Susan G. Cole

Susan G Cole
Born	(1952-02-09) February 9, 1952 Toronto
Occupation	Activist / Author / Radio Broadcaster
Nationality	Canadian
Notable works	Pornography And The Sex Crisis, Power Surge: Sex Violence and Pornography
Notable awards	YMCA's Woman of Distinction

Susan G. Cole (Born February 9, 1952) is a feminist author, activist, editor, speaker and playwright. She has spoken out on a number of issues, including free speech, pornography, race and religion. Her 2010 appearance on FOX news in support of students protesting the appearance of Ann Coulter on the University of Ottawa campus has engaged her in a debate. As a lesbian activist and mother – her daughter Molly is 22 years old – she speaks out on sexuality and family issues and is a columnist.

Early life

Susan G. Cole was born on February 9, 1952 to Lillian and Maxwell Cole. She has two siblings, Ellen Cole and Peter Cole. In 1970 Susan graduated from Forest Hill Collegiate, where she was the first female to be elected president of the student council. She later received her Bachelor of Arts in Classics at Harvard College, where she helped found the university’s first women’s collective in 1970 . She received the Rockefeller Fellowship from Harvard College in 1974 and spent her fellowship year traveling to Greece.

Early work

Susan began her work life as a story editor for the news magazine television show The Education of Mike McManus at what is now TVO. While on the job she met author and Maclean’s editor Peter C. Newman who, in 1976, made her his principle researcher for his book The Bronfman Dynasty (McClelland & Stewart). While working for Newman, Susan helped found the Broadside Collective, which produced a monthly feminist magazine from the years 1978 to 1988. Access to all issues can be found at the Women’s Archives in Ottawa. During this period, Susan began her work on pornography, developing a feminist analysis that paved the way for her upcoming books.

Anti-pornography activism

Susan was a member of Women Against Violence Against Women (WAVAW), when the movie Snuff, a pornographic flick bragging that it featured the murder of a woman as a sexual spectacle, came to Toronto in 1978. She spoke at a rally outside Cinema 2000, where the film was showing, urging demonstrators to head to the theatre to shut it down and to set off a series of demonstrations outside the theatre. WAVAW went on to focus on several actions, including erecting an alternative cenotaph on Remembrance Day acknowledging “Ever Woman Raped In Every War.”

Susan’s anti-pornography activism triggered her public speaking career, as she travelled across Canada to talk about pornography. She published Pornography And The Sex Crisis (Second Story) in 1988, which encapsulated her point of view and which expanded her speaking engagements, including a series of debates on college campuses with Al Goldstein, editor of Screw Magazine.

In 1995, she published Power Surge: Sex Violence and Pornography (Second Story), a collection of articles she wrote in Broadside, in the anthologies Still Ain’t Satisfied and No Safe Place (both available from Second Story Press) and in NOW Magazine, where she was then a contributing editor and is now Books and Senior Entertainment Editor.

Susan continues to speak on pornography and is currently involved in a series of debates on North American campuses with the ex-porn star Ron Jeremy.

Play-writing

Theatre was a passion for the Cole family and Susan was taken to see plays at an early age, fuelling her own theatrical obsessions. She was a board member of Nightwood, Canada’s premiere women’s theatre company, from 1988 to 1991. During that time she was a participant and early organizer of Nightwood’s 5-Minute Feminist Cabaret, where, in 1988, she performed a monologue about her experience with her lesbian partner Leslie of trying to conceive a child. The performance inspired Nightwood to commission a full-length play, which Susan completed in 1991. The hit comedy A Fertile Imagination debuted then and received seven subsequent productions across Canada. Read A Fertile Imagination in the collection Lesbian Plays: Coming Of Age In Canada, edited by Rosalind Carr (Playwrights Canada Press). Playwrights Canada Press engaged Susan to collect and edit a series of lesbian monologues from Canadian plays. OutSpoken: A Canadian Collection of Lesbian Scenes and Monologues was released in 2009.

Lesbian activism

Susan is one of the co-founders of the Lesbian Organization of Toronto (LOOT), the first political organization of gay women in Toronto, and through the 80's was an out lesbian prepared to speak public. She now programs the Proud Voices literary stages at Toronto’s Pride celebrations.

Music

Susan is the co-founder of the first all-women’s band in Toronto, Mama Quilla II and went on to play piano and write songs for No Frills, alongside Sherry Shute, Catherine Mackay and Evalyn Datl. No Frills played the first Gay Pride march in Toronto in 1981. A track recorded by No Frills appears on The Rebel Zone soundtrack.

Media

Susan can be heard weekly on Toronto radio at AM talk 640 where she sits on the Media and the Message panel every Thursday morning at 9 am. She can also be heard on Proud FM every Thursday afternoon. She contributes a column to the feminist quarterly Herizons and can be read every week in NOW Magazine.

Susan began writing for NOW Toronto in the early 80s, and took a regular part-time job as a headline writer in 1988. That soon blossomed into a full editorship and Susan currently holds the title of Books and Entertainment editor.

As Books Editor, Susan has become an on-stage interviewer and can be seen directing literary traffic annually at the International Festival of Authors at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre and at Toronto’s Luminato festival. She is also the programmer of Proud Voices, the literary stages at Toronto Pride, one of the largest queer events in the world, where she appears as reader and host.

As Entertainment Editor, she has written scores of reviews, features and cover stories. And she continues to write opinion pieces for NOW’s news section.

Controversy

In addition to Susan's strong stand against Ann Coulter being courted in Canada by free speech advocates, Susan has taken stances on a number of issues.

Cole's I Hate Hockey" story challenged Canada’s privileging of the sport.

A post about Canada’s Remembrance Day celebrations was met with outrage by veterans groups.

In Patriot Games, she complained about the way Canada was branding its image at the 2010 Olympic Games

An article title Cultural Face-Off piece argues that Muslim women’s desire to wear the niqab is not that much different from western women “choosing” cosmetic surgery or any other procedures emblematic of western women’s enslavement by western definitions of beauty.

Present

Susan lives with her partner Leslie Chudnovsky in Toronto. Their daughter Molly is a graduate of McGill University in Montreal.

External links

• nowtoronto.com