Pervers/Cité is a collaboratively organized summer festival that aims to make links across social justice groups, queer communities, and radical visions of pride. In a climate of corporatized gay agendas and whitewashed homogeneity amongst queers, Pervers/cité strives to provide a critical and accessible schedule of activities, designed to bring back the radical underpinnings to the pride movement.
This year’s festival is taking place from August 4th to 14th, a few days after Divers/Cité and leading up to Célébrations de la fierté Montréal 2011 community day and pride parade.
A Short History:
The idea for Pervers/cité came out of a workshop facilitated by qteam Queersand Anarchism in early Summer 2007 at the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair about.One of the main conclusions of the workshop was that there was a strong need and desire for a summer pride fest in Montreal that was truly about community building and radical resistance, that would return politics to pride and provide a wider representation that was more reflective of diverse communities and experiences. More and more people felt like the Pride fest had become little more than a series of commercial, corporate events and expensive parties targeted exclusively at a middle-class white gay male audience. The question “Who’s Divers/cité is this?” came up again and again.
This sparked the creation of a listserv called Pink & Black that became the networking tool for the first Pervers/cité organizing collective. Pervers/cité was held for the first time later that same summer and has happened every year since. The 2011 edition of the festival will be its 5th.
