C'etait du spectacle!: L'histoire des artistes transsexuelles a Montreal, 1955-1985

The 1960s and 1970s were decades of intense social change in Quebec. C'etait du spectacle! provides a historical context for the first generation of transexuals who underwent sex reassignment surgery. Namaste explores working conditions in the cabarets, prostitution, the police abuse of transsexuals, the role of organized crime in the city’s nightlife, the regulation of obscene representations, and access to health care. C'etait du spectacle! offers a rare glimpse of Montreal’s street culture by one of its most important artistic communities. Montreal’s famed Red Light district has received much attention, but its cabaret culture has never been seen from the perspective of the transsexuals and transvestite artists who made it so popular. Through oral histories and archival research, Viviane Namaste paints a candid portrait of fourteen male-to-female transsexual dancers, singers, magicians, and strippers in a behind-the-scenes look at the social and economic conditions in which they lived and worked.