Photo courtesy Rahim Thawer.

Growing up in an Ismaili Muslim community in Toronto, there was no explicit acceptance of queer folks, says Thawer. “I simply did not know where to look to find other people like myself.”

At the age of 23, Thawer finally found his people at Salaam Canada, a social network and support group for those who identify as both Muslim and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer. The volunteer-run organization based in Toronto, which opened briefly in the 1990s but closed after two years due to violent responses and threats from other parts of Canada and the United States, reopened in 2000. Salaam now offers monthly gatherings and refugee support. It also hosts an annual Peace Iftar during Ramadan, and hosts meetings about human rights and social justice issues within the LGBTQ and Muslim communities.

Today, Salaam Canada is associated with over 20 organizations across Canada and others worldwide, including NAZ Male Health Organization in Pakistan and The Inner Circle in South Africa.

The traditional schools of Islamic law (and many other religions) consider non-heterosexual acts a sin. Many have been forced into arranged marriages, been shunned by loved ones, or forced out of their native countries in fear of being killed.

For Thawer, maintaining his faith while embracing his sexual and gender identity was a process of anticipating loss of community and friends, and then coping with that loss. “My identity formation centered on a belief that my queerness was a deficiency I should correct and compensate for,” says Thawer, who’s now part of the core organizing team of Salaam Canada. “I’ve overcome the weight of these experiences by surrounding myself with affirming people.”

As Thawer points out, offering the space and support to help reconcile one’s identity is a rare but critical service. “We then get to think about what could Islam mean for me if I was queer and trans? Does it have a place in my life? Do I want it to be a spiritual thing in my life or do I want to reclaim it as a cultural part of who I am?”

The contributors’ list features Canadian and American voices such as Vancouver filmmaker-author Amber Dawn, feministing.com’s Miriam Zoila Pérez, and Toronto literary darling Zoe Whittall.

The bright spots are many, but the most affecting essays are the ones that veer into the personal: a sexworker femme’s memories of her butch lover; gay club culture in the post-Stonewall riots era; attending a relative’s stag rather than the doe; wondering if breast reductions or testosterone injections make you less butch than trans and butches with babies.

Other entries are little more than Livejournalling, diary declarations about the Self, or laced with academic speak. Swinging from one end of the narrative spectrum to the other can feel confusing, but the message as a whole is that butch and femme are not two identities, but the work of many individuals who have created themselves in their own images.

Persistence isn’t just about gender performance. It weaves thoughtful threads about class, race, disability, pop culture, and media into an oft-parodied and stereotyped modern queer culture. It’s a worthy collection that brings nuance back to notions of dykes, femmes, butches, and lesbians all.

Syrus Marcus Ware. Production still by Joshua Allen from "Ten," directed by Sarah Sharkey Pearce.

For the last two years, anyone weary of the increasingly commercialized and blissfully apoliticized nature of Pride in Toronto has made a beeline for the back-to-the-future experience that is the Trans March. It’s small, friendly, community-based, unendorsed by any corporate interest. It’s also politicized, giddy, and endearingly disorganized, the way many of us remember Prides of yore. It’s not just nostalgia that draws a bigger crowd each year, though — it’s the sense that trans activism has taken up the social-change banner from a gay movement that dropped it the moment the right to marry became the dominant political cause.

Syrus Marcus Ware, a baby-faced, 35-year-old trans guy, was happily agitating for a trans presence at Pride even before the march got organized. In 2008, he and a buddy “pushed and pushed and convinced” the organizers to start a trans stage (now a regular feature of Pride celebrations), but he’d been kick-starting trans, black, and prison-related causes long before that. Like many trans people, he came out first as gay, became an activist in high school (“I wanted to change attitudes at school and in my family,” he says, “and had a strong belief that the world could, and should, be different”), finally coming out as trans in 2000 after grappling with his feelings for at least a decade. Since then, he’s more than made up for lost time.

He’s an artist (painting, performance, and video) whose work often blurs into activism and whose activism can have the exhilaration of art (a program co-ordinator for youth and young adults at the Art Gallery of Ontario, he’s not wary of blending politics with art appreciation—his take on the recent Maharaja blockbuster show stressed the impact of British imperialism as much as it did the exhibit’s splendour). He’s a host of CIUT 89.5 FM’s Resistance on the Sound Dial. He helped create the publication Primed: The Back Pocket Guide for Transmen and the Men Who Dig Them. He’s involved with Gay/Bi/Queer Transmen Working Group, with a mandate to provide sexual health information to trans guys who have sex with men. He helped develop TransFathers 2B, a pilot course for trans men considering parenting (he recently got pregnant and is in a relationship with another trans guy). He works for prison abolition, both culturally, through the Prison Justice Film Festival, and politically, through the Prisoners’ Justice Action Committee, a group building abolition strategies within the black, indigenous, and trans communities.

If the gay movement opened the door to sexual diversity, the trans movement seems to be kicking it off its hinges, encouraging exploration well beyond gay, straight, and bi, creating a happily dizzy-making world where guys get pregnant, where that bearded dude with the great pecs turns out to have a vagina, where that gorgeous babe intends to keep her penis because she no longer has to comply with cultural expectations of gender. And the rest of us? We get a gender playground, open to all. “There are so many human variations outside the cookie-cutter paradigm of human desire,” says Ware. “We have to stop pathologizing them.” He’s working on it.

Compiled by Dylan C. Robertson & Victoria Salvas

This election means death. Not only have Ottawa scrums, filibusters, and drawn-out committees been killed, pieces of legislation making their way through parliament have all met a harsh end as politicians take to the campaign trail.

Before a bill becomes law, it is introduced in either the House of Commons or the Senate. Subsequently the bill goes through readings where it is introduced, given a number code and debated. It can be read again, amended then passed, from the House to the Senate but only becomes law if it is given Royal Assent by the Governor General.

But bills are stopped in their tracks when an election is called. We tracked down the people who pioneered five of the most important bills that died on the order paper when the writ dropped. We asked what they thought of the abrupt death of their projects and if they’ll attempt rebooting them.

While government bills (titled C- with a number under 201) can be reintroduced at an advanced phase with the consent of the House, private members’s bills and motions are entered in a lottery to determine their Order of Precedence, meaning the order in which they can be re-introduced. Only 30 members per session have their motions considered, although the list is replenished if all motions are dealt with.

Here’s a look at the five bills that may or may not rise again:

1. Cheaper HIV Drugs:

Bill C-393, An Act to amend the Patent Act (drugs for international humanitarian purposes), was introduced by then NDP MP Judy Wasylycia-Leis in May 2009. After she left to run for mayor of Winnipeg, the bill was adopted by another NDP MP, Paul Dewar.

The bill, which came to be known as “the AIDS drug bill” would’ve allowed generic drug makers to supply their products to developing countries, so they could fight diseases like tuberculosis and malaria, and help the world’s 15 million AIDS victims. Apotex Inc. had promised to make much-needed antiretrovirals for children, should the legislaiton pass. The bill, which was passed earlier this month by the House of Commons, was sabotaged by its review committee and then by the Conservatives’s attempt to effectively whip the senate, feeling it would hinder Big Pharma.

“It’s pretty outrageous,” said Richard Elliott, executive director of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network. “This bill had a lot of potential, and we pushed really hard to get it to pass. We had a lot of support from MPs in all parties.”

Dewar said he plans to reintroduce the bill. “We have to abolish the senate though, first,” he laughed. “That’s my plan. Well I’m just joking… but not really.” Dewar noted the bill was lucky to be successfully transferred after Wasylycia-Leis’s leave, as it is not an automatic process. “It was revived when actual co-operation broke out in the House of Commons,” he said. “Through unanimous consent, I was able to pick the bill up. “I’m ready, able, and willing to carry it forward after the election,” said Dewar, who hopes it ranks high in the order or precedence. “There’s so much public support for it. I don’t think they could get away with this again.”

2. Civilizing parliament:

Private Member’s Motion M-517 proposed a reform of Question Period. Conservative MP Michael Chong’s pet project aimed to civilize parliament’s most savage — and ironically unproductive — 45 minutes each sitting day.

The motion sought to strengthen how much discipline a speaker can give, lengthen the alloted time for each question and answer, and aimed at “examining the convention that the minister questioned need not respond.”

“Parliament needs to be reformed and I think the reform of parliament should begin with the reform of Question Period,” said Chong. If passed, the motion would have also stipulated who should be asked questions, most notably dedicating Wednesday exclusively for questions to the Prime Minister, and requiring ministers be present for two of the other four days. Chong noted that he was listed in the Order of Precedence for the first time in six years, and said he would re-table his motion in the rare chance he was listed for the next session. “I’m disappointed that the committee didn’t have a chance to deal with it before the election.”

Chong explained that while many members add motions and bills to the order paper solely to generate publicity for an issue, he fully intends to enact this reform. “I’ll continue to work on this issue through whatever mechanisms are available to me after the election,” said Chong. “Because this problem isn’t going away and I think Canadians want it to be addressed.”

3. Protecting trans rights:

Bill C-389, An Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code (gender identity and gender expression), was a private member’s bill sponsored by NDP MP Bill Siksay. Introduced in early 2009, the legislation would have make it illegal to discriminate based on gender identity, and aimed to protect transgender individuals by amending the Human Rights Act.

These amendments would have also been made to the Criminal Code, rendering these acts of discrimination hate crimes. The House passed the bill in February, against Stephen Harper’s wishes. However, the fact that it received “unanimous support from the Bloc, several Conservatives, and the Liberals bodes well for the next parliament” says Siksay. The MP is confident in the future of the bill; passing it again will demonstrate the governments’ “commitment to human rights.”

4. Improving First Nations’ water:

Bill S-11 Safe Drinking Water for First Nations Act, was introduced in May 2010 and would have developed federal regulations for governing water provision, disposal and quality standards in First Nations communities.

An issue that has received much attention recently is the issue of providing First Nations reserves with safe drinking water. An assessment from 2001-2001 found that three quarters of the drinking water systems in First Nations communities were at risk.

Despite the dire situation on many reserves, many First Nations leaders criticized the bill, feeling they were left out of the creating of the legislation and not offered funding to get it off the ground. The Assembly of First Nations felt that the bill presented lofty goals but sparse plans for financial investment and support, which in the long run, could leave reserves in worse condition.

5. Copyright reform:

Bill C-32, An Act to amend the Copyright Act, was the third attempt at copyright reform killed by an election call, dragging on a 14-year effort.

The bill sparked controversy for attempting to criminalize the use and promotion of software that circumvents digital locks, generating high-profile criticism, a minister’s comment that critics were “radical extremists,” and an indutry-led astroturfing campaign. But the bill also aimed at tackling online piracy, and making it legal to transfer music from CDs to iPods.

MP Tony Clement, who introduced the bill as Minister of Industry, told us he plans to reintroduce the bill if re-elected. “It’s just another example of important legislation that has now been discontinued because of the opposition parties passing a motion of non-confidence,” said Clement. “This is a very necessary piece of legislation to help regularize certain habits of consumers and also protect artists from wealth-destroying pirates. “I’m hoping that if we get a majority government, we can actually concentrate on the issues like C-32 and privacy protection and other aspects of the digital economy.”

Nina Arsenault. Illustration by Chris Kim.

Nina Arsenault has spent a fortune changing her appearance from male to female. The 37-year-old used to work in the sex trade, but now supports herself as a playwright, performer, and motivational speaker to queer youth. Her one-woman show, The Silicone Diaries, recently had a second highly successful run in Toronto, was later performed in Montreal (where This caught up with her) and will open in Vancouver next year.

THIS: Where did you grow up?

ARSENAULT: In Beamsville, Ontario, in the Golden Horseshoe Trailer Park. It was a really tight-knit community. My memories of it are just great. But we moved when I was about six to a house in Smithville. It was very difficult to make friends because I was so feminine. Growing up in the trailer park and going to school with those kids, they always knew how girlish I was. With everyone on top of each other, you have no choice but to accept people. But being the new kid, it was very, very difficult to make friends. I have been a bit of a lone wolf all my life.

THIS: In The Silicone Diaries you talk about seeing a female mannequin in a store at age five. What was it that affected you that day?

ARSENAULT: I think just the harmony and symmetry of the face spoke to me. I knew that I was a girl inside but I had this boy body. Then, for my visual gaze to rest upon a face that was a sculpture of a woman’s face, I just seized on that as a child. It affected me. The perfection of it.

THIS: When did you decide to begin plastic surgery?

ARSENAULT: About age 23, but I didn’t have my first procedure until I was 25.

THIS: What did you have done?

ARSENAULT: At first just transsexual procedures to feminize myself. It got to a point where I looked as much like a normal woman as I possibly could. However, I still had masculine features. It was really traumatic on a daily basis to see those features. So I made the decision to really push the cosmetic procedures, knowing I would no longer look natural. That I would start to look plastic and artificial.

THIS: Like a mannequin?

ARSENAULT: Yeah. But I can’t say at the beginning of the journey I was trying to look like a mannequin or a Playboy bunny. I was just trying to be a woman.

THIS: Did you literally have 60 surgeries?

ARSENAULT: There were actually more. Some were just procedures, like a lip injection.

THIS: When was the last one?

ARSENAULT: In 2006.

THIS: How much did they cost?

ARSENAULT: Upwards of $200,000.

THIS: How did you afford that?

ARSENAULT: I was working in the sex trade and made an incredible amount of money so quickly there.

THIS: Men like “shemales”?

ARSENAULT: Yeah. In terms of supply and demand, there just aren’t a lot of us, but there’s a lot of interest. The first day I put my escort ad in the paper, I had 250 calls. I don’t think that’s something that’s spoken about that openly amongst otherwise heterosexual men. I could have worked from morning until night if I had wanted to.

THIS: What was it like working in the trade?

ARSENAULT: It was physically very tough. And I only did oral, no fucking.

THIS: A lot of transgender women work in the sex business. Why is that?

ARSENAULT: It’s one of the few places you can get work and feel safe. If you’re visibly transgender you’re going to be one of the most disenfranchised and disadvantaged people in culture.

THIS: You have two graduate degrees, right?

ARSENAULT: I do. But it’s tough to get straight work. You can’t imagine the amount of transphobia out there.

THIS: How long have you been out of the trade?

ARSENAULT: About three years. I support myself now as a performer.

THIS: In the play you mention that you have had your testicles removed. But you kept your penis. Why was that, if your goal was to be as close to a woman as possible?

ARSENAULT: I never knew what would happen to me financially so [if I still had my penis] I could always return to the sex business.

THIS: What has the play done for you?

ARSENAULT: It has been an incredibly healing ritual. I think I wrote it because I had a lot of emotional angst and suffering that I needed to express, that I needed someone to bear witness to. It makes me stronger every time I perform it.

THIS: Do you feel 100 percent female now or still a bit male?

ARSENAULT: I’ve always known I was a woman but I was socialized as a male. I have some qualities people see as male—I’m an aggressive thinker—but my core is definitely female.

THIS: Do you feel beautiful enough now?

ARSENAULT: I don’t work on the outside anymore. I concentrate now on inner work.

THIS: Any more surgeries ahead?

ARSENAULT: No. Not until I start to really visibly age.

Trailer for The Silicone Diaries: