Julie Podmore

Gone ‘underground’? Lesbian visibility and the consolidation of queer space in Montréal

Over the last two decades, urban researchers have investigated how gender shapes gay and lesbian geographies in major post-industrial cities. These studies demonstrated that while gay men have often produced highly visible territorial enclaves in inner-city areas, lesbian forms of territoriality at the urban scale have been relatively ‘invisible’ since their communities are constituted through social networks rather than commercial sites. Contrasting the patterns produced by these two populations in the inner-city areas of post-industrial cities during the ‘queer’ 1990s has created a gender-polarized and historically specific interpretation of their patterns of territoriality and visibility that may differ significantly from those of earlier periods. This paper, therefore, provides a long-range historical geography of lesbians in a major metropolitan area through a case study of Montréals lesbian bar cultures since 1950. The focus of the analysis is on the preconditions that led to the establishment of the citys lesbian commercial enclave in the 1980s and the factors that led to its decline in the 1990s. This case study, therefore, outlines the shifting character of lesbian territorial practices at the urban scale in Montréal since 1950. It illustrates that in Montréal lesbian territoriality and visibility have been strongly impacted by local neighbourhood dynamics, internal ideologies, and political and spatial relationships with gay men. Ultimately, these findings suggest that contemporary lesbian visibility at the urban scale may have been undermined by an increased identification with the ‘queer’ forms of community and their territorialization in Montréals gay Village.

Entering the Urban Frame: Early Lesbian Activism and Public Space in Montréal

This article examines the spatial strategies used by Montréal lesbian activists in the 1970s and 1980s to fight for the lesbian “right to the city.” After situating lesbian public activism within Henri Lefebvres ideal of spatial justice, this article provides case studies of four moments during which Montréal lesbian activists joined or initiated public demonstrations as lesbians. The focus is on the multiple ways in which lesbian activists performed politicized lesbian identities in urban public spaces. Their spatial strategies in this first era of the lesbian and gay rights movement provide an alternative account of claiming lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer rights to the heterosexual city.

Space for Queer and Trans* Youth? Reflections on Community-Based Research in Montreal

This article focuses on the process of conducting community-based geographic research with queer and trans youth. It is based on a research project that investigated the spatial experiences of adolescents between 14 and 18 years of age who attended Project 10, an out-of-school LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) community support organization for youth in Montreal, Canada. The authors examine the ways in which working within this community space shaped the research process and how it functioned as a site of critical geographic inquiry. The article highlights the process of gaining access to this population, the methodological particularities of working with queer and trans* youth support groups and, finally, how conducting research in an LGBTQ community space facilitated the research process. The objective is to reflect on the possibilities and limitations of this site in terms of conducting geographic research that considers the lives of queer and trans* adolescents.

‘Straightening’ space and time? Peripheral moral panics in print media representations of Canadian LGBTQ2S suburbanites, 1985–2005

ABSTRACT This paper adopts a spatial-temporal lens to examine mainstream print media representations of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer and Two-Spirit (LGBTQ2S) suburbanites in Canada’s largest metropolitan areas in the 1990s. Due to major changes in Canadian gay rights legislation, the 1990s were a decade when the spatial and temporal reproduction of heteronormativity was contested, including in suburban areas. Through a focus on the metropolitan periphery, this paper argues that LGBTQ2S people and their politics were discursively positioned in print media coverage as spatially unexpected and temporally disruptive of heteronormativity. Drawing upon a suburban LGBTQ2S print-media database from 1985 to 2005 (n = 1300), an analysis of aggregate patterns is provided and three exemplary case studies of suburban ‘moral panics’ detailed from within case-study metropolitan areas of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. The paper concludes that the greatest public debate in the print media was generated when queers intruded upon institutions that were central to the reproduction of heteronormative futures, that is, the institutions that are the very foundation of suburbia such as recreational spaces, religious institutions and schools.