We Still Demand! Redefining Resistance in Sex and Gender Struggles ed. by Patrizia Gentile, Gary Kinsman, and L. Pauline Rankin (review)

This book takes its name from the 1971 "We Demand" movement which contended that Pierre Trudeau's Bill C-150 decriminalizing certain sexual acts between same sex couples failed to eradicate larger systemic violence against, and marginalization of, gays and lesbians. The movement culminated with a demonstration on Parliament Hill attended by over 100 gay and lesbian-identifying people and their supporters. Participants targeted the limitations of the Criminal Code reforms by protesting the ongoing violence, discrimination, and police brutality against gays and lesbians. Like these protests, this collection of essays by various Canadian activists and scholars brings to light themes of activism and resistance that contest the rights-based, state-centric agendas that dominated sex and gender-based activisms and histories. The authors also highlight how sex and gender-based activism has created solidarity amongst activists within different communities, and built and sustained movements that aim to transform society as a whole. This collection is a must-read for queer and sexuality theorists and historians alike. It juxtaposes rights-based movements, such as the crusade for gay marriage legalization, against the more marginalized liberationist endeavors that the essays bring to light.

This book is divided into two main parts. Part One is devoted to maintaining the memories of past movements as acts of resistance. The first essay, "Liberating History" by historian Elise Chenier, explores gay couples Chris Vogel and Richard North, and Michel Girouard and Regeant Tremblay's use of same-sex marriage in the early 1970s as a "radical tactic" to contest heteronormative assumptions around marriage. (32) In getting married, these couples intended to challenge het-eronormative society at large, rather than conform to its ideals of monogamy and middle-classness. Chenier contextualizes the liberationist approach that these couples use against better-known fights for gay marriage. In doing so, she effectively problematizes rights-based approaches as inherently heteronormative and therefore oppressive.

Other pieces in Part One address how rights and liberation-based movements often co-exist while complementing and contesting each other. Mathieu Brulé's "Seducing the Unions" calls into question the "natural" association between labour movements and gay liberation activists in the 1970s and 1980s. (51) This association was based on the premise that the problems labour movements faced were also encountered by those within gay liberation movements. This supposedly coincided in a natural or inevitable partnership between the two. In contrast to this assumption, Brulé notes that union members often displayed discriminatory attitudes against queer activists. However, these movements also formed mutually beneficial alliances, whose members worked together to combat gay and lesbian-based discrimination. These efforts included Toronto's Gay Alliance Toward Equality's (gate) efforts to assist with motions prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation within municipal employment. Brulé marks this as a pivotal moment in which gay liberationists and labour movements officially worked together to make advances in gay and lesbian workers' rights. He then uses oral and textual sources to trace these groups' intersecting and mutual interests in both human rights and liberationist-based struggles.

Some of the essays take a retrospective approach in highlighting sex and gender-based struggles that were in danger of disappearing from memory. For instance, Nicholas Matte, the Toronto-based Project Manager of the lgbtq Oral History Digital Collaboratory, traces in "Rupert Raj, Transmen and Sexuality" how historical unearthing of gender activism can enable trans people to come to the forefront of sex and gender activist efforts and movements. He focuses on Raj's accomplishments in the 1980s as a leading trans-man activist and founder of the trans-man-focused Metamorphosis Magazine, while also problematizing Raj's use of trans-normative initiatives in his attempts to "influence medical and state policies." (118) Matte emphasizes the importance of "unearthing" past sex and gender-based resistances in a manner that honours the book's central theme of keeping the memories, and...