9780774816281_cover Enlarge Cover
0 of 5
0 ratings
rated!
rated!
list price: $34.95
edition:Paperback
also available: Hardcover eBook
category: Social Science
published: Mar 2010
ISBN:9780774816281
publisher: UBC Press

The Canadian War on Queers

National Security as Sexual Regulation

by Gary Kinsman & Patrizia Gentile

tagged: gay studies, gender studies, minority studies, lesbian studies, human rights, post-confederation (1867-), civil rights, lgbtq+
Description

From the 1950s to the late 1990s, agents of the state spied on, interrogated, and harassed gays and lesbians in Canada, employing social ideologies and other practices to construct their targets as threats to society and enemies of the state.

 

In this path-breaking book, Gary Kinsman and Patrizia Gentile use official security documents and interviews with gays, lesbians, civil servants, and high-ranking officials to disclose not only the acts of state repression that accompanied the Canadian war on queers but also forms of resistance that raised questions about just whose national security was being protected and about national security as an ideological practice. This passionate, personalized account of how the state used the ideology of national security to wage war on its own people offers ways of understanding, and resisting, contemporary conflicts such as the so-called “war on terror.”

About the Authors

Gary Kinsman


Patrizia Gentile

Contributor Notes

Gary Kinsman is a professor in the Sociology Department at Laurentian University, Sudbury. Patrizia Gentile is an assistant professor in the Pauline Jewett Institute of Women’s and Gender Studies at Carleton University.

Editorial Reviews

Kinsman and Gentile have taken on an ambitious project both with respect to their topic as well as the scope of more than four decades worth of material. This is an incredibly important piece of work and will be appreciated by those who have a historical interest in national security campaigns and queer history, as well as those who want a history on which to base contemporary resistance to the security campaigns that are still being mounted against many marginalized people today.

— TOPIA, Spring 2011

This account of the surveillance of Canadian lesbians and gays in the name of national security is impressive, at once bone-chilling and inspiring.

— Left History, 14.2

An important intervention into mainstream studies of Canadian historiography.

— Canadian Woman Studies, Vol. 29, No. 3
X
Contacting facebook
Please wait...