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FtF: Female to Femme

February 1, 2009 • Anna Leventhal

I’m a little last-minute with this event posting, but those of you in Montreal might be interested in a screening hosted by Queer McGill tomorrow night.

The film is FtF: Female to Femme, and it’s an exploration of one side of lesbian life that often gets ignored: queer women who also identify as femme, girly, ladylike. From the Queer McGill website:

[FtF] explores femme dyke identities as radical gender practices. A film that envisions more than it documents, FtF denaturalizes gender and pushes for an understanding of femininity as multiple rather than singular, constructed rather than natural. Sexy, funny and controversial, FtF features a host of fabulous femmes, including professors, activists, artists and dancers.

Femmes a-glitterin' (from AltCinema website)

I’m not able to embed the trailer for the movie, but you can watch it here.

The screening is tomorrow, Feb 2nd at 7:30
Shatner Building room B29, 3480 Rue McTavish (McGill University)
More about the screening at Queer McGill, and more about the film at Altcinema.
- Event Listings
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Women Who Have Sex with Women need pap tests too!

January 26, 2009 • Jessica Yee

Women Who Have Sex with Women (WSW) need pap tests too!

In 2007, Planned Parenthood Toronto and Sherbourne Health Centre conducted a community consultation on the sexual and reproductive health needs of WSW. Pap tests emerged as an important issue; many women who have sex with women (WSW) aren’t clear if they need them and neither are their healthcare providers.

So we’re creating a campaign to make sure we all know we need paps and we need your help. Please come to a focus group and tell us what a pap campaign for WSW should look like.

FOCUS GROUPS
-All groups have food at 5:30pm, group runs from 6-8pm
-Food, TTC tokens and a $20 honorarium provided
-Childcare subsidies, interpretation and attendant services available if requested in advance
-Trans women welcome
-All locations are accessible
-Registration required

(more inside…)
- News Flash
- Queeriosities
Separation? What separation?

January 21, 2009 • Stark Koenig

Now don’t get me wrong. I was as happy as anyone to see that jerk Bush get into a plane no longer called Air Force One and fly on home to Texas. I am ecstatic that the U.S. has a Democrat as a president again and I am even more so that finally a day has come when a person of color can hold the highest office in that country. Good for you, U.S.A.!

That said….I could have done with a lot less of the church revival at yesterday’s inauguration speech. The inclusion of one homophobic and misogynist religious leader and the notable exclusion of the words of a progressive, queer religious speaker at an earlier inauguration event have made me pause to wipe the pixie dust out of my eyes.

(more inside…)
- Arts
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Does it come in hot-pink? No, well I don’t want it.

January 8, 2009 • Mir Verburg

Korean Photographer JeongMee Yoon has been taking beautifully arranged pictures of girls and their belongings and boys and their belongings as part of the Pink & Blue Project. So many pictures, and wow! So many belongings.

Pink & Blue Project (JeongMee Yoon)

Crazy eh? You can barely see the child for their toys. The pink/blue split is also kind of remarkable.

I remember lining up all my teddy bears for a group shot when I was about 9 and I don’t think they were so uniformly pink. Then again, I was a tomboy and I think I hated the color because I thought it was sissy. At the time I wanted rainbows painted on everything, in hindsight that was a clue to so many things, from queerness to my inability to choose just one thing and stick with it (as my grandmother says). Okay I also gave all my dolls boys’ names, so forget me, I am not a good sample. What about you? Was pink the big colour for you growing up?
- Media Savvy
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Dudes and Dating Shows

January 8, 2009 • Michelle Schwartz

Last night, for the first time in forever, I tuned in to MTV to watch The Real World. For the 21st season, they are heading to my hometown of Brooklyn, New York, and I couldn’t resist the urge to watch a bunch of spoiled attention seekers embarrass themselves in the place of my birth. I had nothing to do in the hour before the show started, so I let MTV babble away in the background while I puttered around the apartment. Wow, does MTV have some bizarre programming!

First up was a commercial for A Double Shot At Love, in which two vacuous blondes chirp “HI, WE’RE LOOKING FOR LOVE!” as the voiceover explains that this is a dating show about a pair of lonely bisexual twins. Ohhhhh-kay.

Then there was the highlight of the night, an episode of Bromance, another “dating show” in which former model and “reality TV personality” Brody Jenner searches for the perfect man.

This too could be yours!

Supposedly this show is not about Brody finding a new lover, but instead about him finding a new best friend. Why Brody needs a reality show for this purpose is unclear, however one would think that if you have to hold an MTV-sponsored contest to connect with people, you might be doing something wrong.

(more inside…)
- Activist Report
- Queeriosities
New Year’s Resolution: Never To Forget

January 2, 2009 • Michelle Schwartz

With the constant media barrage of disasters, injustices, and assorted international atrocities, it can often be hard to focus on just one cause. In a world of 24-hour news tickers and 30 second segments, it seems like there’s never the time or space for follow up. One minute the news will leave me enraged over one particular case, and the next minute it will have moved on to the next reprehensible act, and sadly, so will I. So for 2009, instead of my typical resolutions to go to the gym more often or eat fewer chemical-laced and possibly radioactive meat byproducts, I resolve not to let the 24-hour news cycle get me down, and not to forget the injustices of the world five minutes after they happen.

Number one on my list is the New Jersey Four. In 2006, a group of young black lesbians were walking on Sixth Avenue in New York City’s Greenwich Village, a neighborhood that has long been a safe haven for queer youth. A man selling DVDs on the sidewalk propositioned them. When he was met with a rejection, he called them dykes, threw his lit cigarette at them, and threatened to “fuck them straight.” A fight broke out, and he was caught on camera trying to strangle one of the women. The women fought back, along with several other men who stepped in to defend them.

(more inside…)
- In My Opinion...
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Queering Xmas

December 20, 2008 • Anna Leventhal

Shameless web editor and blogger Cate Simpson has written a great post over at This Magazine about the difficulties the holiday season holds for queer people who don’t always feel welcome at the family table, which I highly recommend you check out:
For some, it’s that they simply can’t go home — either because they were shown the door after their first adolescent fumblings were met with more than the usual amount of horror, or because they’ve fled their small towns for urban centres and can’t afford the trip back. For others, it’s that they themselves are still welcome at the family dinner table, but evidence of their “alternative” lifestyles must be toned down for everyone else’s comfort levels. For many queers, this means enduring questions about the dates they’re supposedly going on with members of the opposite sex, while questions about their true spouses are conspicuously absent.

Simpson suggests that because of this kind of tension, queers have led the way in terms of forming alternative holiday traditions. And the idea of reclaiming the holidays from the clutches of Wal-Mart and the annual family bicker-fest is looking like a better and better idea to lots of people.

I myself didn’t grow up celebrating Christmas so I suppose I’m lucky in that the holiday season has always been a time for me to construct my own rituals while others were out performing theirs, willingly or not; for many years my Jew-mas tradition involved my best friend and I going to 7-11 for takeout coffees (it was the only place open on Dec. 25th) and driving around marvelling at the eerily empty streets of Winnipeg, followed by a screening of Monty Python’s The Life of Brian at my parents’ house.

(more inside…)
- Activist Report
- Queeriosities
the prisoner correspondence project

December 14, 2008 • Anna Leventhal

Thought I ought to draw your attention to this project being organized by a group of Montreal-based queer activists:

The PRISONER CORRESPONDENCE PROJECT coordinates a direct letter-writing program for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, transgender, gendervariant, queer, 2spirit & intersexed inmates in Canada and the US, linking these communities with people who identify similarly who are outside of prison.

The project also coordinates a resource library of harm reduction practice (safer sex, safer drug use, clean needle care, safer tattooing, etc), HIV and HepC prevention, homophobia, transphobia, etc. The idea of the project is not to match people up romantically, but create accountable friendships where those involved can support and learn from one another.

As an organization, we try to be allies to prisoner struggle, and reject the ways that people a part of these communities are targeted and criminalized.

THE PROJECT IS ALWAYS LOOKING FOR NON-INCARCERATED FOLKS TO ACT AS PENPALS WITH INCARCERATED FOLKS IN CANADA AND THE US! Please get in touch if you want more info on becoming a penpal!

** Though the organizing collective is Montreal-based, you can still become a penpal if you’re not living in Montreal. We’re also currently trying to distribute promo materials in other cities, so please please get in touch if you want to do some out-of-town outreach (even putting up a few flyers or asking a few friends would be helpful!) **

For more information, or to otherwise get involved, please contact
queertrans.prisonersolidarity@gmail.com

In conjunction with a few other activist groups here in Montreal, the PCP (uh, too bad about the acronym) organized a screening of film responses to the AIDS crisis in the 80s and 90s earlier this week. (more inside…)
Agitate! Queer Women of Colour starts tonight in the ODOT

December 5, 2008 • Jessica Yee

I’m super pumped to check out Agitate! Community dinner tonight in Ottawa.

More information about this amazing grassroots collective after the jump.
(more inside…)
- Media Savvy
- Queeriosities
Katy Perry, UR Not Gay

December 3, 2008 • Michelle Schwartz

While doing some research for my post on Amanda Palmer’s scandalous belly, I noticed that she had been nominated for Out Magazine’s annual “Out 100” Awards. While happily watching interviews with Amanda and Tegan & Sara, who should I see but Katy ‘UR So Gay’ Perry standing around in the background. ”

What is she doing there?” I thought to myself. What is the woman famous for lyrics that say kissing another woman is “not what good girls do” and that listening to Mozart and being a vegetarian is “so gay” doing in the Out 100? Well, not only is she in the 100, she was awarded Musician of the Year and is the only woman represented on the cover of the magazine.
The Out 100 Awards (Out Magazine)

I am so sick of Katy Perry. She actually gave an acceptance speech in which she laments not getting to attend the “fabulous” award ceremonies because she would miss all the cattiness and gossip! She trivializes the queer experience, makes lesbianism into a show for men, and trades in cheap and insulting stereotypes. She is not queer, does not claim to be queer, and shows absolutely no solidarity with queers nor understanding of the queer experience. Her martyr-complex tales of being castigated by her conservative parents makes a mockery of every queer kid who really was thrown out of the house and couldn’t fall back on a heteronormative pop-music cushion. Her whining about how people are just “dying to be offended” shows a complete unwillingness to listen to the people she is exploiting for their fabulous gowns and great cocktails.

Shame on Out Magazine for awarding Katy Perry! Shame on them for not only listing her, but for letting her represent all “out” women on the cover, and for letting her offensive apolitical drivel stand above all the other awesome music being made by and for the queer community.