The Canadian war on queers : national security as sexual regulation / Gary Kinsman and Patrizia Gentile.

  • Kinsman, Gary William.
Date:
[2010], ©2010
  • Books

About this work

Description

From the 1950s to the late 1990s, agents of the state spied on, interrogated, and harassed gays and lesbians in Canada, employing social ideologies and other practices to construct their targets as threats to society. Based on official security documents and interviews with gays, lesbians, civil servants, and high-ranking officials, this path-breaking book discloses acts of state repression and forms of resistance that raise questions about just whose national security was being protected. Passionate and personalized, this account of how the state used the ideology of national security to wage war on its own people offers ways of understanding, and resisting, contemporary conflicts such as the "war on terror."

Publication/Creation

Vancouver, BC : UBC Press, [2010], ©2010.

Physical description

xxiii, 554 pages : illustrations, map ; 24 cm.

Contents

Queering national security, the Cold War, and Canadian history : Surveillance and resistance -- Queer history and sociology from below : Resisting national security -- The Cold War against queers : Social and historical contexts -- Spying and interrogation : The social relations of national security -- The "Fruit Machine" : Attempting to detect queers -- Queer resistance and the security response : Solidarity versus the RCMP -- The campaign continues in the 1970s : Security risks and lesbian purges in the military -- "Gay political activists" and "radical lesbians" : Organizing against the national security state -- Sexual policing and national security : Sex scandals, Olympic clean-ups, and cross-country organizing -- Continuing exclusion : The formation of CSIS and "hard-core lesbians" -- From exclusion to assimilation : National security, the Charter, and limited inclusion -- From the Canadian war on queers to the War on Terror : Resisting the expanding national security state.

Bibliographic information

Includes bibliographical references (p. [523]-545) and index.

Languages

Where to find it

  • LocationStatus
    History of Medicine
    TPO.U.54
    Open shelves

Permanent link

Identifiers

ISBN

  • 9780774816274
  • 0774816279
  • 0774816287
  • 9780774816281