{"id":551,"date":"2021-02-20T17:43:10","date_gmt":"2021-02-20T17:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lgbtqhistoriesofviolence.com\/?p=551"},"modified":"2021-02-20T17:43:10","modified_gmt":"2021-02-20T17:43:10","slug":"radical-erotics-lesberado-productions-1987-lesbian-erotic-show-in-vancouver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lgbtq2shistoriesofviolence.buildingthearchives.ca\/index.php\/2021\/02\/20\/radical-erotics-lesberado-productions-1987-lesbian-erotic-show-in-vancouver\/","title":{"rendered":"Radical Erotics: Lesberado Productions’ 1987 Lesbian Erotic Show in Vancouver"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Image courtesy of the ArQuives. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I first came across the poster for Lesberado Productions\u2019 lesbian erotic show in Vancouver 1987 while searching the ArQuives<\/a> collection. I was taken immediately by the woman in the illustration; her hair wild, the shades, leather bodice unzipped. However, my research to find more archival material regarding the show was a short-lived venture: I found only two brief reviews from Angles<\/em>, a Vancouver-based gay and lesbian magazine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I almost abandoned this research, thinking that I was analyzing an event that was too small to be significant. After all, it was not a protest, police raid, or any form of violent suppression against queer life. Rather, it seemed like a fun night, the type to elicit pleasure and joy. Is this why I did not see it as important?  Was I giving into the idea that grief is \u201cthe proper ticket into historical consciousness\u201d (Freeman 59)? How deeply have I held the belief that the work of pleasure was secondary to the work of grief? Audre Lorde<\/a> would argue for the erotic as an \u201copen and fearless underlining of [one’s] capacity for joy\u201d (89). Doesn\u2019t queer joy deserve a podium in queer history?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When considered against such a vast landscape of pain, what is one night of queer pleasure? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I assert: <\/em>It\u2019s everything. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Vancouver’s First Ever Lesbian Erotica Show<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Image: Jan Brown’s post-event message in “Letters,” from Angles<\/span> magazine, January 1988. Courtesy of the ArQuives.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Lesberado Productions was a Seattle-based group that came to perform in Vancouver on November 14, 1987. The event was marketed as Vancouver\u2019s first ever Lesbian Erotica Show, with Lesberado Productions performing for two sold-out crowds at the Heritage House Hotel on 455 Abbott Street. Hosting a second show that same night was an unexpected decision \u201cmade quickly in response to the sell-out of the first show in half an hour,\u201d says the event\u2019s promotor Jan Brown, in her post-event \u201cLetters\u201d entry in Angles<\/em> magazine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the 1987 event claims to be the first instance of public, sexually explicit lesbian representation in Vancouver, I am critical of the ways in which this claim of preeminence buries the possibilities for earlier unrecorded erotic lesbian representation. Would a lesbian erotica event organized by and for Black and racialized lesbians have made it into archival history? Whose labour is erased by such a claim? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a remarkable example of organizing, the event was run almost entirely by the Vancouver lesbian community, as Brown points out in her list of acknowledgements to the lesbians \u201cwho did security, lighting, tickets, bar, backstage, etc.\u201d The Lesbian Erotica Show speaks to an even larger community of West Coast lesbians, the women from Seattle coming together with the Vancouver women to form a new space, even just for a night, where lesbians might gather and celebrate pleasure and eroticism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Representation Hotly Desired<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This event being the first <\/em>lesbian erotic show in Vancouver is a point of interest to me. Sandra Robinson\u2019s review of the event attends both to the productivity and limitations of the Lesbian Erotica Show in the context of representation. Based on the two reviews I found in the archive, the reaction of the crowd was mixed. There was a tension between finally receiving such hotly-desired representation, and finding that it didn\u2019t speak to everyone\u2019s vision of the truth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Image: Sandra Robinson’s review “Desperately seeking erotica” from Angles<\/span> magazine, 1987. Courtesy of the ArQuives. <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

As Robinson points out, the Lesbian Erotica Show mainly represented \u201cthose into leather, domination and heavy butch\/femme fantasies.\u201d Robinson, despite expressing some displeasure around the leather-centrism of the content, still saw the event as generative: \u201cIf dykes want to see other performances reflecting different sexual ideals, perhaps this will provide the motivation necessary to organize an alternative show.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Lesbian Erotica Show occurred during a time when tensions between anti-pornography feminism and sex radicalism were particularly volatile. Many who aligned with the former camp considered sexual representation as a form of violence that re-inscribed the harm of patriarchal domination, and further exploited women. Refusing this view, sex radicalism saw the potential for empowerment and resistance within sexual representation. In the 1980s, lesbians began inciting conversations about the position of lesbian eroticism within the anti-porn debates (Kiss and Tell Collective <\/em>10). Surely, a Lesbian Erotica Show\u2019s situation among these politics was precarious. In the absence of other archived reviews from the show, I can only extrapolate that such a space enlivened the Vancouver lesbian community, galvanizing conversations about representation, the politics of lesbian sex, and the diversity of the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vancouver\u2019s Queer Geographies: 455 Abbott Street <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Image 1: Exterior of Heritage House Hotel at 455 Abbott Street. Presumed date: 1990s. Courtesy of the City of Vancouver Archives. Image 2: Lotus Hotel at 455 Abbott Street, 2020. Courtesy of the Lotus Hotel website.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When Lesberado Productions came around in 1987, the Heritage House Hotel on 455 Abbott Street was already a hub for gay and lesbian events. I found several posters<\/a> from the City of Vancouver Archives promoting various queer events throughout the 1980s. The chronology of 455 Abbott Street is a difficult thing to map. In both the year 1913 and the year 2020, 455 Abbott Street is home to the Lotus Hotel. At some point between that vast amount of time, the space became and ceased to be the Heritage House Hotel: a space where Vancouver queer communities gathered, danced, and fundraised for various organizing efforts. Today, the Lotus Hotel promotes itself as a place for \u201cVancouverites who want to live in the city\u2019s trendiest neighbourhoods…ideally suited for anyone who wants to live the \u201c18-hour\u201d lifestyle of the modern urban townscape\u201d (\u201cAbout Us\u201d). 455 Abbott Street’s role in Vancouver\u2019s queer history has become mostly invisible, the gentrification of Vancouver\u2019s downtown east side likely playing a large role in such a seamless erasure of history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Works Cited<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAbout Us.\u201d The Lotus Hotel<\/em>, www.lotussuites.ca\/about-us\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Freeman, Elizabeth. \u201cTime Binds, or, Erotohistoriography.\u201d Social Text<\/em>, vol. 84-85, no. 34, 2005, pp. 57\u201368. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kiss and Tell Collective. \u201cPorn Wars and Other Hysteries.\u201d Her Tongue on my Theory: Images, Essays and Fantasies. <\/em>Vancouver, BC: Press Gang Publishers, 1994, pp. 5-26. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lorde, Audre. Uses of the Erotic: the Erotic as Power<\/em>. Kore Press, 2000. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I first came across the poster for Lesberado Productions\u2019 lesbian erotic show in Vancouver 1987 while searching the ArQuives collection. I was taken immediately by the woman in the illustration; her hair wild, the shades, leather bodice unzipped. However, my research to find more archival material regarding the show was a short-lived venture: I found […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lgbtq2shistoriesofviolence.buildingthearchives.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lgbtq2shistoriesofviolence.buildingthearchives.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lgbtq2shistoriesofviolence.buildingthearchives.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lgbtq2shistoriesofviolence.buildingthearchives.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lgbtq2shistoriesofviolence.buildingthearchives.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lgbtq2shistoriesofviolence.buildingthearchives.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lgbtq2shistoriesofviolence.buildingthearchives.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lgbtq2shistoriesofviolence.buildingthearchives.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lgbtq2shistoriesofviolence.buildingthearchives.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}