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cityscape

Occupy Toronto Takes a Sissy Stroll

Occupy Toronto's LGBT working group hosts a queer history tour in hopes of upping the scene's queer presence

By Kelli Korducki

A Pride flag waving at an Occupy Toronto protest at City Hall. Photo by Jackman Chiu from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

Jordan Bond-Gorr of Occupy the Rainbow—a queer, trans, two-spirited working group of Occupy Toronto—doesn’t mind admitting that the Occupy movement requires more than a one-sentence summary to explain. It’s a controversial opinion, given the flack Occupiers have caught since the protest movement’s September inception, oft-repeated dismissals of the burgeoning wave as an unfocused, catch-all Pinko love-in. But Bond-Gorr offers an alternate interpretation.

“It’s about more than just banks,” he says. “[Occupy protesters] are talking about colonialism and systemic oppression. It’s about a history that’s been used to oppress people so that some can have the wealth at the expense of the others. There’s racism, there’s sexism, there’s homophobia, there’s transphobia. [The movement addresses] all those things that keep people from attaining shared benefit.”

Bond-Gorr’s Occupy analysis followed Sunday evening’s Sissy Stroll, an inaugural event for Occupy the Rainbow that led a dozen or so intrepid strollers around various queer history sites in the area surrounding Occupy Toronto’s primary headquarters at St. James Park, ending with hot cocoa and discussion in the camp’s Free Skool tent. Guided by Pride Toronto’s Roy Mitchell, the tour wasn’t explicitly Occupy-centric; one stop, for instance, included a tongue-in-cheek gaze at the homoerotic statue facade of Ryerson’s Chang School. But it was informative.

“I remember my friends telling me that [people] used to chain the swings together on playgrounds on Sundays so that people wouldn’t have fun,” says Mitchell of the WASPy Upper Canadian sensibilities that dominated Toronto into the 1970s, from which the early queer bar and arts scene provided a sense of much-needed refuge. “So, God love the queers.”

Other stops on Mitchell’s tour included the site of early gay bar Letros Tavern, on the other side of King Street from the King Edward hotel, and the Lesbian Organization of Toronto that was housed at 342 Jarvis in the late 1970s—institutions fuzzed with the passing of time. Early queer movements at the University of Toronto and kooky activist groups like the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence also received their due mention.

A primer on the queer community’s early transgressions against a puritanical Toronto the Good plays into the Occupy mentality like an interactive protest song, serving as a reminder of ongoing thrusts against the status quo. The parallels between queer rights struggles and the Occupy movement’s overarching clamor are why queer activist Kim Koyama thinks Occupy Toronto should have a stronger queer contingency.

“It’s about the disparities in our society and the system that’s broken,” says Koyama. “The real problem is that not enough people understand how and why it impacts us. It’s kind of disturbing to me that there isn’t more of a queer presence here.”

Bond-Gorr hopes to change this. More Occupy the Rainbow events are in the works, and weekly planning sessions are scheduled for Saturday mornings at 11:00a.m.

Comments

  • Charles Reinhardt

    I think it’s wonderful that so many different constituencies are organizing through the impetus given by OWS. However, it is still important to recognize that the unifying appeal of the movement comes through its focus on the financialisation of North American economies and the steady erosion of the real productive economy and the jobs that used to accompany it. In the case of Canada, rising commodity prices have benefited the public purse, driven by speculation on the price of oil and food. This has underlain Canada’s relative insulation from the global financial crisis. But not only is this speculation unstable, it’s also causing a food crisis and encouraging the unbelievably polluting and dangerous oil sand exploration.

    So by all means, continue to harness the energy of the movement for a wide variety of issues – just don’t forget the centrality of finance!

    • Kelli Korducki

      This is a valid point, though I don’t see how rousing the marginalized communities most negatively affected by an unbalanced, exploitative economic system removes the focus.

      • Kelli Korducki

        Though I will agree that this particular vignette may not be the absolute best example.

        • Charles Reinhardt

          I’m just being a douche!

          But I’m also sensitive to the critique leveled by the mushy middle down here in the US, which is basically “I agree that the banks fucked us, so I support the movement – but upon closer inspection, what the hell are they talking about now? You want to give Manhattan back to the American Indians? What’s going on here?”

  • http://www.facebook.com/roy.mitchell1 Roy Mitchell

    One thing that I hope will happen from the developing Occupy Movement is that it won’t be such a testosterone driven movement. While for the most part people are progressive, they forget how much space men can take up at the expense of women’s voices and people on the margins. I especially hate being told why I am at the occupation and what I do takes away from what the occupation is about. Some folks are great at telling us what to listen to and what the Occupation is all about. For many; it’s many things that all make sense…the arrogance of being told “not to miss the point” is not isolated to Charles comment below. No one is disagreeing with you Charles, but before you make your assumptions about what the movement is about, make sure you’re not teaching us what we already know. And lighten up dude!

    • Charles Reinhardt

      In my experience at Zuccotti, the most testosterone-driven constituency is the violent junkie/anarchist constituency, who want to ensure that there is NO message other than “fuck everything.” As for the “infinite inclusiveness” people, they run the place, and do all the day-to-day organizing, so don’t worry about them. Obviously, the two groups do not get along, which has been a source of serious dysfunction.

      The people who want to keep the focus on Wall Street/the finance industry are in the small minority, and are mostly limited to people who actually work in finance or are economists.

      In other news, I’ll lighten up when you lighten up!