The Canadian War on Queers

by Kinsman, Gary; Gentile, Patrizia

• ISBN13: 9780774816281
• ISBN10: 0774816287
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-07-01
• Publisher: Univ of British Columbia Pr

Summary

From the 1950s to the late 1990s, agents of the state spied on, interrogated, and harassed gays and lesbians in Canada, employing social ideologies and other practices to construct their targets as threats to society. Based on official security documents and interviews with gays, lesbians, civil servants, and high-ranking officials, this path-breaking book discloses acts of state repression and forms of resistance that raise questions about just whose national security was being protected. Passionate and personalized, this account of how the state used the ideology of national security to wage war on its own people offers ways of understanding, and resisting, contemporary conflicts such as the "war on terror."

Author Biography

Gary Kinsman is the author of The Regulation of Desire and an editor of Sociology for Changing the World. He is a professor in the Sociology Department at Laurentian University, Sudbury. Patrizia Gentile is assistant professor in the Pauline Jewett Institute of Women's and Gender Studies at Carleton University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. xi
Preface: National Security Wars - Then and Now	p. xiii
Acknowledgments	p. xix
List of Abbreviations	p. xxi
Queering National Security, the Cold War, and Canadian History: Surveillance and Resistance	p. 1
Queer History and Sociology from Below: Resisting National Security	p. 27
The Cold War against Queers: Social and Historical Contexts	p. 53
Spying and Interrogation: The Social Relations of National Security	p. 115
The "Fruit Machine": Attempting to Detect Queers	p. 168
Queer Resistance and the Security Response: Solidarity versus the RCMP	p. 191
The Campaign Continues in the 1970s: Security Risks and Lesbian Purges in the Military	p. 221
"Gay Political Activists" and "Radical Lesbians": Organizing against the National Security State	p. 243
Sexual Policing and National Security: Sex Scandals, Olympic Clean-Ups, and Cross-Country Organizing	p. 302
Continuing Exclusion: The Formation of CSIS and "Hard-Core Lesbians"	p. 336
From Exclusion to Assimilation: National Security, the Charter, and Limited Inclusion	p. 391
From the Canadian War on Queers to the War on Terror: Resisting the Expanding National Security State	p. 429
Appendix: Index of Interviews	p. 459
Notes	p. 462
Bibliography	p. 523
Index	p. 546
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