Viviane Namaste - C'était du spectacle: L'histoire des artistes...

2005, Canada, French, Viviane Namaste,

Original title: "C'était du spectacle: L'histoire des artistes transsexuelles à Montréal, 1955-1985" (It was a show: The history of transsexual artists in Montreal, 1955-1985). The book was published both in English and French.

The sixties and seventies were decades of social change in Quebec. It was a show! tells the story of the first generation of transsexuals who underwent sex reversal surgery. Namaste examines working conditions in cabarets, prostitution, police abuses of power towards transsexuals, the role of organized crime in the city's nightlife, and access to health care. It was a show! offers a rare overview of Montreal's urban culture, presented in its own words by one of its most important artistic communities.

This very first study on the milieu of transsexuals and transvestites in Montreal for the years 1955 to 1985 is therefore an analysis of the first generation of transsexuals who undertook to change sex. At the beginning of the period studied, the term transsexual itself did not yet exist in Quebec. At the time, it was rather referred to as transvestites, thus leading to confusion between the two meanings, the confusion that sometimes persists today.

This is why the author, in order to frame the precise historical context in which transsexuals evolved, tries to grasp the emergence of the term transsexual by starting with an analysis of transvestites. The latter allowed her to understand the emergence of transsexual identity that became possible in Quebec in the late 1960s.

Namaste's book is divided into five chapters that deal in sequence with the work of transsexuals and transvestites in cabarets, prostitution, access to health care, laws and civil status, and police repression. Within these chapters, a great deal of space is given to the stories of these women. For example, we learn that transsexuals had to discreetly resort to surgeries leading to their sex change, of course when they had access to them.

A witness clearly felt the climate that prevailed at the time in Quebec, when she said that in order not to be embarrassed, the surgeons who agreed to do this type of operation forced these women to go through the service stairs to avoid them being put in contact with other patients. It is the same when others recall that as late as 1969, it was illegal for men to dress as women and that some transsexuals and transvestites have served up to a year in prison for doing so publicly.

Viviane K. Namaste is a Canadian feminist professor at Concordia University in Montreal. Her research focuses on sexual health, HIV/AIDS prevention, and sex work. She holds a Concordia University Tier 3 Research Chair in HIV/AIDS and Sexual Health, and her primary area of research is HIV/AIDS prevention. In 2011, she received the Outstanding Book Award for her book Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America.

According to Wikipedia, in 2013, Viviane Namaste was called as an official intervenor in a hearing at the Supreme Court of Canada on whether the ban on solicitation, prohibition of brothels and criminality of making a living from prostitution violates the Charter of Rights.

In the Grey Center bio, we can read that "She has commented that research that maintains the gender binary can exclude communities. Her research examines the involvement of public health in HIV prevention among swinger groups in Montreal, Quebec. Namaste has been noted for criticizing Judith Butler in her work Undoing Gender by discussing how transsexuality intersects someone's identity and how it attributes to the treatment of transsexuals and more specifically their murder."

Available via Amazon

and erudit.org

Photo by Concordia University