Gary Kinsman

Gary Kinsman
Born
Gary William Kinsman

1955 (age 68–69)
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Academic background
Influences
Academic work
DisciplineSociology
School or traditionQueer liberation
InstitutionsLaurentian University
Main interestsLGBTQ issues

Gary William Kinsman (born 1955) is a Canadian sociologist. Born in Toronto, he studies lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues.[4] In 1987, he wrote a text on LGBTQ social history, Regulation of Desire, reprinted in 1995. In 2000, he edited and co-authored a second work, on Canadian federal government surveillance of marginal and dissident political and social groups, Whose National Security? In 2010, Kinsman's newest book, The Canadian War on Queers: National Security as Sexual Regulation, co-written with Patrizia Gentile, was published by University of British Columbia Press and released on 1 March.[5]

Gary Kinsman was involved in the Young Socialists during high school in the early 1970s, where he first came in contact with the gay liberation movement. Kinsman later joined the Revolutionary Marxist Group, which eventually fused with the League for Socialist Action, creating the Revolutionary Workers League. Before the onset of Kinsman’s AIDS related activism, he was involved in the Gay Liberation Union, Gay Liberation Against the Right Everywhere, the Right to Privacy Committee, and later the Canadian Committee Against Customs Censorship.[6]

A retired professor of sociology, formerly at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario,[7] Kinsman's research and publication focuses primarily on the sociological perspectives of LGBT issues. Kinsman is also a social activist on feminist, trade union, social justice, and anti-poverty issues.

Kinsman was a writer for The Body Politic and a central figure in the publication of the successor magazine Rites. He helped found Gays and Lesbians Against the Right Everywhere and the Lesbian and Gay Pride Day Committee of Toronto.

In Sudbury, he was one of the organizers of the city's first-ever Sudbury Pride event in 1997.[8]

In 2015, Kinsman was active in a campaign lobbying for a formal apology from the Government of Canada for the purges of LGBT people from the federal civil service in the 1950s and 1960s.[9]

In 2024, he publicly resigned from Pride Toronto membership, citing the organization's failure to acknowledge or take action on the Queers in Palestine[10] call to stop the "probable genocide in Gaza".[11]

  1. ^ Jackson, Kyle (2015). Homohegemony and the Other: Canada and Jamaica (PhD thesis). Kingston, Ontario: Queen's University. p. 12. hdl:1974/12691.
  2. ^ Kinsman, Gary (2009). "The Politics of Revolution: Learning from Autonomist Marxism". Upping the Anti (1). Retrieved 14 December 2019.
  3. ^ Brock, Deborah. "'Workers of the World Caress': An Interview with Gary Kinsman on Gay and Lesbian Organizing in the 1970's Toronto Left". Left History. Retrieved 14 December 2019.
  4. ^ "Gary Kinsman's book Canadian War on Queers takes on gay issues in government" Archived 15 June 2013 at archive.today. The Georgia Straight, 17 March 2010.
  5. ^ University of British Columbia Press - The Canadian War on Queers: National Security as Sexual Regulation Archived 3 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 6 May 2010.
  6. ^ "Toronto Interviews". AIDS Activist History Project. 14 October 2016. Retrieved 27 January 2022.
  7. ^ "Gary Kinsman – Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies". sds.utoronto.ca. Retrieved 24 September 2019.
  8. ^ gary (4 November 2017). "A Contribution to the History of the First Sudbury Pride March in 1997". Radical Noise. Retrieved 24 September 2019.
  9. ^ "Group demands apology for Canadian government’s gay ‘purges’" Archived 29 July 2015 at the Wayback Machine. Metro, 1 June 2015.
  10. ^ "A Liberatory Demand from Queers in Palestine – Queers in Palestine". 8 November 2023. Retrieved 22 April 2024.
  11. ^ gary (21 April 2024). "Gary Kinsman — Letter of Resignation from Pride Toronto — The Struggle Continues!". Radical Noise. Retrieved 22 April 2024.