Montreal, Quebec, Canada | THE GAY MEN PROJECT

photo by Kevin Truong

Eric, in his own words: “Being gay is one thing, accepting it is the other. Once this is done life is such much easier. One can wonder if there is a gay culture, but really there is so much diversity within our own LGBT community. In the end, being gay for me means to be truly who I am, like it or not.

At first the biggest challenge was to find gay people I could identify with. Over the years my sense of humor has surely help me stay away from trouble and get accepted where ever I am. In 2008, I ran for office and one of my objectives was to show others that you could be openly gay, have a career and be involved in politics. A bit like this project, a chance to put a face, and say that we exist and want to be around the table when important decisions are made in Parliament.

We are very lucky in Montreal to have a vibrant and diverse gay community. The village is a beacon and a starting point for many. However, gay people in this city are not ghettoized, we are everywhere and that is the beauty of it. I put anyone to the challenge of not liking Montreal, where Europe and North America meets.

(With regards to coming out) I was 22, and went to study abroad for a year. Mette my Danish friend helped me out with my coming out. When I came back home at Christmas I wanted to tell my parents. On my last night in town, we all went for dinner before my flight. I had promised my sister I was going to tell them then. The bill was on the table and I had yet to face reality, my sister kicked me under the table looking at me with her eyes wide open… I asked my parents if they had New Year’s resolutions, after they finished I told them about mine. I wanted to be successful with my studies, have a great career in Europe afterwards and be myself. My dad said: “these are not resolutions!” To which I replied: Well in order to be myself I need to tell you something… I am Gay”. Dead silence, but, it felt like a huge weight was off my shoulders. I was quick in letting everyone know that it was not their fault. The only choice I had to make was to accept or not, whom I truly was. It took me time to come to this conclusion and it was only fair to give them time to reflect on this. Overtime, they made me feel accepted and told me that really nothing much had changed.”

photo by Kevin Truong

Kyle, in his own words: It’s a little strange for me participating in a photography series called the “Gay Men Project” when I don’t really personally use the term gay to refer to my own identity. Back in 2008, after taking a series of undergrad courses in feminist theory, particularly looking at how race and class influenced gender or sexuality, I started using the term queer to prefer to a political that better represented the aims of my writing and activism, that better represented self-inflicted and external threats to my ability to thrive as the kind of person I wanted to be.

That being said, I was drawn to the project because the images I saw were not only aesthetically pleasing, but appealed to my own writing project that is currently ongoing, a project that has been informed by a series of tumultuous events in my own life— including repeated incidences of homophobia, including a severe assault in New York City’s West Village back March 2011 that required reconstructive surgery. Queer Embraces, the name of the project, refers to the way in which my identity and my movement through cities informs how I define what it means to belong—to other men, to those cities, to the ways in which my being visible is an act of personal transformation with political possibilities.

For me, The Gay Men Project matters because of the fact that despite all of the reforms in terms of LGBTQ rights, so many of the men, myself included, face day-to-day struggles simply by being on the streets. I actively choose to wear a lot of thrift store clothes that are designed for women, which has lead to backlash in virtually every city I have traveled. When I write about HIV/AIDS, sexual health, or what it means to hookup with other men in the age of phone and Internet apps, I still face discrimination, even from gay men who are supposed to be part of the same community I belong to. All of this to say that for me, being visible and honest about who you are remains as important today as it was during the Compton’s Cafeteria riot or Stonewall because so many inequalities exist.

I’m not really sure exactly what my participation, my being photographed, will do. But I hope that it is, like my creative writing or journalism, a testament to the public life I lead and the struggles that I have to remain visible and not actively silence my desires.

THE GAY MEN PROJECT

The visual catalog of gay and queer men around the world.

Category Archives: Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Eric, Manager of Public Affairs, Montreal

Kyle, Writer, Montreal