{"id":763,"date":"2022-01-20T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-20T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lgbtqhistoriesofviolence.com\/?p=763"},"modified":"2022-01-20T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2022-01-20T08:00:00","slug":"the-womens-bookstop-and-sites-of-queer-relational-resistance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lgbtq2shistoriesofviolence.buildingthearchives.ca\/index.php\/2022\/01\/20\/the-womens-bookstop-and-sites-of-queer-relational-resistance\/","title":{"rendered":"The Women\u2019s Bookstop and Sites of Queer Relational Resistance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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Figure 1. The Women\u2019s Bookstop, The Hamilton and Region Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual,
and Transgender Community\u2019s PROPHILE Magazine<\/em>, vol. 1, no. 1, September 1997.
Michael Johnstone Fonds, Hamilton Public Library Local History and Archive<\/mark>s<\/mark><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Women\u2019s Bookstop, the first and only feminist bookstore in Hamilton, Ontario, opened in 1985 on 333 Main Street West. In the midst of the AIDS epidemic<\/a> and in the beginning of resistant Queer Nation<\/a> politics, The Women\u2019s Bookstop offered a new space \u2013 outside of mainstream commercialization \u2013 for women and queer folks to gather, theorize, and celebrate. Renee Albrecht, the founder of The Women\u2019s Bookstop<\/a>, defines the early stages of the bookstore as an \u201cexplosion of learning\u201d once the shelves and sections began to reflect some of their queer clientele, specifically lesbians and lesbians of colour. Lesbian and queer bookstores, specifically, offered \u201creal and fictional\u201d voices \u201cwhose words\u201d could \u201cprovide comfort, encouragement, and guidance.”1<\/sup><\/kbd> These bookstores were a relative safe haven for queer folks to explore, validate, and justify their identities by reading others\u2019 experiences with gender and sexuality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If unnoticed walking through the doors, a bookstore can be the perfect place to understand your queerness without \u201couting\u201d yourself to a wider, perhaps heteronormative, community. Albrecht<\/a> remembers one queer woman who almost \u201ctiptoed\u201d into the store but eventually gained courage as she saw the entire section dedicated to queer women authors. The Women\u2019s Bookstop was also a social, intimate space, as past employee Cole Gately<\/a> defines, where \u201cpeople would come in, they would buy books but really they wouldn\u2019t be buying books. They\u2019d be coming in to try and meet other lesbians.” While books could be the focal point, The Women\u2019s Bookstop was ultimately a place for folks \u201cto feel at home,\u201d2<\/sup> to build communal relations and kinships, and to resist the heteronormative mainstreaming of culture by supporting a small, queer business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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Figure 2. Zaremba, Eve. \u201cToronto Bookstore Fire.\u201d Kinesis<\/em>, Sept. 1983, p. 4. Archives of Sexuality and Gender.<\/mark><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

While women-based and queer bookstores provided refuge and joy for queer communities, their very presence was undermined and questioned by heteronormative society, either through misogynist vigilante violence or Canadian governmental censorship of queer materials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1983, three years before The Women\u2019s Bookstop opened, \u201cThe Toronto Women\u2019s Bookstore was destroyed by arson\u201d when a nearby abortion clinic was targeted and \u201cfirebombed.\u201d3<\/sup> These bookstores in Canada supported and championed more than just books, and the owners, employees, and clientele often had strong connections with the surrounding queer community and in political movements advocating for women\u2019s rights and bodily choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 3. \u201cLittle Sisters Needs Help.\u201d Quota Magazine<\/em>, vol. 4, no. 5, 1 Oct 1994, p. 5. Archives of Sexuality and Gender.<\/mark><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Similarly, across the country in Vancouver, Little Sisters bookstore (est. 1983) endured \u201canti-gay bombings in 1987 and 1992.\u201d4<\/sup> Little Sisters also experienced a different type of anti-queer violence when they were persecuted by the Canadian government\u2019s censorship and obscenity laws, which were sometimes understood as calls for the repression of queer sexuality materials and resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1985-86, Little Sisters had their copies of the queer magazine The Advocate <\/em>\u201croutinely stopped, seized, or destroyed at the border,\u201d and Canada Customs ended up burning \u201cevery single copy\u201d of the magazine.5<\/sup> After this, in 1994, Little Sisters took Canada Customs to court and advocated for the freedom to express and distribute queer materials, texts, and other resources.6<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite Canada Customs\u2019 attempts to suppress queer expression and advocacy, the trial subsequently provided a national platform for queer activists, authors, and theorists, like Gary Kinsman, Becki Ross, and Jane Rule, to testify to the importance of queer bookstores and queer texts.7<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

These Canadian queer bookstores continue to represent the resistance against a different type of queer suppression: the mainstreaming of queer culture and spaces. During the Little Sisters trial in 1996, owner Janine Fuller stated, \u201cwhile mainstream depictions of lesbians are considered chic, lesbian produced materials are not.\u201d8<\/sup> With the emergence of \u201cmainstream bookstores,\u201d queer or feminist bookstores face up against a capitalized commerce experience with \u201cspecial orders, online shopping, and deep discounts.\u201d9<\/sup> However, as scholar Kathleen Liddle outlines, queer bookstores are a \u201cpowerful antitode to mainstream culture that marginalizes difference,\u201d and they offer \u201cmuch more than a place to purchase books.\u201d10<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

These bookstores offered a communal space to resist this homogenization of mainstream culture. This is how Cole Gately<\/a>, trans activist and community steward of the 2SLGBTQ+ Community Archives in Hamilton, describes The Women\u2019s Bookstop. There was \u201ca real sense of familiarity and family around\u201d the bookstore and its surrounding, thriving queer community. The bookstore was not only a place of commerce; it was also an intimate communal space where kinships, relationships, and socio-political organizations flourished and thrived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 4. \u201cCommunity Events: The Women\u2019s Bookstop\u201d PROPHILE MAGAZINE<\/em>, vol. 1, no. 7, Mar. 1998. Archives of Sexuality and Gender.<\/mark><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Women\u2019s Bookstop<\/a> hosted events both at the store and in and around the Hamilton region. These events included women-focused dances at the YWCA on Ottawa St. and readings centered around queer writings by local women about women; the Bookstop also had connections with community outreach programs that provided helplines or community centres for sexual assault or domestic violence. In her 2016 book, The Feminist Bookstore Movement: Lesbian Antiracism and Feminist Accountability, <\/em>Kristen Hogan describes feminist bookstores as \u201csites of practicing relationship building.\u201d11<\/sup> The Women\u2019s Bookstop was certainly a space for this type of queer relationality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 5. \u201cThe Feminist Bookstores News.\u201d MS Lesbian Herstory Archives: Subject Files: Part 1: Abortion-Bookstores Folder. Archives of Sexuality and Gender.<\/mark><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In connection with their communal and regional relations, the Bookstop also participated in the FBN (Feminist Bookstore News) to connect their work with a larger, women-based, international community. The FBN, founded by Carol Seajay, connected \u201cbookwomen, primarily lesbians and including an important series of cohorts of women of color, in more than one hundred feminist bookstores in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s\u201d in order to \u201chold each other accountable to lesbian antiracism as well as to ethical representation and relationships.\u201d12<\/sup> The Women\u2019s Bookstop was involved in the FBN to network and connect to a wider, North American understanding of feminism, queer rights, and the importance of bookstore spaces in maintaining the interest and value in queer physical spaces and tangible texts. The FBN connected the Women\u2019s Bookstop within a larger cultural conversation and, with the use of comprehensive booklists, brought forward \u201cnew ways to understand individual texts in conversation with others.\u201d13<\/sup> In this understanding, queer communal relationality goes beyond store fronts and ultimately resists mainstream culture\u2019s attempts to border and define queerness, queer relations, and queer spaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like other feminist and lesbian bookstores of the time, The Women\u2019s Bookstop was a meeting-point for the queer community in Hamilton and provided a \u201crespite from mainstream culture\u201d14 <\/sup>in the form of events for local authors, intimate dances, and a wide range of lesbian, feminist, and queer literatures. This communal relationality went beyond the doors of the Bookstop and intersected with local centres, political-workers organizations, and with a larger lesbian feminist collective of the FBN. As Kathleen Thompson, owner of Chicago\u2019s first feminist bookstore Pride and Prejudice, once said, the bookstore was \u201calmost like a port, for everything that was going on.\u201d15<\/sup> With the store as the heart, queer communities could continue to build literary foundations and relational kinships that will ultimately resist the violences and homogenizations of mainstream, heteronormative culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Citations: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

[1] Liddle, Kathleen. \u201cMore than a Bookstore: The Continuing Relevance of Feminist Bookstores for the Lesbian Community.\u201d Journal of Lesbian Studies<\/em>, vol. 9, no. 1-2, 2005, pp. 150.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2] Albrecht, Renee. (2021). Oral History Interview. Points of Pride Project<\/em>. Hamilton Civic Museum<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3] Millward, Liz. Making a Scene: Lesbian and Community Across Canada, 1964-84. <\/em>UBC Press, 2015, pp. 120<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[4] Jennex, Craig, and Nisha Eswaran. Out North: An Archive of Queer Activism and Kinships in Canada<\/em>. Figure 1, 2020, pp. 216.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[5] Janine Fuller qtd. in Heather E. Cameron\u2019s \u201cQueer Experts at the Little Sisters Trial.\u201d Canadian Women Studies<\/em>, vol. 16, no. 2, 1996, pp. 80-83.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[6] Fuller qtd in Cameron, pp. 80-83.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[7] Fuller qtd in Cameron, pp. 80-83.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[8] Fuller qtd in Cameron, pp. 80-83.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[9] Liddle, 147<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[10] Liddle, 147<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[11] Hogan, Kristen. The Feminist Bookstore Movement: Lesbian Antiracism and Feminist Accountability. <\/em>Duke University Press, 2016, pp. 119<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[12] Hogan, xiv<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[13] Hogan, 38<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[14] Liddle, 157<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[15] Enke, A. Finn. Finding the Movement: Sexuality, Contested Space, and Feminist Activism. <\/em>Duke University Press, 2007, pp. 71<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sources: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Albrecht, Renee and Cole Gately. Points of Pride Project. (November 2022). The Women’s  Bookstop<\/em> [Digital Post]. Points of Pride Project.<\/em> Hamilton Civic Museum, 2021.       https:\/\/hamiltoncivicmuseums.ca\/exhibition\/points-of-pride\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

—. Building Hamilton 2SLGBTQ+ Community Archive. <\/em>“2SLGBTQ+ Archive\/Documentary Project. ” Interviews. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cameron, Heather E. \u201cQueer Experts at the Little Sisters Trial.\u201d Canadian Women Studies<\/em>, vol. 16, no. 2, 1996, pp. 80-83.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enke, A. Finn. Finding the Movement: Sexuality, Contested Space, and Feminist Activism. <\/em>Duke University Press, 2007.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gately, Cole. \u201cArchiving Hamilton\u2019s 2SLGBTQ+ Histories.\u201d Building the Hamilton 2SLGBTQ+ Community Archive: Critical Conversation<\/em>, 21 Oct. 2021,       https:\/\/buildingthearchive.hamont.org\/ Archiving-Hamiltons-2SLGBTQ    Histories_Thurs-Oct-21-2021<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hogan, Kristen. The Feminist Bookstore Movement: Lesbian Antiracism and Feminist      Accountability. <\/em>Duke University Press, 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jennex, Craig, and Nisha Eswaran. Out North: An Archive of Queer Activism and Kinships in Canada<\/em>. Figure 1 Publishing, 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Liddle, Kathleen. \u201cMore than a Bookstore: The Continuing Relevance of Feminist Bookstores for the Lesbian Community.\u201d Journal of Lesbian Studies<\/em>, vol. 9, no. 1-2, 2005, pp. 145-159.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Millward, Liz. Making a Scene: Lesbian and Community Across Canada, 1964-84. <\/em>UBC Press,  2015.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Women\u2019s Bookstop, the first and only feminist bookstore in Hamilton, Ontario, opened in 1985 on 333 Main Street West. In the midst of the AIDS epidemic and in the beginning of resistant Queer Nation politics, The Women\u2019s Bookstop offered a new space \u2013 outside of mainstream commercialization \u2013 for women and queer folks to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[13,34,35],"class_list":["post-763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-feminist-bookstores","tag-queer-bookstores","tag-queer-history-of-hamilton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lgbtq2shistoriesofviolence.buildingthearchives.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763","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\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lgbtq2shistoriesofviolence.buildingthearchives.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lgbtq2shistoriesofviolence.buildingthearchives.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lgbtq2shistoriesofviolence.buildingthearchives.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lgbtq2shistoriesofviolence.buildingthearchives.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lgbtq2shistoriesofviolence.buildingthearchives.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}