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	The Body Politic and Visions of Community
	Page 12 of 14 / Appx 1,130 words

A variety of means and media
The rise of Xtra; the fall of The Body Politic

The rising of the ghetto at the Bath Raids and its regular appearance in The Body Politic had nearly coincided: that first Out in the City section appeared in the issue just after the one reporting the Raids. That hadn't been planned: we'd had Out in the City in the works for a long time and, provocative as we were seen to be, we couldn't have forced a police action to promote it.

But it was fitting. Out in the City grew with the community. By March 1984 it listed more than 110 Toronto groups, many of the newer ones under Health and Social Services (though only one AIDS organization by then), Sports, and Women's Resources.

The same issue showed 17 bars, 13 restaurants (not counting the ones in bars), nine discos, three baths (the Richmond Street gone with the Raids) and three entries under accommodation. Members of the Lambda Business Council were duly marked, and even the Parkside (not a member) was still there.

The event listings connected readers to culture of interest to gay people and, increasingly, to the cultural products lesbians and gay men were creating locally themselves -- though TBP's review section had long been a forum for writers, artists, performers and their critics, and now we were apt to talk about our culture not just as books or plays, but as "lived experience."

The Body Politic had been growing, too, though not as much as we'd hoped. Its circulation figures were stuck around 9,000 and despite constant internal exhortations to "speak to the real, daily lives of real lesbians and gay men," the paper was still, and proudly, a very thinky read. Not that thought's not real. But during one of our trials (I can't recall which one), a witness in our defence had said that a person would need a university education to read TBP -- so it couldn't possibly be dangerous.

The collective still dearly hoped to be dangerous -- you can't seek social change without some threat to the established order -- and was looking for smarter ways to do it. We spent most of 1983 pondering changes in what we published. We had to reach more people, maybe more than The Body Politic could ever reach alone. Maybe it was time to do something else altogether. Something in addition. Something... extra.

Xtra (which was almost called Flash) was launched in preview in January 1984, with the first regular issue appearing in March. It is part of the story of The Body Politic's sense of community because TBP was meant to ride it into places the older paper couldn't easily go on its own: all those bars, restaurants, clubs, theatres, movie houses and community meeting spots that were listed in Out in the City. It was a hassle for them to sell a paper, not being newsstands, but they had no trouble with something people could pick up free.

That was the idea: Xtra was to be small, frequent and free, financed entirely by advertising. But its job, once it got its foot in the door, was to promote The Body Politic -- on sale near you and here's a handy list of outlets. The new paper wasn't meant to replace the old one. Even people who remember TBP well and remember the beginnings of Xtra can forget now that they co-existed for nearly three years.

But in certain crucial ways the child outshone the parent: clearly local, as gay commerce and, we're told, all politics are; clearly accessible in both language and availability -- easy to read even in a bar, and free. In time it might even have something to say....

Actually, Xtra had things to say right from the beginning. Its political message was meant to be the same as TBP's, if in sweeter, bite-sized doses, and it was meant to carry that message to far more people. That it did: its local circulation soon surpassed TBP's world- wide -- which meant it was reaching three times more people in Toronto than its parent publication ever had. (It now reaches 12 times more, pass-on rate not included).

With its June 1985 issue, The Body Politic gave up Out in the City and turned local event listings over to the new kid, who could do a better job. TBP tried something called Coming, event highlights for the whole country (it was still expected to be Canada's national gay newsmagazine, though critics said it was really Toronto's national gay newsmagazine), but in just over a year, Coming would go.

In the summer of 1986 the collective took one last stab at defining its communities and what we wanted to mean to them. For the first time we wrote a mission statement. Our purpose was:

To engage audiences among lesbians and gay men and those who share their concerns, through a variety of means and media, offering them opportunities to support and participate in the development of ideas and actions which promote liberating social change, focusing on sexuality in its social, political and cultural contexts.

What a mouthful. But note the ambitions: not just one audience but "audiences among lesbians and gay men"; not just them but also "those who share their concerns"; "sexuality," not just homosexuality; and not one medium but "a variety of means and media." As I wrote about this later:

The one thing we all agreed on was that the time had passed when a single medium could accomplish all these tasks. We had Xtra and we set out to invent other new publications. We developed concepts for three of them: a national monthly that would reach a broader popular audience than TBP did; an international quarterly meant to revive the best of TBP's intellectual, analytical and (formally) political content; and an initially small-scale tabloid aimed specifically at a lesbian audience.

We were trying not just to reshape The Body Politic and the fledgling Xtra, but to revamp our entire effort to fit new visions of community.

Mostly, I think, we were trying to regalvanize ourselves. We still wanted it all, but we were tired (though others might not have been) and, as it turned out, broke. In the end, none of these new media got off the ground and Xtra was lucky to survive. The Body Politic did not.

On December 16, 1986, the collective decided that the kid has a better shot at success than the parent -- if we could focus our dwindling resources and keep the Press alive long enough to give it a chance. The January 3, 1987 issue of Xtra, its 67th, reported that the February 1987 issue of The Body Politic, its 135th, would be its last.

With its overbearing parent gone from the field, Xtra took off. But it now had a much bigger job to do.

Next: Community(ies) now -- or something else altogether