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The Canadian Lesbian & Gay Archives / Materials / Records / Related documents |
| The Body Politic and Visions of Community | |
| Page 6 of 14 / Appx 880 words |
The ambiguous ghetto
Ratty bars meet "the Jesus Christ Farts of the Movement"
The cover and centre spread of The Body Politic's second issue featured the new gay community centre, opened by CHAT at 58 Cecil Street in early 1972. Big type at the bottom right said: "We have a home. A place run by gay people for gay people -- responsive to our needs -- where gay community is a reality." The headline was "The Alternative."
It was alternative to the commercial scene, excoriated in two TBP articles in a row, both titled "The Gay Ghetto." "It will never change and MUST be eliminated," John Forbes wrote in Issue 1. In Issue 2 David Newcome and Paul Pearce proclaimed that "For those involved in gay liberation the final aim must surely be the destruction of the gay ghetto."
The local ghetto of the day consisted of: the Parkside and the St Charles, ratty bars with dance clubs upstairs; the Manatee, a dance club for men only; and for women Charley O's at Dundas and Bay. Letros on King Street was about to close; the Quest, the Carriage House and the Blue Jay had yet to open. There were baths: the Romans, the International, even the Oak Leaf on Bathurst, but they were covert about gay clientele.
"The people who control the clubs, bars and baths," Paul and David wrote, "realize that gay people are forced to go to only a few places, and they are there, ready and willing to rip us off."
The owners of the Parkside let police use a downstairs room as a spy post, peering though a ventilation grill into the adjoining pissoir to entrap gay men having sex. Cops dragging people up the stairs and out to a waiting cruiser were a common sight at the Parkside. In October 1979 one man, Derek Grant, fought back and was held in a headlock. A few hours later, in police custody, he had a seizure and died. After that, community activists forced the Parkside to close its police glory hole, but cops remained constant visitors and the staff surly. One of them had said, in 1971, "You're lucky to have a place to go."
Eventually we would have lots of other places to go and we would, much nicer places and many gay- owned. But for a long time The Body Politic remained skeptical of the commercial scene. Its stories about ghetto life were mostly about its dangers:
There were, perennially, stories on discrimination against women. In 1974 TBP had refused ads from the Carriage House after it barred dykes in jeans.
There were some concessions made to the fact that people often do like to go out. In Issue 7, late 1972, TBP ran a full-page map showing "Toronto's Gay Spots," its first neutral acknowledgment of bars, baths, parks and restaurants (only one at the time: Fran's). Conscious of its national role, the paper would do similar maps later for Montreal and Vancouver.
But in a letter in Issue 8 Ron Dayman (who ended up joining the collective and was founder of the Canadian Gay Liberation Movement Archives in 1973) wrote:
As for your map of "Toronto's Gay Spots", I think you owe your readers an explanation of your attitude towards these gay ghettos. Surely it is not your role to encourage their existence. It's time homosexuals ceased stalking behind walls and took to the street.
In Issue 9 Ron got an answer, in a letter from Art Whitaker:
If the Gay Lib revolution is to succeed then it could probably use the help of the 90% of the gay population that so far sees you as a bunch of condescending university kids, who, for the mere fact you can intellectually rationalize being gay feel superior to what you refer to as Ghetto, Bar, Bath, Club Queens. Idealistically we shouldn't need the Ghetto, but when you're horny and lonely on a Saturday night these places can be awfully tempting. Some of us, in fact a lot of us, don't have the same avoidance as the principled Jesus Christ Farts of the Movement.
Art had a point. Hugh Brewster had written in Issue 4:
To the Body Politic vendor standing in the foyer [Hugh himself], inhaling the odour of sweating bodies through broadcloth shirts, deodorant and after-shave colognes, the most frequent response is: "I'm liberated. I don't need your paper." 'Liberated' is a modern, fashionable word, you see, and anyone who is sufficiently trendy to patronize the Manatee must necessarily be 'liberated'.
The disdain is palpable -- and this from Hugh Brewster, one of the few people on the Body Politic collective at the time actually interested in camp. (Everybody knew how to do it, but for many it seemed old-fashioned, self-oppressive, a slip back into bourgeois decadence). Hugh is now a successful publisher, though not of things gay. Art Whitaker, no slouch himself, eventually went into the bath business.
Next: Business, reluctant and otherwise: Advertising and budding gay capitalism