Liberation politics, body politics

Liberation and Libido: Masculinity, Sexuality, and the Aesthetics of Gay Liberation in
Canada, 1971–1987
by Nicholas A. Hrynyk

Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2026
$32.95 / 9781487507077

Reviewed by Daniel Gawthrop

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Back in 1990, when I was fresh out of the closet and eager to learn about Canadian gay politics and culture, Stan Persky told me about a 1982 book he had co-edited with Ed Jackson: Flaunting It!: A Decade of Gay Journalism from The Body Politic. Reading this anthology nearly a decade after its publication (and three years after the demise of the paper it celebrated), I discovered a world of sex-positive activism and resistance against homophobia that, during the 1970s, required extraordinary courage.

Most of the events and people discussed in Flaunting It! were in Canada’s largest city, but complaining about Toronto-centrism would have been misguided. The Body Politic (TBP) was the only publication of its kind in the country, the only journalism providing queer perspectives—and reader debates—on issues that mattered to us, from the early post-Stonewall era through the first five years of the AIDS pandemic. Wherever we happened to live in Canada, TBP played a critical role in representing our experience, creating our communities, and educating the rest of the country about us.

So, it’s heartening to learn that Kamloops-based academic Nicholas A. Hrynyk has taken such a deep dive into TBP through the themes presented in Liberation and Libido: Masculinity, Sexuality, and the Aesthetics of Gay Liberation in Canada, 1971–1987. A former research advisor for the Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity, Hrynyk is currently an assistant professor of Philosophy, History, and Politics at Thompson Rivers University. 

In his introduction to Liberation and Libido, Hrynyk sets out the unique problematics of TBP’s groundbreaking mission. For starters, a publication run by a collective of writers steeped in Marxist ideology was bound to struggle with real-world financial decisions that would expose them to charges of capitalist exploitation. Second, the collective’s gay male majority took an unapologetic stance embracing gay porn as central to the liberationist project, alienating anti-porn feminists who regarded all pornographic images as potentially degrading. Finally, the collective’s male-dominant leadership was all white and able-bodied, if mostly working class.

As the 1970s gave way to the ’80s, calls for a more intersectional politics grew louder as activists of colour raised more urgent objections to racism within the gay liberation movement. TBP absorbed much criticism for stubbornly clinging to a libertarian perspective at the expense of building community beyond the white male ghetto.

Hrynyk’s early chapters examine how TBP used its platform to help turn the gay male body into a site for sexual liberation. The collective drew inspiration from Physique Pictorial, which stood out from other muscle magazines of the day by presenting manifest signs of homosexuality in the models. “A playful use of bodybuilders, muscular models, and the boy-next-door type,” notes Hrynyk, “helped create a gay public” of men who wanted to see images of other men. “As a result, the butch macho clone became closely associated with gay liberation.”

Drawing from the work of Thomas Waugh and others, the author explores macho style in greater depth with the mid-to-late ’70s “clone” look, which a large portion of the North American urban gay population embraced. This manly aesthetic, which combined working class attire (flannel shirts, jeans, fatigues, boots) with handle-bar moustaches and Brando-esque machismo, was criticized within the community as a sign “that gay male culture was becoming increasingly misogynistic and conducive to internalized homophobia.” But Hrynyk reminds us that macho style was also campy and flamboyant, more akin to drag than a simple case of hetero mimicry. It was, he says, “simultaneously butch, camp, subversive, incomplete, ill-thought-out and humorous in nature.”

Liberation and Libido also explores the evolution of messaging within TBP classified ads. While there was an obvious need for “a shared visual language for gay men to identify and connect,” the ads had to be monitored for racism, misogyny, and internalized homophobia.

Members of TBP also found themselves living a contradiction: while critiquing the profit motive of bathhouse and bar owners, they took money from them to fund their grassroots newspaper. They also had to live with the fact that TBP’s use of urban maps to show readers where to go for sex or safe space was also used by police for the purpose of entrapment. Hrynyk’s account of police harassment campaigns explores the phenomenon of closeted gay cops who expressed their self-loathing by persecuting other men like them.

Hrynyk’s fourth and fifth chapters explore TBP’s response to the issues of racism, HIV/AIDS, and disability. The bastion of white maleness TBP had been in its early years was challenged by the arrival of such contributors as Richard Fung, Fo Niemi, Lim, Lloyd Wong, David Chang and Gerald Chan. Their presence in the collective, Hrynyk notes, demonstrated how “the racialized dynamic of sexuality disrupted any cohesive or unified image of gay liberation.” 

Photos and graphics from TBP articles and ads sprinkled throughout Liberation and Libido reveal a self-educating collective. To illustrate Tim McCaskell’s 1984 feature, “You’ve Got a Nice Body for an Oriental,” an attractive Asian model clad only in underwear is seen lying casually and gazing invitingly at the camera, defying the racism of much contemporary gay media sexual representation. The lead page for Gerald Hannon’s feature on the sex lives of gay men with disabilities shows the model smiling from his wheelchair. It’s a pity most photos are labelled “Photographer unknown.”

Speaking of Hannon (1944-2022), TBP’s most prolific and controversial contributor, there’s no mention of his most notorious piece, “Men loving boys loving men.” This 1977 profile of three men who admitted to having sex with minors triggered hysterical mainstream media coverage and the December 30, 1977 police raid of TBP offices that Hrynyk discusses in the opening chapter. While tangential to his theme of macho style, the story offers useful added context for TBP’s iron-clad anti-censorship stance regardless of popular opinion.

Hrynyk is assiduous in fairly representing conflicting political positions within the gay community, maintaining a dignified objectivity throughout. This approach serves him well, though it proves challenging in the passages about HIV/AIDS. An account of journalist Douglas Janoff’s attempts to raise an alarm about AIDS-infected gay men continuing to have unprotected sex without disclosing their HIV status becomes a full-throated critique of Janoff (TBP’s position) for “impos[ing] his perception of morality onto already stigmatized men.” Elsewhere, Hrynyk recalls letters from three doctors whose warnings to TBP readers about their sexual habits were seen as moralizing. In defending TBP writer Michael Lynch’s libertarian case for promiscuity, he dismisses Vancouver AIDS physician Brian Willoughby’s “inflammatory” critique of him for its “elitism.” 

Thankfully, Hrynyk then brings Lynch down to earth with a scathing attack from Michael L Callen, who accused Lynch and another TBP writer of minimizing the “approximately four hundred gay men who had been diagnosed with AIDS by that point.” (Callen shared his disgust with the two writers for their willingness, by dismissing the credibility of medical professionals, “to belittle the very real possibility of my own death.”) Notes Hrynyk: “Callen’s rejection of TBP’s ethos of sexual liberation suggests that the newspaper risked alienating the very people it sought to liberate.” No kidding.

Hrynyk identifies Callen only as “a gay man living with AIDS in New York City,” rather than as the beloved Flirtations singer/songwriter and one of the feistiest American AIDS activists of that first generation. (In this light, I can hardly complain that my own 2005 memoir, The Rice Queen Diaries, is elsewhere reduced to an account of my “time working in Asia” rather than an exploration of inter-racial desire based on many years’ experience both at home and abroad. At least it was a smart reference.)

Missing such details in a few cases is forgivable in a thesis as well-argued and exhaustively researched as this one. With his thoughtful and provocative account of masculine aesthetics in gay male culture through a TBP lens, supported by forty-seven pages of notes and a twenty-page bibliography, Hrynyk has created a valuable resource on the evolution of masculinity and libido in queer sexuality.

Daniel Gawthrop is author of a new book on hockey as queer culture that will be announced soon, as well as five published works of non-fiction and a novel, Double Karma. Visit his Substack here and website here. [Editor’s note: Daniel has reviewed recent books by Patrick Johnston and Peter Leech, Ziyad Saadi, Eddy Boudel Tan, Ervin Malakaj, and David Geselbracht for BCR.

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors: Trevor Marc Hughes (nonfiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction and poetry)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster