Category: Xtra

Jokes and the Unconscious dazzled me from the very first page. This brilliant graphic novel by performance poet Daphne Gottlieb and artist Diane DiMassa blazes through death and sex with compassion, honesty and a perfectly sick sense of humour. Oh, and did I mention it’s hot, too?More…

I can’t believe Notes on a Scandal is up for four Academy Awards. Can I just say that I totally hated it?

For those of you who haven’t seen it, Barbara (Judi Dench) is a bitter, frumpy woman obsessed with lovely young Sheba (Cate Blanchett). When Barbara finds out that Sheba is having sex with a teenage boy, she offers herself up as a confidante in hopes of getting closer to Sheba. But her manipulation escalates into blackmail, as Barbara becomes desperate to have Sheba as her “friend.”
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On New Year’s Day I ended up at an impromptu brunch where we had a discussion that was like a distillation of conversations I’ve been having throughout 2006, meaning a mix of despairing and philosophical.
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Queer at the Hospital
In the middle of November, around the time of the boil-water advisory and the heavy snowfall, I had emergency abdominal surgery. I had never been in the hospital before. But all of a sudden there I was at VGH, IVs everywhere, blood transfusions, painkillers, Salisbury steak for dinner, the whole deal. For six days.
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Something has been bothering me lately and it’s that L-word. No, not the skinny women on TV but the word “ladies.” All the irony seems to have gone out of it.
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I had always been an outspoken small dog hater, but in that moment everything changed. I fell in love with all small dogs and started to think of them as symbols of queer pride.

Read the whole column on the Xtra West website.

I’ve been thinking a lot about old dykes ever since my friend Arleen’s 60th birthday party. (I was going to say “older” dykes, but then I read this great thing by Old Lesbians Organizing for Change. They use “old” instead of “older” to “refute the lie that it is shameful to be an ‘old’ woman.”)
Read the whole column on the Xtra West website.

It doesn’t take a lot of deep thinking to understand that the right of women (and other folks with breasts) to be topless is a queer issue, that it’s part and parcel of our larger fight to be out and proud. That women who are trying to cool off or breastfeed or feel the breeze on their skin–or women whose outfits just look better with exposed breasts–should be able to go ahead and take their tops off.
Read the whole column on the Xtra website.

I know I should be happy to live in a city where many people tolerate and sometimes even celebrate queers. But there’s something disturbing about how comfortable the thousands of straight spectators are at the Pride Parade. They seem to think it’s just another spectacle–and I’m not sure we’re telling them any different.
Read the whole column on the Xtra website.

You think of yourself as this great big out and proud dyke. Your family and everyone at work knows you’re queer and you hold hands with your girlfriend in public and people stare at you and you don’t care. Then one day you find out that you have this problem with your uterus. It’s not life threatening or anything, just serious. Serious enough that you have to go to a gynecologist.

Find out what happens next on the Xtra website.