Welcome to the Colette Podcast. My name is Claire Lehman and I am editor and chief of Colette.

Colette is where Free Thought lives. We are an independent grassroots platform for heterodox ideas and fearless commentary.

Our podcast is a team effort and is jointly hosted by myself,

associate editor Toby Young and Canadian editor Jonathan Kay.

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visiting Patreon.com forward slash quilette and becoming a monthly patron. By

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Welcome to the quilat podcast. patron you'll also receive our weekly newsletter.

Welcome to the Colette Podcast.

I'm Jonathan Kay, Quilets Canadian editor.

Long before Toronto Playwright and Performer Sky Gilbert became a contributor to Colette, he'd been a prominent figure in Toronto's LGBT arts community.

Not only has he written such well-known productions as Drag Queens in Outer Space,

but he founded the iconic Buddies and Bad Times Theatre, which survives to this day,

though Gilbert himself no longer plays a role in its operation.

Given his status as a prominent artist who's been championing LGBT causes since the late 1970s,

one might assume that Gilbert was a member in good standing with Toronto's Theatrical World.

But as Gilbert explained in his most recent Quillett, called Watching My Own Ex Communication on a Facebook video, that is not the case.

Following Gilbert's critique of a book by transgender writer Vivik Shria, called I'm Afraid of Men,

Gilbert was effectively shamed and shunned by the artistic community he helped build.

This week he spoke to me in Toronto about the changes that led up to this moment of apparent crisis within the LGBT world.

Here are excerpts from our conversation.

In 1979 you founded your own theater company, you must have been very young.

...