When I started Men For Men BBS, I had to be creative in naming the company. In the community, Men For Men BBS was ok, but in the outside world I was using MFM BBS. To those who did not know what MFM stood for, and were not part of the gay community, I could easily say it was the abbreviation of the computer term Modified Frequency Modulation. It was the way data was encoded onto floppy drives and very early hard drives, which were called MFM hard drives. Most people looked at me confused and accepted that I just said Star Trek techno babble.
Under the MFM BBS/MFM Communications branding, I could also do computer consulting and become an authorized reseller of several major brands at the time, including IBM. No one knew that behind the scenes there was a gay company ordering equipment for terminals and upgrades.
When it came time to launch GayCalgary Magazine, I knew I would need to totally out myself. If the word gay was not in the title, then it might have been easier, but since the GayCalgary website had already become a strong brand in the community, there was no point changing it. It also made it clear to people what we were about.
I knew I would run into homophobia in Calgary, but it was still frustrating how soon we came across it. When we first started distributing the magazine, we used both companies in Calgary that did magazine distribution. For the first couple of months, both companies were having problems getting us into locations. They number of stands we were in reduced every month. Businesses were complaining that they did not want porn in their racks, despite never running full frontal nudity in the magazine.
Three months into the launch of the magazine, one of the distributors decided that the Cruiseline advertisements were too much. The January 2004 edition advertisement showed three guys in their underwear, with two of them kissing, and the third kissing one of the guy’s necks. Their packages were pretty much covered, so it was not showing anything else. He said that he had problems distributing that edition because his son was in the car and he did not know how he would deal with explaining to his son what was going on, yet most of the locations he was distributing to were bars, adult shops and other places you needed to be 18 to enter.
When the February edition came out, the new Cruiseline ad pushed him over the edge: the ad showed two guys naked – with no full-frontal nudity – and read "Blow me, Valentine!". He returned all the magazines and demanded that the ad be torn off the back or he would not continue distribution. We complied as we had pre-paid. After that, he refused to continue doing distribution for us. We transferred locations so we could be exclusive to the other distributor.
With the magazine including a map and listing of gay bars and businesses, Rob and I decided to reach out to hotels and motels in Calgary. Over a period of days, we visited several hotels in the downtown core. Places like the Fairmont Palliser, The Westin and the Hyatt were amazing to deal with and excited to carry us. It also helped that there was a lot of hotel staff who are part of the LGBTQ community.
Then came the ugliness. One of the downtown hotels refused to carry the magazines saying that if people want the information, they would provide it. Out of curiosity, I asked the concierge manager to tell me some addresses and names of gay bars and restaurants. She said that most of the gay bars were on 9th Ave and that one of them was called Virginia’s. She was wrong.
Rob and I kept running into a lot of no’s or we don’t have the space for more brochures. We decided to try going to Motel Village to see if we would yield better results. Things went ok for the first couple, but then we hit a hotel where the manager yelled out from the office "don’t you dare drop of those magazines or they will end up in the trash". Some hotels said yes, others flatly refused them.
I always picked up old editions to see if places needed more. When people phoned us for information about the gay community, and one of the hotels that the magazines were at came up on call display, we asked them to grab a copy if they wanted a map to take with them. These calls helped us keep track of which locations were handing the magazine out.
One location always seemed to go through their magazines. Rob and I assumed it was because they had the magazine out with other travel material. Someone staying at the hotel called, and I asked them to pick up a copy of the magazine. They phoned back ten minutes later saying that the manager said they had been throwing them out right after we left. I was pretty pissed; this was after a couple years of taking the time to drop issues there.
To try to help get clout with the hotels and motels, we decided to buy a membership with Tourism Calgary. Membership with Tourism Calgary is not that affordable for a small business like us, so we tried to make the best of our investment. Our membership was to overlap with the First North American OutGames that were coming to Calgary in 2007. We got the magazines on display at the Calgary Tower and at the Calgary Airport, or so we thought.
During the two years that we were members, we dropped off a lot of magazines at the head office for them to distribute. It was great to see it the magazine on display at the Calgary Tower, and the staff were great to deal with. They said they had to put out about three or four copies at a time; there had been problems with homophobes tossing copies out in the garbage cans and engaging in arguments for having the magazines available.
Over time we noticed that though quantities of magazines delivered would go up, our magazine was never allowed out on display at Tourism Calgary’s head office, alongside the other travel magazines. They kept telling us they didn’t have the space, but I would see other new members’ material out.
We asked people we know who work at the Calgary Airport to see if our magazines were out for pick up. They could not find it, yet staff at Tourism Calgary would tell us that the magazines were doing very well there. I decided to check myself. Sadly, I could not find them on display either. I began to take photos of the display as proof.
Then came a phone call from staff who used to work at the Tourism Calgary desk at the airport. She told me that the other staff refused to put out the magazines. They kept them in the back away from travelers. So, the staff we were dealing with in membership thought the magazines were being distributed and needing more, but they were being tossed at the airport. I had enough of being lied to; I asked Global TV to do an investigation regarding the missing magazines. Reporter Jill Croteau did a hidden camera investigation. When they asked one of the people working at the counter, "I’m just wondering if you guys have the GayCalgary Magazine?" they responded "I don’t think we do actually". He checked with a supervisor who informed them that they do, but that they were out. I know they were stocked up since I provided several more bundles a couple weeks prior to contacting Global.
After the piece aired, Tourism Calgary phoned us. They did not want to guarantee that our magazines would be made available at the airport or in their office, but still wanted us to pay the full amount to renew membership. It was a deal breaker.
The second weekend after launching the magazine, in November 2003, we attended the Taboo Naughty or Nice Sex Show. We thought the magazine would be accepted there without any issues. But homophobia reared its ugly head. Guys would come up to the booth, look at the magazine and freak out, saying they are not gay. We could see people deliberately walk as far from our booth as possible. Some guys would even cover their asses with their hands. Couples held each other’s hands tighter as they passed.
Groups of guys would come up to the booth, roll up a copy of the magazine and tap their buddies with it saying, Now you’re gay , as freaking out ensued. We had one ‘born again’ guy come to the booth and harass us using religious hatred; made us wonder why would he be at a sex show. But he kept coming back throughout the day, to the point Stampede security had to escort him out.
When the covers began to feature celebrities we had interviewed, people attending Taboo would come up and ask, What? ‘Person on the cover’ is now gay?. Rob and I would roll our eyes and say no, they don’t need to be gay to be interviewed by a gay magazine. Our first interview with Dolly Parton was the edition that stood out the most. People at Taboo assumed that because she was on the cover of the magazine, that she was gay. At least every 15 minutes we had to tell people no, she is not.
Magazines getting stolen out of the Calgary Tower location was not a new thing either. Priape and magazine shops along 17th Ave were running into a problem where several different individuals would run into the store, grab stacks of any free gay publication, and throw them in the garbage. Priape staff even ran after some of them to scare them off.
In the office we would get the hate phone calls – drunk guys phoning and threatening us. One guy would constantly try to debate with me on how being gay is wrong; that I should find my way with the Bible. We had to create a special directory just to keep track of them.
We would also get a lot of joke calls. GayCalgary is listed in the white pages. Trades people would get messages on their pagers to call our number to either do some sort of service or ask for someone. There were days we would get 10 or more calls from different people with the same prank. Some would start laughing when they heard me answer "GayCalgary"; others would be confused and start accusing me of a prank. Our voice messaging system took care of a lot of those calls once I had enough of answering the phone.
Most of the homophobia we experienced occurred during the first eight years of running the magazine. Homophobia is not as bad as it used to be: there’s more acceptance, though the transgender part of our community still has a long way to go. Things changed quickly over a short period of time: for example, Tourism Calgary has backed or even been a part of some major LGBTQ events in Calgary. Even the hotel that was providing wrong information about the gay bars and businesses has been a sponsor.
Publishing online has also made things easier. The worries about hard copies being tossed out or businesses not displaying them for homophobic reasons is allayed. People can access content directly. The annoying phone calls still happen so, days like April Fool’s day, I just let all calls go to voicemail.
We stopped doing the Taboo shows. Though things eventually got better, having a booth at the Calgary Expo opened our eyes to the true experience of acceptance: no strange comments or reactions; people excited that we were there and happy to see we had interviewed their favourite celebrities. The first several years of doing the Comic Expo, we handed out more copies of the magazine than we ever did at any LGBTQ weekend event. Celebrities proudly brought up their interviews with us during panels. Fans even picked up the magazine to be signed by the celebrities we had interviewed who were present.
Homophobia and transphobia still happens and, sadly, it will never go away. As the amount of people who fight against it rises, our voices grow louder. All we can do is keep educating, using real facts to combat the alternative facts that individuals use to control their followers. We must remember that who we vote for during an election can make a difference. Support our gay bars, businesses, and non-profit groups along with our allies since, without them, we lose visibility. By GayCalgary being out there, the gay community is out there: it has a voice.
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Contributor Steve Polyak |
Locale Calgary |
Topic History | Publisher's Column | 