold F put his penis to the hole and Thomas S commenced to suck it after a few minutes.

I was watching. I went to the door of the lavatory, opened the closet door where Harold F was — he was pulling away from the hole and sitting back on the seat. I then arrested them.”

Long before Squirt and Grindr came along to guide us, men in Toronto discovered the potential of the lavatory as a site for sex. Lavatories were a central fixture in the sexual underworld of early 20th-century Toronto. I say “underworld” because several of Toronto’s early public lavatories were actually built belowground. From street level, you descended stairs into their dark, dank depths.

More commodious “comfort stations,” as they were sometimes called, could be found in the city’s central parks. Allan Gardens, as we’ve just seen, was popular. So, too, was Queen’s Park.

But men also had sex in the washrooms of Union Station, the YMCA, and those in amusement areas such as Sunnyside and the Toronto Islands.

Men met up in a number of ways.

Some found each other first on the street before repairing to a restroom.

Other men waited with anxious perseverance inside the lavatory for another man to come into an adjacent stall. Once inside adjoining stalls, connected by a hole in the partition, men employed a variety of means to signal their interest. One might put his hand through the hole, or, as we learn from Henry B’s court case file, the other man “looked through a hole in [the] partition and then took his penis out and put it through the hole,” after which “he put his hand through the hole and grabbed my penis and took it in his mouth and sucked it.”

Another method was the straightforward proposition. In August 1919, Frank B recalled meeting Charles B when he came into the Central Y on College St. He “asked me to go to the toilet with him and he said he would give me a dollar. I went there and [he] started to open the front of my pants.” Unfortunately for Charles, the encounter ended at this point, and Charles found himself before the Police Court charged with attempting to procure Frank for an act of gross indecency. It’s not entirely clear from the case file whether Frank turned Charles in because he was shocked to discover Charles’s intentions or, more likely, because Charles failed to produce

LONG BEFORE SQUIRT AND GRINDR CAME ALONG TO GUIDE US, MEN IN TORONTO DISCOVERED THE POTENTIAL OF THE LAVATORY AS A SITE FOR SEX.

At top, urinals and compartments at Ward’s Island lavatory, 1926.

Above, Allan Gardens lavatory, 1928. At right, an underground lavatory at Queen and Spadina, 1890s. CITY OF TORONTO ARCHIVES

the promised $1, offering instead the less-than-acceptable sum of 50 cents.

Most often men ended up in court because they were caught by the morality department of the Toronto police. Long before the advent of video surveillance, police kept a close eye on what went on in the city’s toilets.

On May 11, 1922, just before midnight, Thomas P and James C were inside the lavatory at Allan Gardens.

Thomas “was sitting on the toilet and his pants were unbuttoned and down and there was a hole cut through the partition between the compartments.

He was looking through the hole then he put his hand through . . . to a man on the other side . . . James C was also sitting on the toilet at the same time

with his pants unbuttoned and down.

When Thomas put his hand through, James stood up, putting his rectum against the hole in the partition and Thomas then stood up and put his penis through the hole and started working towards James.”

Eventually, police officers came into the lavatory, catching Thomas and James in the act. The two men were arrested, found guilty of gross indecency and sent to jail. During the trial, one of the first questions concerned how it was that the police could see Thomas and James. The answer was to be found in the washroom’s architecture. As the court heard, there were two basic designs: the “open lavatory,” a space with urinals, and lavatories that also

had compartments with doors.

As the two officers explained, “there is a hole in the wall at the back of the lavatory [and from the outside] you can look down into all the compartments . . . we have a platform built at the back so that we can.” The officers climbed up onto the platform using ladders. From this platform, “you could see both [compartments] at the same time.”

When caught by police, men improvised a number of ways to avoid arrest and its potentially devastating consequences. When Howard and Thomas were arrested, the police noted, “Howard F denied it [and] Thomas S said nothing.” Silence and denial were both common strategies; so, too, was giving a false name. Others expressed

indignation. “It is absurd,” proclaimed one man to the charge that he had let another man suck him.

When Thomas P was first arrested, he said, “I am too excited to tell you anything.” But later Thomas came up with what he thought was a plausible explanation. He said that “he saw a hole in the partition and he got up just to see if his penis was big enough to go through the hole.” To explain why he required a helping hand from another man in the lavatory, Norman T said that “he had been under medical treatment and that he could not properly urinate.”

Many of these stories and strategies ultimately failed. But if we focus on that outcome, we will have missed the point.

Even under the oppressive conditions of police surveillance and what must have been the frightening experience of arrest, men were not passive. Many talked back to the police. These were brave, early forms of resisting arrest.

Remember, these men challenged the police in a period before the rise of an organized gay community.

Researching and writing about our pasts has important political uses. Following the bathhouse raids in 1981, for example, a group of historians working in the community-based Toronto History Group pored over old newspapers and compiled a long list of the bathhouses police had raided over the previous few decades. By doing so, historians were able to counter the police claim that the 1981 raids were an anomaly by demonstrating that, in fact, they were only the most recent and most brutal moments in a long history of police harassment.

History is also a humbling reminder that, clever as we post-Stonewall, postbathhouse-raid generations are, we were not the first to boldly claim public sexual space in this city.

Steven Maynard lives in Toronto and teaches the history of sexuality at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. He’s completing a book entitled Infamous Men. This is the second in a three-part series on Toronto’s gay history. Visit xtra.ca for more.

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XTRA! JUNE 28, 2012

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INTERNATIONAL

ZAGREB PRIDE

Small steps forward in the

Balkans

Activist Goran Miletic, 2012 Toronto Pride international grand marshal, has helped create anti-discrimination laws in Serbia Above, Croatians celebrate during 2011 Zagreb Pride. Right, Goran Miletic has advocated for the decriminalization of homosexuality in the Balkans.

Ruby Pratka WHEN GORAN MILETIC WALKS DOWN YONGE St as international grand marshal of Toronto Pride, a crowd of thousands will be cheering him on.

It’s not exactly what he’s used to in his hometown of Belgrade, Serbia.

Miletic, a lawyer, has been fighting for gay rights in Serbia since 1993. “At that time, it really was ‘mission impossible,’” he recalls. “Homosexuality was forbidden by law, and we never obtained registration from the authorities . . . we were not that visible, but we were perceived as traitors by the government.”

Miletic’s group won one major victory — decriminalization of gay sex in 1994 — but dissolved shortly after. “We were under pressure, because [then-president Slobodan] Milosevic considered all civil society groups to be part of Western propaganda.”

That mentality has taken a long time to disappear. In 2001, gays and lesbians in Belgrade made a first attempt to hold a Pride parade,

only to have it derailed by a pro-Milosevic counter-protest.

Organizers tried to hold a Pride event in 2009, stopping short only when graffiti saying “Death to fags” and “We’re waiting for you” appeared all over the capital on the eve of the parade.

The graffiti was attributed to an ultranationalist group called Obraz, or “honour,” whose young leader, Mladen Obradovic, called the ban “a great victory for normal Serbia.”

In 2010, anti-gay demonstrators threw bricks, bottles, flares and Molotov cocktails at Pride marchers, sending 140 people to hospital and causing more than 1 million euros ($1.3 million Canadian) in damage. City authorities cancelled the 2011 parade, ostensibly for the marchers’ own safety.

Miletic blames Milosevic-era paranoia, “football hooligans, religious fundamentalists and radical nationalists” for creating a climate of fear in the former Yugoslavia. Prides and other pro-gay events have historically been risky undertakings continued on next page ›

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Toronto’s gay & lesbian news

XTRA! JUNE 28, 2012

The big picture The state of gay rights around the globe

Nigeria Canada’s foreign affairs minister, John Baird, last year spoke out strongly against crackdowns on gay rights in Nigeria, one of several West African countries to take steps toward further criminalizing homosexuality.

While gay sex is already illegal in the country, a new law passed by the Nigerian senate would make same-sex marriage punishable by a 14-year jail sentence and further criminalize witnesses and supporters of gay marriages. It would also ban gay rights groups in the country.

Canada While Canada’s Conservative government has been quick to publicly stand up for gay rights and position itself as an international defender of sexual minorities, it has also been criticized for not walking the talk. Canada has not made defence of gay rights part of its international development priorities, nor has it put forward substantial funding for furthering gay rights abroad.

Refugee groups have also lambasted the government for its controversial changes to policy for asylum seekers, which they claim make it more difficult for queer refugees to find protection in Canada.

For more on this story, search Canada’s gay rights defence is all hot air and Refugee groups respond to Jason Kenney’s letter to Xtra on xtra.ca.

For more on this story, search Baird speaks out on Nigerian anti-gay bill on xtra.ca.

Liberia Jamaica The Caribbean island has long been associated with anti-gay laws, rampant hate crimes and homophobic rhetoric, including hate speech delivered by some of Jamaica’s most influential musicians. Just last year two men were murdered by machete, including a 16-year-old chopped to death for “questionable relations” with another man. In 2006 Time magazine called Jamaica the most homophobic place on earth. However, Jamaica’s new prime minister, Portia Simpson-Miller, spoke out in favour of gay rights during the election campaign last year, and activist Maurice Tomlinson recently told Xtra he thinks legislators are ready to do away with anti-gay laws in his home country.

For more on this story, search Gay activist: Jamaica “disappoints and surprises” on xtra.ca.

Despite being led by Ellen Johnson Sirleaf — the first elected female head of state in Africa and a politician usually viewed as progressive — this West African country is the latest on the continent to attempt to target gays in law. Legislators recently introduced two new anti-gay bills; one, known as the “Kill the Gays Bill,” calls for a minimum of 10 years in jail and a maximum of the death sentence for engaging in homosexual acts.

For more on this story, search Homophobia in Liberia on xtra.ca.

Ghana The conservative West African country has been in the media of late as many of its leaders have spoken out against British Prime Minister David Cameron’s threats to cut aid to those countries, such as Ghana, where homosexuality is criminalized. Religious groups, women’s groups and members of civil society have banded together to denounce homosexuality and call on the country’s leaders to uphold anti-gay laws. For his part, Ghanaian President John Atta Mills last year stated, “I, as president, will never initiate or support any attempt to legalize homosexuality in Ghana.”

For more on this story, search The cleansing and A good day in Ghana on xtra.ca.

Balkans › continued from previous page in the Balkans. Several pro-gay marches in neighbouring Croatia have ended violently; eight people were injured in scuffles with rightwing protesters at the 2008 Sarajevo Queer Festival in neighbouring Bosnia, and queer activists in Albania cancelled a planned Pride parade in April after deputy defence minister Ekrem Spahiu suggested gay marchers should be “beaten with thick sticks.”

“I have nothing against gays, but I don’t go to Pride,” says this reporter’s host in Zagreb, an articulate university graduate in his 20s who wants to be called Josip. “Why? I don’t want to get stoned, that’s why.”

While the majority of Serbs, Croats, Bosnians and Albanians might not agree with the bloodthirsty sentiments of groups like Obraz, homophobia and suspicion of gays are still widespread.

Miletic cites surveys done by the Serbian organization Gay Straight Alliance, which state that 70 percent of Serbs call homosexuality an illness and 30 percent believe the government should actively suppress it.

Josip blames the education system. “I’m educated and my parents are intellectuals, so I’ve always thought, ‘What another man does in his bedroom, how does that hurt me?’” he says. “But in our schoolbooks we learn, and our teachers tell us, that gays are sick. The Catholic Church also has a strong influence here.

“I had a friend that came out, and his mother said, ‘Hitler was such a good man to kill all of

the gays’ and told him to get out of the house . . . she was a smart, funny woman and you’d think she’d be open-minded, but you never know with people,” he says. “I am not saying that’s typical, but it still happened.”

Zagreb activist Karla Horvat Crnogaj sighs when she hears this story.

“Our society is a conservative one, and when some people don’t ‘fit in,’ others seem to be offended somehow,” says Crnogaj, who was forced out of her job in the music industry after she came out.

“We have the laws [against workplace discrimination], but enforcing them is another matter.”

Gaybashing is still alarmingly common — a young woman wearing a T-shirt with pro-gay slogans was stabbed last October in downtown Belgrade.

But as difficult as the situation seems, for Crnogaj and her colleagues, it is not mission impossible.

“That first Pride [Zagreb in 2002], we had 300 people, and 27 people were beaten up before and after the Pride,” says Marko Jurcic, who lives in Zagreb. “People were surrounding us, cursing and shouting . . . but we walked down the streets we wanted to walk. For us at the time it was successful. We were so happy we broke the silence.” Now, Jurcic says, Zagreb Pride regularly draws more than 1,000 people and, while rightwing troublemakers do show up, the tone of the discourse has been turned down noticeably. “You just don’t hear such violent hate speech anymore. And many of the people who come to march with us are young, kids who were 10 years old when we started.”

ZAGREB PRIDE

Enida Bogdani is a 23-year-old communications assistant at Pink Embassy, the queer community centre in Tirana, Albania’s capital. Its offices are filled with young, cheerful employees tapping on cutting-edge computers; its spacious, rainbowbedecked meeting room is furnished with an iconic purple velvet sofa. Bogdani and her colleagues radiate excitement. “Until three or four years ago Albania was clueless about LGBT rights,” Bogdani says. “Homosexuals were invisible. But for the last three years we’ve done a lot of visibility, and now society is talking . . . you can mention the word homosexual to people and they will not freak out.”

Anti-discrimination laws came into force in 2009, and Albania is one of the few countries to include

gender identity in such laws.

“In Albania, you have the typical verbal, and sometimes physical, harassment in schools . . . but I’m not afraid to go out,” adds another Pink Embassy employee, who calls himself Amari. “You don’t have the same kind of hooligans in Albania.

An Albanian might be just as homophobic as a Serb, but he’s not going to say, ‘Let’s go find a queer and kick him around.’”

Across the region, encouraging steps are being taken. Croatian courts charged 23 “football hooligans” with hate crimes in the summer of 2011 after Pride marchers were roughed up in the coastal town of Split, according to an ILGAEurope report. Mladen Obradovic was sentenced

more at xtra.ca

XTRA! JUNE 28, 2012

27

Russia Russia decriminalized homosexuality in 1993 under the watch of former president Boris Yeltsin. But the fight to ensure a more progressive legal and social environment for gays has been dealt several negative blows. In the last six years, several Russian cities have voted for the implementation of so-called “gay propaganda” laws to increasingly silence the country’s gay community. Recently, gay rights activist Nikolai Alexeyev became the first person convicted under St Petersburg’s version of the law, which variously bans “propaganda of sodomy, lesbianism, bisexuality and transgenderism among minors.” The powerful Orthodox Church and other political authorities want to have such language encoded in law nationally. But Alexeyev tells Xtra he is not convinced these latest attempts to criminalize queer Russians are a major setback. In fact, he suggests, these “vague” bills are doing “a lot to promote the LGBT rights.”

Iran Under Iran’s sharia law, homosexual sex is illegal and carries a maximum sentence of death. Two gay Iranian teens, 17 and 18, were executed by hanging in the Iranian city of Mashhad in July 2008. Because transsexuality is not criminalized, gay men in Iran often elect to undergo sex change operations to avoid persecution. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad famously stated in 2007 that homosexuality does not exist in Iran. The Iranian Railroad for Queer Refugees has helped a number of Iranians immigrate to Canada.

For more on this story, search Escaping Iran on xtra.ca.

For more on this story, search How Russia’s push to criminalize gays could backfire on xtra.ca.

Balkans See main story, below.

Malaysia While homosexuality is already illegal and punishable by up to 20 years in prison in the Southeast Asian country, legislators in two of its states last year moved to further punish Muslim gays. Under the proposed new laws, gay Muslims could be punished twice for engaging in homosexual sex: under both state and federal law — meaning longer jail times for those convicted.

In November 2011, organizers of an annual gay rights festival in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, cancelled the event when police threatened to target those attending.

Burundi This small landlocked francophone nation in East Africa criminalized gay sex in 2009. In Burundi, homosexuality is punishable by a prison term of anywhere from two months to three years, for both men and women. Gay groups in the country fear that criminalization and increasing stigma and homophobia in the region are making the situation worse.

For more on this story, search Trying not to be afraid in Burundi and Under siege on xtra.ca.

ZAGREB PRIDE

earlier this month to two years in prison for hate speech in connection with the threats he made in 2009. Ekrem Spahiu, the Albanian politician who suggested that marchers should be beaten, received a direct public rebuke from President Sali Berisha. Montenegro, a nation of 630,000 people sandwiched between Bosnia and Albania, recently added sex reassignment surgery to the list of operations covered in its national health plan.

Miletic proudly ticks off the achievements of queer activism in Serbia in the past several years: “We had the new labour law adopted in 2005, the law against discrimination in 2009, the new law on higher education, the law on public information

THAT FIRST PRIDE, WE HAD 300 PEOPLE, AND 27 PEOPLE WERE BEATEN UP BEFORE AND AFTER. — Zagreb resident Marko Jurcic

Above left, participants in the 2011 Zagreb Pride parade were heavily protected by police. Above, revellers party after Pride celebrations in Zagreb.

and the new broadcasting law, all of which explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.”

In Croatia, Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic told daily newspaper Jutarnji List that the government plans to legalize civil unions in the years to come.

“I think we must go forward, and be inspired by the most advanced countries in the world. Giving stronger civil legal rights to gay communities will not deprive anyone of their rights,” Milanovic told the paper.

Serbia and Albania are candidate states for the European Union; Croatia will join in 2013 after its citizens agreed in a referendum this past winter.

While Miletic downplays the importance of EU conditionality in Serbia (“Gay and lesbian issues aren’t always a priority for the EU; they’re only interested sometimes”), Jurcic believes it’s very important.

“Croatian institutions were doing nothing for gay rights until the last five years,” he says. “When a country accedes to the EU it has to pass strict standards; for example, police must recognize hate crimes, so now institutions are being formed to combat hate crimes,” he says. “I don’t know what [long-term] impact it will have; we’ve made a lot of progress during the negotiations, but now we’ll no longer have the carrot and stick.”

Amari fears that the steps Albania’s queer community takes forward may lead to increased violence. “The more advanced our rights are and the more visible we are, the more attacks we might have. We’re certainly not kissing or hugging in the street; there is still a lot of ignorance.”

“We’ve made a lot of progress in 20 years,” Bogdani adds. “Albania is a country full of hope, a very young country with a need for guidance and education. I want to see LGBT people who are free and responsible; that’s the Albania I’d like to see.”

“I spoke to [British activist] Peter Tatchell, and he said we in Croatia were where Britain was in the 1980s,” Jurcic says. “He said, ‘You are not alone; this is a process we all went though.’”

“In the future,” Jurcic adds, “I want to work on educating people about who we are; that is still very necessary. I hope I won’t be working on hate crimes much longer.”

When Goran Miletic meets the Canadian queer community at Toronto Pride, despite the progress that has been made, his message will be that a lot remains to be done, in the Balkans and around the world.

“I’m very excited; I’ve worked with activists in Canada but never been there,” Miletic says. “It’s important that you achieve more and more freedoms, because we are fighting for the same thing in our countries.”

Surrounded by all the floats and pageantry of the summer tradition that Toronto Pride has become, it’s easy to forget that the first gay pride events were not festivals but protests, against the indignities of the Stonewall riots, the bathhouse raids and HIVbased discrimination. In the Balkans, queer people march to remember violence and legal discrimination — which are still very real and present threats.

“Pride is still very political,” Jurcic says. “Everyone wants to have fun, of course, but we can’t forget why we’re out here.”

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Toronto’s gay & lesbian news

XTRA! JUNE 28, 2012

INSIDE

PRIDE

PTP PRIDE

Trans milestones

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE THING ABOUT PRIDE?

Lots of reasons to celebrate and demonstrate, organizers say DAVID SEITZ F O R S U SA N G A K PA A N D LU K A Sidaravicius, Pride is about moments of learning and surprise that are both personal and political.

Sidaravicius still vividly remembers reading a sign that proudly declared, “We support and love our trans son” in his first language, Portuguese.

“This was before I came out as trans, and it blew my mind,” he says. “There’s always something at Pride that makes me rethink, that challenges something I think I know.”

Gapka, likewise, recalls the city’s first Trans March, in 2009. “We had talked about having a Trans March for years and years,” she recalls. “When some people actually started a Facebook group, we didn’t know if people would show up.”

Hundreds did.

“It was exhilarating,” she says. “We went down Church St, and then just kept going. I can’t imagine what this year will be like for people who’ve never been to a Trans March.”

Now Sidaravicius, who leads Pride Toronto’s Trans Pride team, and Gapka, the first out trans member of Pride Toronto’s board of directors and a community liaison, are among the organizers working to create moments of learning, community building and surprise for others.

This year’s Trans Pride activities kick off with a 6pm rally in Norman Jewison Park on Friday, June 29, followed by the Trans March at 7:30pm. American Sign Language interpreters will be present at the rally, and accessibility-services volunteers will be present during the rally and march.

Throughout Pride weekend, volunteers at the Trans Space, just across from the 519 Church St Community Centre, will connect visitors to a wide range of resources in a non-judgmental environment. A rich lineup of trans and gender-variant artists will perform at the North Stage, next to the Trans Space.

Both organizers say this year’s official Pride theme, Celebrate and Demonstrate, couldn’t be more appropriate.

On the one hand, diverse trans communities have a lot to celebrate. Gapka, an advocate versed in public policy, points to the passage of Bill 13, the Accepting Schools Act, and the landmark passage of Bill 33, Toby’s Act, which amends Ontario’s Human Rights Code to prohibit discrimination based on gender identity and gender expression.

“Life is never for sure,” she says, chuckling. “I’ve always said that Pride will come and go every year, and the Monday after Pride, trans people still won’t have our human rights. But this year, we have our human rights, and that’s something spectacular to celebrate.”

“Cute trans guys, magnificent drag queens, rubbing it all in everyone’s faces . . . how could I decide my favourite thing about Pride?”

Michael Lyons, fab intern

Luka Sidaravicius and Susan Gapka say there is a lot for trans people to commemorate in 2012, including the passage of Toby’s Act. ADAM COISH

Sidaravicius also points to gains in health and education, like the publication of Brazen, a unique and pleasurecentred safer-sex guide for trans women,

by The 519.

On the other hand, significant areas of struggle remain. With Toby’s Act on the books, Sidaravicius says the challenge becomes making sure people know about their rights and available resources — and how to use them. “Now comes the hardest part: education,” he says.

Gapka also points to troubling federal actions, like airplane security identification requirements that place a bur-

den on trans passengers and threats to healthcare benefits for transitioning members of the Armed Forces.

Addressing these concerns takes many forms, Gapka and Sidaravicius agree.

But celebrating and demonstrating — or, as Gapka says, “coming on out, catching some great performances and showing people we’re a force to be reckoned with” — is a great way for trans and genderqueer people and their allies to start.

For more information, contact Sidaravicius at transpride@pridetoronto.com or the Pride Toronto office, 416-927-7433.

“My favourite thing about Pride is I am going to experience it for the first time and enjoy the beautiful people that will be part of the 2012 celebration.”

Karim Alradaidh, fab intern

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XTRA! JUNE 28, 2012

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arts › entertainment › leisure

Out City IN THE

YOU CAN’T TAKE THE POLITICS OUT OF PRIDE, JUST AS YOU CAN’T TAKE THE PARTY OUT. IT’S A CELEBRATION AND A BIG-ASS STATEMENT. Denise Benson ›38

INSIDE

PRIDE

Tee has worked with everyone from RuPaul to Perez Hilton and Peaches.

Meow!

Jessica Sutta finds life after the Pussycat Dolls TERRI-LYNNE WALDRON

W

HEN THE PUSSYCAT Dolls emerged on the scene in 2003, some detractors looked down on the group of sexy women proudly shaking their moneymakers. Yet fans loved their sexy strut, eye-popping burlesque outfits and pulsating high-decibel music.

Jessica Sutta, the group’s red-hot redhead, has gone solo — and her single “Show Me” reached the top of the Billboard dance charts last year.

The Florida native is also a staunch supporter of marriage equality and puts her best foot forward to advocate for the cause. Xtra chatted with Sutta ahead of her performance at this year’s Aqua Pride party.

XTRA: Congrats on the hit song from your first release from your upcoming debut, Sutta Pop, topping the charts.

Where were you when you heard the news and how did you react?

JESSICA SUTTA: I got a phone call from my radio rep at Hollywood Records while I was driving, and he said, “I just want to be the first one to tell you that you have a number-one record.” It was really exciting, and I think it was a huge achievement.

You have described your musical tastes as a hybrid of pop, dance and R&B. Is your CD going to be a mix of those sounds?

Absolutely. In music today there really are no rules, and I love that. You can be as rebellious as you want with sounds and lyrics.

a really bad breakup, and I moved out of the house I shared with him. And I was living with my girlfriends and I put my stuff in storage and I was going to get a place when I got back from tour.

When I got back I was injured and I couldn’t look for a place. So that’s where the whole couch thing came from.

There have been so many rumours about friction within the group because of the attention given to lead singer Nicole Scherzinger. What was your relationship like with her during your time in the group?

It was really good. I really respected Nicole. She was the lead singer and she had all creative control. When I look back on it now, I am grateful for it because I wouldn’t be where I’m at today as an artist; I would not have worked as hard as I did as a vocalist.

We’re not personally friends, but I am always going to be grateful for Nicole.

You are a strong supporter of marriage equality. Why is that so important to you?

It is extremely important to me because I feel like it’s a civil rights movement as well. There should be equal rights You were in the Pussycat Dolls from for every human being. I appreciate 2003 until 2010. According to rewhat Obama did when he said equality ports, in 2009 while for all — that’s one of the performing in Australia, things he said that made you broke a rib and were JESSICA so much sense to me. I’ve sent home. But since you SUTTA actually seen a lot of my had no home to go to, Sat, June 30, 2pm gay friends and they’re in you were homeless and Prism: Aqua monogamous relationSugar Beach had to sleep on a friend’s ships and they’re building Queen’s Quay couch. these relationships and and Jarvis St We were on tour for years prismtoronto.com I’m thinking . . . Duh. I and I just went through mean, that’s what we’ve

Tee dance

The architect of electroclash drops new track in time for Pride Lepore’s song ‘My Pussy’ that I wrote and produced,” Tee says. “He emailed DJ, PRODUCER AND CULTURAL to get a copy for his blog and suggested creator Larry Tee has been a staple we work on something together. When of club culture since the 1980s, he came to the studio, he kept singing, when he moved to New York City ‘pussy, my pussy, my pussy,’ so I said, from Atlanta with Lady Bunny ‘Why don’t you do “My Penis”?’ He and RuPaul. It was during the went for it. Contrary to his bitchy early ’90s that he penned Ru- public persona, he’s actually really Paul’s anthem “Supermodel sweet . . . I’m not kidding.”

The equally prolific Tee drops his (You Better Work)” before coining the term electroclash new track, “Charlie,” June 19 and perand taking over the interna- forms in Toronto during Pride at Party City! with Stereogamous and Betti tional club scene.

Despite RuPaul’s success, Forde, but his relationship with the Tee remembers a time when north is more than a one-night stand.

“Canada has produced so many gay artists weren’t so readily accepted. “When I wrote ‘Su- great acts, with acts like the Hidden permodel’ for RuPaul in 1992, I Cameras, Peaches, Feist and Gonzaremember thinking, ‘There’s no les, but Grimes is my fave Canadian band right now,” he says. one gonna be making “Both of my parents were money on this one,’” Tee LARRY TEE born in Saskatchewan, so says. “It went on to sell Party City!

I do have a lot of love for five million copies. But it Fri, June 29, 11pm Canadians. Plus, I think was one of the rarities at The Garrison your social services and that time for sure.

1197 Dundas St W the way you treat each “In the past, many of garrisontoronto.com other is far superior to the gay artists were just what Americans have assumed gay, like George Michael and Queen Latifah. Slowly, been doing lately. I live in London there have been more openly gay art- now but will always love Canada.” ists that have done really well. Now Adam Lambert debuts at number LARRY TEE’S TOP 5 one on the Billboard album chart and PRIDE TRACKS no one blinks. I love it. Things are definitely changing, and nowadays a Charlie – Larry Tee, good song is a good song no matter feat Charlie Le Mindu who wrote the damn thing.”

Tee now has an impressive colPressure (Larry Tee Attack lection of hits. His list of associates 3 remix) – Stafford Bros, includes Santigold, Princess Superstar feat MDPC and Amanda Lepore.

Where Have You Been?

“I get the craziest collaborators – Rihanna ever. That was my reason for doing the electroclash festivals, to work with Beat Down (Larry Tee creative geniuses like Peaches, Chicks Attack 3 remix) – Steve on Speed and the Scissor Sisters.”

Aoki, feat Iggy Azalea Tee has also worked with the notorious queen of all media, blogger 212 – Azealia Banks Perez Hilton. “Perez loved Amanda

ANDREW ROBERTSON

Sutta is looking forward to performing during Pride because, she says, “Canadians are the nicest people on this Earth.”

been trying to tell everyone. And it’s about changing it and giving awareness and giving rights to everyone.

How did you get involved in the NOH8 campaign?

It happened organically. I was doing a lot of work in the gay community in West Hollywood and I happened to meet the person who started NOH8. I was drawn to it because I was bullied as a child, and it was something that triggered in me that I had to be a part of this. Luckily I did and it just fell into place, and I will always support that. There shouldn’t be any hate; there should be more repercussions towards people bullying in school.

How have gays and lesbians embraced you?

With open arms. I love them and I found that they really appreciate and love music and they love what I stand for. I really connect to my gay audience and I want to be the voice for the gays that can’t be heard. That’s why I’m standing so strong on this issue, because it needs to change.

You’ve been to Toronto before with the Pussycat Dolls. What are your impressions of the city?

I love Toronto. I love Canadians.

I think Canadians are the nicest people on this Earth.

30

Toronto’s gay & lesbian news

XTRA! JUNE 28, 2012

IMMIGRATION LAW

listings ›

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For more listings, go to xtra.ca

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Certified by the Law Society as a Specialist in Immigration/Refugee Law Proveemos Servicios Legales en Español s Same-sex sponsorships s Refugee claims

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www.jordanbattista.com ART & PHOTOGRAPHY HEALTH & ISSUES WinWin Bringing Your Nell Tenhaaf’s dazzling interactive Whole Self to Pride

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show explores themes of order and disorder and the controller and the controlled using sculpture and biotechnology. Runs till Sat, July 14.

Paul Petro Contemporary Art, 980 Queen St W. Free. paulpetro.com

Salon A group show featuring new works

by Troy Brooks, David Caesar, Murray Duncan, LeDor Golightly, Kirsten Johnson, Nayoun Kim, Francis Muscat, G Elliott Simpson and Susan Valyi. Runs till Sun, July 15, noon–6pm. Pentimento Art Gallery, 1164 Queen St E. Free. pentimento.ca

277 Wellington St. W (corner of Wellington/Blue Jays Way) 27 Carlton St. (just west of Church St.) Monday-Saturday 6am-3pm Sunday 7am-3pm

That’s So Gay: Girls Who Are Boys Who Do Boys Like They’re Girls Sholem Krishtalka programs a sexy show of men whose art depicts women whose art depicts men.

Runs till Sun, July 29, noon–5pm.

Gladstone Hotel, 1214 Queen St W. Free. gladstonehotel.com

10x10 Launch

2nd Annual

Pride Travel Marketplace June 30th & July 1st 2012 - Toronto, Ontario

Join Us Celebrate Diversity Win a Vacation

Come join us in Toronto to celebrate Pride and Diversity at the 2nd Annual Pride Travel Marketplace taking place June 30 & July 1 2012 – one of the largest Pride festivals in the world.

Pride Toronto festivities include a street marketplace in the heart of Toronto’s gay village and surrounding area. A dedicated area in the Church/Wellesley area with Exhibitor booths lining the streets selling and promoting various businesses. Drop by Pride Travel Marketplace and visit with some of the best destinations and travel companies supporting the LGBT community.

Ten queer photographers tackle 10 queer subjects each. The faces and bodies of the community are captured in this annual exhibit. Thurs, June 28, 7–11pm.

Show runs till Sun, July 15. The Gladstone, 1214 Queen St W. Free.

10x10photographyproject.com

FILM & VIDEO Older LGBT Social The afternoon social celebrates Pride with a screening of the poignant and uplifting Beginners, starring the impeccable Christopher Plummer and the always delicious Ewan McGregor. Thurs, June 28, 2–4pm. SPRINT, 140 Merton St.

Mad Pride An arts, cultural and heritage festival programmed by psychiatric survivors, mad folks and those who’ve endured the stigma of being labelled “mentally ill.” Featuring panel discussions, information booths, a mad-hatter tea party and more. Challenge and educate yourself on the systemic and individual oppression of mad communities. Runs Tues, July 10–Sat, July 15. Annual bed-push parade begins at noon, Fri, July 14. CAMH, 1001 Queen St W. Free. madprideto.com

LEISURE & PLEASURE Jock Yoga Pride’s clean, sober and proud team presents Michael DeCorte in all kinds of mouthwateringly compromising positions. Bring your own mat. Sat, June 30, 8:15am.

Paul Kane Parkette, Church and Wellesley streets. Free.

Full Fetish Friday Hand me my leather. A deep, dark night of rubber, puppy play, fetish, leather and all the fixings.

Hosted by Canadian Leatherman 2004, Paul C. Fri, July 6, 10pm. The Black Eagle, 457 Church St. Free. blackeagletoronto.com

Canadian Media Guild Pride Week LGBT Short Film Showcase A diverse selection of acclaimed shorts from queer film- and video-makers. Runs till Fri, June 29, 9am–7pm. CBC Broadcasting Centre, 250 Front St W. Free. cbc. ca/toronto

Hollywood to Dollywood The closing-night film of the ReelHeART International Film Festival follows gay identical twins Gary and Larry Lane in their RV as they personally deliver their script to Dolly Parton. Sat, June 30, 7pm.

The Projection Booth, 1035 Gerrard St E. $12. reelheart.org

For full details on Toronto Pride please visit: www.pridetoronto.com

An interactive workshop led by Notisha Massaquoi that explores the rich dynamics and dimensions of queer identity, what barriers we face and how to overcome them. ASL interpretation provided.

Thurs, June 28; registration starts at 6:30pm. OPSEU Regional Office, 31 Wellesley St E. Free. rainbowhealthnetwork.ca

The Pin Button Project launches Fri, June 29 at CLGA

The Pin Button Project The launch of an interactive website featuring buttons from the CLGA’s collection offers an opportunity to create your own buttons and share stories. Fri, June 29, 6–10pm.

Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives, 34 Isabella St. Free. clga.ca › continued on page 37

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XTRA! JUNE 28, 2012

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PRIDE

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RON HYDE

A sporting chance Athletic group OutSport encourages diversity and inclusiveness DAVID HAINS WHEN JASON WILCOX JOINED THE Downtown Toronto Soccer league in 2006 it was an impulsive decision. Although he had taken part in track and ďŹ eld events growing up, he had never played on a sports team. Then a friend told Wilcox there was one spot available in the soccer league. He took it.

Now 37, the marketer is still playing and says it has value that goes beyond the ďŹ eld. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I had lived in Toronto for most of nine years before, and it wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t until I joined the league [in 2006] that I truly felt I had found an extended community.â&#x20AC;?

With seven teams, DTS has enjoyed sustained popularity. Wilcox says one of the best parts of the league is the fact itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s co-ed. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s really opened up my social circle and community; now I have a lot of female friends,â&#x20AC;? he says, noting that the league is a good alternative to the segregated bar scene.

The league is welcoming to people of all abilities, too. With an annual draft that balances teams by skill levels, DTS organizers go out of their way to make sure there is a level of friendly competition to the process.

That inclusiveness is something that OutSport, of which Downtown Toronto Soccer is a member, strives for as well.

OutSport was established in 2009 after 30 queer sports groups identiďŹ ed the need for a central organizing body. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Organizations felt isolated, siloed. They didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know what each other was doing,â&#x20AC;? says OutSport chair Shawn Sheridan. To remedy that problem, OutSport, a volunteer-led group, tries to â&#x20AC;&#x153;serve and support Sheridan says, OutSport hopes to highLGBT sport and recreation clubs in light that â&#x20AC;&#x153;LGBT recreation is very the greater GTA through the promo- alive and well.â&#x20AC;?

The SportsZone will feature a foottion of health, healthy living, wellness ball toss, organized by the Toronto Gay and well-being.â&#x20AC;?

Like Wilcox, being part of a close- Football League; lessons in (mock) knit team is something thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s close rifle twirling; and kidsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; ball hockey, to Sheridanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s heart. As a 20-year-old courtesy of the Toronto Gay Hockey he took a beginnersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; swim course Association.

The various sports groups will also and subsequently became a National Lifeguard Service examiner. But march together in the Pride parade.

While these events build a social that accomplishment wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t the best part: â&#x20AC;&#x153;I found camaraderie and ac- context for sports, Sheridan thinks ceptance for who I was through sport they can also break the perception that sports are only for certain kinds of and recreation.â&#x20AC;?

OutSport Toronto is bringing its people. He speaks to the â&#x20AC;&#x153;broad rangeâ&#x20AC;? of athletes in OutSportâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mission to the Pride member organizations, 2012 community OUTSPORT from young people playfair, in the expanded Toronto Pride SportZone ing multiple sports to SportsZone, a contiguSat, June 30â&#x20AC;&#x201C;Sun, July 1 individuals in their 60s ous series of booths 10amâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;6pm and 70s. along Alexander St. By Alexander St, Sheridan says that having the various tabetween Church & Yonge such diversity strengthbles grouped together outsporttoronto.org ens OutSport and that rather than scattered,

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I FOUND CAMARADERIE AND ACCEPTANCE FOR WHO I WAS THROUGH SPORT AND RECREATION. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;OutSport chair Shawn Sheridan ADAM COISH PHOTO

itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s one of the reasons people have responded to their efforts.

Since OutSport is an organizing body, he doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know how many people have become involved because of their outreach, but he says the feedback has been positive. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It was the perception of our member organizations that there was an uplift in interest and participation.â&#x20AC;?

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P M U J OUND Toronto’s gay & lesbian news

XTRA! JUNE 28, 2012

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a n a N ll I e p u o r t Dance e c n a m r o f r e p k c li s s e in b m o c m is iv t c a e r e c and sin HOTOS BY RYAN FAUBERT A ARON L E AF

P

A

Jelani Ade-Lam, Kumari Giles and Sze-Yang Ade-Lam are Ill Nana. The group recently won the Spirit of Will Munro Award.

PTP PRIDE

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE THING ABOUT PRIDE?

“My favourite thing is sending our fantastic Pride editions of Xtra and fab to press, and the celebrations that come after. Almost there . . . ” Lucinda Wallace, PTP creative director

N ILL NANA PER FOR MANCE CAN that’s partly due to homophobia and to racism and be like a ’90s R&B video gone drag : just not fitting into the cook ie-cutter image of what synchronized superhero posturing, a dancer is supposed to be like and look like.” aggressive femininity in masculine From 2007 to 2009, Jelani, Sze-Yang and a rotatpackages. It can also be tender and ing cast of friends performed in club honest, telling stories of loss and s and refined friendship their vision. They were a dance crew in the hip-hop from a deeply personal place. It’s polit ical, titil- mould with an increasin g sense of social responsilating and a middle finger to the excl usionary bility. Then they land ed a commission from the Art culture of mainstream dance. Natu rally, the Gallery of Ontario to do a performance celebrating group will be doing numerous perf ormances the work of Edward Steichen, the legendary highover the course of this year’s Pride festivities. fashion photographer . Things were getting serious.

When Foxy Brown dropped her album Ill On January 12, 2010, an earthqua Na Na in the mid-’90s, it was a rare ke hit Haiti. moment in Like millions of peop le around the world, the sheer the history of pop music. Fierce, sex-positive injustice of the devastation prompted the crew to female MCs were all over the radi o; Lil’ Kim, act. They chose dance as their method of raising Missy Elliot, Da Brat and Left Eye were part of a relief money. movement that hasn’t been replicate d since. The “Until this point,” Jelani says, “we members of the Toronto dance com had left conpany Ill Nana temporary danc e for a while and we were doing came of age during this era, and by taking the name stuff with heel s and hip hop and club dancing. It was of the Foxy Brown album, they unin tentionally gave amazing and really fulfilling for us, but for the relie themselves a liberation manifesto. f fundraiser we decided to take off the “At the time we were exploring our heels, go back feminine to contemporary and do something really heartfelt.” energy,” says Sze-Yang Ade-Lam , “because as a The performance, sans props and male dancer you’re not really allow makeup, reed to do that. IIl sulted in an emo tionally honest work that touched Nana was the first time we wore heel s and the first the audience and ended with the dancers in tears time that we had lipstick or wigs on.

It was the first onstage. They ’d reached a turning point. The loos time we explored that at all. It was e taboo for us.” collective of friends that danced as In recent years, Ill Nana’s founding Ill Nana decided members — to stop wasting time trying to fit into a dance world now married — Sze Yang Ade-Lam and Jelani Ade- that didn’t wan t them and do it for themselves.

Lam, and new-blood Kumari Giles, have taken their “We figured out a structure,” Jela lush hybrid dance performances ni says. “We from Toronto’s figured out gran ts. We put together a mandate and queer club scene to big mainstrea m stages while a vision.” In 2010 they became Ill Nana the danc staying unapologetically themselve e s. company.

Between them, the three have spen t decades “Bef ore 2010 we were doing this for fun and still rigorously pursuing professional danc e careers. Ill looking for the real job outside of Ill Nana. In 2010 Nana, which started in 2007 as a way to make dance it became ‘We can be the real job,’” Sze-Yang says fun again, has evolved into an equa . lly rigorous Training to be a dancer as a queer pers rejection of that mainstream danc on of colour e scene. can mea n chec king yourself at the studio door. For “I was still doing a lot of ballet,” SzeYang says Giles — a queer Sout h Asian woman — her years of their genesis, “navigating the danc e world and training in balle t and contemporary dance made finding that we didn’t have a lot of opportunities her feel she was being erased: “My stories and my even though we were highly trained dancers. I think life while danc ing in those spaces didn’t matter.”

“My favourite part of Pride is mesh. I wear it 24/7 for four days and it feels great. ” Phil Villeneuve, fab editor

“Pride Day is queer homecoming. You bump into old friends, former flames, decades-ago co-workers, ancient crushes, exes and their new babies. Who needs Facebook, when you have Pride?”

Rachel Giese, senior editor at Walrus magazine and former Xtra features editor

P

more at xtra.ca

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D FREAKS & GEEKS (ASIAN ARTS FREEDOM SCHOOL DRAG MUSICAL) Wed, June 27, 8pm Buddies 12 Alexander St

ILL NANA @ PRIDE Now, says Giles, “our lives come into the studio with us, and it is very much a polit ical act to be in traditional dance spaces as ours elves, telling our stories and not leaving ourselve s at the door when we walk onstage.”

Part of that inclusiveness means bein g open to many different styles. Along with ballet and contemporary, which they all share, the group has experimented with all kinds of movement, from Afro-Caribbean to Ukra inian to martial arts.

Though they don’t consider them selves part of the Toronto ballroom vogu e scene, they are close friends with local vogu e dancers and count the form as one of thei r great influences. For Ill Nana, voguing conn ects the dots between genres in a form that was created wholly within the queer community.

“When people are being homopho bic and they call you a fag and a sissy and whatnot , it’s usually like gays are weak or gay people are effeminate or not strong. And to me, when I first saw voguing, I was like, Holy, they ’re both effem inate and so powerful and so strong,” Sze Yang says.

“Bec ause we’v e face d so muc h viol ence and negativity we needed to figure out how to be superheroes,” Jelani says. “We needed to figure out how to put out an image of what we wan ted to be even if we weren’t that image: a superher o is the heels and the bright colours and being, ‘Hey , we’re here

Sat, June 30, 4pm Village Stage Church and Wellesley Sun, July 1, 2pm and 3pm Queer Hip-Hop Flash Mob Dance Norman Jewison Park Sun, July 1, 7pm Blockorama TD Wellesley Stage Yonge/Wellesley parking lot Sun, July 1, 9pm North (Trans) Stage Just north of Church and Wellesley

and we’re powerful and you can’t touch us.”

The two male members credit the recent addition of Giles to the com pany with tempering their club-land personas and moving them forward. Says Jelani, “The other side of being a superhero is Kumari’s humanness. It’s super powerful to be vulnerable onstage.”

Performing is only a small portion of what the company does: they run Right to Dan ce, a free dropin class at The 519 for queer people who might feel uncomfortable in a conventional danc e class; they offer a two-month intensive class that guides dancers through the process of creating group and solo pieces, ending in a performance of new work; and

My favourite part of Pride is the pornstar sightings. You can’t swing a Fleshlight that weekend without running into one or two.

Andrew Tran, graphic designer, Xtra and fab

they ’re working on getting annual funding to create a space “where LGBT peop le can put their own stories and experien ces onstage.”

They’re also the winner of this year’s Spirit of Will Munro award, a $10,000 grant mea nt to establish a local arts project for queer youth.

The company plans to use the money to organize a conference this fall consisting of classes, discussion and performances that will bring queer participa nts together with dance professionals in an affi rming space.

This year’s Pride weekend will see Ill Nana performing at minimum four differen t events in what should be a range of styles, from hard -hitting hip hop to jazz and contemporary.

“Being in the parade is one of my favourite things about Pride. Being able to celebrate our freedom and our love on the grandest scale – there’s no greater high.”

Darryl Mabey, graphic designer, Xtra and fab

“The best thing about Pride is how horny it makes me, and if I don’t succumb to the heat I might be able to do something about that horniness.”

Jeremy Willard, fab intern

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Toronto’s gay & lesbian news

XTRA! JUNE 28, 2012

INSIDE

PRIDE

Baubles, bangles & beads G Fox jewellery one of many Streetfair shopping options Of course, the start-up costs for any new business generally involve a MY FAVOURITE PART OF PRIDE significant outlay of cash, but tossing weekend has always been the Street- precious gems and high-grade metals fair. I mean, who among us hasn’t into the mix puts you in a whole new returned home with a sparkly LED ballpark.

“Oh yeah, the first year my parents rainbow trinket at one point or another? But alongside the roasted corn told me I would take a pretty good booth (generally my first stop) and loss,” he laughs. “But it’s something the inevitable T-shirt gallery (“My you have to do to get the name out. other GF is a dyke too”) are some se- It’s the best thing I ever did.”

One new line that Fox is particularly rious artisans selling handmade and proud of is a collection of wooden bespoke wares.

This will be the fourth year that watches, which he designs and puts jewellery designer Genya Fox has been together by hand. He’s also bringing in part of Streetfair, with his beautiful a new line of Pride rings, candy skulls creations that somehow manage to and a Shambhala bracelet decorated with Swarovski crysbe flashy and classy at the same time. tals. Many pieces From bejewelled military dog feature Fox ’s tags to intricately deown stylized signed rings, the G trans equalFox booth enjoys ity design — brisk business something and repeat the trans man clientele. finds personally “It’s the best rewarding. time ever,” Fox “I want to be out says. “We get new customers, sure, but Fox designs everything from there empowering people and creating then there are peorings to dog tags. original pieces,” he ple who’ve bought my stuff online and now I get to meet says. “Our motto is ‘There’s a richthem in person. It’s totally a big thrill ness to our experience.’”

It occurs to me that having a booth when I see someone wearing my stuff.”

Fox comes by his trade honestly. full of costly jewellery surrounded Both his parents are jewellers, and by hundreds of thousands of people he has a master’s in gemology and is might be a little, well, daunting. But a certified diamond grader. He could Fox has matters well in hand.

“It’s crazy, definitely, but my fiancé easily be pulling in good coin working for a large outfit, but the call to artistic and my parents help out, and my personal trainer is doing security. We play freedom proved too strong.

“I couldn’t see myself doing a nine- good music and it’s a real party. Plus, to-five job in a diamond lab,” he says. I’m a nice guy.”

G Fox creations are also available at “This way I get to really connect with my customers and do my own thing.” gfoxgems.com.

SERAFIN LARIVIERE

Truck Stop

The popular raunchy women’s party is back with New York’s Truck Stop Girlz and LA DJ Brynn Taylor. The fun kicks off Saturday, June 30 at 8pm at The Courthouse, 57 Adelaide St E. Tickets online at ticketzone.com.

COME CELEBRATE WHAT WE’VE BUILT.

Dykes VS Divas Baseball Game

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Sunday, July 22 2 - 5pm

Canada Games Diamond at the Halifax Commons

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Monday, July 23 5pm

Flag Raising

GOLD LEVEL

Halifax City Hall

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Tuesday, July 24 6:30 - 8:30pm

Celebrate What We’ve Built

Granville Square

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Wednesday, July 25 8:30 - 11pm

Halifax Pride Song Writer’s Circle

The Company House

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Thursday, July 26 7:30pm

OutBoating Sunset Cruise

SILVER LEVEL

Tall Ship Silva

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Thursday, July 26 10:30pm - 12:30am

OutBoating Party Cruise

Tall Ship Silva

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Friday, July 27 9pm - 1am

OUT Dancing Halifax Pride’s 3rd Annual Dance Party

Garrison Grounds at the Halifax Commons

A Scholarship for LGBTQ Students in Ontario

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Saturday, July 28 1:30pm

Pride Parade

Through the heart of the city

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Saturday, July 28 3pm - 6pm

Festival and Main Stage

Garrison Grounds at the Halifax Commons

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Saturday, July 28 9pm - 2am

WetSpot

Visit halifaxpride.com for more event and community details.

Garrison Grounds at the Halifax Commons

BRONZE LEVEL

Applications are now being accepted.

Application deadline is August 3, 2012 at 5pm.

• We will be awarding five $2,000 scholarships!

• This scholarship opportunity is open to LGBTQ Ontario students who identify as lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender, transsexual, two-spirited, and/or queer.

Apply Now! bill7award.ca/apply

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XTRA! JUNE 28, 2012

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36

Toronto’s gay & lesbian news

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PRIDE

PTP PRIDE

Fasten your seatbelts

Toronto at Night Ryan G Hinds

D

OES EVERYTHING IN JUNE have to be at the same time? Yes, Pride is the great big granddaddy of our collective summer calendar, but it’s seriously fighting for space.

The run-up to Pride always includes lots of marquee events, and I expect big things this year from Pride, if only because the competition has been merciless. But every step of the way I look at June as a warmup for Pride.

At the Power Ball, the 25th annual fundraiser for the Power Plant, organizers went in for high-end VIP treatment.

The art took a back seat to the crowd, and a little bird told me that Grey Goose had sponsored $24,000 worth of liquor.

It’s no wonder that by the end of the night super-rich art patrons, scenester bloggers and lowly artists were literally swinging from the ceiling in lux clothes and jewellery Elizabeth Taylor would die for. It made for a heady scene that felt surprisingly comfortable; watching high-powered ex-pol Belinda Stronach ducking forks from gonzo performance artist Keith Cole was oddly reassuring and the kind of different-worlds-comingtogether vibe I love to feel pre-Pride. The night’s highlight was a lakeside performance by power trio Dragonette. The

fave band of many a Toronto gay, they served up a tight set of tunes, including the impossible-to-overplay “Hello” and new single “Let It Go.” Chatting beforehand, the band members dished on their new album, with lead singer Martina Sorbara telling me, “People keep saying the album is called Let It Go. I don’t think it will be. In the fall we’re going to go on tour, make some videos, do some instagramming, and the album is mostly just us . . . some producers here and there, but mostly us.”

Although they’re missing Toronto Pride this year, eventually talk turned queer. Keyboardist/producer Dan Kurtz offered up three tips for ensuring a good Pride: “Stay hydrated. Don’t do too many drugs on the first day. Have some clothing in a bag in case you suddenly realize you’re not wearing any.” Words to live by, my friends.

The entire Power Ball night went off without a hitch, hedonistically and glamorously, and I’m prepared to say it was the best event of its kind I’ve been to in Toronto for many a year.

The road to Pride was going smoothly, but then the Universal Music/MMVA afterparty at Maison Mercer happened. Now, don’t get me wrong . . . it was a great party with celebs large and small: with mine own eyes I saw, danced with or photo-opped everyone from LMFAO (no, Redfoo did not rip off his pants for me, and yes, I asked) to Far East Movement (their DJ set was nowhere close to being as fly as a G6) to Glee’s Darren

“My favourite thing about Pride is the happiness, life and energy it brings to everyone who attends.”

Dragonette’s top Pride tip: stay hydrated.

Criss (short, cute, good dancer) to locals Hedley, Marianas Trench and Faber Drive.

Deep in the heart of the entertainment district, if you aren’t a young-ish, trashyish overly made-up girl with too-high heels and a too-short skirt or a douche-y jock, you’re hustled along to a dark corner. It felt like everyone was running around celeb hunting (but trying not to look like it), pretending to be people they weren’t and hashtagging the experience instead of enjoying the moment.

Whereas Power Ball felt like a series of fab situations, the MMVA party quickly devolved into a series of overpriced drinks and spirited games of “Who will flash her cooch first?” and “Is that Justin Bieber?” Frankly, I’d rather play that at Pride, where there are plenty of lesbians who can pass for Bieber just fine.

My ideal Pride is a mix of these two

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE THING ABOUT PRIDE?

events. I do like to see big celebs, but they can’t be relied on to provide a good time; that’s gotta come from inside. This Pride, dress up large, swing from a ceiling or two, and enjoy the moment. Personally, I can’t wait; by this time next month I want to be able to say this Pride was the best on record. I want to say I saw cliques mixing together, that a little hedonism served us well, that everyone’s performances went well and that Pride continues to be the best part of summer.

In some ways, the anticipation is the best thing about Pride. What could possibly be better than lounging with Dragonette or party rocking with LMFAO? Fasten your seatbelts . . . we’re about to find out.

Toronto at Night appears in every second issue of Xtra.

Derrick Branco, national accounts manager

“Partying with friends at my cottage on Beaver Lake. It’s like The 519 beer garden without the lineups!”

Tim Prentice, graphic designer, former Xtra production designer

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NEIGHBOURHOOD

Our very own Magic Mike After 19 years, Remington’s is better than ever Serafin LaRiviere IT WAS CHRISTMAS DAY, 1995. THE city was quickly becoming blanketed by one of those epic snowfalls you see on illustrated postcards or Norman Rockwell paintings, and I’d just suffered through one of the worst Yuletide celebrations in personal memory. My guests had included a dementia-ridden senior citizen whose holiday vocabulary consisted largely of the word “bitches” and a seven-year-old terror who thought that peeing in the cats’ litter box would be the height of hilarity. Ho fucking ho. So, after I shovelled the lot of them out into the blizzard, my dear friend David Bateman suggested a therapeutic jaunt down Yonge St to a strip club called Remington’s.

I’d never been to a peeler bar of any sort, and certainly not one with male strippers. But I was depressed, bloated and horny, so off we toddled to see hot men taking off their clothes. Now I won’t lie to you . . . one can’t expect to find the crème de la crème stripping on Christmas Day: the headliner was built like a deer tick, and, sadly, hung like one as well. But it was quite liberating, hooting and hollering at the

listings › › continued from page 30

PRINT & READINGS Stories and Snacks for Kids S Bear Bergman presents a latemorning session for the little ones.

Sun, July 1, 11am–2pm. Glad Day Bookshop, 598 Yonge St. Free. gladdaybookshop.com

Proud Voices This exciting installation features Sky Gilbert, Waawaate Fobister, Shawn Syms and Ari Belathar.

Hear the voices of queers about town causing a commotion.

Sun, July 1, 5pm. Glad Day Bookshop, 598 Yonge St. Free. gladdaybookshop.com

dancers alongside a surprisingly large crowd of gay brethren.

It was nearly 10 years later that I returned to the club, again with my stalwart pal. Things had definitely changed, and not for the better. The place was clearly run down, the bar service surly, and many of the dancers sported a suspiciously vacant look that inspired anything but lust. The crowd was small, even on a Friday night, and it was clear that Remington’s desperately needed a major makeover.

“The place had gotten such a bad reputation,” says Dave Auger, the club’s general manager. Auger was brought in nearly three years ago, shortly after a massive renovation undertaken by new owners that saw the main room gutted and completely rebuilt. “They put in a new stage, new seating and double poles,” Auger says.

“And we’re still not completely done.”

Up next is a brand-new façade to celebrate the club’s 19th anniversary, replacing the admittedly tired one that fronts onto Yonge St and bringing Remington’s renewal to an architectural climax. “We tried to get it done for Pride, but there’s just too much bureaucracy,” Auger says. “It’ll be done soon, though,

and it will be sizzling hot.”

Sizzling is a good way to describe the current establishment. The lighting and sound is now state-of-the-art, and the décor is a sophisticated blend of urban modern with touches of artdeco chrome. The dancers are certainly a vast improvement over the Christmas tick and the zombified peelers of yesteryear; some of these guys would make the muscle bunnies at my gym break down and weep, and the more twinkish dancers are so cute my teeth ache. One particularly gorgeous hunk named Jersey saunters over for a chat.

Jersey’s been dancing at Remington’s for nearly two years and is one of the establishment’s most popular entertainers. He’s impossibly ripped and classically handsome, with an engaging personality that seems confident without being overly cocky. He clearly loves his job.

“It’s a great place to work,” he says.

“There’s some good money to be made.

But also, I’m from New Jersey, and it’s very hetero there for a bisexual male growing up and not able to express himself. Being here is like night and day.”

Performers rely strictly on tips and private dances for income, and Jersey

Jersey’s been a Remington’s staple for two years.

sees his body as an investment, duly putting in the gym hours to keep it in top form for his clientele. “I spend maybe two hours at home a day. The rest is at the gym or here working.”

I’m a little hesitant when asking whether his family knows about his job’s dress code, or lack thereof — after all, I’m of a generation where such things are kept strictly under wraps.

Jersey laughs. “My family knows, and they’re all for it. They say to use the body while you’re young.”

I have to say I’m a little surprised at how businesslike and natural everyone seems. Auger looks like your

typical professional, nicely dressed and friendly, and he clearly cares for his staff. Everyone seems to actually like one another, and it’s a nice atmosphere to be in, even without the drool-worthy men onstage.

“We’re like a family,” Jersey says.

“And in this business, you really do need to get along.”

Remington’s, at 379 Yonge St, is open every day, with a men’s only space upstairs and a co-ed main room that is open weekends to both guys and gals.

Both floors will be open for Pride, with extended hours to 4am. remingtons.com

For more listings, go to xtra.ca

GLBTQ Literary Speed Dating The beautiful room is empty. Meet new singles and discuss David and Giovanni or Sutherland and Malone.

Bring your favourite books, CDs and writing to share. Visit the branch or call 416-393-7674 to register. Wed, July 4, 6:15–8:30pm. Bloor and Gladstone Public Library, 1101 Bloor St W. Free. torontopubliclibrary.ca

MUSIC Scissor Sisters I want you to funk me. The vivacious, daring and dangerously sexy pop icons return to Hogtown to celebrate and promote Magic Hour, their hotly anticipated follow-up to 2010’s Night Work. Thurs, June 28, 8pm. Sound Academy, 11 Polson St. $32.50. soundacademy.com

The

Pin Button Project

Have you told your story?

Kendall Partington Live Let the music take you and be serenaded and sedated by grooves and cocktails. Sat, June 30 and July 7, 9pm. Statlers, 487 Church St. Free. › continued on page 39

Waawaate Fobister reads as part of Proud Voices at Glad Day Bookshop on Sun, July 1.

An interactive online exhibition and oral history project featuring pin buttons from the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives.

pinbuttons.ca @pinbuttons

Join us at our launch reception on Friday, June 29 from 6:00 - 9:00pm at the CLGA, 34 Isabella Street

38

Toronto’s gay & lesbian news

XTRA! JUNE 28, 2012

HARVEY L. HAMBURG Barrister, Solicitor, Notary Public Many Years of Experience in Real Estate, Wills and Estate Administration

INSIDE

PRIDE

416-968-9054 Serving our community for more than 25 years 120 Carlton St., Suite 215 (at Jarvis St.) e-mail: hhamburg@sympatico.ca

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Big-ass beats Denise Benson and Cozmic Cat set off a huge Cherry Bomb NICK AVELING WHEN ROB FORD ANNOUNCED IN April that he wouldn’t attend the Pride parade — again, and to the surprise of no one — he left the door open to attending some other event on the Pride calendar. Technically, that includes Cherry Bomb Pride, the sweltering club night hosted by DJs Denise Benson and Cozmic Cat. So what would the duo say if Ford showed up?

“I have a hunch that Revival’s security wouldn’t let him past the front door,” Benson says.

“I wouldn’t say anything. Just foot-sweep the leg,” Cozmic Cat says, laughing.

It’s the kind of response you might expect from the hosts of one of Toronto’s most boisterous queer club nights.

But then again, seeing as Cherry Bomb just hosted its fifth anniversary party and Cherry Bomb Pride is timed to go off on June 30, maybe it’s just the stress talking.

“We have pretty high standards in terms of music and parties,” says Cozmic Cat, known as Paula Burrows Cozmic Cat and Denise when she’s not spinning. “We’re super Benson are celebrating passionate about it.” five years of Cherry Bomb.

This time she’s not kidding. At five years old, Cherry Bomb is already something of an institution, having been voted Best Women’s Club Event tirely non-negotiable. So when Savour

by Xtra readers three times. The turned sour, Benson approached the monthly party for queer women and recently repatriated Burrows, back all their friends launched in June 2007 from a 10-year stint rocking danceafter Benson’s previous monthly spot, floors in Philadelphia to huge critical Savour, buckled under the weight of its acclaim.

“I actually used to sneak into Deown success.

“We had more and more women nise’s Boom Boom Room parties when who would demand nothing but top- I was underage — back in the early ’90s, I think,” says Bur40 music, more fights rows, named Best DJ by within the crowd, and CHERRY the Philly press an almost more women who openly BOMB PRIDE embarrassing five times. expressed their dislike of Sat, June 30, 9pm The women agreed on the our open-door approach Revival need for an inclusive club to people of all genders,” 783 College St night, and Cherry Bomb Benson says. $15 door (limited advance tickets was born.

Anyone who’s read available at Benson explains: Benson’s new-music colSoundscapes and “Cherry Bomb is, at its umn in The Grid (and Eye Glad Day Bookshop) heart, a party for queer Weekly) over the last 20 women, but it’s absoluteyears will know that top 40 isn’t exactly her thing. In fact, it ly important to us as people, promotexactly isn’t. And the DJ sees Cherry ers and DJs that it’s open to people Bomb’s inclusivity — something of of all genders, including our straight an exception in a wider club culture friends. That’s just the way we live our that tends toward exclusivity — as en- lives, and we see it as key that Cherry Bombers be able to comfortably bring their friends, whoever they may be, DENISE BENSON & with them.”

COZMIC CAT’S TOP 5 This year’s Pride event at Revival promises to be the biggest yet, with four PRIDE TRACKS DJs spread out over two floors playing 212 – Azealia Banks house, up-tempo, dancehall, hip hop, Pop Pop Pop (Cozmic R&B and more. The night also includes performances by electro-synth riot Cat Mix) – Urvah Khan girl trio Rouge and world-rock rapper Like This – Linkoban Urvah Khan, who was recently remixed Get out My Head – Redlight

by Burrows. Lighting-décor whizz kids cirQlar, meanwhile, have been tapped Love Is You – Cajmere & to provide the night’s visuals.

Russoul with Ari Lourdes “[Crowds at Pride] are ready to party

PTP PRIDE

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE THING ABOUT PRIDE?

“Pride is a spectacular chosen-family picnic in which we’re all related by six degrees of separation (and often significantly fewer)!”

Jen Gillmor, musician, bodyworker, yoga teacher and former Xtra designer

from the moment they walk in the door,” Benson says, justifying the extra expense. But neither woman sees Cherry Bomb Pride as merely a party.

More than any other time of the year, the message is political.

“You can’t take the politics out of Pride, just as you can’t take the party out. It’s a celebration and a big-ass statement,” Benson says.

Even if that big ass doesn’t belong to a certain mayor.

more at xtra.ca

listings â&#x20AC;ş

XTRA! JUNE 28, 2012

39

NEIGHBOURHOOD

Primp your poodle for Pride A downtown doggie salon with all the trimmings SeraďŹ n LaRiviere

Paul Hutchesonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Pride Package 2 on Thurs, June 28.

â&#x20AC;ş continued from page 37

STAGE Paul Hutchesonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Pride Package 2 The cabaret performer sashays onto the stage with 10 comedians â&#x20AC;&#x201D; including Sharon Nowlan, Mike Albo and Robert Keller â&#x20AC;&#x201D; from the Big Apple and Hogtown. Thurs, June 28, 8pm.

Buddies, 12 Alexander St. $10â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 20. buddiesinbadtimes.com

Mum and the Big C A romantic comedy about a rebel lesbian exiled to suburbia to nurse her mother back to health. While pressures mount to conform to a straight lifestyle, Ripley ďŹ nds herself in the arms of her momâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s oncologist. Starring Elvira Kurt, Janet Laine-Green and others.

Runs Wed, July 4â&#x20AC;&#x201C;Sat, July 14.

Various showtimes. Randolph Academy, 736 Bathurst Ave. $10. fringetoronto.com

Mahmoud Iranian-born playwright and performer Tara Grammy delivers her tour de force one-woman performance that maps out the nuances of immigration, displacement and the notion of home. Runs Wed, July 4â&#x20AC;&#x201C;Sat, July 14, various showtimes. Tarragon Theatre, 30 Bridgman Ave. $10, $11 advance. fringetoronto.com

Gay Nerds Because size matters not!

Sam, Lana and Ralph navigate life, love and an obsession with Star Wars in this play and web-series about the often overlooked or mocked members of our community.

Runs Wed, July 4â&#x20AC;&#x201C;Sat, July 14, various showtimes. Factory Theatre Mainspace, 125 Bathurst St. $10, $11 advance. gaynerds.tv, fringetoronto.com â&#x20AC;ş continued on page 40

WHEN I WAS A KID, ONE OF THE grossest chores I had was bathing our dog George. Now, George was a sweet little cockapoo, but he was about as smart as a leg-waxing strip. He also hated any water that wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t swampy and ďŹ lled with dead ďŹ sh, which made his semi-annual bath a truly hellish experience. Worse yet, he was still stinky afterward â&#x20AC;&#x201D; something that apparently doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t happen when itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s done right, according to Deidre Howard, the owner of Tailspin Dog Spa. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Regular grooming really does get rid of the smell,â&#x20AC;? Howard assures me. â&#x20AC;&#x153;And there are products you can spray on in between. Some dogs just smell more than others, and they need to be properly bathed regularly, to clean their skin and the stuff that gets stuck in their coats. You canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t just give them a bath once a year and think â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s it.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;â&#x20AC;?

Oops.

Howardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s been grooming pooches for nearly 15 years, ever since she left a job in insurance that felt like it was going nowhere. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Nine-to-ďŹ ve just wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t for me,â&#x20AC;? she says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;This is more hours, but it feels different when itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s your own business.â&#x20AC;?

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s turned out to be a smart move.

Howard spent 12 years in Vancouver running a dog-grooming business

and netted a slew of awards, including those voted on by readers of the Georgia Straight newspaper. Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s been back home in Toronto for two years now, and her urban doggie spa is going gangbusters.

I can see why. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a slick place, with great lighting and a modern dĂŠcor that says â&#x20AC;&#x153;upscale hair salonâ&#x20AC;? more than it does â&#x20AC;&#x153;dog bather.â&#x20AC;? Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a central area for Howardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new doggie daycare service, with two happy little furballs clearly enjoying their afternoon away from home. Behind that is the actual grooming area, featuring an array of hoses, dryers and clippers that bely the specialized work involved in caring for a variety of breeds.

Given that Howardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s clients have the potential to be as vicious as a Yorkville matron getting her hair coiffed, I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t help but sneak a peek at the groomerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hands for telltale bite scars. Nothing. â&#x20AC;&#x153;No, that hasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t really been a problem,â&#x20AC;? she laughs. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Most dogs are ďŹ ne, and weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re trained to cope with ones that are less manageable.â&#x20AC;?

As Pride approaches, Tailspin sees an upsurge in clients eager to get Fluffy spruced up and cruise-ready for the big weekend. This yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s big trend seems to be a doggie Mohawk, with a longer strip left from head to tail, leaving even the most quivery of Chihuahuas looking

Deidre Howard has been in the dog-grooming business for 15 years. ADAM COISH

butch and threatening.

Howard says the style looks particularly cool on spikier-haired breeds, like Yorkshire terriers. But whatever the breed, the groomer works closely with her clients on whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s best for their furry companions. â&#x20AC;&#x153;For a lot of people, dogs are like their kids,â&#x20AC;? she says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;So thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a lot of care

Kirk J. Cooper

and maintenance and love poured into them. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s so great about the job. Well, that and I just really love dogs.â&#x20AC;?

Tailspin Dog Spa is located at 12 Irwin Ave. To book an appointment, call 416920-7387 or email tailspin.ca. They offer specialized services such as ear cleaning and full pedicures.

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40

XTRA! JUNE 28, 2012

Toronto’s gay & lesbian news

listings ›

Rob Salerno at The Flying Beaver Pubaret on Thurs, June 28 › continued from page 39

STAGE Fucking Stephen Harper: How I Sexually Assaulted the 22nd Prime Minister of Canada and Saved Democracy Rob Salerno tells his side of the story at the signing of his tell-all memoir that explores Canadian politics, the media and the gay community.

Thurs, June 28, 9pm. The Flying Beaver Pubaret, 488 Parliament St. $20, $15 advance. pubaret.com

Grey Ground Beasts of the Theatre presents the gruelling story of Molly Jacobs, a social outcast and misfit who is bullied within the confines of a school hall.

Directed by Adam Pellerine, written by Lindsay Finnie and featuring Caitie Graham and Ryan Bainbridge. Runs Thurs, July 5–Fri, July 13, various showtimes. Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse, 79A St George St. $11, $10 advance. fringetoronto.com

The Judy Monologues The one-act play based on rare recordings of Judy Garland made shortly before her death by accidental overdose makes its triumphant return to Toronto on the Fringe Festival stage. Performed by Philip Cairns, Michael Hughes, Darren Stewart-Jones and Kimberly Roberts, as the legendary Miss Garland. Runs Fri, July 5–Sun, July 15, various showtimes.

Annex Theatre, 736 Bathurst St. $10, $9 advance. fringetoronto.com

Michael Hughes at the Annex Theatre, Fri, July 5–Sun, July 15

more at xtra.ca

XTRA! JUNE 28, 2012

INSIDE

41

PTP PRIDE

PRIDE

Boy-crazy Bollywood

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE THING ABOUT PRIDE?

South Asian dance party combines tradition and liberation CHRIS DUPUIS

ten a strong nostalgic connection. The challenge at those traditional events LIKE MOST DISCUSSIONS OF RACE, was that you couldn’t be yourself. Beconversations on colour in the queer ing able to celebrate your culture with community often fall into a black versus other queer South Asians is important white paradigm, with the occasional because it’s easy to feel isolated.”

Hai is keenly aware of the toll isola“no Asians please” thrown in for good tion can take. Working as outreach measure.

“When you’re queer and South Asian coordinator for the Alliance for South you’re invisible in both your commu- Asian AIDS Prevention (ASAAP, which nities,” says Shazad Hai, co-founder is also the beneficiary of the event’s of the Rangeela collective. “You don’t proceeds), he deals with education hear guys saying things like ‘I’m not initiatives for his community on a daily into brown boys.’ They just forget we basis. The organization was born out of community activism in 1989, after an exist at all.”

Rangeela is working to change that, in HIV-positive South Asian couple died in part by hosting quarterly dance parties isolation because there were no services offered in their language. aimed at building com“Having culturally spemunity. Its Pride event, RANGEELA: cific services is essential The Ultimate Bollywood THE ULTIMATE for HIV prevention,” Hai Ball, celebrates its second BOLLYWOOD says. “Many people are anniversary this year.

BALL Fri, June 29 coming here from other Mixing Bollywood and 10pm–5am countries where there is no bhangra with top 40 and Goodhandy’s HIV education at all, and house, it’s an environment 120 Church St they’re struggling to learn for queer South Asians to asaap.ca the language and adapt to celebrate their overlapthe new culture while stayping identities.

“It’s a space where people can dance ing true to who they are.”

Though Rangeela provides a natural to the music they grew up with and the music they listen to now,” Hai says. home for brown folks, Hai stresses it’s a “These are the songs we’d listen to with welcoming environment for all colours; our families at weddings, so there’s of- inclusivity is important to him, given

Got beef?

“I love seeing Toronto feeling the love from out-of-towners who can’t believe how welcoming this friggin’ great city is to all its people. And the nudity, of course.”

The Ultimate Bollywood Ball is celebrating its second anniversary, which is also a fundraiser for the Alliance for South Asian AIDS Prevention.

his experience of isolation growing up. He was raised in a predominantly white area of Calgary, and finding any space he could call his own was nearly impossible.

“Even though there weren’t a lot of brown people in the city, my skin colour didn’t really become an issue until I

started to explore the queer community,” he says. “I was immediately made to feel different from everyone else.

Finding close gay friends was hard.”

Hai’s first trip to Toronto gave him a glimpse of what was possible, when he attended his first queer South Asian event four years ago.

Kamal Al-Solaylee, journalism professor, writer and former Xtra contributor

“In Calgary I had to be either gay or South Asian but could never be both at the same time,” he says. “[Coming to Toronto] was one of the most liberating experiences of my life because it brought my two worlds together. I want to be able to offer that to other people by giving a face to the queer South Asian community and letting people know they are not alone.”

ENTER FOR YOUR CHANCE TO WIN Xtra brings you the chance to win the Special Edition Vinyl of Fiona Apple’s new album, “The Idler Wheel...”

Pride’s annual gathering of leathermen and bears, the Beef Ball, offers up top-choice Grade A DJ Hifi Sean.

Send your name and contact info to contest@xtra.ca.

Contest closes July 11th.

NEW ALBUM AVAILABLE NOW!

BEEF BALL

Sat, June 30, 10pm The Opera House 735 Queen St E beefdip.com

42

Toronto’s gay & lesbian news

XTRA! JUNE 28, 2012

ON STAGE

Onthe Fringe

Queer highlights from this year’s alt theatre festival by Chris Dupuis

Happiness or death?

Tough choices in production that employs classic gimmick

Rob Salerno’s latest explores condom use and HIV criminalization.

Raw deal Unpacking the implications of anonymous bareback sex ROB SALERNO DIDN’T START HIS PLAY Raw wanting to tell a specific story.

Rather, the former Xtra staff writer’s script on the issue of HIV criminalization began as a series of questions.

“I was covering the issue a lot and started to feel really conflicted about it,” the U of T graduate says. “I understand logically the idea people should be responsible for their actions and that stigma and legal sanctions in the event of nondisclosure can make people less likely to get tested.

But looking at the asymmetrical risk people are taking, I feel like there has to be some greater responsibility on the part of the poz person.”

Salerno’s script follows Stephen (Salerno) and James (Jason R Stroud) as they sort through the fallout of a night of bareback bathhouse sex.

When he fails to disclose, Stephen sends an anonymous letter advising James to get tested. After a furious internet search, James believes he’s found the guy who infected him and shows up on Stephen’s doorstep, ready for a fight.

“James is a relatively naive character and looking for someone to blame, so he latches on to the idea that it’s Stephen who infected him,” Salerno says. “He sees himself as a victim in the situation, even though it’s suggested this isn’t the only time he’s had unprotected sex.”

The show isn’t based on a specific case Salerno covered. Rather, it stems from a genuine concern about the rising trend of bareback sex. While members of the gay community were early leaders in adopting and promoting safer sex in the epidemic’s early days, condom fatigue is on the rise. “ When I was growing up you couldn’t watch a TV show aimed at teens without there being a PSA about condom use,” Salerno says. “Those days are gone now, which I think is partly the changing nature of the disease but may also relate to the justice system’s decision to enter this fight.”

So has the process answered any questions?

“I think I’m more conflicted than when I started writing it,” Salerno says. “As you go deeper, you end up with so many questions about where to draw the line. The one thing I’ve figured out is that relying on criminal sanctions to prevent HIV from spreading is not effective. Creating the assumption that anyone who doesn’t say they are positive is negative is dangerous and counterproductive.”

RAW Fri, July 6–Sat, July 14 Robert Gill Theatre 214 College St, third floor fringetoronto.com

THE OLD “BOY MEETS GIRL, BOY loves girl, girl learns she’s terminally ill” shtick has proven surprisingly resilient, long after Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw’s doomed affair set eyes watering in Love Story. But writer/director Jessica Kostuck’s new musical, 21 Days, puts a unique spin on this well-trodden tale.

Diagnosed with a mysterious illness, Julie (Elizabeth Conway) is given a mere 21 days to live. The twist is that only really good days count toward her tally; as long as things stay mundane she can live as long as she wants.

“Julie’s been extending her life by keeping her excitement level low but hits a point where she’s forced to question that choice,” Kostuck says. “It’s not intentional, but it could be a metaphor for the life of a young artist, torn between a pragmatic path providing financial security and doing what you love.”

Julie’s monotonous existence, without the smallest sense of joie de vivre, is shattered when she meets Ben (Ryan Anning), an awkward yet optimistic writer who offers the shot at love that will ultimately kill her.

“While the theme of doomed lovers is central to the show, it’s the theme of choice that’s more interesting,” Kostuck says. “Deciding to throw away her

future for the sake of this relationship makes the decision almost suicidal. It becomes a question of whether falling in love is selfish or selfless.”

Their relationship is contrasted with that of Dan (Brendan Doherty) and Dal (Peter Perri), a long-term gay couple who did their own tango of terror during the courtship phase. “Dal initially runs because he’s scared of the kind of relationship Dan is offering,” Kostuck says. “He has to decide whether he’s ready for a huge, public commitment like marriage. Eventually he realizes it’s what he wants and comes running back, which serves as the inspiration for Julie and Ben.” The show represents a big risk for Kostuck, who’s just returned to Toronto after a long stint in Montreal. The company’s slot in the festival predates the script; they were chosen in the lottery before having an idea for a show.

Instead of remounting one of her old scripts, Kostuck took the plunge and wrote something from scratch.

“You can create the most amazing things under pressure,” she says. “The Fringe is a time to experiment and be bold because audiences are willing to take a chance on new theatre. It’s really an environment with no rules.”

Julie struggles to keep her life boring and unhappy so she doesn’t die. That is, until she meets Ben.

21 DAYS Thurs, July 5–Sun, July 15 Robert Gill Theatre 214 College St, third floor fringetoronto.com

Banging chicks and steaming lattes Elvira Kurt plays a lezzie slut in a small town REHEARSING A PLAY IN THE CITY CAN easily open the process to distraction.

That’s why writer/director Lynne Kamm trucks her actors for Mum and the Big C to a cottage near Orangeville to work.

“The occasional frog hops across the stage since we’re working next to a pond,” laughs the Toronto-based artist.

“Besides that, getting out of the city has streamlined the process, which is essential. The cast are busy with other projects, so we’re ripping this one off like a Band-Aid.” Mum and the Big C centres on playgirl lesbian Ripley (Elvira Kurt), a trained marine biologist who’s settled for life as a big-city barista. She’s happily banging chicks and steaming lattes, until her mother (Janet-Laine Green) is diagnosed with breast cancer and she’s called to return to the suburbs to nurse her. Finding respite at a local watering hole, Ripley lands a cheap one-night stand who turns out to be her mother’s oncologist (Megan Fahlenbock), leading to hilarious complications.

Despite hinting at a coming-out tale, Kamm stresses the story is anything but.

“Ripley being gay isn’t an issue for her mother,” she says. “The conflict is

Comedian Elvira Kurt plays Ripley in Mum and the Big C.

that her mom wants her to meet a nice woman, settle down and start having kids. But Ripley just wants to remain unattached so she can keep slutting around.”

The script will mark Kamm’s first work for the stage in more than a decade. Though she got her start staging Mambo Italiano creator Steve Galluccio’s early plays, her career has largely been dedicated to directing for the screen. Mum was originally written

as a screenplay, but Kamm decided to adapt it for the stage after securing a Fringe slot.

“You have to do things so fast in film because every second costs money,” she says. “Even when you’re working fast in theatre, you still have a certain luxury to play. I’ve found a better route with these characters watching the actors work through things, and hopefully, putting it on stage will secure a different kind of attention.”

Getting attention for the cause of breast cancer is key for Kamm; she’s the only woman in her family who hasn’t personally battled the disease.

“I’m unfortunately an expert,” she says. “I’ve seen so many women deal with the side effects of chemo and the fears of being ugly because they’re having a mastectomy. But being able to laugh helps get you through. That’s the gift comedy gives us.”

MUM AND THE BIG C Wed, July 4–Sat, July 14 Randolph Theatre 736 Bathurst St fringetoronto.com

more at xtra.ca

XTRA! JUNE 28, 2012

INSIDE

43

PTP PRIDE

PRIDE

Pulp friction

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE THING ABOUT PRIDE?

Archives remembers a time when it wasn’t so easy to be out and proud could do to help bring attention to the documentary? Because it only exists on IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN IT BEFORE, VHS, and she wants to get it made into Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories a DVD, but in order to do that, she has of Lesbian Lives is a 1992 Canadian doc- to get the NFB to renew all the music umentary by Lynne Fernie and Aerlyn permissions, which will cost $20,000.

Weissman that traces a connection be- So, there has to be a demonstration of tween lesbian pulp fiction of the 1940s interest in this material.”

To help drum up this interest, Stanand ’50s and stories about real-life lesbians living in the time period. It’s worth and CLGA have assembled a huge a critically acclaimed film as well as an amount of material, including cover important historical document, but it’s art and excerpts from vintage lesbian also in danger of disappearing forever. pulp fiction, production photos and Enter the Canadian Lesbian and Gay ephemera from Forbidden Love, and Archives, whose exhibit Public Sins/ newly collected oral testimonies from Private Desires: Tracing Lesbian Lives Toronto lesbians. Stanworth helped to in the Archives, 1950–1980 opened on organize “a pre-event with some of the ‘older’ lesbians that we June 22. knew,” where the CLGA “The show started bePUBLIC SINS/ recorded the women’s cause Lynne Fernie went PRIVATE DESIRES: stories. “They talk about to one of our archivists,” TRACING LESBIAN going to the Parkside explains Karen StanLIVES IN THE and the Fly by Night worth, a York University ARCHIVES, 1950–1980 and the Bluebird and professor and the exhibRuns till Mon, Aug 6 all these bars that were it’s curator, “and said it Canadian Lesbian temporary, dingy and was the 20th anniverand Gay Archives literally fly-by-night.” sary of Forbidden Love 34 Isabella St Beyond being a rethis year and was there clga.ca member-when for the something the archives

JOHNNIE WALKER

older crowd, Stanworth insists the stories will be of interest to younger generations: “When we have young people listening to these stories, they’re like, ‘Wow! Oh, my god!

It’s such an eye-opener!”

For those who’ve grown up in a post-gay-rights world, it might be hard to imagine a time when your sexuality could make you The exhibit celebrates lesbian pulp fiction, an outlaw and being out which has had a renaissance in recent years. at work was impossible.

And while many of the testimonies was a raid, they were safe.”

One of the most iconic aspects of are harrowing and traumatic, there are aspects of the world these women Forbidden Love is its use of lesbian lived in that we could probably learn pulp fiction, a kitschy aesthetic that has had a renaissance in recent years, and something from today.

“Many of these women had relation- Stanworth has made an effort to explore ships with gay men, of varying sorts,” its contradictions. For one thing, the Stanworth says. “Their lives were much lurid covers often had nothing to do more intertwined than we often think with the stories inside. “The artists of them now. They would go to bars didn’t necessarily read the books,” she with each other so they could dance explains. “They were just trying to sell with their girlfriends and boyfriends. novels.” Although originally conceived But then they’d sit down at the table for a straight male audience, many with two guys and two girls, so if there lesbians turned to them because “it was

“I love the buildup: we live at Church and Wellesley, so between that and work I get a bit blasé about it. But every year around the Tuesday of Pride Week the neighbourhood starts filling up with unfamiliar faces, and I love wondering where they’re from and seeing their excitement at being here.”

Lesley Fraser, PTP copy editor

the only place they could read about lesbian love.”

Public Sins/Private Desires sets out to shine a light on what homosexuality meant for a woman’s life in the not-sodistant past and, of course, to celebrate everything Forbidden Love achieved.

“This is an important document in lesbian history, in Canadian history, and in sexuality studies across the board.” Let’s hope it finally gets that DVD release.

44

Torontoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s gay & lesbian news

XTRA! JUNE 28, 2012

INSIDE

PTP PRIDE

PRIDE

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE THING ABOUT PRIDE?

This Pride has Gavin Crawford Comedian to perform at Bitch Salad CAROLYN YATES

Crawford says he falls into the category of people who think Pride is still COMEDIAN GAVIN CRAWFORD, A relevant. â&#x20AC;&#x153;If youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been around a long time former This Hour Has 22 Minutes cast member and Gemini Award winner, or if youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been to a lot of Prides, you will be performing at this yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Pride tend to start dissing the crowds and all the annoying things â&#x20AC;&#x201D; people are Toronto. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Because itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a Pride thing, I can do like, Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s too many drunk people my gay stuff, and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s to an appreciative or thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s too many straight people or crowd, so thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s always fun,â&#x20AC;? Crawford thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s too many this-or-that people.

But the bottom line is, if says. you think back to the ďŹ rst Though he might BITCH SALAD time you ever went â&#x20AC;&#x201D; estouch on some of the GIVES BACK pecially for me, when Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m controversies Toronto Fri, June 29, 8pm Buddies from a little small town â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Pride has faced in recent 12 Alexander St itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pretty astonishing and years, he stresses that $20 itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a really great feeling, the comedy comes ďŹ rst. buddiesinbadtimes.com and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s important to keep â&#x20AC;&#x153;Some of the Pride mathat in mind.â&#x20AC;? terial I did at a Pride show Crawford grew up in Lethbridge, Allast year . . . was all about what Prideâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s like now and the different notions about how berta, in the 1970s, a place that he says Pride has changed, the people who donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t was distinctly not gay-friendly. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s important anymore, the people think I could have come out in 1980 in that do, why itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s so important, that kind Lethbridge and made it out,â&#x20AC;? he says.

Lethbridge recently made the news of stuff. Those kinds of politics were all folded in but always underneath the for two homophobic hate crimes. In December 2011, Mark Young was hospijokes,â&#x20AC;? he says.

talized following a ďŹ ght that allegedly took place because a passerby noticed he was wearing a rainbow bracelet and attacked when Young said he was gay. In July 2010, someone broke into Mark Spracklinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s garage and painted his car with homophobic slurs. But in spite of these incidents, there has been improvement. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Things have changed a lot in the past 20 years, but thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s still a long way to go. I grew up in a pretty religious place.

Being gay was about as much of an option as walking to the moon at that point,â&#x20AC;? Crawford says.

Instead, he came out after university and has been out in his work ever since. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I have always been out, and I mostly do character stuff, so I never really

â&#x20AC;&#x153;My favourite thing about Pride is the good olâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; fashioned glitz.

No one does gaudy as well as the gays.â&#x20AC;?

Brian Francis, author and former marketing coordinator for Xtra

â&#x20AC;&#x153;I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think I could have come out in 1980 in Lethbridge and made it out,â&#x20AC;? says Gavin Crawford.

thought about it. I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t set out to push any boundaries particularly, but I also didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want to hide who I was,â&#x20AC;? he says.

Crawford will appear at Toronto Pride as part of Andrew Johnstonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Bitch Salad Gives Back, along with Christina Walkinshaw, Emma Hunter, Julia Hladkowicz and The Cheeto Girls.

Part of the proceeds will go to the AIDS Committee of Toronto and Buddies.Â

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s like my birthday, Christmas, summer vacation and ďŹ nding money in my old jeans, all rolled into one party-sized ice cream scoop on a hot day.â&#x20AC;?

Randall Perry, quality assurance analyst

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more at xtra.ca

XTRA! JJU JUNE UN NE E2 28, 8,, 2 8 2012 0112 0

45

XPOSED Anna Pournikova a

I couldn’t resist this pic of Dan in the Raiders cutoff with matching hat. Being butch has never been so de rigueur.

Vintage butch is even better. Plus, Dan’s going through a midlife crisis, even though his style and bod are the most on-point I’ve ever seen, so a little press pick-me-up fluff job is in order.

Her is the new “it” party on Queen, my sources tell me, and the lovely Frank is behind it. This edition was called Tan-Her-Exic. It’s cheeky as fuck and they have lasers on the dancefloor and a patio.

Mojo Toronto and Lisa Bangs presented a special edition of FML (Fuck My Life) Mondays called LML (Love My Life) Mondays, and a very special guest and performer showed up à la surprise — Anjulie. If you haven’t seen her perform yet, you should.

There is something so heartbreakingly gorgeous about a redhead who’s also a little bit slutty, don’t you think?

Olivya was looking like everything I remember loving about Britney (prelobotomy) and Jessica Rabbit all rolled into one. I could have bought tickets and watched it at the theatre it was so good.

I did not recognize Mary Messhausen at all at Her. I have grown so accustomed to the Afro that I actually asked her name after I took the pic. I felt so ashamed when she told me, but I’m blaming the lack of Afro here and now. By the way, her parties for Pride (Queer West, obviously) are all really good. Put them in your calendar.

So get this story: Craig was at the strip bar (a straight one), and when he was outside for a smoke a group of breeder assholes came out and punched him for being gay! In 2012, at the strip bar. Like come on, people. Thankfully, Craig was with a friend, so he didn’t have to deal with it alone.

Seriously, though, violence is horrible and unnecessary. Be kind to each other.

The best party at NXNE was hands-down the Exclaim! barbecue. They transformed a parking lot into rockabilly heaven, complete with DJ sets, free tattoos, barbershop haircuts and a ’50s-inspired diner area for the burgers and fries. I came early and I stayed late, and we all know it’s been more than a decade since I’ve done either. They had roller derby waitresses, too: Casey, Jil and Melania held it down.

Did I ever tell you how I met Leta? I was in a bathroom stall at The Barn and she just kinda burst in and showed me her nipples. They’re real nice. She’s the best friend any girl could have. Look at the pictures she lets me publish — you couldn’t ask for a better bean in the bunch.

CLASSIC. EPIC. CULTURAL. UBER GAY. BERLIN. ARE YOU READY FOR THIS? www.visitBerlin.com

K, I took this pic of Tanya only because she’s so badass in her white leather dress in the thousand degrees of Wrongbar.

Babe on wheels.

46

Toronto’s gay & lesbian news

XTRA! JUNE 28, 2012

Low fares from Toronto Low fares to Vienna all year. from Toronto to

Save up to 60% this summer on Business Class.

Book by June 30th, 2012.

Touch down at Austria‘s latest attraction. The new Austrian Star Alliance Terminal in Vienna, check-in 3 (301-399) Visit www.austrian.com for complete details on special offers and flight schedules.

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more at xtra.ca

XTRA! JUNE 28, 2012

47

NIGHTCLUB LISTINGS go to 519 community programs and services. the519.com MC Flipside. 9 pm. Central Stage, Church and Maitland streets. No cover. pridetoronto.com/festival/free-zone Grapefruit Pride, with DJs Shane Percy, Aural and Cozmic Cat, featuring Donnarama, Paloma Marquez and the Grapefruit Dancers. 9pm. fly, 8 Gloucester St. $15 before 11pm, $20 before midnight, $25 after. flynightclub.com

Gender Studies: Trans Pride Party is Fri, June 29

THURS, JUNE 28 Starry Night, with the Toronto All-Star Big Band, DJs Alessandro and Phil V, and a performance by Sofonda Cox. 7pm– midnight. Green Space on Church, 519 Church St. No cover; donations support vital community programs and services. the519.org 88 Days of Fortune’s third anniversary party, featuring recording artists TheeSatisfaction, with performances

by Les Femmes Fatales, 88 Days and Progress. DJ SunSun spins. 9pm.

Cinecycle, 129 Spadina Ave. $12 advance at ticketzone.com, $18 door. facebook.com/88DOF Prism College, with DJ Micke Hi, VJ Gary White and porn sensation Brody Wilder. 10pm. fly, 8 Gloucester St. $20, included with Prism all-access pass. prismtoronto.com Goth Drag: Pride Edition, with DJs Murderess Margot, Schramm, CBB and JAL. 10pm. The Garrison, 1197 Dundas St W. $5.

Venus Infers, the House of Venus homecoming party, with DJ Betti Forde and guest Michael Venus. 10pm.

Henhouse, 1532 Dundas St W. No cover. henhousetoronto.com Pop Muzik, with DJ Alessandro.

10pm. The Barn, 418 Church St. $5. thebarnnightclub.com Steers & Queers’ Night of 1,000 Dollys.

Burlesque, live music and dancing. 10pm.

The Gladstone, 1214 Queen St W. $10. gladstonehotel.com Thumper: Scissor Sisters Afterparty, with DJs Sammy Jo and Scooter.

Bambi’s, 1265 Dundas St W. $5, free with concert ticket stub. djsammy.com

FRI, JUNE 29 One World: Where the Wild Things Are, with DJs Frankie Knuckles and Deko-ze.

4pm–midnight. Green Space on Church, 519 Church St. No cover; any donations

Blaze, with DJs Sumation, Unruly and Gavin T. 10pm–4am. Hard Rock Café, 279 Yonge St. $15 advance, $20 door.

Yes Please, with DJs Joe Blow and Denise Benson on decks. 10pm. Bambi’s, 1265 Dundas St W. $5.

Hero Friday Pride Edition, with DJs Craig Dominic, Cajjmere Wray and Blackcat.

10pm–3am. The Barn, 418 Church St. $10. thebarnnightclub.com Loud and Proud AX Pride 2012.

Gaysian boys’ night out, with DJ Alex, performances by Sofonda, Nikki Chin, Paolo and Daija Vu. 10pm–3am.

Phoenix Concert Theatre, 410 Sherbourne St. $20 advance, $25 door. meetmeatax.com Big Primpin’ Pride Party. Hip hop and hot times, with DJs Nino Brown, Phil V, Kevin Ritchie and Auntie Dionne.

10pm. Wrongbar, 1279 Queen St W. $5. wrongbar.com Bootcamp, with DJs Tony Moran and Hector Fonseca. 10pm. The Guvernment, 132 Queen’s Quay E. $45, no cover with Prism all-access pass. prismtoronto.com

Central Stage has DJ Quinces at 4pm; Blackcat at 4:45pm; Sumation at 5:30pm; Craig Dominic at 6:15pm; SpekrFreks, with Melleefresh & Billie Newton Davis, at 7pm; Serial Sean at 8:30pm; Mark Vicente at 9:15pm; Fawn Big Canoe at 10pm; Justin Ryan at 10:45pm; and Dwayne Minard at 11:30pm. Church & Maitland streets.

No cover. pridetoronto.com/festival/ free-zone DJs Leomeo (Paris) and Shawn Riker.

9pm. fly, 8 Gloucester St. $10 before 10pm, $20 till 11:30pm, $25 after. flynightclub.com Electric Avenue kicks off at 9pm, with Nightbox, followed by Lisa Delux at 9:30pm, Lori J Ward & T Orlando at 10:30pm, Cassandria at 11:30pm and Sara Simms at 12:15pm. Labatt South Stage, Church and Carlton streets. No cover. pridetoronto.com/ festival/free-zone Prism Main Event, with DJs Chus & Ceballos, Micky Friedmann and Paulo.

10pm. Koolhaus, 132 Queen’s Quay E. $65, no cover with Prism all-access pass. prismtoronto.com The Rainbow Ball, with the Men of Flash and DJ Aural. 10pm. Flash, 463 Church St. flashonchurch.com The Barn Pride Saturday, with DJs Lady Miss Kier, Rolls Royce, Jeremy Khamkeo, Sumation and Betti Forde. 10pm–3am.

The Barn, 418 Church St. $10 till midnight. thebarnnightclub.com Hard Candy: Pride Edition, with DJ daVinci. 10pm. WAYLA, 996 Queen St E. No cover. whatareyoulookingatbar.com

Gender Studies: Trans Pride Party, with DJs Transnational, Fluffy Souffle, Katie Stelmanis (Austra) and a bunch of hot feminists. 11pm. The Beaver, 1192 Queen St W. PWYC. beavertoronto.com

Pitbull: Electric Pride 2012, with DJs Mark Falco, Rob Ladic and Dwayne Minard. 10pm–4am. Phoenix Concert Theatre, 410 Sherbourne St. $30 advance, $40 door. pitbullevents.com

SAT, JUNE 30

International Dance Hall King and Queen (Last Man Standing). Toronto vs New York vs Montreal, with guest judge Keith “Shebada” Ramsey and DJs Unruly Twin, JJ Rock and Roman. 10pm.

Pacha Lounge, 1305 Dundas St W. $20. pachalounge.net

Show Your Pride Marathon Party, hosted by TNT!Men, with DJs Carson, Justin and Todd. 1pm–2am.

Goodhandy’s, 120 Church St. $5 members, $8 non-members and guests; in-and-out privileges. tntmen.org Backyard Beats, with DJs Delicious, Ana Paula and the Yes Yes Y’all crew. 1pm– midnight. Green Space on Church, 519 Church St. No cover; donations go to The 519’s services and programs. the519.org Dyke Day: The Rhythm, The Boogie, The Beat, hosted by Deb Pearce.

Performers include Kelly & The Kellygirls at 4pm, Raging Asian Women at 5pm, Bellydancers with Pride at 5:20pm, Saye Sky at 5:50pm, MC Jazz/Cozmic Cat at 6:05pm, Shi Wisdom at 6:20pm, Masia One at 6:40pm, Tasha the Amazon at 7:05pm and Keshia Chante at 7:30pm.

510 W. 42ND ST. NEW YORK, NY 10036 H: 1.855.568.8692 E: reservations@theoutnyc.com W: theoutnyc.com

Yes Yes Y’all: Pride Edition, with DJ Jr Flo and performances by A-Game and Tasha the Amazon. 10pm–4am.

The Annex WreckRoom, 794 Bathurst St. $10 before 11pm, $15 after. theannexwreckroom.com

DJs on stage: Jamal at 2pm; Javier Medina at 3pm; Micke Hi at 4pm; Micky Friedmann at 5pm; Theresa at 6pm; Stephan Grondin at 8pm; Tom Stephan at 9pm. South Stage, Church & Carlton streets. No cover. pridetoronto.com/ festival/free-zone DJs on stage: Dare-N at 2:30pm; Dru & Terry at 3:15pm; Danny W at 4pm; Cole Stanley at 4:45pm; Lady Bass at 5:30pm; Linguist at 6:15pm; Chez at 7pm; Jamal at 7:45pm; Cesar Murillo at 8:30pm; Chris Steinbeck at 9:15pm; Cajjmere Wray at 10pm. Central Stage, Church & Maitland streets. No cover. pridetoronto.com/festival/free-zone Wink: Beach in the City, for the women, with DJs Cozmic Cat, L’Oqenz, Infamous Sound Crew and Aneela Q. 4pm–2am.

Screen Lounge, 20 College St. $5 before 10pm, $10 after. iaminthelife.com Blockorama, with DJ Craig Dominic.

6:50–7:35pm. Wellesley Central Stage. djcraigdominic.blogspot.ca Revival, with DJs Dave & Gerardo, Javier Medina and Peter Rauhofer. 10pm.The Guvernment,132 Queen’s Quay E. $70, no cover with Prism all-access pass. prismtoronto.com Butch Femme Salon: Pride Party, with DJ Nik Red. 10pm. The Rivoli, 334 Queen St W. $10 or PWYC. rivoli.ca Go Hard: Shut Em Down, with DJs Blackcat, Unruly Twin, JJ Rock and Pleasure spinning Pride beats with hip hop, reggae, R&B and more. 10pm.

Goodhandy’s, 120 Church St. $15. goodhandys.com Alternapride has alternative, retro, goth and rockabilly for the darker Pridesters.

10pm. WAYLA, 996 Queen St E. No cover. whatareyoulookingatbar.com Vaz/Shame Benefit Party, with DJs Miss Barbara Fisch and Rawbert, featuring Limp Wrist and Vag Halen and hosted by Andrew Harwood. 10pm. Wrongbar, 1279 Queen St W. wrongbar.com Queer West Pride Closing Party, with DJs Mac & Teves, Ess Cams and Bear

For complete listings on the go, scan the QR code below or visit xtra.ca.

SUN, JULY 1 TreeHouse Party, with DJs Abel, Isaac Escalante, Jamal and Jeremy Khamkeo.

1pm–midnight. Green Space on Church, 519 Church St. No cover; donations go to 519 services and programming. the519.org

Unit. 10pm–4am. El Mocambo, 464 Spadina Ave. $10. elmocambo.ca Buddies After-Hours, with DJs K-Tel and Triple-X. 10:30pm. Buddies, 12 Alexander St. $10. buddiesinbadtimes.com

MON, JULY 2 Come Get Your Fcuk’in Beats: Pride Edition, with DJs Deko-ze, Jon Herbert and Nick Bertossi. 5am–3pm.

Comfort Zone, 480 Spadina Ave. $20. comfortzonetoronto.com

TUES, JULY 3 Varsity Tuesday, So You Think You Can Strip? with Sofonda getting them onstage. 5pm–2am. Remington’s, 379 Yonge St. $5 after 9pm, no cover with student ID. remingtons.com

THURS, JULY 5 Flashback, with DJ Chris Steinbach spinning the best ‘70s and ‘80s tunes all night long. 5pm–2am. Flash, 463 Church St. Regular rates. flashonchurch.com

FRI, JULY 6 Dirty Sexy’s 50th party, with pornstar sibs the Rosso Twins. 10pm. fly, 8 Gloucester St. $12 before midnight, $15 after. flynightclub.com Scizzors, for ladies who love ladies.

10pm–3am. Sazerac Lounge, 782 King St W. $5, or free with guestlist until 11:30pm. sazerac.ca Big Primpin’, with DJs Kevin Ritchie, Rory Them Finest and Blackcat. 10pm.

Wrongbar, 1279 Queen St W. $5. wrongbar.com

SAT, JULY 7 Tapette, a French dance party with DJ Phil V. 10pm. Henhouse, 1532 Dundas St W. No cover. henhousetoronto.com

SUN, JULY 8 Miss Conception’s Stage to Screen Show at 6pm; Day-Rama, with Donnarama and Daytona Bitch, at 9pm; Georgie Girl and Donnarama welcome Sofonda and Lexi Tellings, singing live, at 11pm. Woody’s, 465 Church St. No cover. woodystoronto.com

MON, JULY 9 Glitz and Glam! Those fabulous queens Carlotta Carlisle and Katinka Kature add a little razzle dazzle to the evening.

9–11:30pm. Crews & Tangos, 508 Church St. No cover. crewsandtangos.com

STAY AND SAVE Book now until July 28th for rates starting at $209 CALL TODAY : 1.855.568.8692

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48

Toronto’s gay & lesbian news

XTRA! JUNE 28, 2012

Toronto’s online directory of gay-owned and gay-friendly businesses

indexdirectory.ca

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PROUD LIVES

PROUDLIFE Fondly remembering Steve William Mutch who was stolen from us by AIDS on July 9th 1992 having just turned 23.

A true fighter whose strength and grace is still an inspiration.

Always thought of with a big smile by his friend Ian Macdonald of Toronto.

“There are angels all around.”

Commemorate those who have recently passed away.

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Notices

MARRIED? DIVORCED? GAY? BI? HAVE CHILDREN?

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MORTGAGES Ontario-Wide Financial Corp 416-925-3974

SPA SERVICES

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PUBLICATIONS Fab Magazine Pink Triangle Press Xtra (Toronto)

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Dr Jason Hershorn

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Porn is dead.

Long live porn!

Porndoggy Jeremy Feist

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WOULDNâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;T CALL MYSELF AN inherently pessimistic person, but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hard to deny that things in gay porn land are looking a bit bleak.

Erik Rhodes died, Austin Wilde and Anthony Romero were fired, and piracy is still a pressing issue. To paraphrase Abed Nadir from Community, this is the darkest timeline.

Recently, gay pornâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s favourite monster-cocked curmudgeon, Diesel Washington, went on a lengthy Twitter diatribe about how gay porn is now dead. To abridge it the best way possible, he places the blame on the fact that since porn isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t making as much money as it used to, studios are using the same pool of models, who work for less money, and thus the overall quality is sinking. Therefore, porn is dead.

With all due respect, porn is not, nor will it ever be, dead.

Look, no one is saying that porn is entirely free of fault or that there arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t certain aspects of it that could be improved, but the jump between â&#x20AC;&#x153;imperfectâ&#x20AC;? and â&#x20AC;&#x153;deceasedâ&#x20AC;? is a big one. Hell, porn is easily the most unkillable pop-culture phenom-

enon since Cher. Porn is like Jason Voorhees: you can drown it, electrocute it, hack away at it with a machete, and blow it into outerfreaking-space, but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just going to come back again and again because enough people are willing to pay money to see it.

Yes, the industry is changing, but thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s what happens when technology and social attitudes shift at an exponential rate: practices and execution have to change with them.

Admittedly, porn is experiencing something of a culture shock when it comes to adapting to the new consumer model, but to call it outright dead is to assume that these issues are insurmountable and permanent.

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s best to remember that porn is more of an abstract concept than it is set in stone. Porn is more essentially rooted in idea than it is in execution: itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s about connecting with people on a sexual level, rather than it is about any speciďŹ c economic model or fetish. There will always be people willing to get naked and fuck on camera for some form of compensation, and there will always be people willing to pay to see it. However, when it comes to how porn is created, marketed and sold, old practices will eventually die out, be replaced with new ones and die out again to begin the cycle

Diesel Washington may argue itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dead, but the world of porn is just changing into something different and new.

anew. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s like the Circle of Life, only for butt sex.

Yes, there are certain parts of the industry that need an overhaul, but a full-blown burial is a bit premature.

Washington makes a lot of salient points about the current state of the industry, but his conclusion just doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t stick the landing. Porn is going to continue to exist in one form or another, if only because thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s really no conceivable option. Nothing will ever stop people from sticking it in each other on camera.

Jeremy Feist is a Toronto pornstar.

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