The CLGA is filled with transcriptions of what people said when expressing homophobic views. In the course of doing our research over the past year and a half, we have come across hundreds of quotes that vividly demonstrate in unvarnished terms the derision with which gays and lesbians were treated. We decided to start keeping a tally of every pejorative we came across and to date have collected 129 unique terms. They start with almost every letter in the alphabet, from “abhorrent” to “zealout.” Only the letters “k” and “x” — always a challenging character with which to start a word — are missing from our list. It turns out that the letter “d” was particularly favoured for formulating insults that included “debauched,” “defected,” demented” and “disgusting” to name just a few! The archives has a copy of a speech delivered in 1984 by celebrated Canadian novelist and playwright Timothy Findley, who was openly gay. It is a real gem in which Findley expounds on what it was like to be at the receiving end of insults he poignantly described as “gestures of violence” and “the stuff of nightmares.” He provided the following gripping account of how he felt when pointed at and called “faggot:” “It is very like a knife wound — in this respect: it loses its edge under the influence of shock. It does not, however, lose its impact. It is something from which you never recover. It is a loss of innocence through violence … like losing your virginity through being raped.” It is hard to imagine a more eloquent or striking account of the destructive power of words when wielded as weapons. Findley helps us to appreciate — at a visceral level — what it felt like to live in a society that had such a rich lexicon at its disposal for demeaning and defiling a group that had little recourse for countering such attacks. | |
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The following blogs provide vivid accounts of discrimination perpetrated against people in Canada whose sexual identities did not conform to standards of the day. In equal measure, they provide stirring anecdotes about brave individuals who — in the face of overwhelming oppression — challenged ignorance and injustice. Archives
March 2015
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