Toronto’s LGBTQ community is gearing up for what is set to be another successful Pride Week in the city. The event  has taken place in various forms since the late 1970s and has run annually since 1981. It continues to grow increasingly popular within the LGBTQ community, but also with all members of society. Last […] More »

Oh god, not this joker again. These are the first words that enter my head when I see the new issue of Rolling Stone on the newsstand. The cover features a haggard Charlie Sheen. He looks like a cross between a chain-smoking bobble head and a contestant vying for first place in a Keith Richards […] More »

GOP convention features bullet-pocked Obama outhouse In case you’ve been living under a rock this year, a presidential election in the U.S. is fast approaching. That means all decorum is lost and the shit hits the fan—or, in the case of some political “art,” the bathroom. A Republican Party convention in Montana this weekend featured […] More »

Over 30 years ago, the pro-choice movement in Canada was at its peak. In 1970 the Vancouver Women’s Caucus travelled across the country as part of the Abortion Caravan. Stopping in various cities and towns on their way to Parliament Hill in Ottawa, the women spent their evenings hearing the stories of other women so […] More »

Hello, This Kiddos. Today I woke up and read that ex-gay therapy is still being presented as the way to “help” kids who are dealing with homophobic harassment and thoughts of suicide. Oh man, guys, I’m so vexed about this I can’t even find something witty to write. Ex-gay therapy is promoted as solution to […] More »

Since today marks the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, we wanted to highlight some recent stuff that’s appeared in This and elsewhere on the subject of gender justice and equality. Emma Woolley at Shameless has provided a comprehensive overview of why International Women’s Day still matters. The upshot is that while the last century […] More »

The It Gets Better Project—the hugely popular series of videos kicked off by advice columnist Dan Savage a few weeks ago in response to a series of high-profile suicides by gay teens—got a contribution this week from a group of queer Canadian celebrities. The slickly edited video above gathers the stories of more than 30 […] More »

Last spring, Dockers launched its stupefying ad campaign based around the core message of “Wear The Pants.” (In a move that nicely reinforced the tone-deaf idiocy of the campaign, it premiered on International Women’s Day, March 8. Classy.) The whole series, which is still running in a slightly diluted form, rests on the premise that there […] More »

This falls into the “this is a good thing to know,” as opposed to the “this is definitely good news (!),” category. The Bechdel Test is a quick and dirty way to gauge the sexism of a movie, invented 25 years ago by Alison Bechdel, the cartoonist and writer of Dykes to Watch Out For. A […] More »

You may have already heard something of Pride Toronto’s new sign-vetting policy,  its banning of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) from the parade, and its outlawing of the term “Israeli apartheid” from all Pride-related events.  Or about how, after weeks of public outrage, including the humiliation of having several Pride honourees return their awards, Pride […] More »

While the prime minister has been trying to do damage control for his G20 agenda, activists and organizers of all stripes have been busy building social justice movements. Sometimes movement-building involves bickering over listservs about who gets to the carry the banner, but sometimes it also involves holding massive, multi-day, multi-issue summits. Left Forum might […] More »