IS IT OKAY FOR A MALE WRITER TO OGLE a waitress in print, but not a waiter? Is the word' ogle' itself an expression of sexism? To ogle or not to ogle. That is the question the Vancouver Sun considered when it temporarily refused to run a column by its newly-returned media columnist Stan Persky. In a column about 'outing,' the process whereby homosexuals in public life are being forced out of the closet, Persky referred to a brief and slightly flirtatious exchange he had while talking to a waiter in Berlin about outing. Having just ironically returned from Albania and East Berlin where freedom of the press is increasing, Persky was taken aback when a senior Sun editor refused to run the column. Persky said he would have to quit if the Sun didn't print his column with the word 'ogle' in it. Meeting to discuss the issue, Persky advised Sun editor-in chief Ian Haysom he should fire the senior editor and get on with the business of publishing a modern newspaper. "It appeared to me that everyone else on the paper was free to write colunms about their kids, cats and spouses," says Persky, "but as a homosexual I wasn't allowed to refer to my private life." The Sun backed down and Persky's column was to appear on August 31. "I would have had to put the column as an epilogue to the new book," says Persky, whose collection of newspaper writings, Mixed Media, Mixed Messages (New Star $13.95), will be out this fall, "but this means it'll just have to go in the next one." During the week-long impasse with the Sun, Persky was offered a media column with the Globe and Mail. Meanwhile former Globe columnist Brian Fawcett, a friend of Persky's, also has a collection of non-fiction, Unusual Circumstances/Interesting Times (New Star $14.95). "We're the terrible twosome from Vancouver," laughs Persky.
Persky ISBN: 0'-921586-23-X; Fawcett ISBN: 0-921586-26-4

[BCBW 1991] "Media";