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Visibly queer
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Yvon Provencher talks about being both gay and blind
by Matthew Hays
Yvon Provencher recalls the meeting like it was yesterday. It was 11 years ago when a group of angry gays and lesbians met on a hot, humid night in a community space in the Village. The question being considered? How does the community react to the brutal police clampdown on an innocent afterhours party, now infamous as the landmark Sex Garage debacle?
"I was very angry after the Sex Garage raid," says Provencher, now 36. "I stood up in the meeting and said to the others, 'I want to participate, I want to be involved in this. But you have to think of people with disabilities. You have to make room for me.'"
Thus the fallout from police raids on the '90 party, which galvanized Montreal's queer community, hit Provencher hard too. And, he recalls, that reaction in the room was fairly typical of reactions to the blind. "Some felt I was asking too much. Some just ignored me. Others, I suspect, simply hoped I'd go away." But another gay man who was attending the meeting came over to Provencher and thanked him for standing up and being noticed.
For Provencher, the meeting points up the dual identities that have shaped much of his life. Being both blind and gay has given him a very unique perspective on the world. And any discomfort he may have sensed from people, he has generated into action. He was involved with the gay group at Concordia more than 10 years ago while studying psychology there. He was an active member of Lesbians and Gays Against Violence (LGAV), one of the ad hoc groups formed in the wake of Sex Garage. And he now works as a spokesperson and rights advocate for Regroupement des Aveugles et Amblyopes du Montréal Métropolitain, a lobby group for hearing and responding to grievances from members of the blind community. In person, Provencher has one of those endearing humanitarian activist personalities: equal parts feisty and sweet-natured.
Many of Provencher's coming-of-age stories will sound familiar to those in the know ("I knew I was different at age 12 in boarding school," he says), and adolescence and early adulthood meant trying to hide in heterosexual relationships. "One woman and I had sex for about two weeks," he recalls. "I thought I'd made it work. But then men were back on my mind. This was annoying to a 20 year old. But I knew I'd have to leave her eventually."
Call me
And, intriguingly enough, a huge step out of the closet came for Provencher in a realm that didn't involve the visual element at all. "At that point, 1-976 numbers were a really big deal," he says. "A lot of people were using them. I knew, very consciously, that the moment I made that call, nothing would ever be the same. I would be talking to boys who liked other boys and who said it. And it didn't matter whether anyone was sighted or blind--it didn't make any difference to me."
Venturing beyond the phone lines meant facing the inevitable: reactions to Provencher's disability. Reactions have been as varied as they have been odd, he says. "One night I went to a club in the Village, and someone who worked there came up to me and said, 'Do you realize where you are?' And I said, 'Yes.' And he said, 'You're in a gay bar.' And I said, 'I know.' And he said, 'So you want to be here?' And I replied, 'Yeah.'" At that point, the bar employee seemed to get it.
Another time, a man walked up to Provencher and told him he was being too cold. "I've been looking at you for 15 minutes," the man said to Provencher, "and you've been ignoring me." The man was somewhat embarrassed when Provencher showed him his cane.
Sex without the visuals
People do sometimes ask Provencher dumb questions, like 'How do you do it [sex]?' "Once you turn off the lights," he points out, "there's little difference." And he says there was a curiosity factor, when he first came out: "People wanted to know what it was like to do it with a blind guy. It is different in a way, I guess. The glance, the smile, there's something very visual about sex. That it's not there can be very disconcerting for some. They get over it though."
Provencher's blindness does raise some obvious questions though, most specifically: how does a blind man cope among other gay men, who are so notoriously looks-obsessed? "Gay men are men. It's about being male. Men seem to be more visually oriented than women. I do have a different perspective and that's partly related to being blind. I'm not so much into physical appearance. But if I were sighted I'm sure I'd look at men for their bodies too. I realized at a certain point that how you look can affect how people interact with you. For me, clothes were just a matter of not being cold. All that colour coordination for me was very complicated. There was something very superficial about it all.
"After a time, I stopped fighting it as it was going to be there all the time whether I liked it or not."
Meanwhile, Provencher does lament that "there isn't more diversity in the gay community. Gay men tend to like either two kinds of bodies: lean and hairless or muscular."
The blind and bigoted
But for any odd responses Provencher may have received within the gay community, he says he's faced more homophobia from other blind people. "I submitted a piece to a local newsletter for the blind which discussed safe-sex practices," he says with disappointment. "They rejected it, saying it didn't affect enough people. I really don't think that was the real reason though."
Ironically, Provencher says his blind status has protected him from homophobic violence in the past. For years, Provencher wore either a pink triangle or a rainbow symbol on his lapel. "Sometimes, there would be tense moments when people would see them and threaten me. Then they'd realize I was blind and back off. There's something in our society which says you shouldn't beat up disabled people, so that would put an end to it."
Provencher says he'd never deny who he is to anyone though, in virtually any circumstances. "It's very important for me to be honest about who I am," he says. He remains committed to serving the city's blind community, which is estimated at approximately 20,000.
He will march with his boyfriend (they've been together since March) in the Divers/Cité parade on Sunday. "Sometimes we don't always agree on things like the march. Some think it's a bad idea. But I think it's incredibly important and sends a strong message out to the city. We have to make ourselves visible."
Nora Rae
by Matthew Hays
Disabled lesbian activist Nora Bednarski fights to make queer Montreal accessible
Nora Bednarski finds the very fact that she has to make the arguments annoying, seeing as she's made the same ones so many times. But she keeps making them.
"I find it surprising that a community that's been arguing for inclusion for so long can be so exclusive itself," she says. Bednarski is talking about queers, of course, while referring specifically to what she sees as an insensitivity toward the disabled within the bent community. She's made a point of criticizing gay establishments and institutions for being inaccessible to those who are deaf, blind or wheelchair-bound.
Bednarski, who is currently completing a Master's degree in urban planning at McGill, first gained a degree of prominence in '98 when she discovered that Montreal's gay and lesbian film fest, Image&Nation, was being held in a non-wheelchair- accessible space, the Parisien. "At first, I took the organizers on their word. They had assumed the cinema had an elevator, but it doesn't." But a year later, Bednarski was angry to learn the organizers had gone straight back to the very same venue. It was then that she and a group of other activists protested outside the Parisien, raising awareness that for those in wheelchairs, the event was out of bounds.
Last year, things seemed to improve when Image&Nation organizers stated that there would be people at the event ready to carry wheelchairs up the stairs. "But this really isn't feasable, realistically," counters Bednarski. "Getting carried up is rather humiliating, and there's no way people in electic wheelchairs can be carried up--those things weigh a ton."
Bednarski was again irritated to find that the Image&Nation will hold its festival this fall in the Parisien once more. She says she feels the real culprit isn't the festival, but one of their sponsors, Famous Players Cinemas, which refuses to offer space that is wheelchair-friendly. "They are a big company with a lot of money," Bednarski says. "They should be able to accommodate us." A spokesperson for Image&Nation says this year's fest will also be held at the Eaton Centre cinema, a venue that has wheelchair access. This line of reasoning has not pleased Bednarski, who has filed complaints with the Quebec Human Rights Commission, citing grievances against both Famous Players and Image&Nation (both complaints are currently pending).
A happier conclusion seems to have played itself out with L'Androgyne, Montreal's gay and lesbian bookstore, which recently relocated to the corner of Amherst and Ste-Catherine from its long-time St-Laurent home. Situated in a basement, Bednarski began a petition complaining about the new site's lack of a ramp. L'Androgyne types, under the new ownership of Priape, have since responded by installing one.
"It's a bit steep, and there should be a railing alongside it," Bednarski says. "But I'm still glad they've at least made an effort." Though she's spent some time focussing on gay establishments, Bednarski says Montreal as a whole has a pretty bad track- record in terms of respecting its disabled citizens. "It's amazing to me that the metro is inaccessible. Cities across Europe whose subway systems are far older than ours are wheelchair accessible. There's really no excuse for it."
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