by PATRICK LEJTENYI

As another Divers/Cité descends on Montreal, along with thousands of tourists eager to take part in Montreal’s famed gay-friendliness, there are dissenting stirrings from within the local gay community. In a four-university city with a strong anti-establishment movement, it’s not a big surprise that some Montreal homosexuals feel at odds with the mainstreaming of gay and are rebelling against the pigeon-holing of their identity based solely on their sexuality and their supposed disposable income. They make a point of keeping a wide berth from Village life and the grasping materialism of the “gaygeoisie.” But they also express disillusionment at the placidity of gay leaders, who, in their minds, went from street activists to lawyers.

“Stonewall was a riot. A riot!” says “Emma Pantoufle,” a member of Montreal radical anarchist queer group les Panthères roses (who, along with her three co-members who met the Mirror for this article—“Muffalda,” “Jujube” and “Albator”—requested anonymity as many of their actions are unpopular with the mainstream gay community, to say nothing of local law enforcement). “We’ve lost something along the way. Now all gay activism takes place in courtrooms.”

Commodification and body fascism

“Just look at the route the parade takes,” says Albator. “It’s down René-Lévesque, surrounded by office towers, until you get to the Village.”

“What pisses us off about the parade,” says Emma, “is that, if you look at all the floats, you’ll see Coca-Cola, you’ll see Molson Dry—there are more corporate floats in that parade than ones from community groups. They’re commodifying my sexuality, and I refuse to become a target market.”

Furthermore, in their eyes, the mainstream gay culture stinks of body fascism (neither Jujube nor Albator fit the buff, hairless, short-haired beefcake bill), conformity and racism. “There’s a gay monoculture that emphasizes white bodies,” says Albator, and the group is critical of the overwhelmingly white and male gay community leadership.

“To a certain extent, I must agree,” says Louis Charron, a lawyer and president of the Quebec Gay Chamber of Commerce. “But we’re not trying to control admission, it’s just there hasn’t been any interest” on the part of visible minorities to step into leadership roles. He says the Chamber has tried to reach out to visible minorities and lesbians, but with limited success. As for gender, the Chamber’s board of 12 has three women, one of them straight.

“When I started here in 2000, we had a women’s committee to get them more involved,” he says. He thinks the lack of women participants has to do with lifestyle choices. “A lot of lesbians I know live outside of Montreal, in the country. They don’t especially like the urban atmosphere.”

He doesn’t make any apologies, however, about cashing in on the pink dollar. “We’re here to promote networking opportunities for gay merchants,” he says. “People want to access this niche market, whether [groups like les Panthères roses] like it or not.”

Evolution, not revolution?

Michael Hendricks, a well-known gay marriage activist who has been at the forefront of the gay rights movement for decades, isn’t impressed by the anarchists’ arguments. Gay activism, he says, has become less militant because the need isn’t as pressing as it was 10 or 15 years ago, especially regarding police-gay relations. He believes a landmark moment came in November 1993, when the Commissions des droits de la personne held seven days of meetings and testimony addressing violence and homosexuals.

“Our dossier then was police brutality and the banalization of gay murders,” he says, referring to a string of at least 14 homicides of gay men committed in the early 1990s. Also on the agenda at the hearings were legal and civil equality, health and education, especially regarding HIV/AIDS.

“All of it was discussed except education, because there were fears of a right-wing backlash,” Hendricks says. “But for the next 10 years, our work was laid out for us. The police issue was settled within two years, and that was done by negotiation after years of parading in the streets. We also chose the objective of fighting for our civil and legal rights, and for that we chose to use the Charter [of Rights and Freedoms].” In the last decade however, he says advances have been made in demystifying homosexuals through school visits, especially to elementary schools.

Stirring the pot

But Tom Waugh, a Concordia film professor and founder of its interdisciplinary studies in sexuality, likes the fact that queers can still be unhappy with the status quo. “This kind of discourse has been continuous for over 35 years,” he says. “It comes in cycles. We hear about how marriage and the enthronement of sexual diversity in the Charter is a symptom of complacency and the end of gay, so I’m glad younger folks are stirring up the pot.”

Waugh echoes the Panthères’ disgust at the surging commodification of gay sexuality. “You have all these ads about hair removal and laser surgery, but that’s not what it’s all about,” he says. “I can understand about their hesitation about having marriage as a goal. But when you read about its opponents and meet those kinds of people, you also understand that the struggle is important and legitimate.”

But Hendricks generally dismisses the young anarchists’ critiques. “To send the ball back in their court, what are they doing to sell their particular salad?” he asks. “Why aren’t they more public? It’s not like it was in the ’70s, when gays weren’t welcome in socialist and communist circles because they were seen as bourgeois deviationists. Trudeau gave us the Charter, so let’s use it.”

The Panthères are not without allies. Amir Baradaran, founder of the Canadian Caucus for Two-Spirited and Queers of Colour at national gay rights group EGALE, says “gay” as it’s come to be known should be read as “gay and white.”

He says the emphasis on coming out as a way of achieving complete liberation is essentially a white, middle-class belief. “It’s problematic because it hegemonizes sexual identity,” he says, meaning that sexual orientation becomes the individual’s principal identifier, rather than his skin colour, religion or background. “What happens by doing this is that you are pushed to present yourself as only one of the things that you are. It takes away the hyphens, and so legislation only looks at one identifier.”

Pirates on parade

There are other radical queer groups with a similar outlook as the Panthères. The Anti-Capitalist Ass Pirates, a Concordia-based group, dress up in frilly shirts and invade Pride parades in-between organizing theme parties. The Panthères’ Web site (www.lespantheresroses.

org) has links to groups in Paris, Amsterdam, Chicago and San Francisco, where the Gay Shame movement is rocking the pink establishment, as well as other anarchist, culture jamming and alternative media sites.

The Panthères approach their actions with a sense of humour. Past projects include making out with each other while wearing pink balaclavas at last March’s Women’s Day parade to spreading fake puke on the doorstep of Village shops on Valentine’s Day to handing out anti-advertising condoms at last year’s festival. They say they have something in store for this year’s event, but wouldn’t say what.

Ass Pirate “DJ Challes,” who asked the Mirror to use her nom de party, says queer anarchist alienation wouldn’t be so acute if they had somewhere to socialize. “The Village is just not a space for people to meet if they’re not excited by gay consumerism, or to party if they’re not excited by a specific club scene or club music,” she says. “People are still radical, but the social spaces for them aren’t there, except for their living rooms. My great, utopian dream is to open a space for ourselves. All that’s missing in $10- or $15,000.”