1. PUBLICATION FREQUENCY
We will publish an item at least once a month, provided that we have received sufficient material to do so.
2. REVIEW FREQUENCY
We will review submissions twice a year: on or around April 15, and on or around October 15. These review periods will be used to plan the publication of works for the six months leading up to the next review date.
3. SELECTION CRITERIA
The Think Tank is ‘curated’ by Queer Ontario’s Think Tank Committee, which will select works based on:
(1) Intrigue
In essence, whether or not a submission piques the interest of the Committee’s members.
The Think Tank Committee is comprised of a number of volunteers, each with their unique social backgrounds, life experiences, bodies of knowledge, and insights. This includes various personal interests and politics, which encompass a wide range of ‘queer’ or ‘anti-normative’ perspectives and positions.
If for whatever reason your piece is not selected one year, you are more than welcome to try again another year. The interests of the Think Tank Committee is bound to change given regular changes in volunteers.
(2) Relevance to LGBTQ* lives and/or anti-normative thought
Works should aim to achieve one or more of the following goals:
(A) To articulate and make conscionable the needs and experiences of individuals who are marginalized because their sex, gender, sexuality, relationships, and/or lifestyles.
(B) To challenge the laws, institutional practices and social norms that regulate LGBTQ* people.
(C) To address issues that are relevant to the lives of LGBTQ* people, like those outlined in Queer Ontario’s Issues page.
(D) To challenge the way we come to imagine ourselves, the world, and the things we say or think about it/us.
This includes ideas or works that are unpopular, controversial, or difficult to digest.
Works should reflect Queer Ontario’s anti-oppressive, sex-positive, and liberationist values.
(3) Clarity & Compellingness of the work
The work’s arguments, ideas, theories, and presentation should be clear and compelling. Much like ‘Intrigue’ above, this criterion will be left to — and limited by — the knowledge, experience, and expertise of the Think Tank’s committee members.
We recognize that a lack of ‘clarity’ can also be essential to a work, particularly if it is ‘queer’ or ‘anti-normative’. Therefore, strange, confusing, or ‘unclear’ works will also be given their due consideration.
4. NAMING POLICY
We urge all authors and artists to use their adopted name(s) when submitting a work to us. However, given the very real risks associated with outing oneself publicly — especially when it involves a sensitive issue or a less accepting community — we will be open to receiving works that make use of a pseudonym, or that are sent to us anonymously.
We strive to be a safe space for the sharing and discussion of ideas, thoughts, and experiences.
5. IN THE CASE OF A DISAGREEMENT
If the Think Tank Committee cannot come to an agreement with respect to the suitability of a work for publication, it will seek the advice of the Queer Ontario Research & Education Committee on whether or not to publish a work.
If the Research & Education Committee cannot come to an agreement, the Think Tank Committee will seek the advice of Queer Ontario’s Participating Members on the same.
If Participating Members cannot come to an agreement with respect to the suitability of the work, the work will unfortunately not be published.
6. EDITING / REVISION POLICY
We will not actively edit or change any submissions, unless it is absolutely necessary and we have received the author’s permission to do so. Spell-checking, grammar-checking, fact-checking, and theory-testing are the responsibility of the author; as are matters related to presentation and production quality.
There will be instances where a work is otherwise publishable save for a few minor corrections, clarifications, or opportunities for improvement. In these instances, the Think Tank Committee will recommend the changes to the author, along with rationales for each change. The author will then be free to accept or reject some or all of the recommendations, as desired. Once the work has been re-submitted, the Think Tank Committee will review the publication of the work again.
Depending on the structure of our website, there may also be instances where an image or video is automatically shrunken when it is published onto our website. To work around this, we encourage authors to also submit a link to another website where the image or video can be experienced as intended or desired.
7. REMOVAL / RETRACTION POLICY
In principle, we will not take down a published item because of public uproar or personal discomfort, no matter how ‘controversial’ the item may be. We published the works on this website because we felt that the ideas, issues, or themes expressed therein were important to expanding and challenging the ways we, as individuals — and as a society — feel, experience, think about, theorize, imagine, and understand ourselves and the world around us.
We expect visitors to truly reach beyond their comfort zones — and their notions of how things ‘are’ or should be — and to recognize that, by virtue of the fact that the piece has been produced, there are individuals in this world who have an entirely different experience or understanding of it. These views and experiences should be recognized, respected, engaged, and validated.
Individuals who are in any way ‘bothered’ or ‘distraught’ by a work are welcome to write or produce a response to the work in question, be it through a comment in the comments section of the work, or through a formal rebuttal submission. Every attempt will be made to not re-victimize survivors of traumatic experiences.
That said, we will take down works if an artist, author, or representative contacts us directly to complain about a particular use or abuse of their work.
8. COPYRIGHT POLICY
We believe that the author should have full copyright to their work. This means that we do not own the rights to any of the works published on the Think Tank.
We ask visitors who want to re-publish a work found on the Think Tank to contact the work’s author(s) to ask for their permission to do so. If permission to re-publish has been granted, we ask that the author(s) be properly acknowledged and credited for their work.
Conversely, authors should be aware that once their works are published on the Think Tank, they are easily accessible to members of the public and can be easily republished elsewhere on the Internet.
For More Information…
For information on how to submit a work,
visit thinktank.queerontario.org/submissions
To access the official Queer Ontario website
visit www.queerontario.org
To return to the Think Tank homepage,
visit thinktank.queerontario.org
For all other questions or comments,
email us at info@queerontario.org
* Note: LGBTQ is used here to refer to individuals who are marginalized because of their sex, gender, sexuality, relationships, and/or way of life. This includes, but is not limited to: individuals who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, transsexual, transgender, genderqueer, agender, two-spirited, cross-dressing, intersexed, neutrois, asexual, pansexual, polyamorous, and/or kinky.
We know that forms of oppression based on sex, gender, sexuality, relationships, and/or way of life cannot be seen in isolation from other forms of oppression, so we encourage their joint articulation as well.