Queer is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or cisgender. Originally meaning 'strange' or 'peculiar', queer came to be used pejoratively against those with same-sex desires or relationships in the late 19th century. Beginning in the late 1980s, queer activists, such as the members of Queer Nation, began to reclaim the word as a deliberately provocative and politically radical alternative to the more assimilationist branches of the LGBT community.
The Body Politic was a Canadian monthly magazine, which was published from 1971 to 1987. It was one of Canada's first significant gay publications, and played a prominent role in the development of the LGBT community in Canada.
Buddies in Bad Times Theatre is a Canadian professional theatre company. Based in Toronto, Ontario, and founded in 1978 by Matt Walsh, Jerry Ciccoritti, and Sky Gilbert, Buddies in Bad Times is dedicated to "the promotion of queer theatrical expression".
The ArQuives: Canada's LGBTQ2+ Archives, formerly known as the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives, is a Canadian non-profit organization, founded in 1973 as the Canadian Gay Liberation Movement Archives. The ArQuives acquires, preserves, and provides public access to material and information by and about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and two-spirit communities primarily in Canada.
LGBT History Month is an annual month-long observance of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender history, and the history of the gay rights and related civil rights movements. It was founded in 1994 by Missouri high-school history teacher Rodney Wilson. LGBT History Month provides role models, builds community, and represents a civil rights statement about the contributions of the LGBTQ+ community. As of 2022, LGBT History Month is a month-long celebration that is specific to Australia, Canada, Cuba, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States.
The B-Girlz are a Canadian drag comedy trio, based in Toronto, Ontario. The troupe's core members are Michael Boyuk, who performs as Kora Harcourt and Mark Peacock, who performs as Barbara Quigley (Barbie-Q); while the third member has varied at different times, with performers including Robert Windisman as Conchita Castillio and Shawn Hitchins as Ivana.
Hatice Güleryüz is a contemporary Turkish artist. She has worked in video, film, photography, art books and drawing.
The Van Eyck – Multiform Institute for Fine Art, Design, and Reflection is a post-academic institute for research and production in the fields of fine art, design and art theory, based in Maastricht, Netherlands. The academy was established in 1948 and was named after the painter Jan van Eyck. In 2013, 39 researches from countries around the world were working and studying at the institutes premises in Jekerkwartier. In 2012, the Hubert van Eyck Academie / Caterina van Hemessen Academie was established as a ‘teaching bridge,’ linking the Jan van Eyck Academie / Margaret van Eyck Academie with Maastricht University and other Maastricht art schools.
Keith Cole is a queer Canadian performance artist and political activist. Originally from Thunder Bay, Ontario, he is currently based in Toronto, Ontario. An alumnus of York University's Fine Arts program, Cole has worked in film and video, dance and theatre performance, both as himself and in character as drag queen Pepper Highway.
Hysteria: A Festival of Women was a recurring arts festival in Toronto. It was founded in 2003 by Moynan King of the Buddies in Bad Times theatre company in collaboration with Nightwood Theatre.
Avis Newman is an English painter and sculptor.
Elly Barnes MBE FCCT is the founder and chief executive of the charity Educate & Celebrate. She was voted Number 1 in the Independent on Sunday's Pink List in 2011, and was a judge in 2012.
Kim Katrin is a Canadian American writer, multidisciplinary artist, activist, consultant, and educator. She was formerly credited as Kim Crosby and Kim Katrin Milan. She speaks on panels and keynotes conferences nationally, and facilitates radical community dialogues. Her art, activism and writing has been recognized nationally.
Nathalie Claude is a self-described "actress, director, dancer, choreographer, writer, and a sometimes MC, Drag King, clown, artistic coach and musician" from Montreal. She works in French and in English and sometimes creates bilingual performances.
Homonationalism is often seen as the favorable association between a nationalist ideology and LGBT people or their rights, but is further described as a systematic oppression of queer, racialized, and sexualized groups in an attempt to support neoliberal structures and ideals. The term was originally proposed by the researcher in gender studies Jasbir K. Puar in 2007 to refer to the processes by which neoliberal and capitalist power structures line up with the claims of the LGBT community in order to justify racist, xenophobic and aporophobic positions, especially against Muslims, basing them on prejudices that immigrants are homophobic and that Western society is egalitarian. Thus, sexual diversity and LGBT rights are used to sustain political stances against immigration, becoming increasingly common among far-right parties. In Terrorist Assemblages, Puar describes homonationalism as a "form of sexual exceptionalism [dependent on the] segregation and disqualification of racial and sexual others" from the dominant image of a particular society, most often discussed within an American framework.
Filipino American LGBT Studies is a field of studies that focus on the issues met by people at the intersection of Filipino American and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender identities.
Marwa Arsanios is an artist, researcher and filmmaker from Beirut.
Amalia Ziv is an Israeli academic and researcher. Their research areas are pornography and sexual representations, queer culture, queer activism, and queer kinship. Because of their activism and research, Ziv is considered a prominent member of the LGBTQ and feminist communities in Israel.
Peter Knegt is a Canadian writer, producer, and filmmaker. He is the recipient of four Canadian Screen Awards and his CBC Arts column Queeries received the 2019 Digital Publishing Award for best digital column in Canada.
Dainty Smith is a Toronto-based actor, playwright, and burlesque performer. She is the founder of Les Femmes Fatales: Women of Colour Burlesque Troupe, Canada's first burlesque troupe for Black women and women of colour, femmes and gender non-conforming persons. Her interdisciplinary work engages themes of glamour, afrofuturism, queer thriving, body positivity, and Blackness.
