Joseph Couture

Joseph Couture
Joseph Couture in 2013
Occupation	Writer, social activist
Language	English

Joseph Couture (born Oct. 10, 1969) is an award-winning journalist, author and social activist.

Education

After initially dropping out of university to work for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Couture went back to school later in life. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology in 2010, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Criminology in 2016, both from Western University.

Early career

Couture began working for the CBC’s radio program IDEAS in 1994. His first assignment was to investigate a police investigation into the gay community in his hometown of London, Ontario. His work on the project was the subject of a feature-length "analysis" piece called the "Kiddie Porn Ring That Wasn’t" in The Globe and Mail on March 11, 1995 by then Ryerson journalism instructor Gerald Hannon. The piece reported on how Couture had uncovered the fact that the London police were using the guise of a child pornography ring to harass the gay community in London and throughout the province of Ontario.

Hannon’s piece also reported on the extensive harassment of Couture by the local constabulary. Such persecution of a Canadian journalist was unprecedented at the time and Couture was granted the Hellman-Hammett Award from the prestigious group Human Rights Watch in New York in 1996.^[1] The award is named after the famed American writers Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett who left their estates in trust to be given to writers around the world who have faced political persecution for their work, as they had in their own lives. At the time, Couture was the only journalist in Canada to have ever won the award. So unusual were the circumstances, news of his award was published in the New York Times and as far away as Africa. Hannon’s piece in the Globe provoked such a public outcry on both sides, that both Hannon and Couture were named amongst the top newsmakers of the year.^[2] Couture eventually went on to work for CBC television as an investigative reporter for their flagship program "the fifth estate". While there he specialized in forensic pathology and unsolved homicide cases. He also worked for the programs Witness and Newsworld before leaving for a freelance career as a writer in 1998.

Couture in 2000 with his late friend Dr. Jon Paul Voroney

Later career

Couture has written for numerous newspapers and magazines in both Canada and the United States, including the National Post and the Globe and Mail. He had been a regular freelance columnist for his home town newspaper the London Free Press but disappeared abruptly from the editorial pages several years ago.

He published his first book, "Peek: Inside the Private World of Public Sex" in 2008 under the imprint of New York publisher Haworth Press. The book was surprisingly successful for the subject matter and made it onto the Amazon best-seller list in Canada, the United States, Australia and the U.K. He offers regular commentary on the issue of public sex whenever called upon by the media to do so and has appeared in Esquire Magazine,^[3] The Advocate,^[4] The New York Post^[5] and the National Post,^[6] amongst others. Careful readers might notice that while Couture generously thanks a number of people for their help completing the manuscript, the published book lacks any dedication whatsoever.

In press interviews promoting the release of "Peek", Couture set off a firestorm of controversy and criticism in New York after calling gays pushing for same-sex marriage "Borg Homosexuals" who wanted to assimilate everyone and turn gays into boring and indistinguishable drones. The popular gay website JoeMyGod highlighted his remarks and the comments lit up with vicious personal attacks on Couture ranging from petty remarks about his appearance to more vitriolic statements that Couture was going to enjoy being raped in prison.^[7] Many years later, Couture returned to the subject to say the American victory in the courts granting gay marriage was essentially the death knell for gay culture in the United States, as it had been years earlier in Canada.

He wrote in the National Post gay marriage didn't simply mean equal, it meant the same and that was just boring ^[8] He said gays had lost touch with all sense of their historical roots and did not understand changing attitudes about the role of "real men" and masculinity and were basically bad knock-offs of what they thought straight men acted like. Once again, criticism was stinging and his public rebuke swift. Many comments focused on the fact they found Couture's views so hard to believe that they thought it had to be satire. A bemused Couture said it most definitely was not satire.

Couture continued his cultural analysis of trends in the gay community by writing in a Toronto magazine that the Internet was the worst thing to ever happen to gay men. He argued that they now lived essentially nothing but empty virtual sex lives because men seemed to only feel safe hidden behind a computer screen and an anonymous profile ^[9] He declared the "post-gay-lib world" an increasingly sexual desert and cultural wasteland ^[10] In the same article he argued there is no such thing as a "gay community." He said they had nothing in common with each other except with whom they sometimes slept and no bond or special allegiance to each other. He said in 1995 he no longer cared to work with many gay activists because collectively they had turned their backs on runaway and throwaway gay youth. The result was that many of them were thus condemned to live and die homeless prostitutes on the street. He said it was unforgivable and would not march in a gay pride parade again until this changed because there was nothing to celebrate except elitism while the kids were left out in cold. He has not participated in a parade in nearly 25 years and says it is worse now, not better.

It is interesting to note that the largest gay archives in Canada has basically never collected his works, and except for the odd item essentially has no files on him. Many academic books written in recent years about the gay movement either misatribute Couture's work to others or simply omit his contributions altogether. This led Couture to remark that history would be such a wonderful thing, if only it were true.

While some people seemed to take particular note of his "radical" views on the gay movement, he found himself repeatedly caught in controversies over what he thought were simple issues. The decade of 2000 to 2010 proved somewhat baffling to him.^[11] He wrote on many issues ranging from the environment, poverty, mental health, criminal justice, censorship and whatever else struck him as important and it began to look like no matter what he wrote about or said, it seemed to anger just about everyone. He said they were not correctly called controversies because a controversy requires two or more sides, and there seemed to only be one side, those who disagreed with him. He grew increasingly confused as time went on because even when he wrote in support or defense of some issue in calm and conventional ways, the very people he was trying help were the first to target him with extreme criticism ^[12] He continued to be a very prolific journalist and activist during this period, but became increasingly withdrawn and mostly lived a life of invisible solitude.

Couture has publicly discussed the fact that he has completed two other books and has large sections of third manuscript in draft form. The first two books are about his early life which is known to have been difficult. Plans were in the works to publish the first book a few times, but publication by a traditional publishing house never happened for a variety of reasons. He released it briefly in early 2013 as an e-book, only to remove it weeks later. It was reviewed rather extensively during its short life, sometimes favorably, sometimes not. Paul Bellini of Fab Magazine loved the book and said it was a must-read for all journalism students and gay activists alike. He described the book as "Dickinsian in its scope and squalor" and said it "burns every bridge Couture ever walked across.^[13] He says in the book that he ultimately never could decide whether he found it "harder to be lonely at the top, or lonely at the bottom." Ironically, it was his old colleague Gerald Hannon who quickly panned the book and said that Couture's writing was pedestrian at best and the only redeeming quality of the work was in his recounting of his unconventional journalistic tactics in conducting investigations.^[14]

The second autobiographical book is about his struggles with mental health issues. He endured a very long period of hospitalization later in life and the discovery of a past that is lost to him even to this day because of traumatic amnesia for much of his childhood. He has said that he is not opposed in theory to the publication of either of these books, but does not believe the subject matter to be of wide interest at this time and the cost to him personally would exceed its value to the few who would be positively impacted. He has not tried to get either book in print from a recognized publishing house for many years.

The last book, which remains in uncompleted draft form is what he originally believed to be his most important work. Initially described by him as "the psychology of global warming", he later expanded his ideas to become "a theory of everything" in terms of describing all of humanity's self-destructive impulses. He formed his theories while still an undergraduate in sociology and developed them into what he initially believed were significant advances in sociological theory. Interestingly, he discarded the entire body of work and shelved the project indefinitely once he concluded that his own ideas were a red-herring even to himself and began to pursue more "meta-theories" that were focused not on human nature, but the nature of reality itself. He concluded that he had nothing new to say in this regard and that philosopers dating from antiquity were more correct than he was in their understanding of the world.

Couture aged 13 in 1982, the year he came out as openly gay.

He is also a three-time finalist for the Canadian Association of Journalists awards in investigative journalism for his work. His last nomination came in 2015 for a series of reports on the hidden underbelly of London’s street life populated by the drug-addicted, mentally ill and chronically homeless. YouTube banned his documentary "A Look Inside a Crack House", which was part of the investigative series, in November 2016. It appears the move was the result of a single complaint after the video had received more than 125, 000 views in more than a year live online on YouTube. Couture pleaded with multiple journalists and freedom of expression groups for help in appealing the YouTube decision, but was frustrated and disappointed that not a single individual journalist or anti-censorship group came to his aid.

Couture appears to have entirely vanished from public life sometime in the summer of 2017. His last known published article was in Toronto in July of that summer. His personal website and all social media accounts and contact information were deleted from the Internet.

On September 20, 2018 Couture was caught taking unauthorized photographs on government property and threatened with arrest and the seizure of his equipment. In trying to contain the damage in the immediate aftermath, Couture was forced to seek help from colleagues and activists. He admitted he had been involved in a years long series of underground investigations conducted entirely in secret and alone. He was responsible for countless articles strategically published across the country. Once again, Couture's pleas for assistance in defending journalistic rights and freedoms met with stunning indifference. He finally said he has reached the point where his disgust exceeds his desire to continue working and that all activity had ceased now and forever. He said he believes what he did was wholly unprecedented in Canadian journalism, but that the story would never be told, mostly because no one is interested. He said he is looking forward to his new life elsewhere.

Web pages archived deep on the Internet show Couture titled his personal blog "Resisting The Inevitable " for a few months in 2013. It was around that time he took the majority of his work off grid. In remarking to his friend recently about the strange events that had been unfolding around him, he said he always understood that inevitable truly meant inevitable and there simply are no counter measures to fate itself.

Personal life

In his book "Peek: Inside the Private World of Public Sex" he describes himself as "definitely gay" but also with "some curiosity about women."^[15] He writes that he previously believed himself to be "one hundred percent gay", but he realized his attraction to both men and women after viewing heterosexual pornography.^[16]

Couture told a reporter from a Boston magazine in 2015 that he had finally concluded that labels were for soup cans, not human sexuality.^[17] He then mentioned in passing that he recently had a brief polyamorous group relationship with two other bisexual men and a heterosexual woman.

References

External links

• http://www.stephenwilliamsbooks.com/html/hellman-hammett.html
• http://www.ifex.org/canada/1995/03/13/journalist_joseph_couture_threatened/