Tim McCaskell—Speaking & Signing (Winnipeg)
How did a social movement evolve from a small group of young radicals to the incorporation of LGBTQ communities into full citizenship on the model of Canadian multiculturalism?
Tim McCaskell contextualizes his work in gay, queer, and AIDS activism in Toronto from 1974 to 2014 within the shift from the Keynesian welfare state of the 1970s to the neoliberal economy of the new millennium. A shift that saw sexuality —once tightly regulated by conservative institutions—become an economic driver of late capitalism, and sexual minorities celebrated as a niche market. But even as it promoted legal equality, this shift increased disparity and social inequality. Today, the glue of sexual identity strains to hold together a community ever more fractured along lines of class, race, ethnicity, and gender; the celebration of LGBTQ inclusion pinkwashes injustice at home and abroad.
Queer Progress tries to make sense of this transformation by narrating the complexities and contradictions of forty years of queer politics in Canada’s largest city.
From 1974 to 1986 Tim McCaskell was a member of the collective that ran The Body Politic, Canada’s iconic gay liberation journal. He was a founding member of AIDS ACTION NOW!, and a spokesperson for Queers Against Israeli Apartheid. He is the author of R_ace to Equity: Disrupting Educational Inequality._
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians thought out the country. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays.