... having been breathed out

greywash

• Did you know that "hinterland" has a technical definition? Apparently, in maritime terms, the area which brings its goods to a port for export and receives the imports processed through that port, is that port's "hinterland." (In more general economic terms the same can be said of an area outside an urban center, even if that center's not a port.) I always just thought it meant "the boonies." *themoreyouknow.gif*



• Three of the four surviving issues of the Atlantic Advocate, which today I learned was Nova Scotia's first Black Canadian newsmagazine (starting publication in 1915) are available online to browse at one's leisure: January 1917; April 1917; and May 1917. I haven't had time yet to read them all in full, but skimming through, they're an interesting read: extremely moral-suason-y—the January issue promises "All the news of interest: Of the Race; Their Doings; Their Progress"—but it gives a sense of how a certain group of Black Canadians were talking about their lives & activism at the time.



• You can also browse the entire run of issues of the Dalhousie Gazette, the Dalhousie University student newspaper, from its inception in 1869 right up until the present day. In case you wanted to know what Professor Martin had to say about dreams in his lecture to the medical school, or what happened on the Senior Night Walk of November 30, 1916.



• Archives of mainstream Nova Scotia newspapers are, on the other hand, bizarrely difficult to find online?? Apparently I need to track down a ProQuest membership in order to look at back issues of the Halifax Chronicle(/Herald)?? My life is hard, etc. etc.



• Speaking of Halifax, did you know that the Great Halifax Explosion, in which a ship laden with high explosives exploded in the harbor, was the largest man-made explosion in history prior to the atomic bomb? Now you do.

Observers of the [Viola Desmond] trial would have been struck by the absence of any overt discussion of racial issues. In the best tradition of Canadian 'racelessness,' the prosecution witnesses never explained that Viola Desmond had been denied the more expensive downstairs [theatre] ticket on the basis of her race. No one admitted that the theatre patrons were assigned seats on the basis of race. In an interview with the Toronto Daily Star several weeks [after the 1946 expulsion of Viola Desmond for sitting downstairs at the Roseland theatre despite management's refusal, due to her race, to sell her a downstairs ticket, theatre owner] Harry MacNeil would insist that neither he nor the Odeon Theatres management had ever issued instructions that main-floor tickets were not to be sold to Blacks. 'It is customary for [colored persons] to sit together in the balcony,' MacNeil would assert. At the trial, no one even hinted that Viola Desmond was Black, that her accusers and her judge were white. On its face, the proceeding appears to be simply a prosecution for failure to pay a provincial tax. In fact, if Viola Desmond had not taken further action in this matter, the surviving trial records would have left no clue to the real significance of the case.

[...]

[Reacting to the results of the trial in The Clarion newspaper, James Calbert Best] castigated Canadians for their complacency:

We do have many of the privileges which are denied our southern brothers, but we often wonder if the kind of segregation we receive here is not more cruel in the very subtlety of its nature. [...]

True, we are not forced into separate parts of public conveyances, nor are we forced to drink from separate faucets or use separate washrooms, but we are often refused meals in restaurants and beds in hotels, with no good reason.

Nowhere do we encounter signs that read 'No Colored' or the more diplomatic little paste boards which say 'Select Clientele,' but at times it might be better. At least much consequent embarrassment might be saved for all concerned.

Carrie Best, who was born and educated in New Glasgow [Nova Scotia, where the managers of the Roseland Theatre refused to sell Viola Desmond a ground-floor ticket on the basis of her race], was well acquainted with the egregious forms of white racism practiced there. A woman who defined herself as an 'activist' against racism, she did not mince words when she claimed there were 'just as many racists in New Glasgow as in Alabama.' She was thrown out of the Roseland Theatre herself in 1942, for refusing to sit in the balcony, and tried unsuccessfully to sue the theatre management for damages then.

Nor was she a stranger to the heroism of Black resisters. One of her most vivid childhood memories involved a race riot that erupted in New Glasgow at the close of the First World War. An interracial altercation between two youths inspired 'bands of roving white men armed with clubs' to station themselves at different intersections in the town, barring Blacks from crossing. At dusk that evening, Carrie Best's mother was delivered home from work by the chauffeur of the family who employed her. There she found that her husband, her younger son, and Carrie had made it home safely. Missing was Carrie's older brother, who had not yet returned from his job at the Norfolk House hotel. Carrie described what ensued in her autobiography, That Lonesome Road:

In all the years she lived and until she passed away at the age of eighty-one my mother was never known to utter an unkind, blasphemous or obscene word, nor did I ever see her get angry. This evening was no exception. She told us to get our meal, stating that she was going into town to get my brother. It was a fifteen minute walk.

At the corner of East River Road and Marsh Street the crowd was waiting and as my mother drew near they hurled insults at her and threateningly ordered her to turn back. She continued to walk toward the hotel about a block away when one of the young men recognized her and asked her where she was going. 'I am going to the Norfolk House for my son,' she answered calmly. (My mother was six feet tall and as straight as a ramrod.) The young man ordered the crowd back and my mother continued on her way to the hotel. At that time there was a livery stable at the rear entrance to the hotel and it was there my mother found my frightened older brother and brought him safely home.

This was but one incident in an increasingly widespread pattern of white racism, that exploded with particular virulence across Canada during and immediately following the First World War. White mobs terrorized the Blacks living near New Glasgow, physically destroying their property. White soldiers also attacked the Black settlement in Truro, Nova Scotia, stoning houses and shouting obscenities. Throughout the 1920s, Blacks in Ontario and Saskatchewan withstood increasingly concerted intimidation from the hateful Ku Klux Klan. But race discrimination had a much longer history in Canada.

( THE HISTORY OF BLACK SEGREGATION IN CANADA )

The doctrine of marital unity, through which married women lost most of their rights to property, entailed a "suspension of the independent existence of the wife, and an absorption by the husband of the woman's person and all her belongings... " So wrote Clara Brett Martin, Canada's first woman lawyer, who noted the irony of the marriage ceremony, in which the husband solemnly promised to endow his wife with all his worldly goods. With veiled sarcasm*, Martin (who, incidentally, never married**) attributed the injustice of this situation to the common-law tradition that Canadians had inherited from England. "This notion of the unity of husband and wife," she wrote in 1900, "meaning thereby the suspension of the wife and the lordship of the husband, seems to have been particularly agreeable to the whole race of English jurists, tickling their grim humor and gratifying their very limited sense of the fitness of things."

[Black attorney and activist] Lionel Cross was one of a few lone voices to claim that Ira Johnson's and Isabel Jones's right to wed, and that interracial marriage in general, was a positive thing. 'The white people talk of racial purity,' he said scornfully. 'Yet it is a fact that sixty-five percent of the colored people of the South have white blood in their veins.' It was not the fact of racial intermixture that caused white consternation, but the legitimizing of the interracial sexual liaisons. Thousands of Black women had been forcibly coerced into sexual relations with whites during and after the decades of slavery in North America. The Klan did nothing to contest those non-consensual sexual connections. It was the voluntary, egalitarian unions between the races that alone provoked their ire. Asserting that there could be 'no biological reason against intermarriage,' Cross objected to the Klan's campaign of terror. The Oakville raid was not merely 'a question of intermarriage,' insisted Cross, 'but of constitutional right.'

[Black pastor] Rev. [H. Lawrence] McNeil was considerably less sanguine about this point. McNeil told the Toronto Daily Star that he held 'no brief for the promiscuous intermingling of the races,' and directed his complaint solely against 'the substitution of the purely authorized law enforcement agencies by such an intolerant organization as the Ku Klux Klan.' B.J. Spencer Pitt, the other Black lawyer who had pressured the attorney general to prosecute the Klan, was similarly inclined. 'Personally, I do not believe that intermarriage is advisable,' he indicated. 'Indeed, I would say from my own general experience and observation that such marriages lead more often to discord.' He was even willing to accede to a legislative ban on racial intermarriage: 'If the Canadian government saw fit to prohibit intermarriage of negroes and whites, I am certain that we negroes would abide by the law.'

Both McNeil and Pitt espoused egalitarian philosophies and demonstrated sustained anti-racist activism in the face of the Oakville raid. It is unlikely that they meant to be understood as suggesting that interracial marriages were problematic because of any inherent hierarchialization of racial groups. Their position is reflective of an affirmative pride in Black identity as a source of community, culture, and solidarity.( Cut because this got very long! )

The truth—that queer, sexually truthful literature is seen as pornographic, and is systematically kept out of the hands of most Americans, gay and straight—has been replaced with a false story of a nonexistent integration and a fantasized equality. […] In my own experience, the [mainstream] equation of queer literature with pornography is undeniable. […] Of course, in gay time, “recent” quickly disappears because so many participants are dead, and others have been silenced. It’s hard to have collective memory when so many who were “there” are not “here” to say what happened. Once the recent past is remembered, then the Amazon “glitch” [in which LGBT titles were automatically removed from Amazon’s listings during a porn purge in 2008] becomes all too consistent. So, here is just one example, exhumed from memory.

In 1994, a coalition of feminists and right-wing politicians in Canada passed a tariff code called Butler that was designed to restrict pornographic production. Instead, it was applied in such a way that it allowed officials at Canada customs to systematically detain and destroy gay and lesbian materials at the border. A gay bookstore in Vancouver, Little Sisters, had so much of its product seized that it could no longer operate. As a result, Little Sisters decided to sue the Canadian government.

My friend John Preston had just died of AIDS. He was the author of some iconic leather and S/M novels, many with literary bent. His novel Mister Benson had been serialized in Drummer magazine, and created a subcultural phenomena. Men would wear T-shirts asking Mister Benson? Or asserting Mister Benson! While he had a less explicit series called Franny, the Queen of Provincetown, John was perhaps best known for his book I Once Had a Master. Since he was newly dead, I was asked by the Little Sisters legal team to come to Vancouver and testify on John’s behalf. And because I was very clear in my opposition to state repression of gay materials, I had no problem agreeing.

The Canadian courthouse was quite shocking to this New Yorker. No metal detectors, no armed guards at rapt attention in every corner. The building looked like a Marriott hotel, with lovely plants, comfortable seating, and a coffee bar. But do not be fooled, the Canadian government proved to be a vicious animal with a demure exterior.

Tensions were high in the courtroom the day I arrived. The trial had been going on for weeks and many writers had testified. Patrick Califia, who at the time had presented as female with the name Pat, had been on the witness stand the Friday before and had done so well that the Crown had refused to cross-examine him. Interestingly, “Pat”—who was known as a butch leather dyke—had taken the extreme step of wearing a brown corduroy dress, which impressed me. We were, after all, trying to win. I, and I assume many of the women testifying, had agonized over what to wear on the stand. The only nice dress I owned in 1994 was black velvet—kind of a parody of a dress, and something to be worn to the opera. Anyway, I wore pants. Becky Ross, a Canadian academic, testified before me. She wore a dress, but I think she always wore a dress. Anyway, the Crown had been pretty hard on her, asking her to define “fisting.”

John’s books were being persecuted on five counts. The questions I had to address were: Is it violent? Is it degrading? Is it dehumanizing? Does hit have literary merit? Is it socially redeeming? If I had had my way, I would have argued that even if the books were violent, degrading, et cetera, they still should be available. However, Canadian courts had already ruled on that question, so my only remaining strategy for protecting his books was to “prove” that Butler should not be applied to him. Not that the law was wrong.

So many years later, this is the conundrum gay writers faced with the Amazon exclusion. Mark Doty, Larry Kramer, and many other principled gay writers noted online and in print that books like Giovanni’s Room and Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit were being falsely labeled as pornography. Once again we were forced by a state or corporate apparatus to claim that our literature was different from that dirty stuff, instead of part and parcel with it. But it is the homosexuality that got the books marginalized in the first place. Not their sentence structure.

[…]

The actual testifying did not go that well. Once I got on the witness stand, the Crown claimed that I was not qualified to be an expert on “harm.” I said that as someone who has experienced “harm” for being a lesbian, and especially for being a lesbian writer, I was quite expert on the matter. I argued that “homophobia is a social pathology that causes violence and destroys families.” I said that gay and lesbian books are a mitigating force against homophobia and therefore are socially beneficial and the opposite of “harm.” The Crown claimed that I was not qualified to make this statement because I am not a sociologist. They won, and I was forbidden from addressing that issue in court.

This was the first indication I had of our judge’s conceptual limits. As we moved along, I came to learn that Milord did not know what “deconstruction” meant. And later he revealed a puzzlement over the meaning of the word “enema.” Oh no, I thought. If he has never heard of enemas or deconstruction, we are doomed.

The Crown read out loud a passage from one of John’s books describing nipple torture. It was a bit surreal. Then he asked me if this was “degrading or dehumanizing.” I did my best.

Through the rest of the trial the government repeatedly made clear their view about any gay sex. They had seized a lesbian anthology called Bushfire because it included the line “she held me tightly like a rope,” which they said was “bondage.” They had also seized a book called Stroke, which was about boating.

In the end, after many more years and courts and dollars, Little Sister lost their case. The judge ruled that Canada customs officials had, and still have, the right to decide which materials are not suitable to come into the country. Interestingly, they quickly ratified gay marriage, while continuing to retain the right to insure that no married gay man will ever go looking for Mister Benson.

Those two days in court made it crystal clear to me that in the minds of many people, homosexuality is inherently pornographic. And there is nothing that has occurred in the subsequent three presidential terms that has created any other kind of context. The best proof is in our contemporary placement and treatment of sexually truthful gay literature. That John Preston was invited to give a keynote address at Outwrite, the now defunct lesbian and gay writer’s conference, was a sign of the prominent and central role of sexually explicit content in gay literature when it was controlled by the community. Now that gay presses and bookstores have been gentrified out of existence, first by chain stores like Barnes and Nobles, which are now being outsold by Amazon.com, gay literature is at the mercy of the mainstream. […] This puts gentrified queer people in a terrible bind: we can dissociate ourselves from the full continuum of queer literature, that is, from queer sexuality, thereby falsely describing our literature as “quality” if its sexual content is acceptable to straights. But that is a kind of implicit agreement that we only become deserving of rights when presenting as somewhere between furtive and monogamous.