It is thus not surprising that when people of colour (PoC) publicly express their views, shockwaves are sent through the McGill populace, garnering strong and hostile reactions. Last year, for example, a number of articles about race and systemic racism, published in this paper, ignited firestorms of controversy, with some authors’ pieces even getting posted on white supremacy websites and attracting shocking online vitriol. Personal and ad hominem attacks were widespread, and readers started shooting the messenger, rather than actually listening to what was being said. After seeing the kind of response generated by Christiana Collison’s black feminism column in The Daily, it is not surprising that students are uncomfortable talking about race. 

Much of the criticism surrounding these past articles also centered on their form and writing style, which in turn served as a way to deflect their content and avoid honest engagement with arguments. Whether this was the case or not, this argumentative line implied that talking about racism was restricted to those with “better” communication skills. Truth be told, oppression is not aesthetically pleasing, and it is not always easy to understand. To combat racism is to engage with different types of discourse that denounce it, to acknowledge its numerous manifestations, and to realize how these shape people’s lives and forms of expression – including our communicational devices.

The following feature is a compilation of unedited statements on race by students of colour at McGill. My intent is to provide an anonymous public platform for PoC students at McGill to honestly and frankly express their thoughts about race – in their own terms and without fear of retribution or negative attention. Hopefully, in these conditions of anonymity, the testimony will speak for itself. 

* * *

“Do you ever feel, or have you ever felt, self-conscious of your race?” 

I didn’t really have a concept of race until I moved to Canada in 2008. I hadn’t really thought about it, which was remarkable given that my father worked on institutional racism in the UK. Within two years of moving here, I was black. I was apart. I’d spent my entire life in predominantly white institutions and I hadn’t even realized I was a minority. [But] I was reminded of my race nearly every day at the high school I went to. […] Whenever someone thought they were about to say something really racist against black people around me, they tended to just give me the side-eye or stop halfway through their sentences, allowing everyone to imagine the exact worst thing they could’ve said, hanging in the silence like a guillotine blade.

I think what has made me most conscious of my race at McGill is the fact that people keep getting me mixed up with my brother. While I recognize that he’s my brother, and we look a certain amount alike, I highly doubt that if we were more Caucasian, people would have such constant trouble [telling us apart] – we look pretty different, as people go. […] There was also the time my intro English Lit class read Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative… I found it interesting how many of my classmates would earnestly tell me how wonderful it was to be reading an “African author,” mostly people I didn’t really know. I hated that text for its colonialist apologism; they loved it because it was “different.”

I was also reminded of my race whenever people took me not attending the [student] protests as me disagreeing in principle when, as a landed immigrant, there’s a pretty long list of stuff that’d get me deported […] and, as a PoC, I am much more likely to be both arrested and charged. I’m reminded of my race whenever I see fear flash in people’s eyes around me, whenever I’m described by my race first. I’ve been in Burnside elevators several times and had people clutch their purses closer [when I got in], as though someone clearly coming from – or going to – class would have the time, or the need, to steal their purse in an enclosed space with cameras in it. […] There’s also the hair-touching thing. People do it without asking, friends ask me endlessly. It’s most of the reason why I hate my hair being longer than a centimeter. I get reminded and feel self-conscious of my race every day. It’s exhausting.

“Do you have an experience related to race, at McGill or elsewhere, that stuck with you?”

The whole McGill classes system is kind of one big micro-aggression. I mean, why are there so few courses that can be employed in an English Lit degree that deal with non-white authors? It’s well-established that many of the great writers of English literature had read work from large portions of the world. Large elements of other cultures had an input in the tradition of English literature and there have been plenty of PoC authors writing in English for  centuries. There are great authors out there now. They need to be included in the canon because right now the canon is as white as Tom Sawyer’s fences. Diversity of perspective can hardly be a bad thing, especially in lit.

Identifies as a mixed person of Pan-European, African-Caribbean, and Semitic origins. U2 English Literature & Economics.

* * *

“Universities are known for the fact that many students choose to self-segregate based on race. Do you have any comments on this phenomenon?”

I never intended to be segregated into an all-Asian friend group. It just happens. I think it’s just natural and more comfortable for us. We just drift together, as corny as it sounds; I find it may just be the culture we were brought up in. I have, of course, had the chance to make friends with non-Asian peers during the time I’ve spent in Canada both in Vancouver and at McGill. However, I find it’s a little hard to become very close friends with non-Asian people, as if there is a wall between us when we interact … I’m not really sure how to put it into words. It’s not exactly a cultural barrier or a language barrier, but just an invisible wall I feel like I can’t breach.

[…] I’ve also had many encounters in which I would walk on the streets of Montreal, and random white people would shout “ni hao” at me. I always thought it was just ignorant white people who assumed that all Asians are Chinese; however, my recent internship, in which I had to deal with hundreds of different people every day, changed my view slightly on this. I was mind-boggled as to how many Chinese people assume you’re Chinese if you look Asian. I’ve found that the majority of Chinese people that I interacted with each day assume you’re Chinese if you’re Asian… so perhaps it’s not just a case of racial insensitivity – or a kind of barrier – between Asians and non-Asians, but also among Asians themselves.

Identifies as South Korean. U3 Environment.

* * *

“Universities are known for the fact that many students choose to self-segregate based on race. Do you have any comments on this phenomenon?”

I just transferred to McGill after a year at a university in Northeastern America, and while I haven’t been at McGill long, I really appreciate the diverse and genuinely accepting environment that McGill has. The entire approach that most American universities have towards diversity – in deliberately encouraging it – is just so flawed. Even from the application process, the deliberateness and forcefulness of their efforts is really clear. When applying, I had to indicate my race, and for those unfamiliar with U.S. undergraduate applications, I’m what is considered an “overrepresented minority.” U.S. schools try to make every entering class as diverse as possible, so while nothing’s ever officially declared, it’s common knowledge that certain ethnic groups need higher test scores and better resumes than other groups, to prevent one group from being “disproportionately” represented.

When I arrived on campus [of the American university] last year though, it was clear that the school’s attempts to promote diversity didn’t work [the way they intended]. I actually felt like I’d stepped into that scene in Mean Girls where Janice and Damien introduce Cady to the various subcultures at the school. Despite the fact that the university consciously made an effort to gather as diverse and balanced group of freshmen as possible, it seemed to only make it easier for students to self-segregate, since there were more people of the same race to hang out with.

To top it all off, at the end of the year, the school sent out a “diversity survey,” asking 25 questions like, “How many times this year have you formed a study group or done an extracurricular with someone of a different ethnicity/race/creed/religious background than you?” And to encourage students to fill out this ridiculous survey, every hundredth student to answer would win a $25 gift card to the campus store.

[…] The uncomfortable environment created by the university’s attitude towards race is partly why I chose to transfer and come back to Canada. McGill is an actually diverse school, not through conscious effort, but just by being. Walking through campus, I really haven’t seen any of the self-segregation I’d witnessed last year. I’m not sure if these issues stem from a difference in school policy or if they stem from a difference between the treatment of race by American and Canadian culture in general, but it’s really, really nice to be home.

Identifies as Asian. U1 Psychology.

* * *

“How do you identify racially?”

I find that answering the question of what race I am is a difficult one. The cultural environment that I have been raised in is very different from the one that my parents have been brought up in, which in turn is very different from that of my grandparents. Personally, I identify with many different cultures, but when asked what race I am, I feel that it limits me to one that I may not necessarily share much in common with.

“Do you have any experiences related to race, either at McGill or elsewhere, that stuck with you?”

Since coming to McGill, I’ve been exposed to many different kinds of people. Some have never interacted with people of colour before, and have no idea how to do so […] In my first year, I remember being called a “F.O.B.” by someone because I didn’t pronounce the word “vitamin” the North American way. And recently, I heard someone tell a [South Asian] friend that her hair – surprisingly! – didn’t smell of curry. I’ve had to listen to a McGill professor compare wearing burqas to wearing garbage bags. Another [professor], who said to my class that while the Japanese can’t drive, we shouldn’t “get him wrong” because this professor still admires their economic structure.

What upsets me is that these people feel that it’s completely acceptable to say something like this. And when our school’s impressionable first years are being told twerking jokes at a McGill assembly, this kind of racist attitude isn’t hard to come by. What I’ve come to learn my past few years at McGill is that these people are everywhere… and that reporting a professor for racist comments doesn’t actually get you anywhere at this school. But who knows? That could just be because of all the budget cuts.

Prefers not to identify with any particular race. U3 Biology.

* * *

“Do you ever feel, or have you ever felt, self-conscious of your race?”

A better question would be, “Do you ever not feel self-conscious about your race?” and the answer would be – fucking never. I feel self-conscious in classes. I reflexively worry about being ‘too Asian’ when responding to questions I know the answers to. I start to fidget and get uncomfortable when anthropological ethnography is discussed in my anthro classes, and PoC groups are put under a microscope and ‘analyzed’ in a really academic and othering way, treating their behaviours like that of animals because they’re exotic, different, primitive, et cetera.

I can’t help but feel self-conscious even in places where I want to feel safe, and actually believe that I am. When I’m hanging out with queer/trans*/feminist activists, I get uncomfortable if a lot of them are white, because any time privilege enters the conversation I feel like everyone’s eyes are drifting towards me as their token non-white person […] when really, I could give less of a shit about speaking up just to validate their feelings and interpretations of PoC politics.

As a trans*, queer PoC, I get really pissed off when supposed activists throw around the term “intersectionality” without it ever being a real problem or concern for them, as anything other than an abstract academic concept. I walk around with people reading me as a Chinese person, and often either a Chinese fag or a dyke – depending on the day, I guess. Every day. I see thin, white bodies and faces all over trans* and queer groups […] and within the groups of Chinese people I know, barely anyone even knows the word “transgender,” let alone understands any part of my actual identity. Yet here I am, feeling like a walking billboard of weirdness every time I step out my door.

As someone who spent a great deal of their life believing that white men were superior in attractiveness and desirability, I grew up feeling like I had to be attractive to them. That insecurity surfaces now even when I actively seek out non-white, non-male people in my romantic life. I worry about being ugly on a daily basis, as much as I try to believe that I am better than that.

Identifies as Chinese. U3 Biology.

* * *

“Do you ever feel, or have you ever felt, self-conscious of your race?” 

Being a one-and-a-half generation Pakistani immigrant, I’ve always been self-conscious of my race since arriving in Canada. There isn’t really a time that I can pinpoint to when I strongly felt my skin color to be inferior because there is always a lingering feeling.

Before I go on, I should mention that any feelings of inferiority – or comparisons to others – have always been in relation to the whites. It’s kind of inevitable that I consider them to be the ‘wild type’ [in the biological sense]. In my mind, being white was an accomplishment. It was something that I saw in a positive light back home, and so; in retrospect, it isn’t surprising that I always forced myself to align with and befriend people several shades lighter than me. It’s humiliating to admit, but I felt that if I hung out with people of my color – people who understood my culture, my lifestyle, religion or whatever – I would be getting the short end of the stick. I was obviously ‘better’ – more modern, better educated – if my friends were white.

Whenever an occasion arose for me to discuss my roots or my culture, I shied away and steered the conversation towards a more eurocentric route because I just didn’t think my world measured up to theirs. Like, I don’t ever recall mentioning Bollywood films or actors to any of my non-immigrant friends because to me it seemed like, “Yeah, I know what you’re going to say. I know it’s silly and that it’s so elementary compared to Hollywood. I don’t need you to mock it and silence me into humiliation.” I guess what I’m trying to say is that I intentionally try to assimilate rather than integrate because I don’t want reminders that I’m not their equal even though I have every right to be.

My feelings of racial inadequacy are no longer as profound as [in] my pre-university years, but it’s just a matter of time until the internalized sense of shame resurfaces. For example, when Mindy Kaling came on screen as the lead in her romcom brain child, I had to pause my stream and collect myself. I thought, “A brown woman is going to be the focus of this show and is going to be the romantic interest of all these good-looking white dudes? Really?” Part of it was because I felt that Mindy Kaling was carrying the torch for all us South Asian females, and I didn’t want to be there for the aftermath when she stumbled. I was very skeptical to believe that a self-assured, successful, and funny brown girl could be accepted and loved – as much as her white counterparts – by her predominantly white audience.

Identifies as South Asian. U3 Science.

* * *

“Do you ever feel, or have you ever felt, self-conscious of your race?”

Of course, especially with the way immigrants are looked at by the current Quebec government. People might also take a view of me that is probably false due to established stereotypes. I feel most self-conscious when I am travelling, or in a government institution; I always watch the way I act, what I say, and what language I choose to speak in certain situations. I often feel looked down upon in the more intolerant parts of the province, such as when I visit relatives outside of the island of Montreal, or in the States.

“How do you think McGill as a university fares at racial issues? Do you feel comfortable as a PoC at McGill?”

I think even if McGill wanted to manifest itself as a post-racial institution, it will never escape the internalized racism/fear of others among its student body. Personally, I feel comfortable as a PoC at McGill because of the people I surround myself with, but you can’t help that one racist comment by a student/teacher in the classroom, or the misconceptions people might have about your race/background.

Identifies as Arab/Middle-Eastern. U1 Middle East Studies.

* * *

“Do you want to tell me a story related to race that’s stuck with you?”

So you know the floods that have been happening in Calgary, right? Well, honestly, I’ve never been prouder of being Calgarian. After seeing all the kindness after the flood… it made me feel really happy I was from this city. Something I have never felt before. I almost forgot why I never wanted to go back. My parents have been donating a shitload of stuff too, to all the volunteers who have been helping clean up.

And then some white guy comes into their store, asking for cardboard boxes. My parents had already donated almost all their boxes to some people earlier that day, and explained that they needed the rest to run their business… and then [the man] leaves, angrily, saying “I would expect this from you people.”

“You people,” as in Asian. Honestly, my heart broke when I heard that. I almost forgot why I never wanted to go back. I just realized that, in their eyes, I will never be Calgarian.

It’s awful to realize that. I’m sorry.

Yeah, it’s kind of nice that happened though, in a way. It really made things clear. The saddest part though, is that that man thought that he was doing the right thing. All he wanted to do was help others who were affected by the flood, and when my parents couldn’t give him the boxes, he said it, the thing that his subconscious was thinking all along, probably – ‘these people aren’t my people.’

I don’t think racism has ever affected me this emotionally before… My dad has lived in Calgary for over 40 years. Once he retires, he’s leaving Calgary for good.

Identifies as South Korean. Graduated Winter 2013, Anatomy and Cell Biology. 

* * *

“I’m compiling people’s stories, comments, and experiences of race and racism. Do you have anything to share?”

So as I write this, a white, blonde-haired baby is glaring at me as if she just saw an alien prancing down the ramp of a UFO. Her mother holds her while chatting to her own mother about an interracial couple that they know, specifically about the “black” woman’s “tight curls.” And I’m sitting here, trying to write an anecdote about racialized experiences. Uncanny. The grandmother just said, “Their culture will set us back another 100 years.”

A 60 year old man that works at a marche aux puces comes up to me and tells me “tu es un beau garcon.” I know he’s 60 because I asked him when I was lying in his bed 2 days later. I had just come out of the bathroom at the fleamarket, so I guess he’d been waiting for me to exit. He gives me his number, along with an antique lamp from his stall. He offers me the ring on his finger, but I think it’s ugly and say no. I give the ring back, but gave him a ‘ring’ a few days later.

We met in a McDonald’s parking lot, and then drove to his house to have a beer. I knew it was weird, but I let myself try. I didn’t feel in any danger. But more honestly, I hadn’t felt any love. Next thing I know, we’re in his one bedroom apartment flooded with red light and his crackly radio playing pop techno. Dance remixes. Rihanna and Justin Timberlake going, he starts to slip his hand under my shirt. “J’aime ton corps,” he tells me. I ain’t feelin’ it, but again, I try. I start to get very physically repulsed, and when he starts to give me a blowjob I tell him I need to leave to have a cigarette. We have okay conversation about religion and travelling, but he’s clearly only interested in sex. I ask him from his balcony, “alors tu aimes les homes indiennes?” He says, “J’aime tout les immigrants.” I tell him I am frustrated with myself and I can’t do this but I still need him to drive me back to where my bike is. I’m scared that he’ll say no, but anyway he drives me and it’s fine. He also offers me $10 so I can eat dinner. I accepted; I was hungry. In his car he constantly keeps giving me eyes that remind me of when he was giving me a blowjob and I cringe. “Je t’aime,” he says as he rubs my thigh. I ride my bike, trying to find something I can crash into. So. That. Was. That.

Identifies as Indian/Brown/Person of Color. U3 Arts.

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The performance is put on by V-Day McGill, the local chapter of the international organization founded in 1998 by Vagina Monologues playwright, Eve Ensler. On the day of sweet romance and passionate love, the performers on stage candidly confront subjects like rape, female genital mutilation, misogyny, and feminine self-discovery with a mixture of poise and frustration.

In all, nine monologues are performed, with old standbys like “Cunt” and “The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy.” A few monologues stand out in particular. In “The Flood,” the actress connects with the audience through a soft voice that begs you to pay the utmost attention, and though you need to strain a bit, the voice somehow never becomes inaudible. The audience hangs on her every word, coming to understand the character of the sexually repressed elderly woman who comes to life in depth and colour. It feels like she’s having an intimate conversation with every individual audience member; her intermittent, shameful silences provoke the audience to address internalized echoes of erotic embarrassment.

“It stopped being a thing that speaks a long time ago,” she says, referring to her inner sexual self. “You got an old lady to talk about down there. You feel better now?” she demands, and we nod yes. Yes, we feel better. The silence we’re steeped in every day of our life is painful, and the monologues in this play give voice not only to the characters’ stories but to all the things we, as women, have hidden inside. Yes, we feel better – we feel liberated.

“I felt like an astronaut re-entering the atmosphere of the earth,” Lucile Smith’s character affirms in the “Vagina Workshop” scene. It’s an apt description of the bewitching, enlightening experience of watching the entire play, as the topic of female sexuality and the ubiquitous vagina that the women in the audience take for granted is illuminated in a novel way that makes the commonplace seem unfamiliar and delightful.

The beauty of this play is the agency it gives all the characters in the play, the women whose stories they tell, and the audience members themselves. In the “My Vagina Was My Village” monologue, inspired by a Bosnian woman who was raped by soldiers during wartime, the actor’s nervous body language under the smothering weight of her terrible memory transforms into a cleansing anger as she builds toward a cathartic expulsion of her shame, silence, and fear. Through her performance, we give form to the haunting spectre of sexual oppression, misogyny, and violence – and forcefully exorcise it.

Although there’s an occasional lull in energy, and the performances and choreography could at times be uneven, it’s fruitless to judge Vagina Monologues as a traditional play. It’s more about creating an environment of openness, a visceral experience, full of emotional catharsis. To reduce it to its minutiae is to misunderstand the piece’s point.

The play’s final scene is a monologue performed in chorus by the ensemble cast: a rousing speech about One Billion Rising, the campaign launched by Ensler for the 15th anniversary of V-Day. This is not the first time the chorus is used in the performance, but it is by far its most effective implementation. The show’s end is defined by motion, as the chorally-delivered words swell into a beat that takes over the performers’ bodies, and infiltrates into the audience. The clapping and stamping beat stands out, especially against the stasis that has defined the majority of the performance. A dynamic ending to a dynamically imagined performance piece. A standing ovation. And scene.

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People use “bromance” to completely close off the possibility of romantic or sexual same-sex interaction between two close male friends. It’s defensive and painfully self-conscious, trying to pre-empt the accusation of homosexuality before it can be lobbed. It is akin to “no homo” but made more palatable for self-identifying enlightened liberal audiences. It is akin to the phrases “man crush” and “girl crush,” used to refer to feelings of affection beyond the heterosexual norm towards a person of the same sex – feelings that are rendered harmless through the same linguistic process that makes the term “bromance” such a powerful tool for erasing  homoerotic subtext. Close same-sex friendships have been around in fiction and the media since the dawn of civilization (check out Gilgamesh and his gallivanting male companion, Enkidu), but it is a special brand of insidious homophobia that takes these same-sex relationships and sanitizes them for the heteronormative audience.

The bromance comedy genre, which includes popular films like Superbad, The Hangover, and I Love You, Man, show the bromance has become laughable, juvenile, and ridiculous. But more than ever, the borderline between the underlying gay tension and the purely platonic label of bromantic friendship has become tenuous – the more hyperaware society becomes of the homoeroticism that is masked by the “bromance” label in popular entertainment, the more it threatens to burst free into unknown and unexplored territory. The fear, the unease, and the residual disgust with homosexuality that lingers in our cultural psyche makes the bromance a desperate refuge, with the walls between gay and straight desperately thrown up. We can see this defensive rejection of actual homoeroticism woven throughout these comedic, testosterone-fueled flicks, such as in I Love You, Man, where Paul Rudd’s character goes on a series of “dates” with men to find a best man for his wedding. When one of his dates misinterprets his intentions and actually kisses him at the end of the evening, the scene is played for laughs, and Rudd is shown with jaw agape, shocked that his same-sex outings might be seen as homoerotic. The underlying subtextual tension in the movie is that within these platonic man-dates runs the sub-current of legitimate homosexual dating practice.

In today’s celebrity entertainment, the bromance du jour is the “Larry Stylinson” phenomenon of the world’s biggest boy band, One Direction. The name is a portmanteau of two of the members’ names, Louis Tomlinson and Harry Styles, who have borne the majority of gay rumours surrounding the band. The rumours were so prevalent that Louis has gone to the media several times insisting that the insinuations are ruining his and Harry’s friendship, and Louis’ relationship with his girlfriend. It’s interesting to note that when browsing comments on articles regarding Tomlinson and Styles, the most common defense against accusations of romantic intimacy is “it’s just a bromance!” Early in their careers, before they became an international sensation, gossip rags gushed over the idea of Tomlinson and Styles as a couple, since they lived together and exchanged loving tweets with romantic endearments. Then on the cusp their American breakthrough, they were pushed under the cover of “bromance” as if to neutralize all of the homoerotic chemistry that fans had sensed between them and render it palatable for the American audience.

In the world of fictional entertainment, corporate executives have embraced the use of homoerotic subtextual tension to court fan interest in their products. The industry has become savvy at exploiting the audience’s enthusiasm for same-sex relationships on screen, whether they’re platonic friendships or ambiguously homoerotic and rife with tension. The bromance label provides refuge for these writers, allowing these series to embrace male bonding and intimacy without actually portraying homosexual relationships. It allows writers to exploit a significant demographic, mostly made up of straight and queer women, who enjoy mainstream series and movies predominantly for the same-sex relationship at its core. We can see it in the recent Sherlock Holmes reboot, with Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law wrestling half-naked on a train while Downey is dressed in drag.

We saw it in the popular series House, where the friendship between Dr. House and Dr. Wilson was a drawing point for many people in the fandom, some of whom seriously expected the two to get together by its end. The idea of bromance allowed the show’s directors to publish a sexually suggestive, full-page spread of Hugh Laurie spraying Robert Sean Leonard in the face with white silly string, and render it immediately harmless by adding a ‘b’ in front of ‘romance’ in the caption: “true bromance.” It’s coy, irritating, and homophobic – and most of all, its popularity seems to be propelled by the idea that being open about bromances, incredibly close relationships both physically and emotionally between male friends, demonstrates how open you are about homosexuality – as long as they’re not actually gay, of course!

The current MTV show Teen Wolf is an example of the “powers that be” becoming aware of, and tapping into, the sizeable portion of fandom interested in the idea of a same-sex relationship on the show. Creator Jeff Davis said in an E! interview that he never intended characters Stiles and Derek to be romantically involved. When Entertainment Weekly held a poll of readers’ favourite romantic relationship in a TV show, the magazine rejected write-in ballots for Stiles and Derek, because it’s ostensibly still a platonic bromance on the show itself. However, the fandom interested in this same-sex relationship is sizeable and vocal enough to have gotten the attention of the show creator and actors, who often acknowledge and even play up the homosexual subtext to please fans.

These spectacles of popular entertainment demonstrate the coy and evasive way corporate executives manipulate the perception of the tenuous line between platonic bromance and genuine homoerotic relationship. Perhaps one day this will-they-or-won’t-they dance will give way, and the damaging dichotomy of romance versus bromance will be erased, along with other manifestations of the repressed homophobia gripping our society.

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In South Korea, the university admissions test is held only once a year. On the second Thursday of every November, the country shudders with a sense of momentous gravity as high school seniors across the nation simultaneously sit down to write the exam in a nine-hour marathon session. To facilitate the test, daily life comes to a respectful standstill: workplaces open an hour later to reduce morning traffic, live-fire training is postponed at military bases, airport flights are delayed during the hour of the exam’s speaking portion, stock markets open late, and noise restrictions near test centres is enforced. The sense of importance of this life-deciding exam is felt at all levels of society.

U2 McGill Management student Jennifer Seo described her own education in South Korea. “I started going to afterschool classes for English in Grade 1, and it was about six hours a week. Then in Grade 5 I started taking math classes which was another six hours,” for a total of 12 hours per week on top of her regular schooldays. When she got into middle school, the private tutoring got more intensive. “I can’t even remember how much time it was,” she said. In fact, her family moved to the Daechi-dong area of Seoul’s affluent Gangnam district because it is renowned for its cram schools.

The pressure cooker nature of test preparation, and the life-or-death emphasis on the importance of academics and standardized testing has led to mental stress and depression amongst the nation’s youth. Suicide is the leading cause of death for people under forty in South Korea, and every year suicides spike in November around the time of the CSAT and in December when results come out. According to two surveys, by the Korea Teachers and Educational Workers Union and the Korea Youth Counseling Institute, almost half of Korean students have had thoughts of suicide.

“The people who would commit suicide might be the top ten in their school, but still they think that if they don’t get good grades on the exam they won’t succeed later in life,” Seo recalled. On the topic of whether counseling or mental health services are available to students suffering under the pressure of CSAT preparation, Seo explained, “Homeroom teachers are supposedly responsible for taking care of them, but you don’t really talk about your feelings to your teachers ­– not even your parents, because you’re scared you’ll make them worry. You mostly talk among your friends.”

These high-stress conditions have led to the rise of “wild goose fathers” – a phenomenon where mother and child move overseas to receive quality education abroad or to escape the Korean system altogether, while the father remains at home earning the money required to finance the arrangement. Mothers, on the other hand, have become educational agents in this society, and female graduates of prestigious universities are sought-after marriage prospects for their advantage in helping their children obtain the same high scores that got their mothers into university. Getting into one of the top three universities isn’t simply the path to respectable employment, but also confers the benefits of social prestige and invaluable social and job connections among those from your alma mater.

“A lot of people, if they had enough money to go abroad to study, most of them would go for it,” Seo affirmed. “A lot of people know that [the system]’s problematic,” Seo said.

Seo explained that her parents decided to emigrate to Canada when she was in Grade 10, because “once you go into high school, it gets more intense…we thought we could spend more quality time in Canada than Korea…In Korea, there’s a system that’s set for you and you’re forced to study what they offer, there’s no choice and no time for other activities.”

Called by many the “one-shot society,” South Korea’s education system revolves around the CSAT as the apogee of academic achievement and subsequent professional success. And for a country whose obsession with education largely drove the nearly 40,000% increase in the country’s GDP since the 1962, the country revolves around the education system in turn. Ninety-three per cent of South Korean students graduate from high school on schedule, while in the United States that figure is closer to 75 per cent, and, according to OECD data, a high school teacher in South Korea makes 25 per cent more than an American teacher of comparable experience on average.

As early as elementary school, Korean students are prepared for the CSAT. According to surveys, parents in Seoul spend an average of 16 per cent of their income on private tutoring for their children, whose academic schedules often last from 8am to 10pm or even later, spending hours after school in private cram schools, called hagwons. For those without easy access to tutoring centres or those who can’t afford face-to-face instruction, online tutoring is a common alternative. In 2009, South Koreans spent $19 billion on private education, which is approximately half of the public expenditure on public education; in the United States, the private education industry is valued at under $7 billion, while public education expenditures total around $68 billion.

This leads to students being less invested in their regular education because “a lot of students know ahead of what school teaches,” Seo explained. “It’s redundant. They learn the stuff at hagwons and they come to school, and they’re already tired so they sleep in classes.”

The private education industry has risen, in part, out of a perceived incompetence on the part of public school education; in 2004, a survey reported that South Korean classes in middle schools averaged 37.1 students, compared to the OECD average of 23.7. In 2010, 74 per cent of South Korean students received some manner of private instruction after school.

Parents who can afford private tutoring are usually those with higher educational achievement and, unsurprisingly, greater incomes. A study by Ji-Ha Kim at Yonsei University found that, in fact, the quality of public schools has a much smaller impact on parents’ decision to pay for private tutoring when compared to the effect of their perception of their peers’ behaviour. This means that South Korean parents become increasingly more likely to send their children to hagwons if they see other families doing the same – that is, they worry most about their child falling behind the perceived competition if they don’t receive additional hours of instruction.

The cost is enormous – taking classes at hagwons can cost up to $1,000 USD per month for each subject, which is a considerable sum considering the average South Korean household income is around $42,000. In 2003, a survey by the Korean Education Development Institute found that 84 per cent of parents found their household spending on private tutoring to be a financial burden.

 The hagwon system reproduces social inequality by ensuring that those who can afford private tutoring go on to admission in the prestigious universities which lead to higher return in the labor market and greater social mobility, while those of limited socioeconomic means are disadvantaged when it comes to competing in the CSAT against students who receive hours of daily additional instruction through hagwons and online lessons. Participation in private tutoring is correlated with living in an urban centre, parents’ education, income, and socioeconomic class. According to Seo, most students who get into the top three universities are from Seoul’s wealthy Gangnam district. “If you are richer, you have more opportunities because it takes a lot of money for [private tutoring].”

Government reforms to the unpopular educational system in South Korea have been attempted for the past four decades, with hagwons even being banned for a time in the 1980s. After his election in 2008, President Lee Myung-bak vowed to pursue educational reform, and in 2009 his government introduced a 10pm curfew for all operating hagwons, organizing raids to break up infringing tutoring centres that continue to work afterhours.

To emulate Western educational systems, which place greater emphasis on creativity, extracurricular development, and vocational training, new policies were instated within the last decade. Admissions officers were assigned to universities in order to evaluate applicants on criteria outside test scores, such as extracurricular involvement and recommendation letters. 120 universities in the country have adopted this new admissions system, and ten per cent of students are admitted to post-secondary institutions for reasons other than their CSAT score.

Additionally, the government has created alternatives to private tutoring, such as broadcasting public lectures by the Education Broadcasting Station. They have also curtailed fees, and fine hagwons that overcharge. However, hagwons are still plentiful, estimated by the Korean government to number up to 100,000. The measures are thus widely considered failures.

The Korean education system, historically a profoundly effective economic stimulator, is in trouble. Its own high standards may be its ironic downfall.

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Autism is a neurological condition characterized by developmental disabilities in social interaction and communication, along with repetitive and obsessive behaviours. People with the disorder range from high-functioning individuals to those who are more severely affected; it is often diagnosed with conditions including intellectual impairment, learning disabilities, and ADHD. Autistic individuals often need treatment to increase quality of life and mitigate problematic behaviours: this includes costly one-on-one sessions in behavioural therapy, physiotherapy, counseling, special nutrition, and medication. More importantly, however, is that in many cases a formal diagnosis of autism is necessary for an individual to get access to affordable care.

In the DSM-5, Asperger’s and Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS) will be subsumed under the general category of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Patient’s illnesses will be classified according to severity, rather than as individual and definite, disorders. While the criteria will be more specific and less prone to false positive diagnoses, some in the mental health community see the new criteria as alarmingly narrow. These critics worry that future generations of autistic patients – especially those who are higher-functioning individuals – might be overlooked in the new method of diagnosis.

It’s possible that the tighter criteria are a response to the reality that autism rates have skyrocketed in past years. In 2000, the prevalence rate was one in 150 North American children, while today it is estimated that one in 110 children are affected, according to the US Center for Disease Control (CDC). In Canada, an estimated 190,000 Canadians have been diagnosed with autism.

In a 2011 article published in Psychology Today, Allen Frances – the chairman of DSM-IV Task Force – cited the introduction of looser clinical diagnostic criteria as a possible factor in this increase in autism diagnoses. Specifically, the publication of the fourth Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) in 1994 brought with it a new and expanded definition for autism spectrum disorder (ASD); until then, autism had been one of the most narrowly defined disorders in the DSM, reserved only for those who manifested the severest symptoms. The DSM-IV included the new diagnosis of Asperger’s Disorder, which was “surprisingly popular,” according to Frances. To explain this increased popularity, Frances describes the widespread media attention given to Asperger’s, and the decreased social stigma attached to the disorder. Also important were the “expanded school and therapeutic services whose reimbursement often required an autism diagnosis.”

The more stringent criteria in the DSM-5 are seen by some as an attempt to limit what is seen as a tendency towards over-diagnosing autism, and consequently stem a growing drain on resources and funding. David J. Kupfer, the chairman of the DSM-5 Task Force revising the diagnostic criteria, described it as a “cost issue” in an article in the New York Times. Catherine Lord, another member of the Task Force and director of the Institute for Brain Development at New York Presbyterian Hospital, was quoted in a Scientific American article on the issue as saying that “if the DSM-IV criteria are taken too literally, anybody in the world could qualify for Asperger’s or PDD-NOS” and that the new DSM-5 criteria are meant to improve specificity and reduce the amount of kids who are misdiagnosed.

After the draft that proposed the diagnostic criteria for ASD was released, however, two studies were conducted which warn that the new criteria will exclude many currently diagnosed autistic individuals, especially on the higher functioning end. The Clinic of Child Psychiatry at the University of Oulu in Finland released a study last June titled “Autism spectrum disorders according to DSM-IV-TR and comparison with DSM-5 draft criteria.” The study’s conclusions were that, “DSM-5 draft criteria were shown to be less sensitive in regard to identification of subjects with ASDs, particularly those with Asperger’s syndrome and some high-functioning subjects with autism.” Dr. Fred Volkmar of Yale’s Child Study Centre, along with colleagues Brian Reichow and James McPartland, released a study using data from a 1993 survey of 372 high-functioning children and adults to see how they would fare under the DSM-5 criteria. Only 45 per cent would qualify as having ASD; 75 per cent of people with Asperger’s and 85 per cent of those with PDD-NOS would not be diagnosed under the new classifications.

A field study of the new DSM-5 criteria titled “Validation of proposed DSM-5 criteria for autism spectrum disorder” released by the Center for Pediatric Behavioral Health and the Center for Autism concluded that while increased specificity would reduce the number of false positive diagnoses, “phase II testing of DSM-5 should consider a relaxed algorithm, without which as many as 12 per cent of ASD-affected individuals, particularly females, will be missed.” The worries of possible autistic individuals being denied the diagnosis and subsequent support and resources they need is worrying, especially considering that certain groups are already under-diagnosed – such as racial minorities, women, and people of lower socioeconomic status.

Bryan King of the Neuro-developmental Disorders workgroup at the APA asserted that there are some upsides to the consolidation of the categories that fall under the ASD, since certain treatments, only approved by the FDA for one autism-related disorder, aren’t approved or indicated for another. The definition of autism in the DSM-5 has great potential for improving the specificity of diagnosis and helping individuals get the specially tailored treatment options they need for their particular symptoms. The criteria for the DSM-5 are due to be consolidated by December, giving hope that the APA will find a way to provide diagnostic tools which will benefit all those who suffer from mental illnesses.

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the lip of a hole in the earth.

Overhead, the black web of electrical wires

hummed with a subdermal vibration,

The quiet sound of grinding teeth.

(breathed in and out—)

I was tightrope walker, circus freak, sparrow on a string.

So careful not to trip on the unearthed pipes,

glinting like iron-capped teeth in that black, yawning jaw;

Blackened like the black dirt, the soil of the little city.

(Dirty, shitty, poor city; gutted remains of the USSR.

And the fortune tellers said it had no future, that little city

– Leave now! Move away!)

The surrounding countryside was farms,

And ghosts wandering the desiccated corpse of the yellow steppes,

In all directions, stretched like the hide of a drum.

And when the black rain fell, it beat a tattoo on that sad land;

the echo of horse hooves.

Under my feet,

that damned hole was an empty eye in the earth,

Just watching the sky.

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The man who’d just been escorted by security across the convention hall floor was Stan Lee – the industry legend who, in the late fifties and early sixties, fathered the biggest names in Marvel’s roster, including Spider-Man. He was the guest of honour at this weekend’s Montreal Comiccon (MCC), but he was by no means the only impressive name on the guest list. In attendance was DC legend Neal Adams, James Marsters of Buffy fame, kick-ass superheroine writer Gail Simone, and the Batman and Robin actors from the eponymous sixties show – along with a host of other big names from industries spanning science fiction, bande dessinée, manga, and horror.

“Christian Bale? No. Adam West is my Batman,” enthused the middle-aged man beside me as we stood shoulder-to-shoulder ogling the 1966 Batmobile. Around us, the crowd pressed claustrophobically close, many dressed like they had stepped straight out of their respective fictional universes. Wolverine walked beside a Stormtrooper; a flock of Robins chattered as they passed; a tiny Batman trailed after his parents – the irony of which was a little heart-breaking.

In the midst of all these colourful characters, I was struck by the diversity around me. As MCC balances precariously on the edge between a local con and world-class event, so too does it inhabit the ambiguous twilight zone between various cultures and fandoms. The uniqueness of MCC as compared to, say, San Diego Comic-Con or the festivals de bandes dessinée – large comic book festivals in Europe – is that it exists within the cultural mélange of Montreal.

“The global nature of the industry means that this stuff is more or less merging,” said Thierry Labrosse, a French-Canadian comic artist and the author of Ab Irato. As an artist who exhibits at the colossal comic festivals of Europe, he explained that MCC has the potential to serve as an anchor between the North American comic scene, the East Asian graphic novel style, and the European bandes dessinées.

The Place Bonaventure hall is three times the size of the one used last year, but it was still crowded with attendees. At mid-afternoon, the admissions line looped back on itself six times in the cavernous room right outside the convention floor. While waiting in line for my media pass, I overheard MCC staff inform an irate man that they’d had to turn people away on Saturday because they were over capacity. It’s a little mind-boggling to imagine that this convention, which in 2007 reported a mere 700 attendees, swelled nearly 30 times in size to boast an attendance of over 20,000 this year.

Without fail, every exhibitor and artist I talked to said that it was their first year attending the MCC, many having heard about the success of last year’s show through the convention grapevine.

“The media coverage was good,” said Walter Durajlija, owner of Big B Comics in Hamilton. “The convention was covered by CBC, CTV, and the local papers picked it up… The organizers went all out this year.”

When I queried local artist Sanya Anwar about the MCC’s growth, she pronounced: “Montreal has been waiting for a con like this.” This thought echoed Durajlija’s opinion that while metropolitan areas like New York City and San Diego have their respective world-class cons, Montreal has always lacked one of its own. The unvoiced implication I discovered in every interview I conducted over the weekend is that, if MCC’s exponential growth continues, it may just well become Montreal’s own world-class con.

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Surrounded with images of bones and skulls, one can’t help but feel alone as the only living avatar amidst this morbid dreamscape. Yet the repulsion one might expect to harbour towards these emblems of death is curiously absent. Instead, the pieces exert a fascinating pull: a certain solemnity and dark charisma in the staring eye sockets and the elegant lines of bone, seen in Bevan Ramsey’s “Bone China” series and Karine Turcot’s dreamlike “La vie en rose.”

The exhibition itself is an exploration of the way contemporary artistic thought tackles the theme of memento mori – a Latin phrase that translates roughly to “remember that you will die.” The exhibit program states that the phrase dates as far back as Ancient Rome, where it was whispered in the ear of a triumphant general to remind him of his mortality.  Art with this cautionary theme, ranging in terms of visual aesthetic from openly confrontational to quietly philosophizing, became popular in medieval and Renaissance art. It’s appeal was influenced largely by the moralizing Christian prescripts of living virtuously, and the miasmatic spectre of the Black Death that hung over Europe.

In a long-running tradition of memento mori artwork, Bone Again surveys the concept of death in art under the purview of contemporary society. “All of the artists who did the work are still alive, and the pieces were made in the last ten years,” says Rhéal Olivier Lanthier, one of the two founders of the gallery.

A few themes thread through the collection, most notably a comment on the vanity of indulgence in the face of inevitable death. Christoph Steinmeyer’s “Disco Inferno” hangs in the front window display looking onto the street – a pair of fake skulls tackily studded with mirrored tiles evocative of disco balls. This gaudy appropriation of death surfaces again in Damien Hirst’s “For the Love of God, Laugh,” a silkscreen print of his famous diamond-encrusted skull – which Hirst claimed he sold for £ 50 million – and Laura Kikauka’s cheeky parody-homage made of dollar-store plastic skulls and rhinestones, “For the Love of Gaud.”

“Images of skulls were used by people like the Hell’s Angels,” said Lanthier. “They represented something fearful and scary. The image of the skull used to be thought of as disgusting, but now you see it on dresses, t-shirts, videogames. It’s like a fashion object now.”

These artworks embody this contemporary nonchalance towards depicting death and the grotesque. The traditional imagery of death has become, for us, contrived and abstracted due to death’s tangible absence from our ordinary lives. Advancements in medicine, technology, and our sanitized cultural infrastructure have ensured that unpalatable reminders of death – such as the bodies of the dying and the dead – are absent in the day-to-day. The disappearance of religion as a governing authority in the Western world has also contributed to our disappearing concern with the afterlife.

“In this day and age the threat of eternal damnation informs the daily lives, and acts of precious few Westerners. Furthermore, in Quebec, the number of believers has plummeted so that its inhabitants particularly give little credence to this threat,” writes Ève De Garie-Lamanque in the exhibit catalogue.

Though the collection deals with the theme of vanitas which was traditionally the domain of Christian art, religious imagery is scarce in Bone Again. The only explicit reference is in Al Farrow’s “Humerus of Santo Guerro,” a sculpture of bullets and bone crowned with the figure of Christ on the cross – a criticism of religion’s history of war.

The historical gravity and solemnity which death once demanded has given way to a wry, ironic, and increasingly detached treatment of it in today’s society and art. As religion and the fear of mortality gradually disappear from the modern consciousness, the way that we view bodies and their skeletal remains – both animal and human – seems to have changed. Exhibits like Bone Again illustrate this growing disconnect between our conceptions of our bodies as alive and dead, and the aesthetic journey of our remains, from the earth to the gallery.

“Bone Again” runs until April 23 at Art Mûr, 5826 St. Hubert. For more information see artmur.com

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“I was interested in the Canadian Forces Artists Program as an art form when I first contacted them, ten years ago,” Collier wrote by email. “The only support material I sent in when I applied to the CFAP was a three-part comic book series published by Dark Horse Comics, called Unsung Hero. Harvey Pekar wrote this story for me, based on my military experience.” The book is a biographical account of the experiences of a former Black Panther and Vietnam War vet named Robert McNeill.

Canada’s military art initiative has a history that reaches back to the First World War. At the time, news blackouts at the frontlines of combat were par for the course. “Journalists were often barred from the front. Instead, official and often false communiques were issued,” Collier narrates in Chimo. “The Artists Program was one of the few things to come out of the First World War that wasn’t horrible or destructive.”

A new kind of struggle

Whereas Unsung Hero dealt with the nightmarish reality of the Vietnam War, Chimo is significantly more mundane in setting. Afghanistan, for Chimo’s Collier, is a distant and elusive dream. Much more concrete are Collier’s daily struggles: with his aging and deteriorating body, the conflict between military and family life, and the gritty reality of the Canadian urban landscape.  “The book is a very personal work. More about mortality and aging than anything else,” commented Andy Brown, Collier’s publisher, by email.

The novel opens with Collier having recently been accepted to the CFAP. He hopes to re-enlist in the army in order to maximize his chances of going to Afghanistan – in the comic, John MacFarlane, CFAP manager, points out that the problem with sending civilian artists into war zones is that these civilians are not covered by Canadian Forces insurance. But in lieu of the active combat Collier anticipates, he’s instead given the opportunity to spend two weeks at sea on an active vessel.

On Collier’s desire to re-enlist, MacFarlane’s disembodied voice says on the telephone: “But remember, if you do take this step; do it for yourself not for the program.” At the age of 42, Collier begins the Canadian army’s basic training for the second time in his life.

Military art

Collier’s character cites A.Y. Jackson and Frederick Varley as early war artists who became pillars of Canadian art when they went on to found the Group of Seven. Collier notes that, following the conclusion of the Second World War, the Royal Academy in London hosted a wildly successful exhibition of Canadian war art which helped the country define its worth on the international stage at a crucial time in its history. It seems obvious what Collier is trying to say – military art has played an undeniable role in forging Canada’s national identity.

The Canadian military art initiative stopped after the First World War, but ran again twice: first during the Second World War (in 1942), and then in a push for civilian artist recruitment through the Civilian Artists Program from 1968 to 1995. The program’s current incarnation was restarted by the Chief of Defence Staff, General Maurice Baril in 2001, now called the Canadian Forces Artists Program. The program’s website states the CFAP’s raison d’être as being to “capture the daily operations, personnel and spirit of the Canadian Forces.” The artists are unpaid volunteers chosen by the committee from a pool of applicants – including not only painters but all types of artists, running the gamut from sculptors to writers and poets. Collier, as a comic artist, is living proof of CFAP’s mandate to widen its spectrum of artistic media and human perspectives.

When probed on the degree of influence the Canadian Forces had on Chimo, Collier wrote by email: “I was grateful for the suggestions made by the Canadian Forces Artists Program, as they actually made my work more entertaining. Focus less on equipment, they said and more on the human story.”

A personal narrative

As propaganda, Chimo is arguably a poor recruitment aid. Collier’s depiction of life in the army, while respectful, is not particularly glorifying. The disjointed, meandering narrative of the book is a little hard to puzzle out.  It’s not an easy read, full as it is of tangential personal anecdotes and stories about the history of Canada and the Canadian military. The line between past and present is blurred, events sliced from the chronological timeline and pasted in what seems to be a slapdash manner. The book is very much coloured by Collier’s personal experience, and as an autobiography it is intensely insular and self-reflective.

“It’s a way of telling a story that more closely follows the jagged curve of real life, rather than the slick smoothness of a conventional narrative,” wrote journalist Jeet Heer, who has reviewed much of Collier’s work, by email.

Though one of Collier’s characters opines that joining the army is a way to perfect his physical condition, Collier himself suffers a variety of nauseating physical injuries after enlisting. After fracturing his tibia a few days into basic training, he runs on it for a while before seeing a doctor: “A month earlier, the distance would’ve been nothing for me, but now, because of my leg, it was a killer. The pain was almost too much. I held off crying until I got to the shower. The water covered up my tears.”

The fragility and breakdown of Collier’s body is mirrored in his artwork: linework is rough, the drawings generally dark in a literal sense, weighed down with heavy inks. It’s almost morbid, with Collier’s writhing cross-hatching sometimes bordering on the grotesque. The hand-written text and its uneven, clumsy lines adds to the eclectic feeling of the work.

Despite the essayistic and self-reflective nature of Collier’s storytelling, he seems to put surprisingly light emphasis on the impact his re-enlistment and military participation has on his young family. His drawings of his wife, Jen, and his young son James are careful and complimentary. And yet on the tradition of husbands leaving their families behind to pursue dangerous and far-flung careers in the military, Collier has this to say: “You listen to the older guys – also with beautiful families at home – and you find that they are here because they want to be.” He ruminates, “Even if I joined the Navy and was away a lot, Jen, James and me would still have together-time capital in the bank, so close together we’ve been.”

But recurrently throughout the book, such concerns about his family are worryingly played off with jokes or glib changes in subject. In one surprisingly lucid stab at dark humour, Collier likens his desire to go to Afghanistan to a scene in the comic strip The Gumps, where the husband is stopped by his wife from trying to jump over a deep chasm.

“There’s nothing dangerous about all this? I mean, he’s the only husband I’ve got,” his wife asks at one point. “You could be safer staying in bed, I guess,” her friend responds.

From function to expression

While honest in presenting himself, throughout the book Collier appears unwilling to deal with the topic of how his involvement in the military will affect his family.  The comic medium allows a non-conventional narrative, the strip style suited to the individual anecdotes he relates.  As Brown commented, “David is extremely respectful of the military and the war artists program.”  This respect prevents him from openly criticizing the military itself, and what remains is only the implicit consequence that it takes him away from his family.

In its current state, the CFAP doesn’t really deal with war.  Few artists who join the program are able to go into areas of active combat.  Furthermore, war itself has changed, necessitating a change in the function of the program: from a way to navigate the information blackouts of the First and Second World War, to a means of capturing what contemporary photojournalism cannot. Rather than focussing concern on conveying information, it seeks to help individuals come to terms with the effects of war through artistic expression. For Collier, this encompasses his training and its effect on his home life. While lacking both exploration of and a concluding judgment on the military as an institution, Chimo still offers valuable insight into the personal effects a role in the Forces can have – even if one’s role doesn’t involve active combat.

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One of the most harmful myths regarding LGBTQ healthcare is that queer people do not have health care needs distinct from the general population. Perhaps due to a willful refusal to recognize the unique LGBTQ struggle, this health care myth results from the conflation of queer people deserving equal rights as non-queers, with queer people having the same needs as non-queers, according to Allan Peterkin and Cathy Risdon’s Caring for Lesbian and Gay People: A Clinical Guide.

Facing the oppressive workings of heterosexism, queer people experience “minority stress” – a research term describing the chronic psychological distress associated with internalizing stigma and experiencing repeated incidents of prejudice. Countless studies have shown that oppressive social environments lead to very tangible negative health outcomes for queer people. This can include depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and substance abuse. Lesbians and gay men have been shown to be more likely to smoke, and lesbians are more likely to be overweight than the general population; both are more likely to suffer from heart problems. A study in the The Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry connected risk of suicide in GLB teens with negative attitudes toward homosexuality.

The LGBTQ community has a precarious relationship with the health care system, sitting  atop a rocky foundation of a lack of awareness among health care providers, as well as a reluctance to engage with the health care system on the part of the queer population. There are many reasons that queer people choose not to engage in the traditional patient-provider model of health care services, the biggest reasons often being discrimination or judgment. Surveys of LGBTQ individuals show that many are reluctant to “come out” to their doctors, due to a fear of being judged or turned away.

Barriers to care include heterosexist environments fostered by aspects such as heteronormative language on medical forms, lack of awareness on behalf of health care providers, prohibitive costs as well as a lack of adequate insurance coverage, and a reluctance on the part of the patient or provider to discuss salient issues concerning sexuality and sexual history. Patient histories assume heterosexual sexual activity, or even a gender binary between man and woman.

Quinn Albaugh – a former Daily columnist on trans issues – stated in an interview that, “The onus is always on you to disclose information, and you may not be comfortable doing that. Finding a reliable physician whom you can trust is a lifelong challenge.” In fact, in the absence of a trusted doctor, many LGBTQ individuals put off seeking help until their conditions become aggravated, and they often fail to come back for follow-up care after the initial visit. The institution is in a state of transition, with the gay rights movement making strides that are perhaps not reflected equally across the board. For example, Albaugh talked about the awkward state of Quebec health care in covering sex-reassignment surgery operations. “They will cover it if you get it done at a public hospital, but there are no public hospitals that currently offer the surgery. So you have to go to a private clinic where it’s not covered,” they said.

Alongside high fees, potential stigma, or bureaucratic issues that may stop many people of non-normative sexual identities from seeking health care, transgender people also face an additional obstacle which homosexuals have generally overcome: having transgender status classified as a mental disorder within the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV (DSM), used in America and to varying degrees around the world. The pathologization of homosexuality has historically impeded the fight for gay rights and equality, though it was removed from the DSM as a mental disorder or “disturbance” in 1980. Nicola Brown of the national Centre for Addiction and Mental Health stated in an email that “because of the positioning of Gender Identity Disorder within the DSM, many trans people interface with mental health providers in order to be assessed for the World Professional Association for Transgender Health diagnostic and readiness criteria as part of their eligibility for hormonal and surgical treatments.” Yet these conditions may change, as the DSM-V is currently in preparation for publication in May 2013.

Danielle Chénier of the Association des transsexuels et transsexuelles du Québec (ATQ), an organization that maintains a list of trans-friendly medical resources and services, wrote in an email that especially for queer and trans people living in remote locations, access to care is hampered by a dearth of trained specialists – instead, they are referred to general hospitals which are often not equipped to deal with their needs. “Many transgender people end up discovering ATQ by chance, and we make sure that they are provided with good quality services and served by specialists who won’t exploit these people to line their own pockets,” Chénier wrote. Other similar organizations include Montreal’s Project 10, Stella, and the Concordia-run 2110 Centre for Gender Advocacy, all part of of the Montreal-based Trans Health Network along with ATQ.

Aid for the queer student

Though the situation seems bleak outside the hallowed halls of academia, queer students  at  anglo Montreal universities like Concordia and McGill have a much more robust resource network, and services that are considerably better-suited and aware of their needs. For instance, the 2110 Centre for Gender Advocacy is a powerful queer- and trans-friendly institution in Montreal, and also a student-funded Concordia organization catering to student interests, as well as those of the general community. Pierre-Paul Tellier, director of McGill’s Health Services, has worked at McGill for over thirty years and also works as a physician at Head and Hands – a non-judgmental and largely free clinic which is famously queer-friendly and trans-positive.

Albaugh noted that Tellier himself provides endocrinology consultations and prescriptions for a number of trans patients. More broadly, McGill’s SEDE (Social Equity and Diversity Education) Office provides safer space training for various bodies at McGill, including the counselling services, security, administration, faculty, and notably the health services. Albaugh notes, however, that “university students are in a place where they’re not quite financially independent. So navigating everything with your parents in terms of starting to transition [for transbodied students] can be an issue. Not having supportive parents can be a big deterrent to getting care, because they can always cut you off.” For many students, university is the first time to explore or determine sexual identities, and these resources are especially important in this context.

Ryan Thom, co-administrator of Queer McGill, believes that health services for students can be improved by making students feel more comfortable with using them. It may be the responsibility of the student to seek out help if they need it, but seeking help is easier if the environment is non-judgmental and discreet. Thom says, “Right now, of course, things are operated with an emphasis on the doctor-patient confidentiality policy, wherein to access McGill health services you have to provide your student ID and your legal name and other such information. I’d like to see more services available that are anonymous and specified as non-judgmental. … I would not only like to see a shift toward a more queer-friendly paradigm, but also a greater emphasis on general sexual health.”

Concordia University professor Deborah Dysart-Gale of General Studies Unit of the Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science wrote a review article in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing arguing that nurses can leverage and provide better health services for queer teens. Dysart-Gale was quoted in The Science Daily on the topic of the suicides committed by queer youth last fall, “Bullying and such resulting suicides are avoidable. Health care workers have tools that can help queer teens – no one needs to die because of their sexual orientation.”

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