NMP Équipe NMP Editors Rédactrice En Chef Mél Hogan Content Curator M-C Macphee Video Curator Dayna Mcleod Rédactrice Mathilde Géromin Consultant Elisha Lim

NMP Équipe NMP Editors Rédactrice en chef Mél Hogan Content Curator M-C MacPhee Video Curator Dayna McLeod Rédactrice Mathilde Géromin Consultant Elisha Lim

Copy Editors TS Lindsay Shane

Traduction Gabriel Chagnon

Site Configuration + Design Jeff Traynor Mél Hogan Archinodes.com

Design + Mise en page Mél Hogan

Open Source CMS

NMP Drupal.org

Print-on-Demand Lulu.com http://stores.lulu.com/nomorepotlucks

Adventures in Deconstruction 3 Poems Mary K. Bryson (6–21) Trish Salah (42–44)

Boycott de Madame Arthur Sexual Healing Line Chamberland (22–26) Nicholas Little (45–47)

The Postman La New Born Canadienne Dianah Smith (27–29) Mathilde Géromin (48–53) Deep Lez I Statement sweetest thing/ tierra sagrada Allyson Mitchell (54–56) Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (30–32) An Interview with La Bombe Catherine Opie Julie Doucet (33) Marie-Claire MacPhee (57–67)

The Two-spirited Rebirth of Patty Hearst Gets Laid: Indigenous Nations: The Scandelles Meet An Interview with Bruce LaBruce Dayna McLeod (68–70) Waawaate Fobister Stu Marvel (34–40) Cover (71) NMP

Editorial NMP continues to be run entirely volun- tarily by a group of people impassioned by cultural production, re-defining culture A birth is a beginning – a moment of com- in each issue. We’re trying something new ing into, of coming out of, and of emerging here and we hope you are going to like it. from, a new existence. I am grateful beyond words to people who It is this kind of “birth” that has inspired contributed to this first issue, who trusted the first issue… and not so much the cul- us blindly to make this come together. Mer- tural obsession with babies. Birth of a new ci à toutes les personnes qui ont permis à year, birth of new era, birth of a new way of ce projet de voir le jour. being afforded by technologies like print- on-demand, content management sys- I followed Mary K. Bryson’s Adventures tems like Drupal that make websites dy- in Deconstruction online for the past few namic and easy to use, and of course, your years. This, after a series of uncanny, albe- everyday, DIY, recording equipment. We it virtual, encounters. It’s quite something are looking for people all across Canada to to grow to care for someone you have nev- post short entries and photos on our media er met in person, to follow them on such page, online. an intimate journey, to have a friendship born through and bound to the internet. It The birth of (a new) NMP – a journal of poli- is an honour to have her writing published tics, arts, and culture – will come to define in this first issue. itself through you, the readers. We look forward to your feedback, your reactions, Nous sommes tout aussi enthousiasmées your contributions to further issues dealing de publier ici un article de Line Cham- with a range of topics like copyright, ego, berland, militante lesbienne féministe, NMP health, softball, making out, spirituality portant sur le boycott du bar Madame and interactivity. Our next issue, out March Arthur. Ce précieux récit me donne envie 1, 2009 carries the theme of “Trespassing/ d’entreprendre une démarche concertée Transgressions.” de recherche et de publication de contenu historique, et de contribuer d’une façon Ce premier numéro est un début, un re- plus systématique à la redécouverte et à nouvellement pour NMP, dorénavant pub- la célébration de notre culture, dans toute lié sous forme de journal-zine qui, tous les sa richesse et sa diversité. deux mois, vous offrira une vaste gamme d’articles et d’entrevues sur une théma- De plus, vous trouverez d’éclectiques et tique particulière. fascinantes contributions de fiction, de poésie et de style « manifeste », par plu- of NMP – more of Lim’s work to come in sieurs artistes et militantes triées sur le every issue. volet par les éditrices de NMP pour cette édition d’inauguration : Dianah Smith, Julie Also, you’ll never miss another Dykes on Doucet, Trish Salah, Leah Lakshmi Piepz- Mykes show – we have them all archived na-Samarasinha et Allyson Mitchell. Nous for you on the NMP website. espérons qu’elles sauront alimenter et re- nouveler votre réflexion critique et artis- A very special thank you to my lesbro Jeff tique. Traynor for his technical support with the website – I know you’ve put in a crazy In journalistic and academic form, Nicholas amount of time and energy into this. And Little and Stu Marvel explore the interplay thank you to Maryse Bézaire for configur- of health, culture, art and identity. ing the NMP of yore, which we are working to archive and make accessible in the near A stunning cover image entitled “Thrown” future. taken by Montréal-based photographer Nikol Mikus adorns our first issue. Mikus Big love to M-C MacPhee and Dayna McLeod sets the bar very high for future issues and who have lost more than a few nights’ sleep we are very proud to feature her work as over this, and to Mathilde Géromin and Eli- part of NMP’s rebirth. sha Lim who seriously enrich the scope and reach of this project. Finally, four fascinating features by NMP editors include Marie-Claire MacPhee’s in- Thank you to our translator, Gabriel Cha- terview with internationally famed photog- gnon, to copy-editors Lindsay Shane and rapher, Catherine Opie, bringing to light her TS, and to you, the readers, to whom we work on temporary communities – fishing are committed to bringing forward the houses and surfers – complementing her greatest and most audacious magazine earlier seminal queer portraiture. Dayna ever made, in the entire universe.

McLeod delves into the work of The Scan- NMP delles and Bruce LaBruce, a well-known Mél Hogan porn amateur and filmmaker, becoming NMP’s first of many exclusive video art features. Mathilde Géromin offers us a self- reflexive account of “becoming” Canadian – and I am so very happy to have her here working with us. Elisha Lim’s astonishing Butch Portraits are to be a regular feature I have been living with a breast cancer diagnosis for three short weeks - days that have been filled to burst- ing with specialist appoint- ments, blood tests, MRI, and hundreds of desperate and sometimes awkward conversations with friends and family. And I have cried. I have never cried so much as I have over the past 21 days. Buckets. I never know when the tears will start.

The beginning of this story probably involves a minimum of three combustive elements: queer love, a tat- Adventures in Deconstruction Mary K. Bryson too and cancer. I could start this account 17 years ago, when I had fallen desperately in love with a woman called Ange. She seemed like a heroic figure to me at the time. When I met her, NMP The following is an excerpt from: Ange had just been through http://brys.wordpress.com surgery for colon cancer. She had “the bag”. And she “Adventures in Deconstruction: Field Notes From a Cancer Battle had a poster on her bed- Ground Where Queer Life Meets Precarious Life Head On” room wall of an Amazonian woman with an amazing June 30, 2007 floral tattoo that wound its Dancing on Knife’s Edge way across her double mastectomy scar. Ange died of I have wondered how to start this blog. Just thinking about cancer about six months writing my cancer onto the screen is way too real. after getting the all-clear from a doctor at the B.C. Cancer Agency. she had set up an appointment with a sur- And now, today, I am quietly waiting for my geon. I remember that I couldn’t hear the own bilateral mastectomy (double) which surgeon’s name, and that I was utterly at is scheduled for the day after the day af- a loss for words. I couldn’t metabolize the ter tomorrow. And the tattoo that I have information at all. so proudly sported for the past seventeen years - a floral wreath that winds its way It was a Friday, which meant that I couldn’t across my breasts in Ange’s honour - will it- get into the doctor’s office until Monday to self be severed, and distorted; brutally cut read the radiologist’s report on the biopsy. short, just like my love of Ange. So I read whatever I could get my hands on about DCIS. Monday, I knew what to look I wanted to start this blog right away - back for in the report. And when I finally got to then - in the early days - but I just couldn’t see the report, I couldn’t fathom the inten- bring myself to do it. I didn’t have the en- tion of my doctor’s good cheer. The DCIS ergy or perhaps, the courage. So this first was multi-focal, grade 3 comedocarcino- entry will be a retrospective on the first ma, and with a focus of microinvasion. Not three weeks. good. But my doctor wasn’t around, and the next step was to get in touch with the June 8 - a mere three weeks ago - I got the surgeon, and to see what I could find out call from my doctor with the results of my about her. core biopsy. I was sitting in the Edmonton airport, waiting to fly back to Vancouver af- Dr. C works at VGH and is an oncological ter having done a couple of really good re- surgeon. So far so good. I found published search interviews. I am working on a proj- papers she had authored. I didn’t find any- ect where I am looking at media, sexuality, thing awful, although I am not sure what communities and knowledge. When I saw I was expecting to find. When I called Dr. my doctor’s name flash across the call dis- C’s office, her secretary set up an appoint- play I knew before I even clicked the little ment the very next day. I was just four days green button that the news wasn’t good. post-biopsy news, and heading into the on- NMP After all, why phone me with good news? cological surgery floor of a major hospital. “Are you sitting down?” she ventured. My I didn’t take that as a very reassuring sign doctor told me that the biopsy of the right although, of course, I was also really grate- breast had revealed DCIS (ductal carci- ful. noma in situ). “We’ve found it very early,” she exclaimed buoyantly, “and it’s totally Dr. C’s office manner was a breath of fresh curable. 100%” She then told me that she air for me. She took one look at my page was heading out of town herself, but that crammed with notes and questions, and asked me what I thought about the situa- in three days, my breasts will be removed. tion. I remember thinking, “Wow. How nov- Some days, the loss of my breasts seems el. A doctor who wants to know what I think like the really bad thing that I have to some- before even giving me her opinion.” So I how get used to. And then, cruelly, comes ventured forth with my impression of the the realization that after all, what’s the loss biopsy report, outlined my family history of of breasts in comparison to the very real bilateral breast cancer, and ended with the possibility of metastatic cancer? notion that I would probably be more com- forted with a simple mastectomy of the right breast than a lumpectomy, despite the equivalent survival rates, because the fear July 7, 2007 of recurrence would likely prove untenable Living in Prognosis for me. My presentation felt oddly clinical - like I was an extra on House who had just It’s amazing to read something that seems nervously stumbled her way through a case to speak directly to you when you are in presentation during Rounds. I thought Dr. the grip of an extraordinary trauma. I can C would vigorously disagree. After all, how imagine getting really flaky, which I could hopelessly old fashioned of me to suggest not have envisaged pre-cancer. Yester- a mastectomy for DCIS when I could opt day my friend Stuart gave me a paper by for lumpectomy and radiation - or what we Sarah Jain called “Living in Prognosis: To- call, “breast conserving” treatment. But in- ward an Elegaic Politics” (Representations, stead of trying to persuade me to keep my Spring, 2007). It’s a funny thing, coinci- right breast, Dr. C steered us right down the dence. I met Sarah Jain last year, having path of deciding the fate of the left breast, exchanged articles by email sight unseen, and about 60 seconds later, I had settled as folks commonly do these days. And then on a bilateral mastectomy. There wasn’t a I discovered that another new email friend, NMP whole lot left to talk about at that point, Kris, from the University of Chicago, knew save for a discussion of the sentinal node Sarah Jain, as does Stuart. How odd is that? biopsy - a technique for testing the can- And now this incredibly smart woman who cer status of the lymph node closest to the teaches at Stanford and whose work I have cancer and that is designed to reduce the been getting to know is writing about un- risk of unnecessary lymph node removal. certainty, risk, discourses of temporality Then came the date for the surgery. July 3. and breast cancer. Wow. I am almost ready 3 days from today. to start talking about angels.

I don’t know how to accommodate to the Everyone wants to know when I will get fact that I have cancer, nor to the fact that my pathology report and it concerns them greatly that (a) I am not sure, and (b) I treatment and I am rather glad that at this don’t seem to be motivated enough about point, today, as I am riding the waves of reading the analysis of the evidence from post-anaesthetic nausea, that there is a lot the diagnostic work on the breasts follow- that I still don’t know. ing the mastectomy. These folks who are concerned about my apparently lackadaisi- cal attitude don’t have cancer. Well let me correct that. They are not “living in prog- July 17, 2007 nosis” - to use Jain’s elegant formulation. Full Circle, Kind of… Prognosis is a very inexact set of practices. The reassurance that my well-intentioned Includes the verse: I am no longer afraid of friends think will be provided by a set of mirrors where I see the sign of the amazon, statements about the tumour and the pres- the one who shoots arrows. ence of absence of cancer cells in the two lymph nodes removed in the sentinel node There was a fine red line across my chest biopsy is actually a pipe dream. In fact, where a knife entered, but now a branch someone working in a lab will look at slices winds about the scar and travels from arm of the breast tissue and the lymph nodes, to heart. I started this blog not so very long and provide a set of descriptive state- ago with the story of a woman I loved, and ments that, as a collective set of facts, a poster on her wall of a post-mastectomy will link up with another set of aggregated woman (Deena Metzger) with an amazing probabilities. The relationship between the tattoo. Well, I found that image today - yes, population statistics and what the patholo- today - even though I have been looking gist notices, and between these two sets of for it unsuccessfully for weeks. And today I relations and treatment options - well, it’s found out from my pathology report, again, just a big huge open field of uncertainty. unexpectedly, that I am prognostically- speaking, cancer free and that my treat- Tumour size, single or multi-focal, cells in ment has come to an end. Yeah I know, it’s the lymphs or not, estrogen and/or proges- really weird. I have not exactly adjusted to NMP terone positive or not, age on diagnosis, the news yet. But it’s amazing and real. micro-invasion or not — yes they all trans- late into slots in an actuarial chart — but Think about the symmetry here — I get a no, there will be no moment of clarity and tattoo on my chest in the late 1980’s to comfort in this clinical picture. Chemother- mourn the death from cancer of a woman apy yes or no, radiation yes or no, hormone I loved. I get this tattoo on my chest be- therapy or removal of the ovaries or both. cause of the post-mastectomy tattoo in the Any and all are possible elements for my poster by Deena Metzger on Ange’s bed- room wall. And then like Deena Metzger, any better than this.” is how Dr C began I get breast cancer, and that tattoo gets the conversation. redrawn. And in the most unlikely turn of events, (a) the surgeon decides to save The pathology report was as follows: No in- my tattoo, which looks virtually the same vasive cancer beyond the DCIS in the ducts. as before my mastectomy, and (b) I get No cancerous cells in the lymphs that had a clean bill of health in the pathology re- been removed for the sentinel node biopsy. port. And then life starts again. Hope you Clear margins. weren’t sleeping at the wheel. Ha ha. The bottom line from this kind of report is I had to go to the surgeon’s office five days that any systemic treatment would have a prior to what was supposed to be the un- higher probability of causing harm than the veiling of the post-surgical pathology re- probability of stray cells going metastatic. port because I have developed a very com- End of treatment. mon complication following a mastectomy - a fluid build-up that the body can’t drain My reaction to all this has been disbelief in the space where the left breast was, and disorientation. I had so thoroughly pre- which is known as a seroma. So, in we go pared myself for systemic treatment that I to visit Dr. C and get the seroma aspirat- am not sure how to reorient myself to no ed. Back to the scary place at the hospital. treatment at all. That’s ok. It probably is The wonderful R, Dr C’s nurse, mentioned totally predictable. quite casually when we arrived that she had received the pathology report and so I will have to keep going back to the sur- would be cancelling the planned follow-up geon’s office to get the seroma aspirated on Friday. YIKES. I had kind of anticipated until it stops filling up again. But apart from 10 that the report might be there and so had that, I can now get on with the business of NMP figured out a preliminary set of questions recreating my life, again. for Dr C — questions about chemotherapy, radiation and hormone therapy — but I SO I will have more to say about all this, but wasn’t actually ready to hear the news. I wanted to post something as soon as I heard to get the word out. I don’t quite Ready or not, there was Dr C and in we know how to thank all of you for your sup- went. She had the report in her hand and port. So for now, let me just say that I am I can’t likely ever adequately convey the incredibly moved and very grateful. You state of stark dread with which I was an- have been very kind and very courageous ticipating the information about the post- to step into this awful place with me and mastectomy pathology. “Well it doesn’t get hold my hand. July 22, 2007 The prince marries his newly authenticated Dumb Fairy Tales and other Dis- bride. The pea is put in a museum. courses of Femininity As a child, I felt deeply ambivalent about I now look at myself every morning, every this story. The fetishization, in women, of evening, naked, in the mirror, equanimous- useless knowledge seems to me epito- ly, as I always did, and what I see is not mized by the positive spin placed on the a maimed body. Some might call this de- princess’ ability to find the pea. And when nial. Yet - I look at this flat expanse of my the possession of that useless knowledge is chest and I do not find it ugly, or repellent. the litmus test for jubilant heterosexuality, My face, somehow, “goes” with this chest, well, then its existence, let alone cultiva- there is a harmonious continuity from my tion, is most assuredly far from innocent. face all the way down my body. There is, in all human beings, when they are bare- How then, to feel about the fact that it chested, a touching symmetry between is now my task, imposed by the medical the eyes and the nipples, and this sym- establishment, to effect local control of a metry, of course, in my case, is gone. Yet, breast cancer recurrence by finding the and this may sound scandalous, absurd, or pea. “When it comes back” my surgeon ex- even mad: this breast-less body is not de- plained patiently, the other day, “it almost void, in my eyes, of a certain pure and ab- always feels like a pea.” Keeping track of stracted beauty. If it is indeed monstrous, the pea is not a new job for me. My fam- it is so in the manner of some magical, not ily tree is chock-a-block with breast cancer, quite human creature - a fairy, a mermaid which is why I have been dutifully going for - an Amazon. Anne-Marie de Grazia yearly mammograms since the age of 42.

Likely you know the fairy tale of The Prin- Little did I know that mammograms are a 11 cess and the Pea. A prince is looking for very unreliable method for tracking early a bride. A woman appears at the gate of breast cancer in women under the age of his castle who claims to be the real deal 50, and that this lack of accuracy is even NMP but she looks, well, pretty disheveled. more pronounced for women with what are Old ma knows how to tell the difference, known as “dense breasts” - small, prone and so places a pea under the pretending to cysts… After all, I had a “good” mam- princess’ twenty mattress bed. When the mogram just ten months before my can- parvenu wakes up she whines incessantly cer was diagnosed. It had been missed the about having slept so poorly because there time before. It is also the case that I did not was something amiss with the bed and know that MRI’s are considered by some to BINGO everyone knows she’s the real deal- be a much more reliable tool for detecting early breast cancer in women under 50. The procedure can often be made easier by having breast reconstruction after mas- I wonder about how my chances of finding tectomy. This helps to reshape your breast that pea would be affected by reconstruc- and reduce any disfigurement, and may tion. There is a lot of pressure on women to help you to feel more comfortable choosing undergo reconstruction after a mastecto- mastectomy. Ask you health care provider my. Audre Lorde talks about this phenom- for more information about this option.” enon in her Cancer Journal. When I went to visit my GP about a week prior to my dou- No where in all of this research are the side ble mastectomy, she asked me which sur- effects and complications of reconstruction geon was going to do my reconstruction. clearly delineated. Reconstruction surgery She guffawed when I told her that I had involves an initial long and very painful op- decided against reconstruction. “You’re in eration followed by several additional sur- denial” she proclaimed. “I am going to sign gical procedures. The impression of breasts you up. The waiting list is two years any- is created either by means of implants or way. By then, you’ll be more than ready.” the use of a woman’s own tissue (abdomi- nal) which is relocated to the chest area. Oncological research appears to indicate no impact of reconstruction on detection of re- So what is the medical establishment’s pri- currence. But there is a clear set of norma- orities in relation to breast health, cancer, tive assumptions at work in this research, and morbidity amongst women? Clearly, which go something like this: (1) breasts millions, if not billions of dollars is going to constitute a vital marker of femininity, (2) the improvement and funding of breast re- women will benefit from the restoration, construction. And it is equally obvious that post-mastectomy, of their “spoiled iden- virtually no money is being directed to pro- 12 tity” (E. Goffman) and therefore (3) recon- grams that would improve the reliability of NMP struction should be made widely available cancer detection in populations at-risk of to all women undergoing mastectomy. mammogram failure. Whose job is it, actually, to find that pea? How terribly conve- This is what the official story regarding re- nient for medical discourse inappropriately construction and mastectomy sounds like: to relocate responsibility to women to find that pea, and in so doing, exaggerate the “Deciding on Mastectomy Making the deci- agency possessed by individual women in sion to have a mastectomy can be very dif- determining the likelihood of survival in re- ficult. It can be hard to imagine living with- lation to early stage breast cancer. out your breast, and you may feel like your identity or femininity is being threatened. What a different world it would be if we decided to spend all of the breast cancer re- the wrong answer. It was like being back in search dollars on the (a) identification (and school. She wrote me off. I tried to recuper- elimination) of the actual causes of breast ate my girl points by commenting on her cancer, (b) widespread availability of accu- highlights, but it was in vain. It was prob- rate methods of early detection, (c) appro- ably even worse than if I had just let it die priate methods to deal with post-surgical quietly on the vine. complications (e.g., lymphedema, which is very common and extraordinarily challeng- She did spend rather a long time trying to ing), and of course, (d) a cure for cancers figure out why my chest was so totally flat. of all kinds. Hallelujah! But looking would not yield an answer to her curiosity. I have seen this look, now, many times. When I catch people looking, they are scanning from the chest to August 23, 2007 the face and back again. I guess they are Breastless in Vancouver, and You? trying to figure it out. Hmmmmm. Looks like a woman’s face, but no boobs. So they So yesterday, at the breast/onco surgeon’s, look at the face again, maybe the buzz-cut the resident comes in first, to prep me be- short hair is another distractor, then back fore the big cheese herself. When she pre- down to the washboard chest. pares to do the examination of my inci- sions, she says, “Let’s have a look at your I spend countless time here and there scan- breasts…” “I mean” she ning the crowd for boob-less chests myself, continues, having clearly funbled the ball, I must now confess. I want to see more “Where your breasts used to be.” WOW. people who look like me. I feel lonely in my Talk about a shitty save. I can’t believe she state of exception. I keep hoping that I will said that. No matter how good I feel about look out into the crowd at the mall and see 13 my mastectomy, to be defined entirely by an obviously breast-less chest like mine, lack in such an explicit way really sucks. thrust proudly forward into the flow of life.

But I don’t — EVER. In the Cancer Journal, NMP My biggest challenge today was when the Audrey Lorde talks about the politics of vis- manicurist asked me, “What shape do you ibility of walking in the world, breast-less. like your nails?”. Yikes. This is not some- Lorde is very passionate about the politics thing I have ever spent even 2 seconds of visibility for the breast-less and excori- thinking about. I stared at her rather in- ates those who would foist prosthetics or tently, hoping for clues, and then rather reconstruction on mastectomy patients. awkwardly confessed that, “I don’t think I have a favorite shape”. I knew that was I have no interest in being critical of anyone else’s choices. But I would like more dyke, but the L word just doesn’t work for visibility for those of us who travel the me, and never has. At any rate, there I was world without breasts. Come out, come Friday night listening to a panel of amazing out, wherever you are. Send me a picture women at a literary reading, and it turns of yourself. Tell me how it is, for you. Maybe out that one of them, Betsy Warland, read we should start a Facebook group. Or make from a recent work that features a primary t–shirts. character living in the altered state that results from a bilateral mastectomy. The “never the same” ontological house of mirrors that breast cancer effects is also the September 9, 2007 theme of Only This Blue, a long essay-poem Born to Be Alive: Drag King, Tantric by the talented Warland. It’s on my pile of Sex, and White T-Shirt Contest things to read this month, quite close to the top, in fact. The pile is substantial!!! Okay, so for an audio track to listen to while reading this post, go grab this on for One of the highlights of the conference size: Patrick Hernandez, the one and only for me was a performance by drag king original Disco Queen, and Born to Be Alive troupe, 3 Dollar Bill. After the show, I was crooner. If you are observant, and have hanging around outside the main ballroom, laid eyes on me in the last three months, and someone came up to me and asked you will notice that finally, Mary is BLOND me if I was a drag king. I have to say that again. YAY!!! Months of AC (after cancer) I was incredibly excited by this instance guilt about carcinogenic hair dye stopped of mistaken identity. I decided it had to me from reaching for the bottle (of bleach). be because of my stunningly flat chest, How dull. which looked, perhaps, like a really skillful 14 instance of chest binding. Flush with ex- NMP This weekend was my first AC BIG social citement, I practically flew over to my pal excursion. Unexpectedly, I found myself at J, from Little Sisters bookstore, who was the BOLD conference (Bold Old(er) Lesbi- standing in a crowd that included all the ans). And I say, “unexpectedly” simply be- guys from 3 Dollar Bill, and breathlessly cause I have a pretty uneasy relationship relayed the anecdote. J quickly suggested with the “lesbian” moniker, let alone “old”. that perhaps I should perform my first drag Call it internalized homophoboia if it makes king act at a social event the group had you feel better, with maybe a dash of un- planned for the Xmas season at the Majes- resolved misogyny and ageism. I wouldn’t tic. The “real” kings decided that maybe, I deny any of it. Identification is complex could give it a whirl, and that they might ground. I can live with/in/as queer, or even even offer tutoring. My first homework is to choose “my song”. I was given sternly buoyed with excitement about my sighting delivered instructions about how important I decided to toss off the 2nd layer of pro- it would be to pick a song that I could really tective armour - the sweater - and go and “fill” — as in, “fill the space”. F*ck!. dance wearing just my light white t-shirt. I felt practically naked. There was no hiding Earlier in the evening, while innocently the fact that my chest is completely flat. perusing the amazing array of desserts, a And I felt GREAT. It was really liberating. conference-goer mistook me for the dem- While I was dancing my heart out, I discov- onstration gal in the Tantric Sex workshop. ered my drag king song — Born to be Alive I am not sure exactly what kind of energy I (the one and only and incomparable Patrick was giving off last night, but it was good. Hernandez). It doesn’t get any queerer.

I even had my very own first vision of a Yeah. I am. Still Here. Queer. And definitely, post-mastectomy-no-reconstruction-hon- Alive. est-to-goodness-dyke at this wonderful conference (yeah, so, I’m a convert). I did PS> Oh, and about that BOLD conference. my best not to gape, but I really felt like (1) Many thanks to community heroes Pat I can only imagine someone might feel Hogan and Claire Robson for organizing this who had gotten very lost in the woods for cultural extravaganza. This kind of work is oh, fifty years, only to emerge and experi- SO very important. (2) Bold - Yes, Older - ence their first sighting of a fellow human. Yum, and Lesbian - double Yum. I drank in her image. I even screwed up the courage to talk to her and get her card. Good for me. I am not always good at stuff like that. Social multi-tasking is definitely October 30, 2007 not my strong suit. All Clear! 15 In honour of her, I took off my sweater Yesterday was eventful. I went to see Dr. R to go and dance. I realized the other day at Sunnybrook Hospital, in Toronto, for my NMP that of-late, I have been carefully adjust- second opinion dialogue. My wonderful pal ing my wardrobe so as to avoid the plain and sister-in-law, M, came with me. I have solid colour t-shirt directly worn over flat been staying with M and my brother, Tom, chest. It is, well, just too bold, even for me. for the last couple of days. They have been I have been wearing a white t-shirt and so incredibly kind and generous as hosts, then another t-shirt over top of that one. inviting over friends and family, cooking Or I have been wearing a white t and a but- marathon meals, and generally being the ton-up shirt over that. Got the picture? Well wonderful people they are. In some significant way, it is M’s own can- -Mastectomy was, in fact, my only surgical cer story, or part of it, one really important option because the cancer was not just dis- detail, that may have saved my life. M had persed (multi-focal) but also existed in two pain in her left breast a couple of years large and separate locations (multi-centric) ago that prompted her to seek a diagnos- which removes lumpectomy as an option. tic mammogram, only then to learn that she had breast cancer. When I experienced The clinical implication for the findings is continuous pain in my left breast this past that there is no need for any further treat- Spring, it was the echo of M’s story that ment of any kind, and I don’t even need to sent me on my own path to my GP seek- pursue any kind of follow-up monitoring. ing a diagnostic mammogram, and finding likewise, cancer in the other breast. I really appreciate the effort and commitment demonstrated by Dr. R, who orga- M and I made our way to Sunnybrook Hospi- nized the pathology second opinion, and tal, and to Dr. R’s office in the Cancer Cen- offered to talk to me with no formal referral tre. To recap, for the uninitiated, following — just following contact by email. I can’t my surgery, there was a conflict between say clearly enough how wonderful it was the cancer diagnosis at time of biopsy (mi- to be able, finally, to ask my questions and croinvasion) and at the time of pathology feel heard. analysis following surgery (no invasive cancer). I located, with Dr. R’s assistance, a You have likely participated in some way in dedicated breast pathologist who special- my cancer story, if only as a reader of this izes in the kind of cancer that I had (DCIS) blog, which has been, for me, a vital way and had ALL the slides sent to her for re- to connect with a social network of folks analysis - a fresh and highly skilled pair of who offer solace, wit and the critical fac- 16 eyes. Dr. R offered to provide a consulta- tor of co-presence. To all of you, I need to NMP tion regarding the whole case once the pa- say how very grateful I am that you have thologist had finished her work. been strong enough and persistent enough to be part of my life in this strange time. The important facts that emerged from my With this new clarity concerning the pres- conversation yesterday with Dr. R are as ent - my present body - I feel like I can fi- follows: nally take a big first step away from this grotesque disease that is cancer. -No indication of invasive cancer

-Clear and significant surgical margins November 28, 2007 (greater than 1 cm) The Politics of Aesthetics When we ask what the conditions of intel- tive requirements, such as, for example, ligibility are by which the human emerg- that a candidate for SRS “pass” success- es, by which the human is recognized, by fully for a member of the “opposite sex” for which some subject becomes the subject a minimum period of two years PRIOR to of human love, we are asking about condi- approval for surgery and that this success- tions of intelligibility composed of norms, ful “passing” be observed and recorded by of practices, that have become presuppo- “qualified professionals”. It is also the case sitional, without which we cannot think the that candidates for SRS need to be inter- human at all. Judith Butler (2001). “Doing viewed and approved for surgery by two Justice to Someone: Sex Reassignment and mental health professionals. Allegories of Transsexuality”. GLQ: A Jour- nal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 7 (4): 621- Step Two, if we are to think of Step One, 36. as the deliberate selection of the Calvin Kleins, involved filling out copious forms. Today I wore boxers. It felt transitively Dr. B wanted to know such a lot about me. gender appropriate and maybe even, es- There were 8 pages of questions about my sential, since I was heading off to see the sexual and gender identity in relation to plastic surgeon about chest reconstruction. temporality, as in, “Who were you when Recall, that this is the only plastic surgeon you were born?” (identification via biolo- in British Columbia who does chest surgery gy), and “Who would you like to become?” for fTm trans folks AND who does breast re- (identification via surgery). I was asked to construction. This guy, I figured, would get use the space inside of an empty circle to my particularities. But still, I needed the demarcate, with a single dividing line, just performative insurance boxers might pro- how much of ME was f or m at those two vide. After all, I would need to convince the critical times - past and future - actual and surgeon that doing chest contouring would virtual. All my circles were covered with 17 be, in my case, an genderqueerly appropri- lines going every which way, tartan-esque, ate form of post mastectomy/breast can- and sported a lively mix of f and m. It was cer “reconstruction surgery“. appropriately messy. NMP

Typically, chest, or “top surgery” is regard- Complete these sentences: Gender Iden- ed by the medical professionals and the tity. I think of myself as a _____. Ideally, I health care system in British Columbia as would like to think of myself as a _____. a form of fTm Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS). The rules regarding SRS are archaic I experimented with playful answers, as in: and extraordinarily discriminatory towards How did others perceive your gender iden- transgendered folks. They include proscrip- tity as a child? Answer: Simplistically. How do others perceive your gender identity risky biz, so I made some kind of blister- now? Answer: Generously. ingly ironic statement about preferring a dick I could slam in a drawer to one that Step Three was the live interview with Dr. B, might whither away and drop off my body. who was intelligent, informative and kind. It seemed persuasive. And I meant well. Dr. B is a really stunning example of ethi- “Have you told your parents?” This was a cal medical sensibilities. He was emphatic tough question, on all kinds of levels, not about wanting to use respectful language the least of which is, “What’s to tell?”. Once in asking me about “personal aspects” of again, humour was my friend. Most of the my life, and encouraged me to correct him time, I was able to assert my stubborn at- if he went astray. Dr. B didn’t read my an- tachment to a transitive relation to gender swers on the forms. That impressed me. He — a moving project with no fixed address. I just chatted away and asked lots of ques- insisted on standing in the space of gender tions. Medical protocol requires doctors to queer, and of living a life that is about play- establish that patients seeking any form of ful complexity, rather than having ever in- SRS actually, seriously want surgery based habited something as apparently simple as on what is called, in transgender health a tick box on a form. discourse, the test of Real Life Experience (RLE). And so the performative criterion We moved on to Step Four, because I becomes, Can I establish that I have a sta- passed Step Three. OMG. Who was born of ble and longstanding record of making suc- this moment - this institutionalized accom- cessful choices in the world that are rec- plishment of intelligibility? ognizable and public actions which would pass as Otherly gendered? Dr. B told me enthusiastically that he would not require me to be evaluated by a psychi- 18 I knew that many of the queries were quite atrist, because it seemed like I “had a re- NMP important to get right, no matter how ca- ally stable and healthy identity in relation sual they may have appeared, like, “Would to my complex gender”. And so I learned your ideal gender identity include male about the various options for my chest re- genitalia?” If I sounded like I love being a construction, which include several varia- woman “just the way I am,” including all tions, from fixing the problems residual to my womanly parts, I would fail the neces- the bilateral mastectomy, to a full chest sary performance of some stable elements contouring operation. I have lots to think of gender dysphoria that would make want- about. At the end of today, I was fixated on ing a male chest something other than to- two thoughts: tally pathological. Fortunately, “bottom surgery” (as we trannies call it) is a pretty If I had been talking about using reconstruction to get a 36DD chest, I would not space has been cleared in my life so as to have been required to disclose whether I permit celebration is attributable directly felt like I had been born, secretly, as Dolly to the support and overwhelmingly gen- Parton, and now needed surgery to correct erous love and social connection that so a lack of fit between the inside feeling and many of you have shared with me. No one the outward appearance. knows what to do in the face of cancer. I didn’t have a f*cking clue. And you some- Maybe everyone should have to read Fou- how, against all odds, found the courage cault as a right of passage into adulthood, and the insight to step into the void, beside and yearly thereafter. There might even me. have to be a test. So last night, on Christmas, celebrate, we I am left with enormous respect for a doc- did. Lots of people who I love came to our tor who has learned so very much about house for “A Little Christmas Queer”. And how to care under conditions of institution- please don’t think ‘queer’ is about the sex/ alization, uncertainty and risk. I am, also, gender of who folks cozy up to. It’s just so very proud that I found within myself about affirming a principle of kinship that the courage to insist on speaking truth to is other than blood ties. And of course, power about a kind of complexity of intel- many people who I really wanted to cele- ligibility for which there are so very many brate with DID have family things happen- punishments, sanctions and harsh mea- ing that were good and wonderful, and so sures. couldn’t be celebrating with us last night. So it was far from the whole queer family. But maybe that’s all there ever is anyway — that particular queer family, that night, December 26, 2007 in that place, and f*ck the idea that there 19 Mary’s Christmas Queer is ever a “whole” anything. What I do know for sure is that there was a lot of love in our

I had an amazing Christmas yesterday, and house last evening and also, that all my re- NMP you helped to make it so utterly memora- search into how to cook the perfect turkey ble. It wasn’t about the gifts. Janice and I sure did pay off. Some things should not be decided to skip that part of Christmas this an ‘adventure in deconstruction’ and a tur- year. There wasn’t any overwhelming rea- key, perhaps, is one such entity. Although son. It wasn’t about anything worthy or even this claim seems quite suspect. principled. We just didn’t feel like piles of presents. What we felt like, was celebra- Yesterday, the bag of breast cancer books tion. The very fact that enough psychic that has been a fixture in the living room finally got moved to the back room. It’s al- that we have had to inhabit. Your courage most out the door. I haven’t consulted one and kindness have inspired me, and kept of those books for weeks, and the last of me company. I will leave the last word to the stray volumes that were, up until re- Metzger. cently, strewn about the house, was col- lected up and deposited in the bag. I am no longer afraid of mirrors where I see the sign of the amazon, the one who Loki the super-dog cozied up to everyone, shoots arrows. and saved a very special kiss for one of There was a fine red line across my chest her (many) one-true-loves. Somehow, she where a knife entered, but now a branch manages to find space on the couch for the winds about the scar and travels from arm great dane self, even when there isn’t any. to heart. If ever there was a postmodern mathema- tician with a very post-structural theory of Green leaves cover the branch, grapes space, it would be Loki. hang there and a bird appears. What grows in me now is vital and does not I started this blog with a story about queer cause me harm. I think the bird is singing. love, a tattoo, and a poster on Ange’s wall I have relinquished some of the scars. that inspired me so many years ago. Last I have designed my chest with the care giv- night, P, who knew Ange for many years, en to an illuminated manuscript. brought me that very poster - the very I am no longer ashamed to make love. Love poster of the Deena Metzger photograph is a battle I can win. I have the body of a that I had spent so many hours staring warrior who does not kill or wound. at on Ange’s wall. After Ange died, P had On the book of my body, I have perma- been guardian of the Metzger poster. P’s nently inscribed a tree. 20 generosity in passing on the poster to me NMP is extraordinary. Ange’s poster now sits on my kitchen table, leaning against the wall. I had forgotten that there is a verse January 8, 2008 of Metzger’s poem on the poster. I was in- Say Hello, Say Goodbye spired by Metzger’s beauty and courage back then, as I saw it embodied by Ange in I think we’re done, here. How’s that for an her own struggles with cancer. And now, it ambivalent ending? reanimates my own life. As you do. I hate endings. I hate saying, “Good bye”. Thank you so very much for walking with me, this year, in the most ghastly places I am back at work, and my mind has been relentlessly elsewhere than on breast can- http://brys.wordpress.com cer. I had thought that by changing the Mary K. Bryson name of the blog, from “Big Grrls DO Cry” Vancouver, British-Columbia to “Adventures in Deconstruction”, that I Dr. Mary Bryson is Professor in the Faculty of Edu- could shift the emphasis of the blog from cation and Director of the Center for Cross-Faculty cancer, to the politics of everyday life as a Inquiry and the Network of Centers and Institutes breast cancer survivor. And who knows, I in Education. Mary has numerous publications on may do that some day. But for now, I think theoretical treatments of gender and technology, that I need, definitively, to step away from queer theory, and equity in education, including “Radical Inventions: identity, Politics and Differ- cancer as a site of cultural production and ence/s in Educational Praxis” (SUNY Press, http:// analysis. www.ecps.educ.ubc.ca/research/mbryson.htm). In 2000, Bryson was a recipient of the Canadian I want to thank you, for being here. If I know “Pioneer in New Technologies and Media” award. something that might be helpful, I will gladly Emerging from scholarly engagements with queer pass it on. That function has been just one and feminist theory, Bryson’s program of research contributes significantly to the production of the joys of maintaining this blog. What of theory at the interdisciplinary intersections of can I say? I am compulsively attached to critical studies of gender, sexuality, and new tech- some kind of idea of the Internet as a viral nologies. Making the crucial step away from both knowledge network that really does make disembodied narratives of virtuality and human- a critical difference to lives where agency ist accounts of liminal subjectivities, this program is imperiled. And sure as donuts at Tim of research charts new directions for sociocultural work in queer theory, educational, curricular and Hortons, breast cancer and its attendant critical media studies. social/medical institutions, imperil one’s core sense of freedom, identity, value and viability. The poster image is of the writer Deena Metzger. 21 Presence. It’s all we are, and all we have. Poster design by Sheila de Bretteville. Photographer: Hella Hammid.

The poster, “I Am No Longer Afraid,” also known NMP as “The Warrior,” can be obtained from: Donnelly/Colt: www.donnellycolt.com E-mail: [email protected] Boycott de Madame Arthur Line Chamberland

Le bar Madame Arthur, situé au 2170 Bishop, accueillit entre 1973 et 1975 plusieurs centaines de lesbiennes qui y découvrirent amour, sexe… et fierté. Il est évo- qué par Marie-Claire Blais dans son roman Les Nuits de l’underground, traduit en anglais sous le titre Nights in the Underground.

Début novembre. Un mercredi ou un jeudi soir. Nous sommes en 1974. Nous 22 étions peu nombreuses chez NMP Madame Arthur ce soir-là, surtout des habituées. Il y avait Fran, la belle Fran. Infirmière, elle venait de démissionner de son poste dans le bloc opératoire de l’hôpital, exaspérée par le harcèlement sexuel des mé- decins. Fran s’était rasée les cheveux en signe de révolte. Comme à l’accoutumée et malgré nos protestations répétées, le pro- fut brève, je lui portais encore une grande prio avait laissé entrer un de ses chums de affection) et d’autres l’avons retenue : elle gars qui venaient zieuter et cruiser des les- avait déjà eu suffisamment de démêlés biennes. Pour nous, l’enjeu de la bataille avec la justice à cause de ses liens avec le qui allait se déclencher ce soir-là était clair Front de Libération du Québec et avec le : l’espace était exigu, nous étions suffisam- Front de Libération des Femmes, il ne fallait ment nombreuses et fidèles pour assurer pas qu’elle se fasse arrêter de nouveau. la rentabilité du bar, nous en avions marre de la présence de ces gars et nous deman- C’est ici qu’arriva ma minute de gloire. Ni- dions le respect. En revanche, le détail de cole évoque parfois cette minute devant l’événement se prête à plusieurs interpré- des amies communes. Pour ma part, tations. Que s’est-il passé au juste ? Fran lorsqu’il m’arrive de raconter l’événement aurait été agacée quand le gars-ami-du- dans mon enseignement à l’UQÁM afin proprio (encore un après cette sale journée d’illustrer la radicalisation des lesbiennes !) lui aurait passé une remarque, selon Ni- féministes dans la première moitié des an- cole Lacelle, elle aussi présente ce soir-là. nées 1970, je le dépersonnalise, omettant Ou encore, la blonde de Fran, la grande et même de mentionner ma présence. Quoi batailleuse Élisabeth, aurait quelque peu qu’il en soit, revenons-en à ce moment agressé le gars verbalement. Excédée, fatidique. La police circulait dans le bar. Fran a lancé sa bouteille de bière dans le Pour affirmer son autorité, elle nous insul- miroir. S’ensuivit une échauffourée en- ta et nous ordonna de nous asseoir, sans tre Élisabeth et le gars selon une version. toucher à nos bières. J’étais debout, une Ou encore le barman aurait maîtrisé Fran bouteille à la main. Un policier qui me fai- de manière brutale. J’ai personnellement sait face me dit : « Petite chienne ! Assieds- le souvenir d’une fille allongée par terre, toi pis mets ta bière sur la table ! » Je n’ai mais pas Nicole. Entretemps, le proprio pas obéi. Il me l’a arrachée des mains et l’a 23 avait appelé la police qui, arrivée sur les déposée sur la table en la cognant. Je ne lieux, avait arrêté Élisabeth. La petite his- me suis pas assise. J’ai repris ma bière et toire veut que la police lui aurait demandé j’en ai bu une gorgée. Je me souviens que NMP si elle était une femme ou un homme, ce mes genoux flageolaient, mais j’avais soif à quoi elle aurait répondu par ce qui allait et j’étais décidée à lui tenir tête. Il laissa devenir une réplique célèbre : « I’m more tomber. Question de courage ? En tout cas, of a man than you’ll ever be; I’m more of a ce courage était collectif. woman than you’ll ever have. » La police avait appelé le panier à salades Lise Balcer voulut s’en mêler mais moi et décidé de vider les lieux. Nicole prit (Lise était mon ex et quoique notre relation l’initiative. Nous nous donnâmes le mot : pas de voiture, c’est risquer de se faire ar- isé et respecté le boycott. Plusieurs se sont rêter pour conduite en état d’ébriété. Ren- transformées en amitiés durables. Pour dez-vous chez Neva, qui habitait tout près. moi, ce moment reste celui où ma gang de Discussion : que fait-on ? Y en a marre de lesbiennes s’est soudée, où un Nous est ne pas se faire respecter ! C’est nous qui apparu, où notre riposte est devenue col- le faisons vivre ce bar, après tout. Déci- lective. sion collective : organiser un boycott pour le week-end suivant. De mon côté, et avec Moment-clé de la naissance d’un mouve- d’autres, je m’occupais de Marie-May, qui ment de lesbiennes féministes au Québec, avait avalé d’un coup ses nombreux caps cet incident a presque disparu de la mé- de mescaline et se sentait un peu-beau- moire collective et la mienne s’embrouille coup mal. Je lui devais bien ça. Johanne et de plus en plus. J’imagine qu’il en va de Marie-May, les deux grandes acadiennes même pour les autres « héroïnes » de cette fraîchement débarquées à Montréal, me lutte. Quelles traces en reste-t-il ? Pas de protégeaient quand nous nous faisions photos – il n’y avait que les flics ou leurs in- écoeurer par des hommes dans la rue, ce formateurs qui en prenaient à cette époque. qui était courant. Elles répondaient du tact Les patrons de Madame Arthur, eux, nous au tact, y compris par des gestes agres- ont bien regardées et les organisatrices sifs. ont été définitivement barrées de l’endroit. Nous nous sommes mises à fréquenter le Vendredi, samedi et dimanche : boycott ! bar de Baby Face[2] qui nous avait bien à Trois soirées à marcher en cercle devant l’œil elle aussi – mais toujours pas de pho- le bar, à convaincre celles qui s’y présen- tos. Il existerait un récit narré par Nicole taient de ne pas y pénétrer tout en expli- Lacelle et vidéographié, mais je n’ai pu le quant le pourquoi de notre action. De nom- découvrir. Les rares sources écrites fournis- 24 breuses lesbiennes sont entrées comme si sent des versions différentes du déclenche- NMP de rien n’était, mais plusieurs autres ont ment des hostilités. Un article de Tavormi- rejoint les rangs des piqueteuses. Parmi na[3] met l’accent sur l’agressivité avec elles, quelques-unes venaient de loin et laquelle le waiter s’en est pris à Fran après avaient très envie d’aller faire un tour dans que celle-ci eut fracassé le miroir. Même ce lieu dont elles avaient tant entendu par- chose pour Long Time Coming – la revue ler. Par exemple, Claudine Vivier, qui venait lesbienne de l’époque – qui poursuit en af- tout juste d’immigrer au Québec, ne put se firmant que Fran fut traînée à l’extérieur et résigner à franchir une ligne de piquetage battue par plusieurs hommes, jusqu’à ce : par conviction politique, elle n’en traver- que des lesbiennes interviennent pour la sait aucune. C’est ainsi que se sont nouées délivrer et qu’elle puisse s’enfuir[4]. Enfin, des solidarités entre celles qui ont organ- selon le mémoire d’Andrea Hildebran[5], la bataille éclata plutôt entre un client et la cours crédité en études lesbiennes au Can- costaude Elisabeth qui ripostait à ses in- ada s’y déroula à l’hiver 1990. sultes, celle-ci se retrouva allongée parmi des débris de verre (venus d’on ne sait où) et le waiter en rajouta en lui donnant un [1] Cet article est une version légèrement modi- fiée de celui paru originalement dans l’Archigai. coup de pied dans le ventre… Quoi qu’il en Bulletin des Archives gaies du Québec, no 18, soit, toutes les sources s’accordent pour 2008. Merci à Nicole Lacelle pour sa mémoire souligner le ras-le-bol des lesbiennes face et sa fidèle amitié, ainsi qu’à Ross Higgins pour au traitement méprisant et arbitraire qui m’avoir signalé l’article de Long Time Coming. La leur était réservé dans les bars, la colère difficulté de reconstituer un événement pourtant qui éclata ces jours-là et l’effet catalyseur si mémorable dans l’histoire des luttes lesbiennes à Montréal montre bien la nécessité des archives du boycott. gaies et lesbiennes.

Aucun récit ne corrobore entièrement [2] Durant les années 1970 et 1980, Baby Face la mémoire que j’en conserve. Celui de fut la gérante de quelques bars s’adressant à une Long Time Coming, écrit dans la foulée de clientèle exclusivement lesbienne et auxquels elle donnait son propre surnom d’adoption. Le l’événement, exagère selon moi l’ampleur Baby Face Disco était situé au 1235, boul. René- de la mêlée et son degré de violence. Les Lévesque Ouest (anciennement Dorchester). Voir deux autres reconstruisent les débuts Chamberland, Line (1993), “Remembering Lesbi- du mouvement des lesbiennes à partir an Bars: Montreal, 1955-1975”, Journal of Homo- d’entrevues réalisées 15 à 20 ans plus sexuality, vol. 25, no 3, p. 231-269, ou une ver- tard ; le boycott de Madame Arthur n’est sion remaniée parue en français sous le titre « La conquête d’un espace public : les bars fréquentés qu’un des moments reconstitués, d’où une par les lesbiennes », dans Irène Demczuk et Frank description relativement sommaire de la Remiggi (dir.) (1998), Sortir de l’ombre, Montréal, séquence des événements et partiellement VLB éditeur, p. 129-164. erronée selon mes propres souvenirs. Mais 25 ceux-ci sont eux aussi partiels et dépen- [3] Tavormina, Patrizia (1991), « Le bar Ma- dants de ce que fut mon champ de vision dame Arthur et le mouvement des lesbiennes de 1970 à 1975 », Amazones d’hier, Lesbiennes ce fameux soir-là. NMP d’aujourd’hui, no 22, mars, p. 104-114.

Comme le rappelle Tavormina, l’énergie des [4] Orchard, Leslie (1974), “Fighting Back”, Long lesbiennes a continué longtemps de hanter Time Coming, vol. 2, no 2, décembre, p. 31-33. l’espace du bar Madame Arthur, lequel fut recyclé par l’université Concordia pour de- [5] Hildebran, Andrea Logan (1997), Lesbian Ac- venir partie de l’Institut Simone-de-Beau- tivism in Montreal : 1973-1979, mémoire de maî- voir. La Lesbian Studies Coalition y tint ses trise en histoire, UQAM, p. 46-48. rencontres à partir de 1987 et le premier A lesbian and feminist activist since the seventies, Line Chamberland has published Mémoires lesbiennes – le lesbianisme à Montréal entre 1950 et 1972. As a sociologist, she does research about discrimination against lesbians and gays in the workplace, about lesbianism and aging and about homophobia in secondary schools and cegeps. She teaches a course on Homosexuality and So- ciety at UQAM.

Militante lesbienne et féministe depuis les années 1970, Line Chamberland a publié Mémoires lesbiennes – le lesbianisme à Montréal entre 1950 et 1972. En tant que sociologue, elle fait des recher- ches sur la discrimination envers les lesbiennes et les gais en milieu de travail, sur les lesbiennes âgées et sur l’homophobie dans les écoles secon- daires et les cégeps. Elle enseigne le cours Homo- sexualité et société à l’UQAM.

Photo Baby Face par Suzanne Girard

26 NMP The Postman The next September Gracie, Sot Bell and Dianah Smith Karen Deveey were back. So were Pan- kaj and Jiban and Suzie. And there was a new girl. When I walked into the classroom there she was sitting in the front row – a little white girl, with brown hair cut in a bob, hands folded politely on the desk, sitting very straight, looking very attentive. I was worried for her. In grade two I wanted to be the postman on Valentine’s Day. The Postman got to She lived on King Edward Avenue in a deliver all the Valentine’s cards and didn’t house at the bottom of the hill. Most of us have to worry about being embarrassed lived off of Mann Avenue in the low rise by the small number of cards on his or apartment buildings at the top of the hill. I her desk. The year before, Miss Hahn had knew I had to protect her from Scot, Karen sent a class list and a note home instruct- Deevey and Gracie. Especially Gracie. They ing parents to buy enough cards for each liked to pick on new kids, but they wouldn’t student on the list so that no one would be mess with her if I was with her. I decided I left out. And yet, I still received very few would be her bodyguard. She was soft and cards. So while the other kids giggled and delicate, unlike the tough, loud, and brash counted their cards, my face burned with crew that dominated Viscount Alexander embarrassment and humiliation. Public School.

Karyn came to Viscount Alexander in grade It didn’t take long for us to become best two. I had spent the whole summer worry- friends. We could always be found with our ing about not having a best friend. Anna, heads together giggling about something, 27 my best friend from grade one, had left at whispering about Gracie or Karen Deevey, the end of the school year. I always thought or trying to guess the identity of the secret Anna and I had been destined to be best admirer who had left a chocolate bar in NMP friends because she was Spanish and I her desk everyday for a week. Eventually knew that my dad had been born in Span- we figured out that it was Andy, a pudgy, ish Town, in Kingston, Jamaica. I wondered freckle faced, white kid from the top of the if my dad understood her language, and hill. He and his three sisters returned from if that meant that she and I were related lunch every day with Chef Boyardee sauce in some way. Before I could discover our around their mouths. We were both disap- shared roots, she moved away and went to pointed when we found out it was him. another school. The week before Valentine’s Day we were sent home with a list of all the students in was just the two of us. No one and nothing our grade two class. Mom bought a pack- else existed. I remember everything that age of Valentines cards with McDonald’s happened after that. She looked up at me characters. I picked out the Grimace card after reading the card her brown hair fram- for Karyn and wrote ‘I love you’ inside the ing her face like an angel, I heard her say card. It was the first time I’d written those ‘I love you too’. The world fell off its axis. words. The schoolyard started to spin. She loved me. I wanted to throw my hat in the air like That year my wish came true, and I was Mary Tyler Moore in the opening sequence chosen as the Postman for our afternoon of the show. Valentine’s card delivery. I delivered everyone’s cards, but saved my Grimace card She loved me. for recess because I wanted to present it to Karyn in private. I gave her the signal to meet me at the water fountain at the back of the classroom. At the water fountain, I told her that I hadn’t forgotten to get her a card I was saving it to give it to her at recess.

Although it was February, there were still patches of grass all around the schoolyard. It was a cold day, in the minus double dig- Dianah Smith is Jamaican-born, Ottawa-raised its, but I was feeling hot in my jacket. Nor- writer, teacher and arts educator. She is the mally it didn’t provide much warmth but Founder of ‘A’ is for Orange (www.aisfororange. in that moment, I was overheating from org) a reading series featuring queer Caribbean 28 emerging writers, and the former curator of When NMP nervousness. We stood at the edge of the the Rainbow Isn’t Enough a monthly reading series asphalt where the cement met the grass, sponsored by the Toronto Women’s Bookstore fea- me in an oversized robin’s egg blue nylon turing queer and trans emerging writers of colour jacket, and Karyn in her pink, perfectly fit- and two-spirited emerging writers. Dianah is the ted winter jacket. I took a few deep breaths recipient of several grants including an emerging before handing her the card. She opened writer’s grant from the Toronto Arts Council and it and read my little note ending in ‘I love a Writing Mentorship grant from the Ontario Arts Council. Dianah has been published in Siren and you’. I held my breath wondering what Flirt magazines and most recently in Shameless she would say, worrying about what she magazine (Summer/Fall 2008). She says ‘Writing would do. Kids ran past, snowballs whizzed is a way to grieve/retrieve the past, make sense of through the air, but I heard none of that. It the present and leave a legacy for the future. 29 NMP sweetest thing/ tierra sagrada plants, plates and books to the floor of the Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha room. I want the fingers inside their holes to dry erase their scars the way theirs did to mine. I want it to be precious. I want it to be private. I want to be fearless. There are certain things you just don’t do, certain things you just don’t tell anybody. Not family business that should be shared, 1. I have an ongoing thesis about brown but certain things secret like a cervix or people loving brown people and brown peo- that crinkled place that cries in my cunt. ple loving white people. It’s an unfinished Like how I never talk about my spiritual be- one with lots of unproven hypotheses. I liefs, despite the altar that has taken up a need to gather more raw data to evalu- quarter of my room since I turned 18 and ate, but there are times when the scientific got a room of my own. I don’t trust people method breaks down and is inadequate to who run their mouths bout Yemaya or their describe what goes on in my pussy and my pagan healing circle. The gods don’t talk heart. to people who talk about them too much. You get down on your knees to her in pri- This is what I know. Sometimes it’s the vate and she gives you things. that’s how sweetest thing. Some times its boredom it works. and bullshit. Sometimes I open my legs and give up my head, heart, and panties And there are certain things you don’t give to the sky based on nothing more than skin white people is what I’ve thought that is the same color as mine and lips as I am a nationalist! full. Lips that can say my name right, or at I mean it! 30 least make a stab at it. I’ll forgive them if I mean NMP they fuck it up, if at least they try hard at I may fuck you when there is a shortage it. I’ll forgive them so much. I need so bad but I won’t hold your hand in public! to be forgiven I won’t cook you Sri Lankan food call you kunju I want to fuck them back to before. be- make my culture a Disneyland road map fore before. before the ships arrived on for you our lands, before our white parents fingers There’s certain shit that’s our secret probing genitals, hair and skin looking for I had to work hard enough to find it marks of the devil. before the breakups and I’m holding on to it with each other like earthquakes we nev- like our ancestors held onto the location of er expected that threw carefully arranged Palmares like that last apartment where the Tamil gravy woman activist is holing up from the cops and the LTTE like the last bit of rez we’ve held on to sometimes brown people fall in love with there’s certain things you don’t ever give us on the first date up to white folks give us a UTI cuz they’re banging your pel- no matter how much you might love them vic bone so hard no matter how idiotic some of our own or just ain’t it might be but sometimes sometimes…. There are so few of us and, like Chrystos said, that’s why we don’t “I don’t even look at white girls anymore,” fuck sometimes said my friend as I am sobbing in his mom’s because there are so few of us bigass deluxe four poster bed. It’s the first because friendship is safer and lasts in what will be a year of sobs about how my perfect brown boyfriend had left me two but for a year days after I opened letters from my father, I fucked my peer group, first time I talked to him in a decade, for a and nothing was sweeter on my tongue femme so platinum she practically glows nothing was sweeter than these excerpts in the dark. My lover will never write me of my magic fuck life back and it’s a bhangra song from a movie starring Amitabh, Parveen Baba, and a 2. I usedta have a rhyme with that one lov- gun about lost letters, plane tickets, pretty er, like: brown men who been and gone. white boys are like fast food A year later my friend is dating a blond 31 well advertised woman because he likes her, because “it’s a lot has gone into making them taste just easier,” and I don’t judge him. My heart good attack of perfect open pussy heart brown NMP sometimes there’s nothing else on the side boy love, scars, feathers torn in half valen- of the highway tine has left me drinking, working, jerking but they sure leave your tummy feeling off, dancing, sitting meditation with grief funny after! and talking to him in my head for a year. white girls are different! sometimes they’re like fast food too I know how high stakes this love is. And I sometimes they’re a vegan hippie salad! know I haven’t wanted to be fed anything sometimes they’re fatback biscuits and else but dynamite. Nothing but brownness like sweet chai and paan chewed and sipped on the sidewalk under Christmas lights, sold by an uncle with a card table when it is oh so cold.

Basically it is Arabs and Latinos and the oc- casional South Asian and any kind of mixed person who wants to do it with me. And then of course there are the white geeky post anarchist guys who used to hate me and later loved me and wanted to fuck me because white anarchist boys always want to fuck angry brown girls as a complement to their bell hooks collection. I am an ex- punk who hated it, who now likes to sometimes walk through those group houses aloof. I used to make white guys give me head for nineteen hours as some form of reparations, beyatch! for colonialism.

And then I got over it. Brownness was a relief. The biggest exhale.

4. Sometimes the queer community of col- Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a queer Sri Lankan writer and performer, based for ten years or is so small. so wanted. so necessary. so in Toronto, recently relocated to Oakland, CA. The 32 drama filled. so exhaustion ridden. I know author of Consensual Genocide (TSAR, 2006) her NMP everyone’s secrets and keep them safe. I work has been widely anthologized in the queer, have boundaries, I have rules. That there is feminist and of color press, including in Yes Means no room to move into the spaces that I so Yes, Homelands, Colonize This, We Don’t Need desperately want. Another Wave, Bitchfest, Without a Net, Danger- ous Families, Geeks, Misfits and Outlaws, Bent on Writing, Femme and A Girl’s Guide to Taking Over I don’t know how the story ends. I am still The Word. She writes for Bitch, Colorlines, Heri- gathering data. I know love never stops zons, Hyphen, Make/Shift and Xtra magazines, and seeing color. I know love is an anarchic regularly performs and tours her work throughout bitch that will slap your ass and upside North America. She is the co-director of Mangos your head and send you to places you’d With Chili, North America’s only annual touring cabaret of queer and trans of color performers. never thought you’d go. Visit her at www.brownstargirl.com La bombe Julie Doucet

Julie Doucet est née à Montréal en 1965. Elle s’est fait connaître avec ses bandes dessinées auto- biographiques. Elle a vécu à New York, Seattle et Berlin. À son retour à Montréal, Julie doucet se consacre à l’estampe et au livre d’artiste. Elle vit toujours à Mon- tréal et découpe des mots et des images.

33 NMP or prophets (Lovejoy 2008).

The ease with which multiple gender formations were received within tribal cultures represented more than the hiving of an extra category into an essentially binary system. Rather, it spoke to a worldview that valued the complex interrelationships of all living things. Many Ab- original nations respected the powers of transformation, with creatures and spir- its from traditional cosmolo- gies shifting between the The Two-spirited Rebirth of Indigenous Nations: worlds of fish and sky; birth An Interview with Waawaate Fobister and death; man and woman. Stu Marvel If a person was born with both male and female char- acteristics it was expected that their creation had re- More than 155 Indigenous nations of North America had a ceived great care from the word to describe people beyond the binary of male and fe- Spirit and they were conse- 34 male, with some tribes recognizing up to six different gender quently blessed with unique NMP categories. Individuals were usually observed as ‘neither abilities. As Dakota elder man nor woman’ from an early age, with many communi- Eva McKay explains, “They ties holding rituals of passage to determine whether a child were special in the way that would be drawn to a unique combination of gender roles. In they seemed to have more others, a portentous dream or vision was often regarded as skills than a single man or a signal. Such people were generally held in high regard, a single woman…He is two with their qualities seen as a gift conferring important spir- persons, this is when people itual responsibilities. Anthropologist James Thayer writes would say they have more that they were “said to possess supernatural powers for power than a single person. healing (Cheyenne, Arapaho, Plains Cree) or for naming (Da- They were treated with re- kota)” and would often hold a ceremonial role as shamans spect” (Carter 2008). Such physical and spiritual embodiment was in nally held property and – importantly – a keeping with a mobile order of being that respect for gender variance encouraged had little in common with the European Western settlers to hoist aloft the banner societies developing across the Atlantic, of a Canadian federation. Amidst the heat where a dualist mentality of good-versus- of genocide and gendering a country was evil grappled furiously within a nascent born. Christian theology. These violent legacies are today being As Western colonists eventually poured off challenged, however, as the rights of In- their boats and onto the shores of what is digenous peoples are demanded the world now Canada, they brought along a cargo over. Struggles for self-determination and of relentless dichotomies that explained cultural preservation have been taken up to them how the world worked. Man over in both domestic and international legal woman, mind over body, life over death, arenas as Indigenous peoples and their al- light over dark, humans over nature. The lies ground themselves in movements for colonial encounter with Indigenous peoples social justice. Crystallized in the United encouraged white Christian men to place Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indig- themselves on the upper half of this sche- enous Peoples, which was adopted in 2007 ma, and to construct a global hierarchy after 22 years of drafting and negotiation, within which they stood supreme. Through a vigorous global movement is working to the denigration of ‘savage’ peoples to a achieve the goals of decolonization. lower order of nature, a host of new racist, heterosexist and classist categories were On a Canadian level, a young man from invented to prop up European society at the Grassy Narrows First Nations reserve the apex of human history. in Ontario is doing his part to unearth Ab- original traditions from the bedrock of im- 35 A central goal of this imperial project was perial history. Actor Waawaate Fobister is to make the world over in Europe’s image, just 24 years old and yet he has already bringing ‘civilization’ to all and installing taken to stages across the country to retell NMP three primary virtues at the heart of assimi- the forgotten stories of his people. Incor- lationist ideology: the superiority of nuclear porating the Ojibwa language, where the family patriarchy, the importance of land word agokwe referred to a ‘man-woman’ ownership (preferably when owned by Eu- while a ‘warrior woman’ was known as ok- ropeans!) and the infinite wonders of capi- itcitakwe, Fobister’s most recent creation talism. The determined elevation of these is a one-man show in which he performs values over Aboriginal understandings of multiple characters. Simply titled Agokwe, kinship, harmony with the land, commu- the play uses the trickster and shapeshifter figure of Nanabush to evoke ancient histo- call myself that is huge. And I don’t take it ries of transformation. It traces the journey lightly.” of two Aboriginal boys who fall in love at a hockey tournament while dealing sensi- An important part of Fobister’s journey tively with the brutality and complexity of from a closeted teen on the reservation to homophobia on the reserve. “I guess I’m spokesman for gay Aboriginal youth has doing my small part as a person, as a sto- been through the teachings of Ojibway ryteller,” Fobister explains, “and that’s the traditions. He explains that while growing way my ancestors have been for genera- up in high school he didn’t know that gays tions, for centuries. That’s how our stories even existed, let alone two-spirited peo- are passed down. My role as a storyteller ples. It was only after he became the first of is to come back and bring these ideas of his extended family to graduate from high agokwe, two-spirited people through my school and moved to Toronto to pursue an storytelling.” acting career that any context for his experience came into view. After contacting the The term ‘two-spirited’ was born in 1990 Two-Spirited People of the First Nations, Fo- at a Native American/First Nations gay and bister was introduced to the term agokwe lesbian conference in Winnipeg, as a way and began to learn about the histories of of distinguishing the spiritual nature of his people. He explains, “It made me feel tribal gender categories from an identity so empowered. I was like, this is so amaz- politic based primarily on same-sex desire. ing and strong and powerful!” Two-spirit is not merely an analogue to ‘gay and lesbian’ or ‘transsexual’ or even Fobister is careful to stress the importance ‘queer’. Indeed, many Aboriginal LGBT of elders in passing on these teachings and communities resist identifying with a West- in refusing to forget the oral traditions of a 36 ern linearity that (typically) ranges gender colonized people: “All of my knowledge is NMP across a continuum from male at one end mostly from elders, from listening to their to female on the other. Traditionally, two- stories and what they have to say and spirited people occupied a variety of spiri- what’s important to them. There’s a say- tual and cultural positions upon a wheel of ing that ‘when an elder dies it’s like a li- gender possibility. Yet as mentioned above, brary burning down.’ I try to take as much with this special status came significant re- in from the elders as I possibly can so I can sponsibilities. When Fobister is asked if he pass it on and keep that tradition going. personally identifies as two-spirit he hesi- Elders are really important in our commu- tates for a moment, pondering the weight nities because we can learn from them and of the title: “I don’t know…it’s such a big they have these stories that are important responsibility and a big role, so for me to to our lives. They have messages.” This contemporary re-claiming of two-spir- represent only 3.3% of the Canadian popu- itedness is occurring within a broader relation, Aboriginal persons comprised 5-8% surgence of Aboriginal traditions, as Native of prevalent infections and 6-12% of new peoples are strengthening old practices HIV infections in Canada in 2002. suppressed under centuries of colonization. Montreal activists Fiona Meyer-Cook Meyer-Cook and Labelle also point to the and Diane Labelle describe how this emer- negative memory association that many gence of gendered and sexual difference residential school survivors hold in regard ties in to other sacred aspects of commu- to the sexual abuse experienced at board- nity life: “In the same way that the drum, ing schools, much of which was same-sex the sweat, the pipe and languages are re- in nature. As they explain, this means that emerging, Two-Spirit people are beginning “Two-Spirited people are seen in the same to make their voices heard.” Embracing light as sin and sexual abusers.” Without and living openly as two-spirited means an analysis that places the factors of rac- addressing not only homophobia, but the ism, poverty and multi-generational trau- entwined pressures of racism, imperialism, ma in the context of colonization, two-spir- sexism and neocolonialism (Meyer-Cook ited people can quickly become vulnerable and Labelle 2004). to multiple forms of discrimination. A 2007 study entitled Leading an Extraordinary While the traditional esteem held for cat- Life: Wise Practices for an HIV Prevention egories such as agokwe and okitcitakwe is Campaign with Two-Spirit Men found that now being remembered, this resurgence many two-spirited men had experienced should not be romanticized over the tough a painful litany of family and community reality faced by contemporary two-spirited shaming, discrimination and abuse. As the peoples. Such experiences can only be un- report concludes, “The effect is that Two- derstood within the context of Aboriginal Spirit people have become displaced people 37 peoples as a whole and the violence of co- within Aboriginal and Canadian society.” It lonialism in Canada. To take the example can be difficult to muster up the courage to of Aboriginal persons living with HIV/AIDS, stand against rejection or physical threat NMP not only poverty but the homophobic leg- from within one’s own kinship circle while acy of European society continues to be- still working toward better social and eco- leaguer many communities. This makes it nomic conditions for all Aboriginal nations. difficult to talk about the same-sex trans- mission of disease or begin working on pre- Yet such courage is casually expressed by vention and support initiatives. The impact Fobister as he relates difficult stories from of these obstacles is painfully apparent in his past with both strength and humour. national health statistics: Although they He talks about performing an earlier play called Savage, the story of a young gay will be able to do some of the things I’m boy who grows up in a small town and is doing, in their own way. And keep inform- helped by a mentor. A thorny and revealing people.” ing piece, Fobister has toured it all over the province to public and private schools, on In the book Me Sexy, Daniel Heath Justice reserve and off. He recounts the Q&A that explains how the time-honored role of two- followed a performance in Moose Factory, spirited people as spiritual guides can be when the first questioner from the crowd of reclaimed as a powerful tool to work to- assembled students wanted to know if he ward healing the wounds of colonialism. was actually gay himself. He writes, “In the traditions of many Indig- enous nations, queer folks had – and con- Fobister explains, “They asked in kind of a tinue to have – special gifts granted by the snotty way – they’re high school students Creator for the benefit of our families and right – and so I go up and say, YES! I’M the world at large. In this understanding, GAY! (laughing) And they had this really our sexuality isn’t just a part of our Na- awkward reaction and didn’t know what to tiveness – it’s fuel for the healing of our do, because no one ever ever says they’re nations.” As Indigenous communities in gay in those communities. No one says Canada are increasingly mobilizing to de- that, because it’s been lost. And then I have mand legal recognition, reparation for the young gay people that come up to me after residential schools legacy, land restitution the shows, and are like ‘you inspired me so and the renewal of sacred ceremonial prac- much because I can’t ever say that, and tices, two-spirited peoples may most ably for you to come here and say I’M GAY in represent the fluidity and far-seeing knowl- front of these people, a gym full of people, edge of these ancestral traditions. I feel so empowered. And like there’s hope 38 for me’.” As the birth of Canada was nestled in the NMP uncompromising cradle of a dualist world- In providing a model for other Aboriginal view, so the re-birth of Indigenous tradi- youth, Fobister clearly envisions his role as tions may pivot upon the reclamation of that of a traditional storyteller. He is explic- more complex ontologies. It has been ar- it about the desire to reach out to remote gued that the disruption of equitable rela- or marginalized communities and speak to tions between men, women and other gen- young people who may feel as isolated as der categories was a key colonial strategy he did. “Those are the people that I want to erode and damage the vitality of Indig- to reach and that’s why I keep doing the enous nations. As historian Andrew Gilden things that I’m doing. Because it can in- writes, “These efforts radically transformed spire somebody. And hopefully that person the traditional Native American beliefs as to child autonomy, relative equality of the plank of the colonial platform. In revealing sexes, and commitment to the tribal com- the restrictive impact of a gender binary munity” (Gilden 2007). Under the impact of that kept women at home, men at work, colonialism all gendered relations changed, property in private hands and spirituality in but a particular vitriol was reserved for a book, two-spirited peoples may be able those who existed outside the male-female to function once again as visionaries for binary. The distinctive threat that two-spir- their nations. In Lighting the Eighth Fire: ited people represented to settler society The Liberation, Resurgence and Protection is evident in the patriarchal, heterosexist of Indigenous Nations, Leanne Simpson re- language expressed from the earliest days tells a well-known Nishnaabeg prophecy: of colonization. “The later part of that prophecy relays that we are currently living in the Seventh Fire, Europeans who encountered multiple gen- a time when, after a long period of colo- ders were both titillated and horrified by the nialism and cultural loss, a new people, existence of what they called berdaches, the Oshkimaadiziig, emerge. It is the Osh- a derogatory term which comes to French kimaadiziig whose responsibilities involve through the Arabic word bardaj meaning reviving our language, philosophies, politi- “kept boy” or “male prostitute”. Treatment cal and economic traditions, our ways of not only focused on what was erroneously knowing, and our culture. The foremost re- labeled male transvestism (women rarely sponsibility of the ‘new people’ is to pick figured in these field notes) but fixated- al up those things previous generations have most exclusively on matters of sexual cou- left behind… .” pling. White ethnographers were relatively unconcerned with the social significance Simpson explains that the current genera- held by two-spirited people, choosing in- tion of Native people holds a profound abil- stead to dwell on the fevered perversions ity to contribute to the recovery and rebirth 39 of sodomy. The spiritual role of multiple of Indigenous nations. Through a return to genders was condemned by the church original visions of peace and justice, the and branded with shame as discourses of keepers of the eighth fire can forge new re- NMP ‘morality’ ensured that only heterosexual lations with other nations and engage with couples joined by Christian marriage (and settler society to decolonize their relation- preferably non-miscegenated) could re- ships. Only then can a sustainable future ceive the approval of the state. be created upon a renewed foundation of mutual recognition, justice and respect. Thus in helping to reaffirm the two-spirited traditions of Native peoples, young leaders In discussing the impact of his work and like Fobister are challenging a fundamental how it seeks to honour the forgotten role of the two-spirited peoples in Native communities, Fobister is modest yet passionate about the fire he hopes to light. “That’s why I wrote [Agokwe] and that’s why I want to go tour it, so in a way I’m trying to give 100 Butches, it as a rebirth myself. And giving back to Number 35 our communities because the old ways of Elisha Lim how people were back before colonization have been lost and disappeared. So I find my responsibility as a storyteller is to tell it as much and as true and honest as I possibly can.”

Elisha came out so late. When Bibliography she was 26 she dumped her fi- Amnesty International (2008) Take Action: UN ance and moved to Berlin, which Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: started a sharp learning curve Canada must set positive example, Accessed On- including lesbian squat houses, line, May 1, 2008. queer trailer parks, transgender pride parades and an Ethical Slut Carter, Sarah (2008) The Importance of Being Mo- reading group. She has since nogamous: Marriage and Nation Building in West- played in Drag King circuits from ern Canada to 1915, Calgary: University of Alberta Berlin to Jerusalem, illustrated Press. for queer zines in London and Vienna and runs a tribute night Gilden, Andrew (2007) “Preserving the seeds of in Toronto called Lesbian Blues gender fluidity: tribal courts and the berdache tra- from the Thirties. She draws a dition,” Michigan Journal of Gender and the Law, comic strip called 100 Butches 40 13(1). about Butch-gazing, which has NMP been featured in lesbian maga- Lovejoy, Bess (2008) “Two Spirit Peoples,” The Sa- zines in Australia, England, Aus- cred Fire, 2-Spirited People of the 1st Nations, Fall tria and the U.S. You can check 2008. out more of her beautiful comics here: Meyer-Cook, F., & Labelle, D. (2004). “Namaji: Two- Spirit organizing in Montreal, Canada,” Journal of www.qpoccomics.blogspot.com/ Gay & Lesbian Social Services, 16(1).

Stu Marvel is not as young as she used to be, but she’s a whole lot gayer. http://www.qpoccomics.blogspot.com/

41 NMP 3 Poems Trish Salah

42 NMP

Kern

In the transparency gestation she has whiling been within long limned interiors. (Culled of) hopefulness of translation hoping, when we break, all fall out. 3 am on Maitland (recollecting) slow to realize he is looking to pick up–

The girls are crooning, tell us a story. And I refuse the offer of a ride, you know what they mean. Tell something and his cruiser shadows me, hot. and he’s a gentleman, sweet talkin’ me.

Okay, this was me out at the Pope, with I’m curious as I get in, still playing my beer and bad disco, drag kings performing part, but virginal white trash. or the part of a girl who plays virginal, in a scrap of net, slip of skirt, big boots Now, then and then, there I got snarky, walking a working girls’ stroll. tending your drunken, tending to looks “spoilt,” intending on “such a witty and He’s Black and I convince myself that can- subversive gesture” and “oh my identity,” cels out the gun, the uniform, to get past too, into it, to pick up… so drunk I float on the thought we’ve something in common and he’s… I still remember her, she or I with subur- he’s just fucking massive, and somehow ban femme prettiness. That was maybe that’s exciting when the offence, losing nights at the bar; it is he’s so nice and from Brampton, even. how the body behaves, or the community. I don’t know if that means I’m “safe.” Eyes sliding down and away, as if to an- nounce, “You can’t police desire.” It’s not Anyway, I’m nervous but reeling him in, so obvious, some stumbling i am I aim to reeling away, going on about my college, be– asking about his marriage… in the moment I’m such a white girl So, slipping past, and having gotten I could be wearing angora, you know? 43 tossed, going nowhere home but still lumi- Still not knowing if or how I want to be nous, I cannot help, who cannot help– But “safe.” notice NMP I let myself be dropped a few blocks from my stride and skirt, short and tight like my my door, boots, Try to imagine, my boyfriend, the cop– high gloss to thighs gash hips, top scraps keep his number for months. of net, as the cruiser pulls up, its driver hails me.

I’m unpracticed, unprofessional, so very hands over fist

1. 2. I can’t make myself walk into the new In rubber tire swings, in the church yard– Flamingo, Speakeasy, whatever… we do not make it– overlook the lamp lit I put my nerves on you, waiting. parking lot.

As queer a girl as I to hold in this past my Not sure where the snow storm was, when hand we fly, a brick in it, even if grade 8 small to hold. travel home is always moving down time

Being asked for is not always clear, what – legs in fishnets splayed wide, a grassy is slope – her pause is also your visible age, my vis- to the wrong you. Boys keep swinging, I ible sex. can’t–

Holly came from Miami, F.L.A., scratchy on understanding is no ground clearer. u.h.f., as junior high Sexies threw the punches. You don’t just cut people out of your life, you do it with years of violent hollow. In queue, look to the proper young couple all in leather, To come round here and expect to just their baby swaddled against the cool night be her. To look everywhere without a right. air. “Did you like the band?” How to word it, these two weeks in sum- 44 mer… NMP A suspect want, once voiced, a school Everyone’s home. yard kiss, an earring torn out to the limits of prettiness… Trish Salah is a Montreal-based writer, activist and steals a self from Jen, again. teacher at Concordia and Bishop’s Universities. Her writing addresses questions of desire, identity and the precarity of belonging. She has been Or, trying to protect me, you ask, “Should politically active in grassroots, campus-based and we just go home?” labour organizations, on issues of Palestinian solidarity, anti-capitalism, sex workers’ rights, anti- racism, queer and trans rights. Her first book of poetry Wanting in Arabic was published by TSAR in 2002 and her recent writing appears in the journals Open Letter, Atlantis, Aufgabe, and West Coast Line. Sexual Healing I’m the only guy on staff and chicks don’t Nicholas Little have prostates.

Did you know that 17% of all women have chronic vaginal pain that can make it hard to use a tampon or have sex? Well the vaginal physiotherapist who came to tell Originally published in Capital Xtra, vol. 197, us about it did. I felt the chakra-shatter- December 10 2008. ing prostate orgasm of my fantasies escap- ing me once again and settled in to learn Dyspareunia. Vulvovaginitis. Pubococ- about pre- and post-menopausal vaginal cygeus. Sacrotuberous. Each of them a challenges that can make sex a painful Scrabble knock out in its own right. experience, get in the way of developing confident sexual self-esteem and also pre- My full time job is handing out lube in Ot- vent you from wearing your pants as tight tawa’s bathhouses, but in my off hours I as you’d like. teach women and men how to give blowjobs at Venus Envy, an education-focused The instructor, who had been practicing sex store downtown. I started doing it last physiotherapy for 25 years, re-trained mid- year when Shelley, the owner, moved to career to help ladies with incontinence Halifax for a year with her partner Steve, issues. She said she enjoyed that but who’d been giving the workshop up to that eventually it, too, got to be the same old, point. They didn’t interview me for the job same old. So she retrained to be a vaginal and as far as I know they didn’t talk to any physiotherapist. She told us that in vagi- of my former lovers. It’s one of the only nal physio training courses, students learn places that’ll hire you as long as you truly hands-on by practicing on each other. 45 suck. A woman burdened with dyspareunia or

About a month back I got invited to a vulvovaginitis can meet with a physio- NMP free workshop for Venus Envy staff. The therapist to reduce pain, increase func- email was pretty brief - it just said we’d tional ability and reclaim the life of great learn about the pelvic floor. Somehow in sex and hosiery she’s entitled to. Over my head I interpreted that to mean they’d 6-12 months, in weekly or bi-weekly ses- teach us how to squeeze our bums in spe- sions, the therapist will guide the patient cial ways while getting done to make our through a series of exercises, which the pa- prostates go bonkers. In retrospect, that tient also practices at home. For the first was a really dumb assumption given that couple weeks, the therapist may penetrate the patient anally in order to mobilize her that she’d need to stand on a corner in run- coccyx bone, to which many of the pelvic down Hintonburg to earn enough money to floor muscles attach. Once mobilized, the go see her dentist – “…after all, with one following sessions will involve incremental tooth missing, I’ve already got the right vaginal penetration: first one finger, then look.” two, slowly working out the pelvic pain. The therapist will model diaphragmatic Last year a local gay guy approached me breathing for relaxation. She might use and asked if I was involved in planning the vaginal dilators - hard plastic dildos, basi- Ottawa actions for December 17th, the cally - to progressively stretch the patient’s International Day to End Violence Against vaginal walls with comfort. Sex Workers. Yeah I am, I told him, think you’ll come check it out? I dunno, he said. Then it struck me: here is a lady who deep- I mean, I’m definitely against violence in all ly understands wellness as the intersection its forms, but sex work… This was one week of the many dimensions of self. Aside from after jurors found Robert Pickton guilty of the toll it takes on her body, living with brutally murdering six sex workers on his chronic physical pain can thwart a woman’s pig farm in Vancouver. capacity for intimacy, confidence, sexual satisfaction and the freedom to define how When I was a kid growing up in Alberta, the she will engage with the world around her. mother of one particularly devout family at the local Full Gospel Tabernacle Church The physiotherapist uses her own hands used to talk about “ladies of the night” as if and body as curative tools, sometimes in- they were stiletto-wearing phantoms that serting them inside the client, in order to wafted out of sewer drains. Once she even heal, soothe and increase the capacity for took us to see them in a twisted kind of 46 pleasure. It is a physical intervention to horror spectator sport. Guys from the high NMP facilitate sexual, social, emotional and per- school used to drive by and throw pen- haps even spiritual wellness. A truly holis- nies. tic remedy. And a testament to the integral role of physical and sexual needs if a life is How do sex workers become extraterres- to be balanced in health. trial beings in our mind’s eye? How do we come to construct them as so utterly in- I hear people trash talk hookers all the human and unlike us normal folk that at a time. When the veneer on a friend’s front panel discussion on prostitution earlier this tooth came off, exposing a haggard, filed year, Jeff Leiper, President of the Hinton- down spike in her smile, she lamented how burg Community Association, inexplicably much it would cost to replace it and joked argued that Hintonburg hookers aren’t part of his community – they just happen in order to heal, soothe and increase the to live and work in the very same neigh- capacity for pleasure. It is a physical in- bourhood. tervention to facilitate sexual, social, emotional and perhaps even spiritual wellness. Some people think all sex workers must be A truly holistic remedy. And a testament victims, because who – given real options to the integral role of physical and sexual – would choose to do that kind of work. needs if a life is to be balanced in health. They argue that we are too poor, young, dominated or addicted to know what we are doing. And so they must help us by speaking for us and acting on our behalf. They discount sex worker voices that say it is not the sex that is killing them and it’s surely not the money - it’s the police vio- Nicholas Little is a sex educator, outreach worker lence, the constant incarceration and their and writer living in Ottawa. You can follow his blog neighbours’ vigilantism to deny them their at http://www.ickaprick.blogspot.com Charter rights and dismantle due process before the law.

On a good day, in the right headspace, when both the client and I manage to tem- porarily suspend our egos, sex work can be an act identical in intent and execution as that of the vaginal physiotherapist. It isn’t always that. And it doesn’t always have to be. It can be purely erotic, purely a laugh, 47 purely kinky experimentation or purely labour. But it can also be the provision of pleasure as antidote to the cumulative pain NMP amassed by any human who dares to sur- vive and thrive in a world that constantly seeks to obstruct self-determination, be it individual or collective.

For an hour, sometimes two, I use my own hands and body as curative tools, sometimes inserting them inside the client, La New Born Canadienne Le libre échange des marchandises sur les Mathilde Géromin continents, les océans et dans l’air ne cesse de s’accroître, la circulation de l’humain est de loin la plus contrôlée. Le libre droit et choix de décider d’habiter et de travailler dans un monde meilleur, reste et restera pour longtemps encore Au moment où la France fait la chasse aux comme une idée folle et saugrenue pour la immigrés illégaux jusque dans les écoles plupart des gouvernements sinon tous. primaires, je deviens ce qu’on appelle une néo-canadienne, une immigrée légale, qui Car c’est bien connu : les immigrés vien- peut payer ses impôts, voter et voyager nent voler le travail et les femmes et c’est avec ce fameux passeport. À considérer à cause d’eux si il y a la crise. Alors on fer- comme un honneur d’après le gouverne- me les frontières. ment canadien. Et quand par bonheur on fait parti des Sachant que si je le déshonneure, ce élus, on vous entrouve la porte mais il faut même gouvernement peut décider de me s’essuyer les pieds longtemps (on ne sait l’enlever... jamais, si on avait de la crotte sous les tal- Il s’est passé un temps infini entre le mo- ons), montrer patte blanche, et s’allonger ment où j’ai décidé de vivre sur le sol cana- de tout son long par terre pour qu’on vous dien (1995) et celui où je peux enfin vivre carresse gentillement le ventre, sans grog- sur ce sol sans avoir d’angoisse de papiers ner, surtout ne pas grogner. (2008). Un temps de course contre la bureaucratie Garder un profil bas, toujours, c’est un hon- et la bêtise humaine. neur, ne l’oubliez pas, que ce grand pays 48 vous accueille. NMP Malgrè cette bureaucratie et cette bêtise « Les Canadiens et les Canadiennes sont étant là pour en décourager plus d’un, j’ai fiers de leur citoyenneté, qui figure parmi décidé d’immigrer.Pourtant je n’ai fuit au- les plus prisées au monde. » site du CIC cune situation économique dévastatrice, ni aucun régime politique destructeur, ni Alors comment qu’on fait pour devenir même une histoire de vie horrible. J’ai en- KANAYIENNE??? core de la famille, des amis que j’aime et qui m’aime, dans mon pays d’origine. Ben c’est simple : J’ai voulu immigrer parce que je peux Déjà si t’es sidatique, pauvre, pas éduqué, toucher le bonheur de plus près ici, c’est noir, musulman, et que tu as plus de 40 tout et c’est beaucoup. ans…oublie-ça. Si ton travail fait partie de la liste des mé- l’argent à ses amis une fois que les pho- tiers non désirés, oublie-ça! tocopies signées conformes par la banque ont été approuvées… Sinon tu fais ce qu’on appelle un dossier de demande de résidence permanente, ça Autre obstacle : coûte 550 $. J’avais échoué le passage de la visite médi- Alors c’est une série de questions, sur tes cale obligatoire.(coût : 100$) études, ton travail etc. Car au Canada « L’examen médical vise à Plus t’es jeune (et encore à l’âge de la pro- garantir que le demandeur n’a aucun pro- création), plus tu gagnes des points. blème de santé qui représente un danger Tu as fait des études universitaires, tu pour la santé ou la sécurité publiques, ou gagnes encore des points. qui serait un fardeau excessif pour les ser- Plus tu as de points, plus tu peux gagner le vices sociaux ou de santé au Canada. » droit de t’établir. Alors avec mon pipi (et un peu de sang de- Moi j’ai échoué une première fois dans) je devenais un fardeau excessif pour Raisons : le gournement. Pas assez d’années de travail (il faut au Donc mon dossier est resté en hold jusqu’à moins avoir travaillé 3 ans à temps plein), ce que je puisse leur démontrer que j’étais pas assez d’argent sur mon compte en assez normale. banque. Alors re-visite chez le médecin (100$) pour certifier ma bonne santé. Ah oui?…Euhhh bon d’accord. Pour ce faire je fais attention de ne pas boire d’alcool ni fumer de « drogue » pen- Je suis retournée faire me devoirs, j’ai ap- dant deux semaines. Juste des légumes et pris qu’il fallait leur prouver que je possé- de l’eau, pour faire un beau pipi et donner dais (au moins pendant trois mois) la som- du bon sang. 49 me de 6000$ sur mon compte en banque. Et bingo…j’ai réussi le test. Chaque étranger d’où qu’il vienne doit Mon corps est apte à s’établir sur le sol Ca- posséder cette somme. Donc l’immigration nadien sans le mettre en danger. NMP canadienne est une immigration de « riches ». Me voilà résidente permanente. Alors que faire quand on est pauvre? On Je peux y rester toute ma vie, si le droit de attend de devenir riche ? Ou bien on em- vote ne m’intéresse pas. prunte cette somme à plein de gens dif- férents (amis, famille), on la garde sur son Mais tous les 5 ans il faut refaire sa carte compte les fameux trois mois pour avoir de résidence (50$). Ça veut dire remplir des preuves bancaires, et on redonne encore et encore des papiers, attendre des 50 NMP mois, pour obtenir une carte valide. Et pen- taient tous les papiers à chaque fois). dant ce temps on ne peux pas voyager, car Ensuite tu reçois un beau carnet qui on ne peut pas prouver quand on rentre au s’appelle « Regard sur le Canada » avec Canada,qu’on est résidente permanente une petite note qui te dit de bien lire le doc- puisqu’il garde l’ancienne carte quand on ument car tu dois te préparer pour passer fait son renouvellement….Et si on décide l’examen de citoyenneté. de faire un grand voyage, surtout penser à ne pas dépasser les six mois fatals hors Et puis tu attends 1 an et demi avant du pays. Sinon la résidence permanente d’obtenir le droit de passer ce bel exam- est annulée, et on retombe dans la case en. départ. Oui oui un examen comme à l’école avec des questions à choix multiples. Alors pour éviter toutes ces paperasseries Car si tu veux devenir canadien tu dois et ces regards obliques à chaque fois connaître tout sur le pays (pourquoi pas). qu’on revient de l’étranger, j’ai décidé de demander ma citoyenneté. Bon c’est vrai « # Examen de la citoyenneté j’avais aussi envie de pouvoir voter un jour Ce que vous devez savoir au sujet du Can- NPD. ada pour réussir l’examen pour la citoyen- Et puis d’avoir un passeport qui me per- neté et ce à quoi vous devez vous attendre mettrait de ne pas passer par la case pendant l’examen » déclaration des douanes de l’aéroport à chaque fois que je reviens de France. Car Alors un jour tu te retrouves dans une salle je suis toujours une terroriste alimentaire comble de 80 personnes dans le même cas qui veut faire passer sous le manteau, des que toi, toutes immigrantes, à qui on parle boites de fois gras, du fromage qui pue ou avec un petit air condescendant comme encore des litres de vin rouge, normal je si nous étions les derniers débiles de la 51 suis FRANÇAISE…. terre.

Donc maintenant je serai CANADIENNE, et Et là tu réponds à des questions aussi dé- NMP les canadiens c’est bien connus sont de biles les unes que les autres. Et tu enrages gentils touristes bien élevés. parce que tu te dis que si tu étais née ici, jamais au grand jamais tu n’aurais eu à Pour ça il a fallu attendre d’avoir vécu sur passer cet examen sous le regard mépri- le sol candadien 1095 jours minimum. sant de la reine accroché au mur. Ensuite tu payes 100$ pour remplir encore et encore des papiers, où on te pose tou- allez hop un jeu: un petit aperçu quiz de la jours les mêmes questions (comme s’ils je- culture canadienne extrait de http://www.cic.gc.ca/quiz/questions-fra. de vote car si la réponse est fausse, retour aspx à la case départ de la demande de citoyen- « Questionnaire sur la citoyenneté qui vous neté… permettra d’évaluer vos connaissances en matière de citoyenneté. « # Cérémonie de citoyenneté Question 11 Ce que vous devez savoir au sujet de la cérémonie de citoyenneté une fois que Quel personnage de bande dessinée a été vous avez complété toutes les étapes cocréé par le Canadien Joe Shuster? menant à la citoyenneté canadienne »

A) Wonder Woman Ouiiiiiiiiiiiiii faire allégence à la reine, je sais, B) Superman tout le monde en rêve, et moi je l’ai fait! C) Batman Convocation un mercredi matin à 9h30. En présence de 375 autres immigrants, on C) Exact! Superman a été inventé par le attend tous que le Canada se fasse plaisir Canadien Joe Shuster. avec ses petites cérémonies d’intronisation, et nous on attend que ça passe…ça fait Lequel des sports suivants a été inventé 2 heures qu’on attend assis dans cette par un Canadien? grande salle. On trépigne pour signer encore des putains A) Le football de papiers. Un ennui certain se lit sur tous B) Le tennis les visages. Et j’entends un employés dire C) Le basketball que c’est mieux des grands rassemble- ments, comme ça ils font une batch de 375 C) Exact! Le basketball a été inventé par le d’un coup! 52 Canadien James Naismith en 1891. Le gouvernement dépense moins d’argent, NMP Ayoye les canadiens ont crée la culture mais dépense le temps de ses futurs citoy- américaine… » ens sans problème. Et en plus, après avoir signé ces papiers, t’es obligée de rester Bref le Canada a inventé l’inconscient col- pour chanter ô Canada et jurer allégeance lectif américain. à la reine… Si tu veux aller pisser on te prend tes pa- Et après ce magnifique moment de culture piers pour t’obliger à revenir!!! canadienne si on obtient la moyenne sur 20 on est accepté pour la cérémonie de Et tous venus de 75 pays différents, on se citoyenneté. Attention toutefois de bien lève indifférents pour lever la main droite répondre à la question concernant le doit et prêter le serment d’allégeance à la reine numero 2 d’angleterre (et oui nous som- http://www.cic.gc.ca/francais/celebrer/ mes toujours une sorte de colonie) et à ses menu-reaffirmation.asp descendants… Et ensuite on se relève cette fois pour me voilà donc une des quelques 185 000 chanter Ô Canada, ou plutôt marmonner nouveaux arrivants devenus citoyens can- et faire du Lipsink sur la magnifique et adiens chaque année. Et j’étais le numéro emportante musique jouée 2 fois, d’abord 155 du matin. pour les francophones et la 2ème pour les J’aime bien les numéros.Je suis la sujet de anglophones. sa reine numéro 155. Quel ravissement!

J’ai même pas eu droit à mon petit drapeau En tout pour devenir le numéro 155, j’ai rouge, ni à un pins…Mon amie Caro, une dépensé : 7050 $ belge, a passé son examen et sa cérémonie en une seule fois, le même jour. Et en plus Et après on pense que les immigrés sont elle a eu droit à son drapeau et son pins et pauvres et aculturés…. même que la juge lui a parlé ….c’est par- Bienvenue au Canada. ce que là, le gouvernement ne voulait pas faire perdre trop de temps à ses employés (elle travaille pour le gouvernement).

Alors toi aussi si tu veux devenir a new born canadian et que tu es née sur le sol canadien, tu peux le faire et vivre des émo- tions royales. Je t’invites donc à participez à une céré- monie de réaffirmation de ta citoyenneté 53 afin de montrer ton engagement envers le Canada et the queen of the queens. Mathilde Géromin. Son travail porte sur le corps

dans sa représentation ou son senti, essentiel- NMP « Organisez une cérémonie de réaffirma- lement en traitant des genres et l’image de la femme. Toujours avec humour pour prendre une tion. Vous pouvez organiser une cérémo- distance nécessaire, toujours en musique pour nie de réaffirmation dans votre collectivi- sentir les corps vivants en mouvement rythmique. té, sur votre lieu de travail ou dans votre C’est un jeu de montage, un jeu de point de vue. établissement d’enseignement. Pour ce Une mise en avant du quotidien évident et trop faire, veuillez suivre les étapes suivantes. souvent invisible. Née en France Lamathilde vit et » travaille à Montréal, elle fait partie du collectif de performances les WWKA, et est une membre très Tu as juste à visiter active de la scène des arts visuels de Montréal. Deep Lez I Statement radical lesbianisms as they have histori- Allyson Mitchell cally unfolded, and look to provide correc- tives in this regard. Unfortunately, this is often accomplished through the wholesale dismissal of a radical lesbian practice and identification. Deep Lez was coined to ac- knowledge the urgent need to develop inclusive libratory feminisms while examining Deep Lez is an experiment, a process, an the strategic benefits of maintaining some aesthetic and a blend of theory and prac- components of a radical lesbian theory and tice. Deep Lez is right this minute and it practice. This project is carefully situated is rooted in herstories and theories that not to simply hold on to history, but rather came before. It takes the most relevant to examine how we might cull what is use- and capable ideas and uses them as tools ful from lesbian herstories to redefine con- to create new ways of thinking while simul- temporary urban lesbian (and queer) exis- taneously clinging to more radical politics tence. In so doing, ‘lesbian’ is resurrected that have already happened but definitely as a potential site of radical identification, aren’t over yet. Part of the deep of Deep rather than one of de-politicized apathy (or Lez is about commitment, staying power worse, shame). and significance. Part of the deep of Deep Lez is about philosophies and theories, as Deep Lez originally began as a cultural in “wow man, that’s deep.” project of mine, largely informing my art practice. I make lesbian feminist monsters Deep Lez uses cafeteria-style mixings of using abandonded domestic handicraft. craft, context, food, direct action and hu- This has meant the creation of giant 3D 54 man connections to maintain radical dyke sasquatch ladies and room-size vagina NMP politics and resistant strategies. Part quilt- dentatas. The objects and environments ing bee, part public relations campaign, that I create are about articulating some and part Molotov cocktail, Deep Lez seeks of the ideas and imaginings from second- to map out the connections between the wave feminisms that were so foundational second position feminisms that have sus- to me, while still remaining committed to tained radical lesbian politics and the cur- an inclusive third wave theory and prac- rent ‘third wave’ feminisms that look to tice. In a short time, this idea grew beyond unpack many of the concepts upon which my own practice, and took hold among a those radical politics have been devel- variety of local and international commu- oped. These recent feminisms have set nities. For example, the language of Deep forth a host of important critiques about Lez has been adopted by those at the Michi- gan Womyn’s Music Festival art into their politics and how who lobby for trans inclu- they live their lives and con- sion, as well as the organiz- tinue to get fired up about ers of Camp Trans, who use ideas. Deep Lez can offer al- an article about Deep Lez in ternative ways of imagining their annual trans solidarity the world and who we are. It packages. Here, Deep Lez is meant to be passed hand- is mobilized to move radi- to-hand from crafter to film- cal lesbianism and identifi- maker to academic to stu- cation with or allegiance to dents to teachers to leaders trans communities out of and back again. My wish is the realm of either/or and that it permeates and also into the space of both/and. I loosens things up. also recently received word that a Deep Lez art exhibi- Deep Lez is not meant to tion is being mounted in become its own dogma but San Francisco next year, in to encourage thinking about which lesbian identification new feminist and dyke stra- is to be explored as a rel- tegic positions. Every Deep evant and strategic site of Lez text, installation, mani- young queer urban politics. festo and potluck offering is Given the growth of this different because it is con- idea, I am currently under- tingent on the contributions taking the project of writing and participations of many a Deep Lez manifesto that and also because it is ac- begins with this Deep Lez I cumulating and discarding 55 statement. as it goes. We can band together through Deep Lez to

Deep Lez is meant to be a imagine and realize our way NMP point of departure for me to out of this dysfunctional start thinking about my poli- habitat to create new ecolo- tics and what is important gies, new policies and new to me and my communities. styles without war, poverty, Deep Lez is meant as to be violence and waste. a macramed conceptual tangle for people to work Deep Lez is the volunteer, though how they integrate the workshop coordinator, the curator, the consumer, the first initi- Allyson Mitchell is a maximalist artist working ated and the instigator - anyone who gets predominantly in sculpture, installation, and film. intrigued by this bell-bottomed fat-assed Since 1997, Mitchell has been melding feminism and pop culture to play with contemporary ideas catch all: whether they are dykes or not, about sexuality, autobiography, and the body, they are still Deep Lez. largely through the use of reclaimed textile and abandoned craft. Signed in solidarity for new kind of sister- hood that isn’t based on gender and privi- Her work has exhibited in galleries and festivals lege and a new kind of brotherhood that across Canada, the US, Europe and East Asia, including the Museum of Contemporary Canadian isn’t based on rape and pillage. Art, the Andy Warhol Museum, and Walker Art Center. In 2009, Mitchell’s show Lady Sasquatch will tour galleries across Canada. Deep Lez Film Craft, a program of her films with fellow filmmaker Christina Zeidler, is also currently making its way across North America. She has also performed internationally, most notably with the fat performance troupe Pretty Porky and Pissed Off, as well as publishing both writing and music. Currently, Mitchell is curating a survey of Judy Chicago’s textile based work titled When Women Rule the World for the Textile Museum of Canada opening February, 2008.

Mitchell holds a PhD from York University, where she is Assistant Professor in the School of Wom- en’s Studies.

You can find more of her work at: allysonmitch- 56 ell.com and the Feminist Art Base at the Brooklyn NMP Museum http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/ feminist_art_base/gallery/allyson_m... An Interview with Catherine Opie Marie-Claire MacPhee

On November 4, 2008, the date of the United States Election that anticipated the victory of Barack Obama, Marie-Claire MacPhee in- terviewed Catherine Opie. Opie’s mid-life retrospective, Catherine Opie: American Photographer opened at the Guggenheim Museum in New York on September 26, 2008 and runs until January 7, 2009. For more information about the exhibition see: www.guggenheim.org 57

I’ll start out by asking you how things are looking in NMP the US today?

Well, we’ll see. It was really amazing. I live in a predominantly African Ameri- can neighbourhood I’ve been here for 6 years, and I’ve never seen a line at the polls, but today we had to wait an hour and of the show, I was really excited to have a half to vote. I think that it’s true that we’re it up during this historic political campaign going to see an unprecedented number of as well as after the election. voters out, and that’s really exciting. I hope the show allows people to think in terms of their own notions of representa- What’s the feeling around who will win, tion, and how they begin to relate to ideas and is there any fear surrounding this elec- of humanity by looking so humbly at peo- tion? ple that they might fear, or at certain positions that they might fear. Do they walk Obama will win. away with an increased sense of homophobia or do they walk away with the hope I think the only fear right now is that we all that maybe the world’s not actually such a feel so confident that he will win, and we’ll weird place? be highly disappointed if all of a sudden he doesn’t. That exact same thing happened Even though I’ve always been out in my in the first election with Bush and Gore. work, I’ve never really known if that actual- And to wake up the next morning and see ly provides any possibility of social change that Bush was elected was a shock, and in people’s minds, or if it is just really im- we’ve been living in that shock for 8 years portant for me within my own community as a country now. After experiencing that, I in terms of visibility and representation. feel like we’re in a position of really having the potential for a positive change. We’re all hoping for change. Did you play a key role in selecting all of the images for the show? 58 NMP Given the current political reality in the US, Oh completely. The only body of work that I and given the history of the work you’ve did not select were the pieces from Ameri- done representing queer communities, can Cities, which were picked by the cu- raising serious questions about the “Ameri- rator, Jennifer Blessing. Otherwise, I had can Dream” and such, how does it feel to models that I worked on in my studio for a have this really important show at the Gug- year and a half, then we printed everything genheim right now? to scale, and then we hung it. So we knew exactly what the show was going to look My work is not only political, it’s personal, like going in to it. It’s really important if you and there are also highly aesthetic mo- have four floors of museum like that for it ments in it. Because of some of the content to be very precise. After staring at those models for a year and work. The art world has always gone along half, how was it to see the real thing? with whatever I’m thinking, whether it be issues of queer identity that I bring forward Oh it was amazing, just mind-boggling ac- in different years and times, or by studying tually. It’s one of those once-in-a-lifetime American culture and how it’s constructed experiences. To have a museum give over around us, what it looks like, and what it that much space to you when you’re only means in relationship to another kind of 47 years old is just phenomenal. Everybody specificity of identity. keeps asking me if I have the post-show traumatic syndrome or if I’m depressed, I get dumb questions; I remember in the and I’m not at all, I’m still kind of shocked beginning, everybody would be looking at that my work is being viewed by almost my portraits and asking “is that a boy or 5000 people a day, so there’s no room for a girl” and I would think, “well, that’s not being depressed in that. really the point.” Or with Self Portrait Cut- ting or Self Portrait Cutting Pervert people would ask, “Did that hurt?” or “Did you get Of your entire body of work, do you think really drunk before you did that?” And I there is a particular series or even a specif- would answer “No, I didn’t get drunk, and ic photo that you’re most well known for? yes it hurt, but you transcend through pain.” I was explaining SM 101 to people Probably Self-Portrait (1993) of the cut- who would just look at me like “what the ting on my back. That is definitely the fuck?” most printed photograph and it’s the most iconic. It’s a stick figure of two girls holding hands which is cut into my back with a I read that you made a very intentional scalpel and it’s dripping a little bit of blood. shift in your work after that series and spe- 59 Not a lot blood, but enough for people to cifically after that Self-Portrait. Why? want to see it.

Yeah, Self Portrait was in the 1995 Whitney NMP Biennial. It was the largest show that I had Does the popularity of that image (and of ever been in and I was heading into a terri- your other work) change in various com- tory of being only identified as “the leather munities; in the queer community vs. the dyke artist”, and I had spent my whole life “mainstream” art world? working on, and being very interested in other things. Photographing my own com- I don’t think so. Actually, that’s one thing munity was something that I decided that that has always been surprising about my I had to do, but it wasn’t predominantly what I was interested in. I did it because it the Whitney Biennial because I thought, was a very political time and it was a very “ok, if I don’t switch it now I’m going to upsetting time. An enormous number of have a really hard time switching it later”. my friends were dying of AIDS or were HIV positive, and there was an incredible political rift in this country; it was before Clinton How was your work that followed that shift got elected, so we had gone from Reagan received by your audience? to Bush Senior and they were completely ignoring the health crisis in the gay com- Really well. It allowed me to continue a long munity, homophobia was rampant, and it dialogue going back and forth between is- was just a really hard time. sues that fascinate me, and that go beyond my own queer identity. I’ve always been an out lesbian, and out as part of the leather community, and I felt that it was time to create something that In terms of shifts; as someone who came was historical and familial and that dealt out as a lesbian in the 1980s in San Fran- with my own ideas of representation of my- cisco, can I ask you to talk about some ma- self and my community. jor shifts that you’ve seen in that community in the last 30 years? Before that, I had made a whole body of work about the gentrification of Macarthur The 1980s in San Francisco were an incred- Park in Los Angeles, and prior to that I had ible time. The queer community was just done a thesis on the construction of mas- coming out of disco, Harvey Milk and the ter plan communities, so I’ve always talked mayor had just been shot, and the Cas- about these structures. From American cit- tro was engaged with being completely 60 ies to the notion of ice houses and surfers out and proud. It was also a highly politi- NMP being temporary communities, all of my cized time; there were marches to raise work definitely surrounds - in a non-linear awareness about El Salvador, and when fashion - ideas of specificity of identity in Jesse Jackson came to speak, there was a relation to notions of community. But with- large march at the Democratic Convention in that, I don’t think that people necessarily -- which of course brought an enormous have a singular identity; we move through amount of homophobes out who were all many different chapters of our lives with saying “You’re Against Jesus.” many ideas about how we are living our lives, or what’s happening at any given time. I have black and white photographs of this history because at the time I was a street I shifted back to doing freeways right after photographer. I not only photographed the gay community, but also the financial dis- of a separatist position from each other up trict of San Francisco. Women were, for the to that point. first time, really entering the work force and I was looking at the gendered model Historically, I couldn’t have been at a bet- of dress and what people were wearing; it ter place for such an amazing 10-15 years was the time of the shoulder padded skirt of vast transformation. And since then, and suit and I was really fascinated with those the early 90s I have watched so many of kinds of things. my butch dyke friends become men, which is another huge shift in terms of issues of I couldn’t have asked to move to a better identity. city, but it was hard. We watched the first round of AIDS decimate the community, which resulted in these amazing enlighten- Do you think that some of these major ing moments of feeling an absolutely huge shifts in the community have affected how community spirit. In what other city could your work is viewed? you - on gay pride at the Folsom Street Fair - walk down the street without your shirt on I would say that my work has shifted be- and have chains wrapped around you? It cause my own personal life has shifted more was so amazing in terms of how you could than my relationship to the community. I experiment with your own sexuality in rela- am basically married, not legally married tion to queer identity. But then we watched because we’re going to see what happens all the bathhouses get shut down south of today, and I wasn’t going to go get married Market, and we watched the Castro turn and then have it voted against, it’s just too into a place full of mourning. depressing. I know the numbers are really important, but I don’t want to go do some- That really transformed the community in thing that’s going to be taken away from 61 so many ways, and also created a political me, I’ve worked too hard in life to not have platform that went beyond the Castro, and that experience, the thought of it makes those are really important things to remem- me kind of sick, so I’m only going to do it if NMP ber. Even though Harvey Milk was huge, he it sticks, if it’s real. didn’t create the same kind of platform of activism as the devastation of AIDS in the I think that my life is just different now. I community. So a lot of different perspec- have a family; I’m not just a single dyke tives were formed in relation to that. It was wondering around with my Australian also a really polarizing time between the Shepherd going from relationship to re- gay male community and the lesbian com- lationship. I’m in my first long term rela- munity, which had maintained somewhat tionship, and I’m monogamous and doing things that I have never really done before. being able to see “Pervert” on your chest And it’s nice, but it has settled me in way. while you’re nursing your baby (in Self Por- When you have a full time tenured teach- trait Nursing)? ing position at a research university a full time art career on top of that, and you I think a lot of people don’t even notice. have a family, you don’t have much time I had one really bad comment in Art in for gallivanting around like you once used America by a critic who put her personal to. Things just shift and with that, your per- comment in parenthesis. She wrote “the ceptions shift. child looks too old to be nursing”. It was taken right after his first birthday and he’s a tall boy, and I just thought, does he look How do you feel about the fact that some like he’s too old to be nursing because I people find your Self Portraits (both Cut- have “pervert” carved on my chest? What ting and Nursing) shocking? are you really saying here, in parentheses?

That’s a hard question for me to answer. I’ve never thought of them as shocking; I guess a lot of people can’t accept the fact they just always were what they were. I that a self proclaimed pervert can actually was always more shocked by people’s re- be a mother who breast feeds her baby, action to them. But I think they’re probably who has chickens, dogs and a family. hard for some people. A friend was telling me that she took her 20 year old nephew Right, because we’re not supposed to have to see the show and he asked “But why, children, don’t you know that? We’re go- why does a person do that to their body?” ing to do bad things to our children (laugh- and she replied, “That’s exactly the ques- ter), like breast-feed them, and make sure 62 tion that this artist is exploring”. And that that they’re allowed to wear tutus if they NMP is the point: why would you go to the ex- want to wear tutus. Goddammit, don’t you tent of creating such a powerful piece in know that he should have a football in his relation to identity, why would a person do hand!?! that? After explaining that to him, he got it. But I don’t know if that’s true across the board. I don’t know that a homophobe will What have people’s reactions been to see- walk into the Guggenheim and leave no ing the full show at the Guggenheim – see- longer a homophobe. But maybe they’ll be ing all of these images together? thinking more. The feedback from most people has been What do you think people’s reactions are to “wow, what a beautiful show”. I haven’t read one scathing review, nor has it been as well. I was in a place of incredible sad- censored. And I thought that there would ness in relation to the attempts at trying be a possibility of censorship on this one . to normalize the gay and lesbian commu- It’s always been a very curious thing for me nity that ended up further alienating the that I’ve never been censored. Chris Ofili leather community. It was shocking to me can make paintings with dung and they’ll when that was happening. We’re normal, get censored. I can have Ron Athey with and for other gays and lesbians to adopt pearls coming out of his ass and nobody the word normal created a further schism blinks. of abnormality.

Why do you think that is? I read an interview that you did where you said that SM was often framed in the I think it’s because the viewer is seduced language of the abnormal and doing that in a certain way. And they also are so ref- stripped it of its humanity. You’ve also said erenced (art) historically, that you end up that your goal is not to normalize. Can you understanding what you are looking at be- talk a bit about that middle ground, about cause you know that you’ve been seeing the reality of trying to live outside of that this style of representation since the 16th dichotomy of the abnormal and normal? Century. It’s a dichotomy of language that I wish None of the work is over the top. Some that didn’t exist, but how does one exist people might think that carving pervert on between those constructed lines of lan- your chest is over the top, but it doesn’t guage? It becomes a polarity; yes it’s com- push other kinds of buttons. Maybe if I had pletely normal to decorate a Christmas a nun carving pervert on my chest, that tree and to make sure your kid has Easter 63 would be the thing: “oh my god, she has a egg hunts and all of that within in the idea nun…”. of family, but still, people don’t believe in

the ability of homosexuals to raise healthy NMP families, and that puts me in the position of It’s so great that people can recognize so being abnormal. many aspects of your work. And I realize that I’m a really low percentile I think it’s really an interesting territory person these days. Meaning that, I’m part to belong to. I’m not interested in being of 4% (or 8%) of the population who are sensational, I never have been. Pervert is homosexuals in America. I’ve succeeded in my hardest piece and it was hard for me the art world, where 1% gets to do that with a Masters Degree. I don’t believe in God that we were more than a sum of our body and there are only 4% of people who actu- parts, and that we were worth more than ally don’t believe in God, which is so amaz- that on a visual level, and I wanted to cre- ing to me. All of these things could make ate a history of my friends. Not only for me abnormal, but I just refuse to think that myself, but because I was a practicing art- there is anything abnormal about me. ist, I was hoping that people would show it. I had no idea that it would launch me When one is a compassionate human being into a big career. When I was doing it, I and is really, truly, interested in ideas of thought, oh fuck, I’m never going to get humanity through a true democracy, then tenure. Nobody is ever going to hire me, there is nothing abnormal about them. But this is it, I’m really shoveling a big pile of with my positioning, I am often pushed dirt over me now. And it was amazing how over that line. I don’t want to be perceived it worked completely opposite. I always tell as a person who accepts the notion of fam- my students that whatever they’re scared ily values just because I have a family now. of, or whatever preconceived notions they Language is a very complicated thing, and have in relation to their careers, is every- that’s one of the reasons why I like making thing that they should put aside. In rela- photographs; it’s another way to engage tion to art, you have to make what you’re with the idea of language and history. thinking in your head, no matter what you think of the consequences will be.

There seems to be a significant stream And that’s basically what I did with my of honesty in relation to humanity and to friends. Instead of making it all about their trying to have conversations about how body parts, or play parties, or our houses people are living, can you talk about the where we all had loft beds with whips hang- 64 importance of that. Back to your Portraits ing down, I wanted to throw them on bright NMP again; you constructed your subjects in colored backgrounds. very royal positions… I’m really interested in portraiture. I’ve been Yeah, with integrity. It’s not about body having a great time photographing these parts. The predominant photography that high school football kids. I started this proj- was being done of the SM community dur- ect last year and I probably have one more ing that period was always about the frac- year to go on it. I’m traveling around the tioning of the body, not the whole of the country just looking at these young men. person in relationship to the body. I’m not doing it to make fun of masculinity, but to look at everything that gets loaded I really believe in human integrity. I felt on these young kids. A lot of them end up going off to war in Iraq and Afghanistan and where it was football and God, and I was what we load on to young men is fascinat- the tomboy who wanted to play with the ing to me, in terms of identity. You look at boys all the time. It’s always been a part of some of them and they don’t even fit their my culture to a certain extent, even though uniforms and you know that some of them I’m not one of those people who watches just don’t want to perform that, while oth- football on the weekends. That would just ers are completely into what that identity not…well, Julie would kick me out of the encompasses. house (laughter).

I decided recently that the reason I like to But I think that the temporary moments make portraits so much, is - as Julie (my that happen in these spaces are fascinat- partner) often reminds me – I’m always ing. Like with ice fishing, with surfers or on staring at somebody in public and I real- a football field, where a temporary commu- ized that my photographs allow me to nity is created and histories are built out of stare for a really long time without being the creation of those identities. told “you’re staring!”

When you provide a person, or a commu- So, why football? nity with a reflection of themselves, not only are you documenting them, but you Football is amazing to me, and the high can also be providing them with a history. school football field is everywhere you go Do you see your work in that way? in this country. It’s complicated. At the time that I was do- And again, in terms of specificity of identi- ing all the portraits of my friends and of the ty, I can regionally map out different ideas gay and lesbian community, a lot of them 65 of identity and of community through high didn’t like them. A lot of them found it too school football, and through the American intense to live with, that’s what they would landscape. say, “It’s really intense Cathy, its such an NMP intense photograph”. I’m really interested When I’m in South Texas, it’s very specific in this honest thing that comes out of im- as compared to Alaska, or Ohio, or here in ages, and I can’t really tell you what that the predominantly African American high means specifically, but there is something school in my neighborhood. It gives me a that I look for that I just keep finding, and I snapshot of a male component of youth think a lot of people have a hard time with culture at a given time in history. And I just what they end up seeing. find it really interesting. I grew up in Ohio My nephew was in the high school football That’s another really timely series; in terms series and he loved it - all of them thought of looking at a community and recording that it was incredible - and there was such a community that some would argue is vulnerability that came through. And in my disappearing…butches seem to be a rare work, I’m always so interested in what is breed these days. iconic, that I create another sense of iconic; a surfer portrait is usually of a gorgeous Yeah…and I’m also one of those butch on guy, with the hair, who is really athletic on butch lovers. the waves, but what do you get when you have a regular surfer just standing before you? In a way, it’s trying to create more of You are? a realistic history in my mind of how images begin to work. Yeah. I’m a butch on butch

Can you tell me a bit about what you’re Fascinating. You’re also a rare breed. working on now? I heard recently about a series called “Girlfriends”... Again, a low percentile.

Girlfriends is a fun body of work; it’s a bit of a play on a title of another body of So is this project coming out of that de- work by the artist Richard Prince who did sire? a series called Girlfriends, but they were all biker chicks, and my girlfriends are all I’ve always dated butches but also have butch dykes. They’re both famous and not been butch identified. I just wanted to 66 famous and include: JD Sampson, KD Lang, make this, it’s new so I don’t know how to NMP Kate from the L-word, I think Sam Ronson exactly talk about it yet. They’re not even is going to pose for me, and then a lot of hanging in the studio I’ve just been shoot- my friends like Pig Pen and Jenny Shimizu ing; I haven’t even lived with them yet. (who we call Chicken). So to take all of these butch dykes and then to title it Girl- friends, raises all of these questions - what Is that one of several projects you’re work- is a butch dyke? Is a butch dyke really a ing on now? girlfriend or a boyfriend? It’s playing with a lot of things and I’m also just enjoying Yeah, Girlfriends and the high school foot- making portraits again. ball series. Then I’m going to go to Italy and photograph in Venice for a month and do a body of work based on Cannelleto the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. Paintings. I might be doing this weird com- Opie has also exhibited at Regen Projects in Los mission for Hanjin Shipping Lines where I Angeles, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, SITE Santa Fe, the Centre d’Art Contem- get put on a container ship in Korea and porain in Geneva, Switzerland and the Kunstmu- ride it all the way to LA (for 11 days) and seum Wolfsburg in Germany. photograph well, whatever I photograph. There’s always stuff. In 2004, Catherine Opie received the Larry Aldrich Award and in 1999 she was the recipient of the Washington University Freund Fellowship. In 1997 she received the Citibank Private Bank Emerging Artist Award. Opie’s work is in the permanent col- lections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Whitney Catherine Opie lives and works in Los Angeles. Museum of American Art, New York; Tate Modern, She was born in Sandusky, Ohio in 1961. She re- London; the Walker Art Center; and the San Fran- ceived her BFA from the San Francisco Art Insti- cisco Museum of Modern Art. tute in 1985, and an MFA from CalArts in 1988. In 2000, Opie was appointed Professor of Fine Art at Yale University, and in 2001 she accepted the position of Professor of Photography at UCLA.

Catherine Opie’s photographs include series of portraits and American urban landscapes, ranging Marie-Claire MacPhee is a Concordia University in format from large-scale color works to smaller graduate who made the obvious transition from black and white silver gelatin prints. Moving from women’s studies to carpentry. When she’s not the territory of the body to the framework of the learning about sustainable building, she is a free- lance researcher and communications coordina- city, Opie’s various photographic series are linked 67 together by a conceptual framework of cultural tor for various NGOs and consulting groups. M-C portraiture. is the programmer for Dykes on Mykes Radio in Montreal and is an East Coaster who now floats NMP Catherine Opie has exhibited extensively both na- between Quebec, Ontario and Nova Scotia. tionally and internationally. A mid-career survey of her work, entitled, “Catherine Opie: American Photographer,” is on view through January 7, 2009 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Recent solo exhibitions have been organized by the Aldrich Museum in Ridgefield, CT, the Mu- Image (of Opie) photographer: Nicole Belle seum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Walker http://homepage.mac.com/csopie/filechute/opie- Art Center in Minneapolis, The Saint Louis Art Mu- hatprint-1.tif seum, the Photographers’ Gallery in London, and Patty Hearst Gets Laid: Imagine getting kidnapped by sex-kitten lesbians and hot-ass butch dykes, and the The Scandelles Meet Stockholm Syndrome starts to make a hell Bruce LaBruce of a lot of sense. If the very idea gets your Dayna McLeod pot boiling and you’re wondering where to hang out with your most unassuming ex- pression innocently pasted on your face in the hopes of meeting your own personal body snatcher and making this dream come true, check out these clips from Give Piece of Ass a Chance, the third mini-porn is a series produced by Toronto’s The Scandelles

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for a few tips and tricks on getting nabbed, grabbed and brainwashed by hotties. Re- nowned for their smart n’ sexy full-on the- atrical productions that dig deep into sexual and social commentary, The Scandelles have teamed up with fag porn oh-my-God, Bruce LaBruce in this playful political satire later, her kidnappers are recognized by a that pokes and prods our cultural obses- student in a, ‘Women in Consequential but sion with celebutant scandal while sexual- Careless Anti-War Groups’ class. Beauti- izing anti-war and feminist activist groups fully cut to a soundtrack of memorable old- and activities from the 1970s. ies, Give Piece of Ass a Chance capitalizes on director LaBruce’s cult and queercore Give Piece of Ass a Chance is directed by background whose work includes spectac- LaBruce and features The Scandelles alter ular alternaporn classics like No Skin Off egos in a 1972 flashback plot in which a My Ass (1991), Super 8½ (1995) and Hus- munitions heiress is kidnapped by a sex- tler White (1996). LaBruce’s most recent terrorist gang who militantly fuck her with film, Otto; or Up with Dead People (2008) anti-war rhetoric and guns, claiming that features a young zombie named Otto who

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the real terrorist is her weapons-producing embarks on a journey of self-discovery with father. The Munitions Heiress is slowly won an underground filmmaker who is trying to over through brainwashing orgies, gun- complete her epic political-porno-zombie sucking blowjobs and good old fashioned movie that she has been working on for cuddling. She joins the group to live hap- years. LaBruce brings this signature hard- pily ever after in Toronto, where, 20 years edge punk porn sensibility to Give Piece of Ass a Chance with an incredible eye for composition and a self-reflexive wink to his own politically charged filmmaking practice. The results are sexy, sassy and Scandelle-licious, making Give Piece of Ass a Chance the ultimate homage to a collective romanticized activist past complete with unrequited ransom demands, vague pleas for peace, and that free-love spirit that lands us all in the sac with girls, girls, grrls.

For more on The Scandelles, visit http://www.thescandelles.com/ For more on Bruce LaBruce, visit http://brucelabruce.com/

Dayna McLeod is a video and performance artist 70 who likes to poke and prod feminism, homopho- NMP bia, and sexually oriented stereotypes with irony, sex toys, and funny business. She has traveled extensively with her performance work, and her videos have played from London Ontario to London England- across Europe, North America, South America, Asia and a few times on TV. She majored in Sculpture in college, Open Media in grad school, and is currently working on a three-part animation with funding from le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec about the trials and tribulations of Va- gina Dentata. Dayna is a Gemini. For the last 12 years, Nikol Mikus has been working in the field of image-making. After graduating from Concordia University with a BA in Communications, special- izing in Film Production, her film, Have you seen my dog? (1996), was screened in the New Emerg- ing Filmmakers category of the Montréal World Film Festival.

She continues to film artistic and corporate videos, as well as photograph dancers, actors, and fashion models within the Montréal community. Currently, Nikol is completing her degree in Commercial Photography at Dawson College. Her photography is conceptual, stylized, and cinematic, focussing on the Edi- torial Portrait. www.nikolmikus.com

(Model: Alyson Wishnousky)

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