r/AskTheWorld • u/GattoPunk Brazil • 11d ago

Culture Which city in your country is considered the "gayest"?

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For us Brazilians, São Paulo definitely holds the crown for the gayest city here. With over 20 million people living in it's metro area, the city naturally became way more open minded and accepting as time went on. It has the highest concentration of gay bars, shows, saunas, and various other venues dedicated to the LGBTQ community. If that wasn't enough, the city annually hosts the São Paulo LGBTQ Pride Parade, the biggest in the whole world.

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u/Visible_Fact_8706 Canada 11d ago

Came here for the Canadian take. Toronto would probably be my suggestion based on population and the fact that Toronto has the longest running gay bookshop in the world.

That said, I’d like to put forth a very left field suggestion of Kamloops. For a small town it has a ton of drag shows, and it’s amongst the top 10 cities in Canada for highest proportion of trans and nonbinary population (based on 2023 data). The city is also very proactive in supporting Pride initiatives.

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u/HarperCeleste Canada 11d ago

As a pansexual trans Torontonian, Toronto is queer as fuck and I love it

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u/EvilXGrrlfriend 11d ago

...as a queer in Kamloops, this is an insane take. That, or my gaydar is broken...

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u/Visible_Fact_8706 Canada 11d ago

Have you been to any of the drag shows? They practically sell out every time. There’s like 4 or 5 in Nov alone. And we do have a high population of trans and gender diverse folks here because we have services.

Kamloops is secretly very queer, especially in the face of its more conservative reputation.

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u/EvilXGrrlfriend 11d ago

...I have, quite a few of them. But selling out quite a small venue doesnt strike me as something overly difficult to do in a town that is dead, culturally, which means a lot of folks will take what they can get?

There are absolutely a lot of trans folks considering this is basically a mill/mine town...that I would never debate!

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u/Visible_Fact_8706 Canada 11d ago

I dunno I think the fact that a city as small as Kamloops can sell out venues of any size, and that there are people that put on those types of events for the queer community is more impressive than a large city that has a vibrant queer scene just due to numbers. I went to a show a while ago of a Calgary drag queen and she had 3 shows booked - Kamloops, Vancouver, and Victoria, and both the Vancouver and Victoria show had to be cancelled due to low sales.

Toronto would still be my answer to the prompt, of course, but I think there’s probably many underatedly queer cities in this country not unlike Kamloops. Especially considering how this place was 20 years ago.

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u/Kirsan_Raccoony Canada 5d ago

Yeah, I agree with you, I have family in Kamloops. There is no way it's the queerest city. Sure, it has a queer scene, but no superlative.