It's Not A Parade, It's A March!: Subjectivities, Spectatorship, and Contested Spaces of the Toronto Dyke March

In this thesis I address the following questions: (1) How do dykes take up space in public in contemporary cities? (2) How does the ‘marching dyke’ emerge as a subject and what kind of subject is it? (3) How, in turn, do marching dykes affect space? In order to examine these questions I focus on the Toronto Dyke March to ask how it emerged in this particular time and place. The answer to each of these questions is paradoxical. I argue that the Dyke March is a complex, complicated and contradictory site of politics, protest and identity. Investigating ‘marching dykes’ reveals how the subject of the Dyke March is imagined in multiple and conflicting ways. The Toronto Dyke March is an event which brings together thousands of queer women annually who march together in the streets of Toronto on the Saturday afternoon of Pride weekend. My research examines how the March emerged out of a history of activism and organizing and considers how the March has been made meaningful for queer women’s communities, identities, histories and spaces. My analysis draws together queer and feminist poststructuralism, cultural geography literature on sexuality and space, and the history of sexuality in Canada. I combine a Foucaultian genealogy with visual ethnography, interviews and archival research. I argue that the Dyke March is an event which is intentionally meaningful in its claims to particular spaces and subjectivities. This research draws connections across various bodies of scholarship and offers an interdisciplinary contribution to the literature, contributing to discussions of queer women’s visibility and representation. Although my analysis is focused on Toronto as a particular site, it offers insight into broader queer women’s activist organizing efforts and queer activism in Canada.Ph