Tag Archives: human-rights

Thank you Calgary & New Gay History Developments

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Kevin Allen | 1 comment

Wow. Thank you to everyone who attended last night’s public presentation at CommunityWise (the Old Y). I have never seen the Common Room so full – we even ran out of chairs – very humbling…

Two big topics in the presentation were the Klippert case (which you can read more about: here), and Club Carousel, Calgary’s first gay and lesbian owned and operated chartered club (which will be the subject of a future post). Special thanks to Lois Szabo, one of the club’s founders, who attended the public presentation and added her first person recollections to the evening.

Here are some recent developments that were announced at the public presentation last night:

1) The Calgary Heritage Authority has requested another public presentation. This one is scheduled for Friday, May 3rd, 2013 at the Castell Central Public Library from 5:30 – 7:00 PM.

2) The Calgary Foundation is interested in a gay historical Jane’s Walk, which I am keen to do. This has yet to be scheduled but will likely happen in the morning of Saturday, May 4th, 2013 – stay tuned…

3) The Glenbow Museum has expressed interest in developing a gay and lesbian archive, which this project will help coordinate. If you, or someone you know has documents or artifacts which might be of historical value, please contact me. In addition, tax receipts can be issued by the Glenbow for donations to the archives (if appropriate).

Thank you again Calgary! I am off now on holidays and am taking a break from the website for the month of March. Please look for new posts in April.

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Posted in Gay history

Tagged Calgary, Club Carousel, gay, Gay history, human-rights, Old Y, queer

What turns women to Lesbianism? Ideas from 1966.

Posted on February 14, 2013 by Kevin Allen | Leave a comment

Chatelaine Magazine featured a 5-page article in October 1966, exploring the phenomenon of lesbianism written by Renate Wilson. Largely sympathetic, the author contrasted lived experiences of the lesbians she interviewed for the story with academic and psychiatric theories of lesbianism – a certain gulf existed between the two of them.

Lesbians reported feeling fundamentally normal and were proud to be contributing members of society. Many did not know they were lesbian until their 20s: often after they had married men and had children.

Wilson’s interview subjects reported:

“Until I was twenty I didn’t even know the word lesbian.”

“I read about lesbianism but didn’t connect it with my own situation”

“I got married, had a baby. then I met this woman and it suddenly hit me like a sledgehammer: I could love her but not him.”

“I don’t hate men, I just don’t want to marry one.”

Wilson remarked that, “most lesbians aren’t distinguishable by appearance. Of the dozen I met [in] a Vancouver apartment, a few wore slacks, but only one was vehemently against skirts. They would not have stood out in a group of housewives, office girls or nurses getting together to play bridge or discuss PTA or union affairs.”

The article goes into some detail about potential causes of lesbianism, ruling out heredity, chromosomal abnormality, glandular imbalance, and free choice. Wilson settled on Freud and current (in 1966) psychological trends, which focus on psychosexual development and the role of parents in a child’s upbringing, which sounds far-fetched and bizarre to a modern-day reader.

Wilson noted that if a girl does have lesbian leanings and is willing to be treated by psychotherapy, a change in orientation does not have the best of chances. She writes: “According to the Toronto Forensic Service lesbians rarely attempt treatment and when they do they harder to help than males. In ten years, Dr. Turner hasn’t seen one lesbian persevere in therapy to completion; yet he can count considerable success with male homosexuals.”

The article concluded with the legal context for Canadian homosexuals, noting that in common law lesbianism is mostly ignored. Wilson explained, “When a revision of English law in 1885 condemned homosexual practices by men and women, Queen Victoria refused to sign it because, as she huffily explained, ‘women can’t do that together.’ Rather than enlighten Her Majesty, her ministers removed women from the clause.”

Buried Memory/Alarming Find in the U of C Archives

Posted on January 24, 2013 by Kevin Allen | 3 comments

Younger folk here at Calgary Outlink have asked me what the environment was like for queers in Calgary when I was their age. [For the record I am 42.] I often reply that there was an element of danger being out, going to clubs, and in associating in general. I remember nervously looking over my shoulder around the Beltline, and knew of people who had been bashed.

However, combing through the archives at the University of Calgary this morning, I found this poster in a 1992 file from the Gay and Lesbian Academics Students and Staff Society (GLASS) that gave me a jolt.

A U of C undergraduate student at the time, I have a distant memory of this event. On June 17, 1992 this exact poster was found tacked to the door of GLASS – the invitation to a gay bashing to be held at the same location at an upcoming rally for gay and lesbian rights.

In a press release the next day, Greg Lane, Co-chair for GLASS wrote, “Lesbians, gays and bisexuals live in a continual climate of potential violence. I am deeply concerned about these tools of oppression.” He noted that it was not the first time that GLASS had been targeted on campus.

In a move of solidarity, student politicians from the Students’ Unions of U of C, SAIT and Mount Royal College, all swiftly and publicly condemned the action of the unknown poster author, who to my knowledge was never caught, despite police involvement.

[Special thanks to Karen Buckley at the U of C Archives for research assistance.]