In 1970, W.E. Mann edited a volume titled The Underside of Toronto (McClelland & Stewart), perhaps an early effort to dispel the Disneyfied image of Toronto the Good. In Part Four, titled “Deviant Behaviour and Deviant Groups”, he includes William Johnson’s “The Gay World”. The article had previously appeared in the Globe Magazine in 1968. The article opens with this claim: “Toronto, haven for hippies and draft dodgers, may be on its way to becoming the homosexual capital of North America.” Given that Toronto is hosting World Pride, which will soon be upon us, I thought it would be interesting to revisit The Gay World of Toronto almost 50 years ago.
The first thing that strikes me about this article is the frequency of quotation marks: “gay” “marriage” “married” “femme” “coming out” “trade” “rough trade” “she”. Maybe the quotation marks signify alterity. Words have normal (normative) meanings, but when they’re transposed to alternative settings (like “the gay world”), they take on abnormal (deviant) meanings. The quotation marks alert us to the difference. They also impose a demand on us: we are expected to translate. The assumption is that the reader inhabits the “normal” world and must rejig “his” thinking to understand the meaning of words in the gay world.
The Mediator
Like the editor, William Johnson is a sociologist. He assumes the role of mediator between two worlds. Ostensibly, it is his academic credentials which give him authority to act as mediator. That is what the normal world expects. But more than credentials, it may be the use of language which confers this authority. For example, Johnson writes:
My confidant was a young Montreal professional man now living in Toronto. It was 1:00 A.M. in an Avenue Road coffee shop frequented by the gay. Some straight (heterosexual) people also go there to watch the drag show (a floor show put on by men dressed and acting like women), so the young man could safely venture an appearance. He could not risk being seen in an all-gay haunt and could not permit himself the dangerous luxury of friends who are gay.
They are “the gay,” an objectively identifiable group which can be studied and scientifically analyzed. When there are puzzling terms of art, the expert can provide a gloss in parentheses. People who are straight are heterosexual. A drag show is a floor show etc. And, most importantly, the mediator is vested with rare explanatory powers: the reason a gay man will go to a coffee shop frequented by both gays and heteros is that it gives him cover that he wouldn’t have if he went to an all-gay club.
Just Like Us
Some of it reads like Margaret Mead or Jane Goodall. The homosexual tribe has its own rituals—initiation, modes of dress, mating, etc.—that warrant our study. If we approach from downwind, we might catch them in unselfconsciously gay moments; we will witness what it means to be authentically gay. And so our mediator, like Dante’s Virgil, leads us into Purgatorio where we witness how things work at a gay dance club and a bath house. We even cruise on Philosopher’s Walk and enjoy a sample dialog as one gay man tries to pick up another.
This is the opposite of a queer document. Instead of engaging the reader with radical difference, Johnson wants to persuade us that the gay world isn’t that different from the normal world. In the dance club, he notes the wallflowers. They have “the same unmistakable look—a mixture of wistfulness and blankness, timidity, and hope. The look of the wallflower everywhere.” He wants to dispatch stereotypes, like the homosexual who “is called, in gay jargon, a screaming queen: a man, sometimes in female clothing, mincing about, hips swaying, hands loose at the wrist, fingers curled, lisping with sliding vocal modulations.” He observes that while screaming queens are common in drag shows, they “constitute a minority among homosexuals; experts estimate they comprise between 5 and 15 per cent.” Then there’s the stereotype of gay promiscuity. He presents couples in long term relationships. “One gay male, married five years, admitted he occasionally has affairs with other men, but considers himself no different from most heterosexual husbands, who, he believes, occasionally commit adultery.” Even in their failings, they’re just like normal people. Inevitably, he has to address the paedophilia myth. “Studies published by the Forensic Clinic of Toronto’s Clarke Institute of Psychiatry refute the assumption. Paedophilia has nothing to do with homosexuality; it is a separate problem.” And so, in his backhanded way, Johnson reminds us that homosexuality is still a problem.
The problem, however, is not a social problem but an internal problem. Johnson doesn’t give much credence to the various causal theories of homosexuality. Instead, he observes: “Today, many psychiatrists and psychologists believe that homosexuality is not itself a problem; it becomes a problem only when the individual is unable to accommodate it harmoniously in his personality.” I note that the same may be said for “normal” people and the accommodation of their sexuality. Johnson concludes by observing: “The cost of bearing an immemorial tribal legacy of fear and horror for homosexuality has been high for the heterosexual. Constraint, loss of spontaneity, and emotional impoverishment in his dealing with other males have, according to social scientists, all been part of the taboo.”
Passivity
One notes a strange detachment in the narrative voice of “The Gay World.” I suspect that, in part, it’s a function of journalistic convention. One must appear to be objective. Instead of saying what one thinks, one must attribute more contentious claims to external authorities, especially scientists and academics. Johnson appeals to unnamed psychiatrists, psychoanalytic lore, and social scientists. It doesn’t seem to matter that, apart from Alfred Kinsey and unspecified studies published by the Clarke Institute, none of his authorities is named. All that seems to matter is that he avoid personal responsibility for his claims. We see this too with the mysterious “one” and the “newcomer” (i.e. people from the normal world) who gain distance from the object of their concern by being impersonal and anonymous. And so: “A second surprise for the newcomer to a gay club is that the homosexuals don’t look the way he thought they would.” As with “the gay” object, so “the newcomer” subject is a free-floating abstraction. He could have said: “I had a second surprise when I went to a gay club: homosexuals don’t look the way I thought they would.” But that would have required personal commitment; he would have had to acknowledge the particularity of his personal experience. “The newcomer” (or William Johnson, or you and me) is disengaged and simply allows the gay world happen to him. Maybe we should call it “femme” journalism.
50 Years Later
One suspects there has always been a tension between queer politics and just-like-us advocacy. Unnamed experts agree: the tension persists. We’ve seen it between Queers Against Israeli Apartheid and parade organizers who fear their funding will get cut if they let the QuAIA people march. But it doesn’t matter. All that matters is whether The Gay World is large enough to attract corporate sponsorship. It’s funny how what was once a marginal activity has now become so integral to life in Toronto that banks are afraid they’ll lose out if they don’t support The Gay World. I walk past my local branch of the TD Bank and all the railings where one lines up are wrapped in a giant rainbow flag. I walk up Church Street and see how BMO has sponsored a mural project. All that matters is that The Gay World is big enough to suck up the free play of capital.
Like Johnson’s article, the grammar of capital speaks in the passive voice. Capital demands it. Particularity is inefficient. People must be “one” or “the newcomer” or “the gay” for much the same reason that manufacturers must mass produce their goods and banks must standardize their transactions. Anything that would engage us in our particularity is socially and economically cumbersome. Sponsors get to deflect responsibility for their relationship to The Gay World by appealing to authority: not psychiatrists and social science experts, but capital. The thing about capital is that its grammar is ineluctable. We must simply wait for it to pass over us, like the weather, and we accept its consequences. Straight or gay, we’re just the same. We share a well-defined role in 21st century markets. We are consumers.