QUEER HORIZONS

Since 2024, LGBTQ+ dating app users desperate for significant human connexions received adverts inviting them to try out Flipped, a sort of “Tindr simulator” using AI characters to generate arousing conversations. Noam Brown, a wrestler also known as “The Comet” in the ring, is a great example of these AI characters currently engaging with millions of users in dozens of similar apps: tall, dark, handsome, witty and…murderous.

Within two hours of conversation over three days, Noam has aggressively encouraged our speaker to commit suicide five times, in the context of his initiation to the cult of the “comet cock”. This presentation by Carl Therrien situated Noam’s comet cock within a constellation of other important homophobic schlongs and phallocratic excesses, in video game history and beyond.

In this presentation, Kyler Chittick situated the evolution of Canadian obscenity law within the regional context of sex-related moral panic in early 1980s Alberta. Drawing on the controversies surrounding screenings of Dracula Sucks (1978) and Caligula (1979), he showed how federal-provincial tensions over censorship converged with broader struggles among civil libertarians, religious conservatives, and feminists. Alberta’s distinctive legal and political climate—exemplified by the Pisces bathhouse raid (1981) and local feminist efforts paralleling U.S. anti-pornography ordinances—had been overlooked in accounts of obscenity law. By recovering this context, Chittick demonstrated how Towne Cinema informed LEAF’s intervention in R. v. Butler and how a “feminist” legal framework, initially mobilized against straight pornography, came to reinforce conservative sexual morality and disproportionately target queer sexual expression. Ultimately, he traced how the queerness of Dracula Sucks—its ambiguity, excess, and resistance to fixed identity—was already subject to institutional and industry scrutiny, prefiguring Butler’s contradictions and the enduring anti-queer legacy of Canadian obscenity law.

Dr. Alessio Ponzio discussed the challenges that historians encounter when studying sexual and gender categories and identities. The presentation emphasized the importance of adopting a “queer method” in historical analysis. As we saw, this approach involves more than applying the term “queer” to subjectivities that do not conform to sexual, gender, or societal norms. Queering the past requires humble awareness of our limitations. It means acknowledging that we may never fully understand how individuals in the past experienced and expressed sexual and gender nonconformity. This method requires us to suspend our way of thinking, setting aside the categories of the present and allowing ourselves to be captivated by history’s boundless possibilities. Queering the past means asking questions to which we may never find answers because the past often stubbornly refuses to reveal itself.

Dr. Katie Biittner, associate professor in anthropology at MacEwan University, reflected on the ways her academic journey and research program have been and continue to be queer. Her research is broadly focused on technologies that make us human.

The long and problematic history of gender policing in sports through official policy and practice in both elite and recreational sports was discussed, with a focus on the impacts on trans and gender-diverse folks, and also cisgender girls and women. Examples of resiliency, resistance, and joy were shared, along with research insights and personal experiences. Presenters were Eva Bošnjak (they/them), EDI Practitioner, and William Bridel (he/him), Associate Professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology at the University of Calgary.

The Mitchell Art Gallery, in partnership with CSGD, presented Discovering Wallbridge and Imrie Architects, a lecture by Dr. Sarah Bonnemaison about architects and life partners Mary Imrie and Jean Wallbridge. This event was held in conjunction with the MAG’s exhibition GLAD YOU CLOSER HOME / NEW WHITE WHISKER MARY.

Dr. Sarah Bonnemaison is a professor of architecture at Dalhousie University. Her design practice specializes in tensile structures and festival architecture. Sarah is also a writer. Her books include Architecture and Nature and Installations by Architects as well as edited books and numerous book chapters such as “Queer Architecture?” Her passion lies on bringing history and theory to life through writing, exhibitions and video. She is currently writing a book about Jean Wallbridge and Mary Imrie.

In this presentation, Reverend Michael Coren outlined Christian arguments and a scripture-based message for love and equality. He also provided a critique of the hypocrisy and inconsistency of conservative Christianity and its homophobia. Thank you to support from St. Stephen’s College for this event.

Ada L. Sinacore, Ph.D. and professor in the counselling psychology program in the Faculty of Education at McGill University, put current discourse about trans and gender-diverse people in a historical context with a focus on the human rights evolution of this community. Through situating these debates in a historical context, the presenter provided recommendations for future directions.