LGBTQ+ Reading List

When 18-year-old South African runner Caster Semenya burst onto the world stage in 2009, her championship was not celebrated but instead launched a series of increasingly invasive public attacks, exposing her personal medical records via the international media, and stirring relentless debates on her "legitimacy" as an athlete and as a woman. Using women's naturally varying androgen levels to evaluate their performance advantages, the sporting institution World Athletics created new rules declaring certain female athletes must medically alter their healthy bodies to compete in their sport. Category : woman focuses on four athletes from the Global South who were targeted and forced out of competition by these regulations, and explores the devastation both to their bodies and their lives. Filmmaker and former Olympian Phyllis Ellis exposes an industry controlled by men that puts women's lives at risk and raises issues of racism, sexism, and the right to determine another person's biological sex.

They called it "Gay Day." 100 protesters gathered in Ottawa in August 1971 for the first large-scale public protest for gay rights in Canada. Speakers addressed the fact that amendments to the criminal code in 1969 legalized their sexual relations but did little to alleviate the oppression of the gay community in everyday life. This protest came on the heels of a brief called "We Demand," submitted to the federal government a week earlier, calling for changes to law and public policy regarding gays and lesbians.

When Love Is Gay explodes myths about gay love. It explores relationships between men--from long-standing monogamous partnerships to brief encounters. Men of all ages talk openly about their homosexuality, and the difficulty of self-acceptance in a straight, often homophobic society. They speak of sensuality, and their determination to love freely. Their life experiences compile an oral history of an evolving gay culture. Intimate interviews alternate with action scenes: a steamy dance floor in Montreal's gay village, sexual tension inside a sauna, the gay community centre, a gay ex-policeman lecturing to future officers. When Love Is Gay allows viewers to look at their own reactions to the people and situations on screen. This film contains explicit sexual scenes.

In this animated short from Diane Obomsawin, four women reveal the nitty-gritty about their first loves, sharing funny and intimate tales of one-sided infatuation, mutual attraction, erotic moments, and fumbling attempts at sexual expression. For them, discovering that they're attracted to other women comes hand-in-hand with a deeper understanding of their personal identity and a joyful new self-awareness.

Last Chance by Paul Émile d'Entremont travels the world to tell the stories of five asylum seekers who flee their native countries to escape homophobic violence. Here in Canada, they face hurdles integrating into society and fear deportation. As they anxiously await a decision in their refugee claims, they remain hopeful their adopted land will show mercy. The five men and women are not alone in their fight for freedom. Friends, lawyers and support groups mobilize to get their cases heard at a time when Canada's tradition of openness is coming under threat. Last Chance gives voice to sexual minorities who refuse to deny their core identity. It brings to light the reality of people who boldly and bravely assert their differences against all odds.

What would you do if you were old, disabled or ill--and the person feeding you put down the spoon and said that you are going to hell unless you change your sexual preference? Sound absurd? Social workers around the world say it's happening every day. Gen silent is the critically acclaimed documentary from filmmaker Stu Maddux that asks six LGBT seniors if they will hide their friends, their spouses--their entire lives--in order to survive in the care system. Their surprising decisions are captured through intimate access to their day-to-day lives over the course of a year. It puts a face on what experts in the film call an epidemic: gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender older people so afraid of discrimination by caregivers or bullying by other seniors that many simply go back into the closet. Unlike any film before, Gen silent startlingly discovers how oppression in the years before Stonewall now affects older lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people with fear and isolation.

The story of the brave young men and women who successfully reversed the tide of an epidemic, demanded the attention of a fearful nation, and stopped AIDS from becoming a death sentence. This improbable group of activists bucked oppression and infiltrated government agencies and the pharmaceutical industry, helping to identify promising new medication and treatments and move them through trials and into drugstores in record time.

A documentary built around personal stories of gay and lesbian Hasidic and Orthodox Jews. Portrays people who face a profound dilemma - how to reconcile their passion for Judaism with the biblical prohibitions against homosexuality. Includes interviews with closeted and out gay Orthodox and Hasidic Jews, including the first openly gay Orthodox rabbis, Steven Greenberg.

Identical Vietnamese twins, assigned as female at birth, were adopted to white Canadians. As one begins to navigate their gender identity, this family in North Vancouver, B.C. pulls together to support Levi becoming himself.

What if the world told you that you don't exist? For many gender non-conforming individuals, this is the reality. We exist : beyond the binary is one of the first films to document this growing community living life "beyond the binary" construct of gender, offering a first-hand account of what it is like to exist as other than strictly male or female. Designed with education in mind, We exist features non-binary individuals, activists, and doctors who all weigh in on subjects ranging from gender binary/social constructs, pronouns, access, and safety.

Chronicles the depiction of gay and lesbian characters in popular films, showing how the movies reflect and define public attitudes to homosexuality. With footage from over 120 films and commentary by actors, filmmakers and writers, traces gay images from the humorous stereotype, the indirect expression, the overedited plot to the overt successes of the last 20 years.

A young man is sent to gay conversion camp by his staunchly religious parents after a traumatic event leads him to be 'outed'.

A young African-American man grapples with his identity and sexuality while experiencing the everyday struggles of childhood, adolescence, and burgeoning adulthood.

Two women from very different backgrounds find themselves in an unexpected love affair in 1950s New York. As conventional norms of the time challenge their undeniable attraction, an honest story emerges to reveal the resilience of the heart in the face of change. A young woman in her twenties, Therese is a clerk working in a Manhattan department store and dreaming of a more fulfilling life when she meets Carol, an alluring woman trapped in a loveless, convenient marriage.

A naive teenager is sent to rehab camp when her straitlaced parents and friends suspect her of being a lesbian.

Marina, a transgender nightclub singer, comes under suspicion when her much older lover Orlando dies suddenly. After being harassed and threatened by her late boyfriend's vengeful relatives and the police, she must defend her rights as both Orlando's partner and as a human being.

Based on a true story, Boys Don't Cry was adapted from the life of Brandon Teena, born Teena Brandon, a transgender man in rural Nebraska who falls victim to a brutal hate crime.

The story of Hedwig, an ambitious glam-rocker from Berlin who comes to America determined to find fame, fortune, and his "other half."

A mini-series involving a gay couple who breaks up when one has AIDS and the other cannot handle it, a husband who realises he is gay and the wife is not capable of coping with it, and Roy Cohn being treated for AIDS and facing his demons.

France, 1760. Marianne is commissioned to paint the wedding portrait of Héloïse, a young woman who has just left the convent. Because she is a reluctant bride-to-be, Marianne arrives under the guise of companionship, observing Héloïse by day and secretly painting her by firelight at night. As the two women orbit one another, intimacy and attraction grow as they share Héloïse's first moments of freedom. Héloïse's portrait soon becomes a collaborative act of and testament to their love.

Call Me by Your Name is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents' cliffside mansion on the Italian Riviera. During the restless summer weeks, unrelenting but buried currents of obsession, fascination, and desire intensify their passion as they test the charged ground between them and verge toward the one thing both already fear they may never truly find again: total intimacy.

Saving Face is a romantic comedy about a daughter struggling to understand her mother's heart, which ultimately allows her to understand her own. It is the story of unspoken loves, contemporary and cultural taboos, and the journey of two women towards living their lives honestly.