Gary Kinsman

Gary Kinsman (born 1955 in Toronto, Ontario) is a Canadian sociologist. He is one of Canada’s leading academics on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues. In 1987, he wrote one of the key Canadian texts on LGBT social history, Regulation of Desire, reprinted in 1995. In 2000, he edited and co-authored a second work, on Canadian federal government surveillance of marginal and dissident political and social groups, Whose National Security? A professor of sociology at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, Kinsman’s research and publication focuses primarily on the sociological perspectives of LGBT issues. Kinsman is also a social activist on feminist, labor union, social justice and anti-poverty issues. Kinsman was a writer for The Body Politic and a central figure in the publication of the successor magazine Rites. He helped found Gays and Lesbians Against the Right Everywhere and the Lesbian and Gay Pride Day Committee of Toronto. In Sudbury, he was one of the organizer’s of the city’s first-ever Sudbury Pride event in 1997.

• Sociology