The Importance Of LGBT Rights In Canada

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In the 21st century, Canada is in the forefront of LGBT (Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) rights in the world. Struggles over the last twenty years centred on equality rights such as same sex marriage and homosexual practices have instilled new understandings of policy change and drive for improvements in social institutions of legal recognition and protection of LGBT citizens. In Toronto specifically, LGBT zones have become increasingly visible and popular with the success of civil right movements advocating equality, prohibition of discrimination, and rights to operating LGBT commercial spaces. This trend resulted in several changes within the city giving rise to a booming market in regard to tourism and new ideas of recognizing LGBT …show more content…

Events such as Pride Week and commercialization of gay/lesbian bars, baths, and nude beaches have flourished and expanded as a result of ostensibly support from the government and police officials claiming to promoting the city as cosmopolitan and multicultural place within the globalized world. In spite of the city promoting itself as a major global centre of LGBT community life, governance of spaces and urban politics have revealed alternative desideratum of the government in seeking to neutralize individual transgressiveness of queer identities by assimilating them into the hegemonic state, promoting a peaceful, white-collar, well-behaved gay/lesbian community (Bain, 2007: 17). Stemming from bathhouse raids to security of LGBT events in self-policing and commercializing of specify zones, shifts to neoliberalism give rise to a new relationship between LGBT communities, non-LGBT individuals, the market, and the state. In this paper, I argue …show more content…

The Bijou, a gay men’s pro theatre, The Barn, a gay men’s club, and several other bathhouses were all raided preceding the raid on the “Pussy Palace” bathhouse (Bain, 2007: 24). These establishments are all similar in which they provide asylums for various LGBT communities across the city but also challenges hegemonic notions of traditional gendered practices and identities. When put on to the spotlight, I argue, that these business were perceived by the city and police as “dark areas” of city, promoting sexual deviance and illegal practices. These societies were certainly not areas where family tourists could bring their kids in comparison to the centre of Pride Week such as Church and Wellesley village in downtown Toronto. In contrast to day-time clothing shops, museums, and parks where one could see brightly coloured rainbow flags and cheerful homosexual couples holding hands walking down the street of Church and Wellesley, bathhouse events, specifically the “Pussy Palace” is held during the night, in shady, downtown, entertainment sectors of downtown Toronto, promoting perverse, kinky, and devious activity such as sexual practices in closed doors. Rather then attracting tourists and citizens of Toronto, I argue, that perceptions of

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