Lesbians in Canada

Janet Money is Sports Editor of the Woodstock Daily Sentinel-Review.

Lesbians in Canada is a collection of essays describing aspects of
lesbian existence—mostly lesbian-feminist existence in white,
middle-class milieus. Stone regrets her inability to obtain articles
about working-class lesbian life, francophone lesbians, the bar culture,
and so on. This omission is serious but it shouldn’t detract from the
essays included, which provide interesting snapshots of lesbian life in
Canada.

Many of the articles—such as Becki Ross’s moving account of
watching members of the Ontario Legislature debate providing human
rights protection to lesbians and gay men (“Sexual Dis/Orientation or
Playing House; To Be or Not To Be Coded Human”)—are based on
personal experience. Several of the essays include a great deal of
interview material, allowing lesbians to speak for themselves. The
emphasis throughout is on experience, not theory, with the exception of
Joan Blackwood’s philosophical article “Aristotle, Sex, and a
Three-Legged Dog: The Naturalness of Lesbian Sex.” Other subjects
include Canadian law affecting lesbians, lesbian organizing in Ottawa,
lesbian mothers, lesbians in social-service work and teaching, and
lesbians in universities.

The intersection of lesbian activism and the feminist movement is a key
theme in many of these articles, forcing one to wonder, “What about
lesbians untouched or unmoved by feminism?” Still, given that much
writing about lesbians is in small-circulation newsletters or academic
journals, this accessible book, even with its omissions, represents a
positive step in Canadian publishing.