Activities and Events
Celebrasian
The Gay Asians of Toronto was a fixture within gay Toronto by the early 1980s. This is best documented via GAT’s quarterly newsletter Celebrasian. Multiple issues of Celebrasian in the 1980s and 1990s contained directories of fellow queer organizations and their mailing addresses. The directories included organizations both across Canada and internationally, especially in major cities such as Chicago, New York, Houston, Hong Kong, Palo Alto, Houston, Vancouver, Manila, and London. Starting in 1983, GAT began holding an annual celebration aptly named "Celebrasian." Sharing the name of GAT's newsletter, Celebrasian featured panels, theatre, discussions, and workshops. It was widely attended, with organizations such as AMALGM (the Alliance of Massachusetts Asian Lesbians and Gay Men) documenting the experience of attending and acknowledging the vast scale of the event.[1]
The Gay Asian AIDS Project (GAAP)
GAT’s activism within Toronto often focused on AIDS prevention. After applying for a grant from the Toronto Board of Health in 1989, GAT organized an AIDS prevention program known as the Gay Asian AIDS Project (GAAP). GAAP was conceived as a public health initiative and accomplished its goals through public pamphlets, collaboration with local clinics, and other forms of community outreach to non-English-speaking Asian communities. The project was aimed at a pan-Asian audience; pamphlets and brochures were published in a variety of Asian languages, such as Vietnamese, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Tagalog.[2]
The initial application was filed by GAT in April 1989.[3] The project grant was approved in June of that year.[4] The strategies for AIDS prevention outlined within the application included the distribution of pamphlets, outreach to clinics, and town halls and panels to listen to community input. The project requested a renewal grant in February 1990, but it is unknown whether it was approved.[5]
The 1985 International Gay Association Conference (ILGA)
In 1985, GAT was instrumental in organizing the International Gay Association Conference, whose main theme was "Smashing Borders and Opening Spaces: General Oppression of Gay and Lesbian People." The conference was held in Toronto. At this event GAT was able to meet and collaborate with other queer Asian organizations across the world, notably from Boston, San Francisco, and Japan. The event was foundational to GAT's later involvement in transnational activism, including with activists from Japan.
Diversity, Divisions, and Conflicts
While a majority of queer organizations within Toronto approached queerness as a basis of political organizing as well as social gathering, there was a significant divide between white and racialized queer groups with respect to how to approach social justice issues, most notably in relation to sexual liberation. One particular incident exacerbated the divide between the two communities. More specifically, The Body Politic published a classified advertisement in the February 1985 issue for a white man looking for a "black houseboy." The text read as follows:
“BLACK MALE WANTED: HANDSOME SUCCESSFUL, GWM would like young, well built BM for houseboy. Ideal for student or young businessman. Some travelling and affection required. Reply with letter, photo, phone to Box 2647, Station F, Scarborough, ON M1W 3P2.”[6]
The advertisement was considered significant for multiple reasons. While The Body Politic editorial board and the person who submitted the ad found it acceptable as a rejection of conventional sexual desires, other community members and readers of the ad, including GAT members, found it racist. While The Body Politic stopped reprinting the ad in subsequent issues, multiple members of its editorial board, including Gerald Hannon and Ken Popert, defended it, citing “the inviolability of desire” as a rationale.
The ad itself was representative of the divide within Toronto's queer community on how to handle the issue of sexual liberation. The debate over the house boy ad is reminiscent of how hierarchies of sexual desire and racial hierarchies were perceived to intersect with one another. Multiple community members of Toronto, racialized and white alike, spoke out against the ad and denounced its publication as racist; Alan Li and Richard Fung of the Gay Asians of Toronto were among those who did so. While these debates about acceptable and unacceptable desires and how they intersected with other social systems such as race and gender are far from settled in contemporary queer organizing, the houseboy incident is indicative of a significant clash of views about sexual desire and sexual liberation within Toronto’s queer communities.
Both Li and Fung wrote letters to The Body Politic expressing frustration at the racist nature of the ad and the periodical's response. In the April 1985 issue, the periodical published Fung’s critiquing of the magazine's response to criticism:
“What people of colour and many white lesbians and gays are angry about is the fact that the ad was objected to by the one truly active person of colour on the paper but was printed anyway, and that the concerns about the ad raised later by Zami and Gay Asians Toronto met with an incredibly patronizing dismissal by the most vocal members of the collective.... If TBP continues with this policy, you might as well change your masthead to read 'A magazine for white gay men.'”[7]
Li wrote in the same issue of The Body Politic about his frustration over the dismissal of concerns about the lack of inclusion in white queer spaces:
“It is all safe and grand for the middle class GWMs [Gay White Males] on the Body Politic collective to preach 'sexual libertarianism' and make the 'inviolability of desire' the centre of their politics, but women and third world gays have added battles to fight.... To us, racism, sexism, and socio-economic as well as political oppression are equally important issues to be confronted. Until such time as The Body Politic makes the larger communities' (including: Asians, Blacks, women, and other minorities) interests part of their objective, and do not exclude non-white members by their politically elite structure, I cannot see TBP as a magazine for the true 'liberation of gays.'”[8]
The controversy that the ad created strengthened a color line within Toronto's queer community organizing scene that never disappeared, even decades later. Michael Connors Jackman’s 2017 article, “Receptions of the Past,” details how The Body Politic’s choice to publish the ad still drew controversy at a 2016 symposium at the University of Toronto, indicating that the controversy was significant enough to have ramifications well over three decades later.[9]
[1] S. H. Chua, “Asian Lesbian/Gay Conference in Toronto,” Alliance of Massachusetts Asian Lesbians and Gay Men (AMALGM) Newsletter, March 1988, 7, 10-12.
[2] GAT AIDS Prevention Pamphlets, 1990, Gay Asians of Toronto Fonds, Box 65, Folder 62-07-046, The ArQuives, Toronto.
[3] Toronto Board of Health Grant Application, April 1, 1989, Gay Asians of Toronto Fonds, Box 65, Folder 62-07-046, The ArQuives, Toronto.
[4] Toronto Board of Health Grant Notice of Approval, July 20, 1989, Gay Asians of Toronto Fonds, Box 65, Folder 62-07-046, The ArQuives, Toronto.
[5] Toronto Board of Health Grant Renewal Application, February 1990, Gay Asians of Toronto Fonds, Box 65, Folder 62-07-046, The ArQuives, Toronto.
[6] “TBP Classifieds,” The Body Politic, February 1985, 44.
[7] Richard Fung, letter to the editor, The Body Politic, April 1985, 30.
[8] Alan Li, letter to the editor, The Body Politic, April 1985, 30.
[9] Michael Connors Jackman, “Receptions of the Past: Commemoration, Racism, Desire,” Somatechnics 7, no. 2 (2017): 293-295.