Genealogies of queer fear in activist periodicals: Examining internalized queerphobia


Nicholas Hrynyk, Thompson Rivers University

Danny Cockerline never thought to anticipate queerphobic violence in Toronto’s ever-flourishing queer community in 1984. As a man who enjoyed wearing eyeliner to the gay bar, Cockerline found out the hard way that such transgressions of gender were not appreciated by some at the Toronto bar, Cornelius. Cockerline was evicted from Cornelius and (understandably) complained of his eviction to readers of The Body Politic, then Canada’s largest lesbian and gay newspaper (The Body Politic 1985). Cornelius, despite being a gay bar, apparently enforced a strict dress code that centered on cisheteronormative (cishet) ideas of gender performance. Cockerline challenged that dress code. Beginning with internalized queerphobia and extending the politics of desire to race, dis/ability, class, gender, and sex, I explore the ways in which queerphobic violence within the queer community is part of a broader historical legacy. It traces a relatively recent history of queerphobic violence, anticipations of violence, and knowledge of violence as it has shaped queer self-preservation and self-protection and notions of sexual “deviancy” within 1970s and 1980s queer Toronto. I argue that instances of (anticipating) queerphobic violence are rooted in debates about the tenuous nature of queer desire, a culmination of moral panic around disease and death, a conservative backlash against the social(ist) and political activism of the 1970s and 1980s, and growing economic uncertainty spurred by a recession (Kinsman and Gentile 2010; Adams 1997; Kinsman 1996; Robinson and Kimmel 1994). These forces led queer community stakeholders to regulate and police gender, sexuality, dis/ability, and “deviancy” in new ways. Against the backdrop of institutionalized queerphobic violence, violence has been, at times, replicated by queer people themselves because of their own anticipation of violence (Machado 2019). It should come as no surprise as to why queer people anticipate violence, why anticipated violence haunts their daily lives. Not only were queer people navigating this institutionalized queerphobia and fearing the consequences, but they were also acutely aware that their cishet peers, parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents were taught that homosexuality and queerness was a sin, a sickness, a dirty way to live, and rationale for physical, emotional, financial, and social violence (Shahani 2013). Using historical analyses of activist periodicals, along with primary documents from racialized and queer people with disabilities, I connect contemporary examples of violence within the queer community to historical debates around the objective of queer rights and organizing in the 1970s and 1980s. Evidence within The Body Politic reveals the ways in which queer communities were policed by queer folks themselves, some of whom were trying to cling to some sense of control in a landscape that was full of pain, trauma, and turmoil as a result of state-sanctioned violence and the HIV/AIDS epidemic (Hrynyk 2022). Concerns around internalized queerphobia have been evident since formal gay liberationist organizing in the 1970s and has since become the focus of numerous studies on queer mental health, cultural attitudes towards gender performance and desirability, as well as the political agendas of queer organization (Namaste 2000). However, internalized queerphobia – and, in turn, internalized discourses of disability and ugliness – has also led to other forms of queerphobic discrimination, such as transphobia, interphobia, fatphobia, racism, ageism, and ableism to manifest within the community. For example, the silencing of Black people’s voices is not a new phenomenon and many white gay male activists in the 1970s and 1980s endorsed a neoliberal understanding of sexual desire that negated concerns of racism and ableism in the name of “sexual liberation.” This paper is part of a larger panel that proposes to offer nuanced insights into the historical legacies, discrimination, and violence prevalent in queer spaces. It presents a comprehensive exploration of the challenges faced by queer communities, bridging the gap between historical contexts, contemporary issues, and theoretical concerns. In doing so, this paper—and by extension our panel—prompts a critical reflection on the dynamics that have shaped and continue to shape the queer community, fostering a deeper understanding of its complex history and ongoing struggles

This paper will be presented at the following session: