Preliminary Program

“We Demand” History/Sex/Activism in Canada/« Nous demandons » : Histoire/

Sexe/Activisme

(Film Program: Pacific Cinémathèque, 1131 Howe Street)

Thursday, August 25, 2011
Time: TBA

“We Demand… Moving Images”: An Illustrated Lecture by Tom Waugh

Tom Waugh, renowned film scholar and Concordia University Research Chair in Sexual Representation and
Documentary, will open the “We Demand” Cinémathèque programming with an illustrated lecture reevaluating
the cinematic heritage of the post-Omnibus/pre-AIDS era of film, video, and moving image production by
Canadian LGBTQ activists. Showing excerpts from ten exemplary films and videos from Canada’s three moving-
image production metropoles, Waugh will develop a subjective survey of the political cinematic landscape in the
decade following “We Demand”—a contrapuntal historiography of activist film and video from 1970 to 1982.

Friday, August 26, 2011

8:45am-9:00am: WELCOME

9:00am-10:30am: PLENARY: Activism as History Plenary

Chair: Patrizia Gentile
Ron Dutton
barbara findlay
Janine Fuller
Amy Gottlieb
Gary Kinsman

10:30am-10:45am: BREAK
Danielle Cooper, Poster Presentation: Introducing the Sexual Representation Collection at the University of
Toronto (continues through lunch)

10:45am-12:15pm
1.Roundtable: We Demand: Remembering as Resistant
Speakers:TBA

2.Politics and History of HIV/AIDS

Chair:
David Churchill, The Cultural Politics of HIV/AIDS in 1980s Toronto
John Paul Catungal, Making (a) Difference: Genealogies of Ethno-Specific Organising in Toronto’s
HIV/AIDS Sector
Richard McKay, ‘I don’t see him as any more typical of a gay man than Jack the Ripper was of the
heterosexual’: Randy Shilts’s characterization of Gaétan Dugas

3. Trans Rights, Activism, and Representation

Chair:
Bobby Noble, Beyond Bodies / After Borders: Female-to-Male Transsexual Masculinities and the Unruliness
of Trans Embodiment
Kristin Ireland, Trans Activism and The Human Rights Commission in Canada
Anika Nicole Stafford, Everyday Exclusions: Vancouver Trans Inclusive Feminists and Maneuvering Anti-
Violence Organizing

4. Archives and Queer Collections

Chair:
Mel Hogan and Marie-Claire MacPhee, Taking the Archives down with us
Clare Robson, The Bridge Generation: demanding archives from the Queer Imaging & Riting Kollective for
Elders (Quirk-e)
Mandy Koolen, Archiving the Personal, Inspiring the Political

12:15pm-1:30pm LUNCH (advance registration requested)

Canadian Queer Studies Association Founding Lunch Meeting

1:30-3:00pm

1.Collecting and Interpreting Transgendered Histories

Chair:
Aaron Devor, Saving our History: Building a Transgender Archive
Nicholas Matte, Professionalizing Transsexuals in the 1980s: Rupert Raj’s Media and Medical Activism
Fabian Rose, "Other cases must certainly exist": some reflections on gender passing and history”

2. Regulations, Spaces and Histories

Chair:
Virginie Pinneault, The First Known Quebec's Homosexual Clubs
Frances Reilly, Homosexuality and the Cold War Metaphor of Disease
Rosanne Sia, “White Girls Banned From Chinatown Cafes”: Regulating Cross-Racial Intimacies in Vancouver
during the late 1930s

3. Lesbian Histories
Chair:
Diana Ann Heffernan, Mémoire de notre histoire: Memories of Lesbian History in Quebec
Tamara Lang, “Nobody had ever penetrated the secret world of lesbianism”: Locating the Canadian lesbian in
magazine investigations of homosexuality, 1963-1969
Allison Burgess, The Triple Emergence of the Toronto Dyke March

4. Activism, Organizing and Communities

Chair:
David Anderson, “Breaking down the walls”: Investigating, documenting and celebrating 40 years of gay
liberation and student activism at the University of British Columbia
Jake Feldman, The Shirtless Debates: The Beginning of the End of Halifax Liberationist Activism from 1989-
1995
Natalie Kouri-Towe, What’s Queer About Palestine Solidarity? Homonationalism, Apartheid, and
Transnational Queer Activism

3:00-3:15 BREAK

3:15-5:00pm KEYNOTE
Facilitator: Elise Chenier
Ann Cvetkovich, Queer Archives and their Institutions

5:00-6:30 RECEPTION

(Film Program: Pacific Cinémathèque, 1131 Howe Street)

Friday, August 26th
That was Then: Revisiting the Positive Images Debate
Time: TBA

Long before the television series Oz, or the recent film The Kids Are Alright, two Canadian narrative films boldly
waded into the treacherous representational waters of male sexual subcultures in prison and lesbian parenting.
Either ignored or critically reviled in Canada at the time of their release, these two films nevertheless claimed
notable champions (including, in the case of By Design, Pauline Kael), and in hindsight bear re-viewing and
reassessment.

1. Fortune and Men’s Eyes (Harvey Hart, 1971)

2. By Design (Claude Jutra, 1981)

Saturday, August 27, 2011

9:00am-10:30am PLENARY: History as Activism

Chair:
Mary Louise Adams
Line Chamberland
Karen Dubinsky
Steven Maynard
Becki Ross

10:30am-10:45am BREAK

10:45am-12:15pm
1.Regional and Urban Spaces, Sexuality, Activism & the Queer West
Chair: David Churchill
Lyle Dick, Western Canada’s Frontier Era—A Same Sex Goldern Age?
Liz Millward, “No-straights” rules and private members’ clubs as contested territory for women
Valerie J Korinek, ‘We never thought of ourselves as anything but ordinary people:’ Prairie lesbian identities,
‘communities’ and activism, 1950-1980

2. Health, Rights and Community Activism

Chair:
Star Deibert-Turner, The history of feminist health activism in 1970s Vancouver, BC
Nancy Nicol, “We Demand” & “Free Abortion on Demand”
Christabelle Sethna, Campus Hotbeds: Student Birth Control Activism and Oral Contraception

3. Museums, History and the Activist Archive

Chair:
Krista Jane Cooke, Representing Sexuality at the Canadian Museum of Civilization
Ross Higgins, From Androgyny to the Archives: Building the Queer Infosphere in Montreal
Rhonda Hinther, A Tale of Two Museums: Representing Sexuality in Museum Exhibitions
4. Violence and Queer Response
Chair:
Amber Dean, Queering representations of murdered or missing women: The ethics of (mis)interpretation
Alexa Degagne, Strategies for Queer Resistance in Alberta: Evaluating Edmonton’s Community Response
Project
Jason Crawford and Karen Herland, Sex Garage! Unspooling Stories, Rethinking Collectivities
Chris Samuel, Normalization as Symbolic Violence: Collective Identities and the Ethics of Resistance

12:15pm-1:30pm LUNCH – Complementary with registration.

KEYNOTE: Jessica Yee
Indigenous Youth Lead the Way: Reclaiming Healthy Sexuality for the Next Seven Generations

1:30-3:00pm
1. Round Table: Indigenous Women and Feminism: Does it matter if we say sex or gender?
Chair: Jessica Yee
Cheryl Suzack
Jean Barman
Kim Anderson

2. Resistance and Activism in the 1970s

Chair: Steven Maynard
Mathieu Brulé, “Seducing the Unions”: Organized Labour and Strategies for Gay Liberation, 1970-1982
Scott de Groot, In the Trenches of History: Gay Liberation and the Weapons of Historicism
Gary Kinsman, Queer Resistance in the 1970s: Subverting the Privatization of Queer Sexualities and National
Security

3. The Bodies of Liberation and Embodied Activism

Chair:
Michael Connors Jackman, “Spectral Desires and Political Reterritorialisations: Ethnographic Notes on The
Body Politic”
Kelly Phipps, “Lesbians and The Body Politic”
Virginia Solomon, “Expanded Sexuality, Expanded Politics: Conceptual Art in Vancouver and Toronto”

4. Queer Negotiations of Space and Intimacy

Chair:
Stacey J Bishop, Containing Sex Work in the ‘Livable City’: Neighbourhood Organizations and the Expulsion
of Sex Workers from Vancouver’s West End, 1981-1985
Heather Stanley, “How is ‘this’ all going to work?”: Discourses of Married Sexuality and Heterosexual
Embodiment
Byron Lee, Finding Citizenship in the Landscape: Creating a counterpublic in Vancouver’s Davie Village

3:00-3:15pm BREAK

3:15-4:45pm
1. The Expulsion of On-Street Sex Workers from Vancouver's Emergent 'Gayborhood', 1975-1985:
A Cautionary Tale
Chair: Lynne Marks
Becki Ross, No Sex in the City: The Legal and Moral Repression of On-Street Prostitution in Vancouver,
1975-1985
Jamie Lee Hamilton, The Goldern Age of Prostitution: One Woman’s Personal Account of An Outdoor
Brothel in Vancouver’s West End, 1975-1985
Rachael Sullivan, Tracing Lines of Horizontal Hostility: Sex Workers, Feminists, and Gay Activists Embattled
in Vancouver’s West End, 1975-1985

2. Queer Historiography and the Epistemology of Sex

Chair: Valerie Kornick
Isabelle Perreault, Sexuality as an Academic Discipline: the Birth of the Department of Sexology at UQAM,
1965-1975
Steven Maynard, "Screwball Homosexuality": Writing Queer History in Homonormative Times
Melissa White, Approaching Queer(er) Futures

3. Queer Activism and Social Movements

Chair: Gary Kinsman
Lynne Marks “Giving Him the Same Rights as Everyone Else”: One Mother’s Gay Rights Activism
Graham Willet, ASK: Vancouver, Canada, The Western Hemisphere, The World...
Nick Mulé, Transcending the Provincial: LGBT Liberationist Activism in Ontario – From CLGRO to Queer
Ontario
Jen Marchbank and Sylvie Traphan, Demanding Youth, Claiming Space, Making History-Queer Youth in
Surrey

Special panel: 3:15-6:00pm

Using Film and Video in the Construction of Lesbian and Gay Politics and Community in Canada
1971-1982
(Extended time slot: Duration of this panel is 150 minutes or 3:15 to 6:00pm)
Contributors: Thomas Waugh, Diane Heffernan, Sara Diamond, Michel Audy, Paul Wong, Nancy
Nico, Harry Sutherland

7:00pm BANQUET featuring local entertainers

(Film Program: Pacific Cinémathèque, 1131 Howe Street)

Saturday, August 27th
Sex Wars
Time:TBA

In the 1990s, AIDS and pornography emerged as flashpoints for the queer community in Canada. Film and video
artists responded not by capitulating to shaming and negative stereotyping in the press and in parliament, but by
unabashedly—and cheekily—celebrating queer sexuality in a series of works that were poetically erotic,
politically complex, and (especially in the case of the two features programmed here) campily agitprop.

1. Shorts by Marc Paradis, Richard Fung, and Zachary Longboy

Zero Patience (John Greyson, 1993)
2. Shorts by Lorna Boschman and Shawna Dempsey/Lori Millan
Bubbles Galore (Cynthia Roberts, 1998)

Sunday August 28, 2011

9:30am-11:00am

1. Queer Film and Media

Chair: Susan Stewart
Julianne Pidduck, Family as a Scene of lgbt Visibility in Recent Québec Cinema
Jasmine Rault and T.L. Cowan, Cabaret Commons: Digital Archives for Feminist feminist and queer artists
and audiences
Andrea Zanin, “Your Cuntry Needs You”: The Politics of Early-1990s Canadian Dyke S/M Porn

2. Health Community Politics

Chair:
Liam Michaud O'Grady, Criminalizing risk: Living histories of HIV criminalization
Daniel Keith Hambly, “The Greatest of all the Vices”: Antimasturbation discourses in Canada, 1830-1914

3. Queer Performances and Theatre

Chair:
Teresa Jewell, BASHing Gays: Activist Theatre and Stereotype Reappropriation in the Fight for Equal Rights
in Canada
Kerri Mesner, Innovations in Sexual-Political Activism: Queer Theology and Theatre of the Oppressed
Jillian Deri, Polyamory or Polyagony? Jealousy in Open-Relationships

11:15-12:30

Endnote:
Marc Stein, Associate Professor, Department of History, York University
Raven Bowen, MA Candidate and Sex Worker Activist and Organizer
Others TBA

(Film Program: Pacific Cinémathèque, 1131 Howe Street)

Sunday, August 28th
Queer Vancouver
Time: TBA

The “We Demand” action on August 28th, 1971 was a parallel event that took place in Ottawa and Vancouver.
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of this landmark moment in Canadian queer history, and to highlight the long
history of queer activism in Vancouver (a city celebrating its own 125th anniversary in 2011), the following series
of films has been programmed.

1. Rex vs. Singh (Fung/Greyson/Kazimi, 2008)*

Hookers on Davie (Janis Cole and Holly Dale, 1984)
2. Riffs on the Theme of Activisim (5 short films by Debora O, David C. Jones, Gwen Haworth, Byron Chief
Moon, Joe Average and Jamie Griffiths on the history of queer activism in Vancouver, 2010)*
Little Sister’s vs. Big Brother (Aerlyn Weissman, 2002)