Male strippers
need support

[Re: Sasha, Aug. 30] Sasha’s response to a young man who got turned down for work as a male stripper in three gay clubs was very sensible, but she should have added that male strippers have only four gay strip clubs to choose from. Female strippers, on the other hand, can choose from more than 75 clubs in Quebec. Male strippers who get turned down are forced to go back to the same bars and try again.

Gay male clubs, like female clubs, need to have leeway on who they hire, but the problem with gay clubs is that two of them hire only very muscular dancers or bodybuilders and the other two say they hire only very young men. Dancers who don’t belong to either genres mostly don’t get hired and are endlessly pushed around.

Gay male strip clubs also hire very few minority dancers—out of 60 dancers, you might see one black dancer and one or two Latinos. Dancers of other races/ethnic groups are almost never seen in gay strip clubs. (And do not forget, more than 45 per cent of the population on the island of Montreal is not French Canadian.)

It is great that we have female and male strip clubs in our city for those who love discreet adult entertainment and I wish them well. But by adopting narrow hiring policies, gay strip clubs have unfortunately lost many clients. In the gay community, tastes are varied. In gay strip clubs, clients pay the dancers through tips and private dances—in most cases, dancers do not get a salary from owners.

I wish the gay community would be more supportive and sympathetic of male sex workers and their concerns. Bravo to Sasha for discussing this in your alternative paper.

>> Frederick Muster

Anti-globalization
and gay pride

[Re: “Les agents provocatives”, Raf Katigbak, Aug. 30]

Last week, one of the letters to the editor suggested that the Mirror might have covered the Montebello summit if there had been a sexual angle or a concert to promote. In came Raf Katigbak on page 10 to coyly smush the writer’s criticism in his/her face. The whole thing reminded me of a workshop I attended at last spring’s 8eme Salon du livre anarchiste de Montréal, where a young man suggested that heteros are to Ricardo and Smith what homos are to Marx.

Unfortunately, there was no mention on the part of the lecturer of the contemporary significance of new social movements and radical democracy for progressive cultural politics. The only person who seemed to have put two and two together was a very out gay man whose studded pink and black cap read: Die Yuppie Scum! Not bad, but a bit simplistic.

There’s more to Raf’s comparison of anti-globalization demonstrations with gay pride than he may care to admit, least of which is the importance of the Marxist view that class is not an identity for notions of queer subjectivity, not to mention hard-line gay and lesbian radicalism of the Leninist sort.

The more pertinent point of comparison, however, is the lacklustre performance of both leftists and queers in the last little while. While the pink block had a remarkable showing in Heiligendamm in June, with many a lovely demonstrator taking it all off during a head-to-head with riot cops, the Montebello crews were highly disorganized, very young and few in numbers. The mainstream media, including the CBC, basically handed things over to the neo-liberals, that is, until the YouTube video of undercover police allowed the citizens’ movement another chance to expose the SPP.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate Raf’s postmodern/indie wisdom, I do. It’s just that the premises of his cute comparison rely on the same politics that work to further marginalize our hopes and dreams. We know when we’re being engaged, and we know when we’re being marketed.

>>Marc J. Léger

China cons and pros

[Re: “Cloudbusting,” Raf Katigbak, Aug. 16] Good, funny and accurate piece on Asians and China. To add to your nightmares, just got back from China, where it was reported that 80 per cent of processed food there is made in factories with fewer than 10 employees—i.e., in home-based and/or fly-by-night enterprises. This makes regulatory policing close to impossible.

On the positive side, everywhere I went, whether Shanghai and Beijing or Lijiang in the mountains in the southwest, I saw street trash cans marked “recyclable” and “non-recyclable,” which is more than I can say for Montreal.

>> Will Aitken

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