Thanks also for the gossip. The grey-suit guy is the person I was referring to who had a lot to say about diversity. Nice to know his name and get a sense of his intentions. That goes a long way to explaining why his somewhat extensive comments had the flavour of a voter-courting speech - and here I was thinking it was just a leftover tendency from his time in office. Manoeuvering indeed. I’ll definitely have to attend future such panels if they’re all backed by such juicy intrigue!

July 29th, 2004
Gay Village
Village people no more
Leila Pourtavaf

Why many Montreal queers are decamping from the land of the rainbow flag.
http://www.hour.ca/news/news.aspx?iIDArticle=3768

I am glad to see you enjoyed the evening and yes it did get off topic several times. I would have loved to moderate and cracked the whip. But hey, we are still getting great feed back. I would have like to have seen more business types from the traditional village at Church and Wellesley, just about every big name person and community leaders were invited, with connections to Church and Wellesley, but they all refused to be on the panel. Go figure?

Here’s a bit of gossip and rumours the Moderator is NDP politico who ran in Davenport Ward 18. The NDP, MPP for Parkdale High Park breezed in and out in 15 minutes. Glen Murrary, the big beefy guy in the grey suit near front, the former mayor of Winnipeg now living in Toronto. Well rumour has it he will be running next provincial election for the liberals in Davenport. As one gay NDP wag said: “there is lot of political power and maneuvering going on in the room tonight.” Some queer politics, some queer neighbourhoods, in the Big Smoke LOL. ~ mp

Hee hee. Pervy typos. I normally correct such things when I catch them, but I think this time I’ll leave it be!

Very interesting article. And really good questions you ask. There’s lots of intriguing conversation going on these days around the intersections of ethnicity and queerness, and I feel like every perspective I hear has a fresh take on the topic. At the same time, though not exclusively so, homo and queer identities themselves are in some ways fairly distinctly Western constructs. So I imagine that would also influence a given person’s sense of draw to a ghetto, when such a draw even exists - whether they understand themselves as homo or queer, or as part of an ethnic group or cultural community, or both, or neither, or some other combination of identities, along with all the non-identity factors to consider when choosing a place to live (affordability, proximity to employment, etc.).

Yes, “slippage” is a fairly common academic term. At the very least it comes up in linguistic studies, where the idea of slippage refers mainly to a given term’s meaning shifting over time because of the way common usage evolves. It’s an organic process rather than an academically determined one, so in that sense it is “mistaken,” but not necessarily because such a process results in an actual error.

I think in this particular case, though the speaker was not a linguist, the idea of slippage in the linguistic sense sort of applies, though perhaps in a slightly different way. It’s not so much in that a term’s meaning has changed, but rather that the same (or a similar, or a new generation of) community is being referred to by a new term that some people deem equivalent to the old (i.e. a lot of people use “queer” as though it were nothing but the new, shorter version of “gay and lesbian), while in truth it indicates a more fluid type of vaguely homoerotic and gender-questioning identity. So services and spaces and groups that were originally aimed at gay and/or lesbian people are expanding and redefining to become queer, and that vagueness and fluidity in identity and terminology does translate into a vagueness and fluidity in practical, everyday realities (such as people’s choice of partners, sexual practices, community spaces, etc.). Not that I think you don’t know this, of course. Just waxing academic…

sounds like a great talk. i’m finding the idea of the gaybourhood particularly interesting relative to something else i read today: ken alexander’s musings in the walrus about ethnic neighbourhoods, “reasonable accomodation” and canada’s big cities.

http://www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/2008.02-sightings-canada-minorities-puzzling-ethnicity/

while i was reading that this morning, i was thinking about how articles on such topics take it for granted that ethnic groups want to live with “their own kind” when arriving from somewhere else.

in what ways is this similar/different from smalltown queers who move to the big city?

to which ghetto do homo and/or queer immigrants feel more drawn?

i’m also interested in this “slippage”. is this a common academic term? it makes it sound like a mistaken gesture, but from what you say after that, it appears not to be intended as such. it also sounds dirty/embarrassing, but maybe that’s just me… (e.g. “i spent so much time with my straight family over the weekend, i experienced a brief moment of identity slippage. don’t worry, i skimmed through some old Tom of Finland mags/ watched a half-season of the L word, and now i’m all back to normal.”

glad you’re settling in and finding the fun stuff!

can’t wait till you’re back in M-dot!