Mother Goose’s Map

Abstract

This article is an exploration of the ways that gay men negotiated and created urban spaces in 1950s Toronto. A significant part of this everyday encounter was the proliferation of tabloid journalism that exploited and mapped out transgressive domains of same-sex erotics for its readers. Using a variety of sources, such as oral histories, government documents, and these local newspaper tabloids, the author traces the contours of same-sex urban spaces, their conceptual and geographical linkages, and their relationship to the larger society within which they are set. Ultimately, the author shows how the securing of these spaces was deeply implicated in existing class and gender hierarchies that simultaneously served as places of resistance and domination.