Gay Male Pornography and Sexual
Violence: A Sex Equality Perspective on Gay
Male Rape and Partner Abuse
Christopher N. Kendall*
The author critiques the uneven application of the sex
equality test for pornographic harm advocated by many of
the interveners in Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium.
Contesting the interrelated claims that (1) homosexual
pornography does not result in the perpetuation of the same
kinds of harms documented in relation to heterosexual
pornography; and (2) homosexual pornography is central to
gay male identity and liberation, the author argues that the
differential
treatment of hetero- and homosexual
pornography is not only legally untenable, but also
dangerous given the high incidence of domestic violence
and rape within the gay male community.
Arguing in support of the Supreme Court of Canadas
that
decision
insufficient attention has been paid to the specific content
of the gay male pornographic materials at issue in this
litigation. In particular, he argues that both hetero- and
homosexual pornography depend on similar sexist gender
hierarchies, reify a conception of normalized sexuality
valorizing violence, degradation, and non-mutuality, and,
therefore, can be understood to encourage harmful sexual
practices in those who consume these materials. In
forwarding this argument, the author engages in an
extensive description and critical analysis of the gay male
pornographic exhibits at issue in the Little Sisters litigation
and demonstrates that these materials operate according to
a sexual logic comparable to that observed and denounced
in respect of heterosexual pornography.
the author contends
in Little Sisters,
entre
traitement
Lauteur critique ce quil considre tre une
application ingale du test du dommage caus par la
pornographie invoqu par plusieurs des intervenants dans
larrt Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium. Lauteur
remet en question les affirmations inter-relies selon
lesquelles (1) la pornographie homosexuelle ne perptue
pas des torts semblables ceux observs en relation avec la
pornographie htrosexuelle; et (2)
la pornographie
homosexuelle se trouve au cur de lidentit et de la
libration gaies masculines. Lauteur soutient que la
diffrence de
les pornographies
htrosexuelle et homosexuelle est non seulement
juridiquement intenable, mais de surcrot dangereuse au vu
de lincidence importante de la violence domestique et du
viol dans la communaut gaie masculine.
Largument de lauteur se veut en faveur de la
dcision de la Cour suprme du Canada dans Little Sisters.
Celui-ci soutient que trop peu dattention a t dvolue au
contenu spcifique des lments de pornographie gaie
masculine en lespce. Il soutient en particulier que les
pornographies htrosexuelle et homosexuelle reposent
toutes deux sur une hirarchie des sexes discriminatoire et
rifient une conception de
la sexualit normalise
promouvant la violence, la dgradation et labsence de
mutualit. Selon lauteur, on peut donc en conclure que les
deux types de pornographie encouragent chez ceux qui en
consomment des pratiques sexuelles destructrices. Dans la
prsentation de son argument, lauteur se consacre une
description extensive et une analyse critique des lments
de preuve prsents dans laffaire Little Sisters et explique
en quoi ces documents de pornographie gaie masculine
fonctionnent selon une logique comparable celle observe
et dnonce en matire de pornographie htrosexuelle.
* B.A. (Hons), LL.B. (Queens), LL.M., S.J.D. (Michigan); Dean of Law, Murdoch University,
Perth, Western Australia. Many of the issues covered discussed in this paper are discussed in more
detail in Christopher N. Kendall, Gay Male Pornography: An Issue of Sex Discrimination
(Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004). Please be advised that this article contains sexually explicit material.
Readers who do not wish to be exposed to these passages may want to pass over Section II(B):
Inequality and Violence Normalized Through Sex (at 898) and the description of an individuals
experience of sexual abuse in Section III(A): Gay Male Rape (at 909).
McGill Law Journal 2004
Revue de droit de McGill 2004
To be cited as: (2004) 49 McGill L.J. 877
Mode de rfrence : (2004) 49 R.D. McGill 877
MCGILL LAW JOURNAL / REVUE DE DROIT DE MCGILL
[Vol. 49
878
Introduction
I. Gay Male Pornography: Different Audience,
Therefore Non-Harmful?
II. Gay Male Pornography: What It Says, What It Does
A. Why a Description Is Necessary
B. Inequality and Violence Normalized Through Sex
III. But Is It Harmful?
A. Gay Male Rape
B. Gay Male Domestic Violence
Conclusion
879
882
896
896
898
908
909
916
922
2004] C. KENDALL GAY MALE PORNOGRAPHY AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE
879
I was battered by my first lover, and the pornography each
of us used condoned the violence.
When I was younger, I was exposed to heterosexual
pornography, including Playboy, Penthouse, Oui, and other
magazines. It was one of the places that I learned about sex,
and it showed me that sex was violence. What I saw there
was a specific relationship between men and women. The
woman was to be used, objectified, humiliated, and hurt. The
man was in a superior position, a position to be violent. In
pornography I learned that what it meant to be sexual with a
man or to be loved by a man was to accept his violence.
When my lover was violent, I was taught that the violence
was normal. I accepted the violence, which I did not like,
and it was some time before I left the relationship.
There is a lot of sexual violence in the gay community, and
pornography condones it. I was with my ex-lover after he
had been raped by a casual sex partner, and my ex said that
rape was just a risk you had to take. I was with a friend after
he had been violently raped by his boyfriend, and his
boyfriend did not understand that violence and force was not
supposed to be a part of sex. The objectification and the
violent themes in pornography promote and increase these
kinds of violence.
Oral testimony of Mr. C, testifying before
Minneapolis Hearings to make pornography an
actionable civil rights violation.1
Introduction
On 20 December 2000, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in Little Sisters Book
and Art Emporium v. Canada (Minister of Justice),2 a case concerning the right of
Canada Customs to detain lesbian and gay male pornography, that lesbian and gay
male pornography violates the sex equality test for pornographic harm first set down
1 In Catharine A. MacKinnon & Andrea Dworkin, In Harms Way: The Pornography Civil Rights
Hearings (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997) at 107-108 [MacKinnon & Dworkin,
In Harms Way].
2 [2000] 2 S.C.R. 1120, 193 D.L.R. (4th) 193 [Little Sisters (S.C.C.) cited to S.C.R.]. This paper
will not outline the Little Sisters litigation in detail, other than to describe some of the gay male
pornographic materials defended in that case by Little Sisters Bookstore and some of the interveners
before the Supreme Court of Canada. For an analysis of the constitutional and criminal law issues
relevant to the case and the limitations of the statutory regime in place to control the distribution of
pornography in Canada, see Christopher N. Kendall, Gay Male Pornography after Little Sisters Book
and Art Emporium: A Call for Gay Male Cooperation in the Struggle for Sex Equality (1997) 12
Wis. Womens L.J. 21 [Kendall, Gay Male Cooperation].
MCGILL LAW JOURNAL / REVUE DE DROIT DE MCGILL
880
by the Court in its 1992 decision in R. v. Butler.3 In Butler, the Court ruled that legal
efforts aimed at prohibiting the distribution of pornography were constitutionally
sound because pornography undermined the rights of all Canadians to be treated
equally on the basis of sex. Specifically, the Court ruled that
[Vol. 49
[t]he effect of [pornographic] material is to reinforce male-female stereotypes
to the detriment of both sexes. It attempts to make degradation, humiliation,
victimization, and violence in human relationships appear normal and
acceptable. A society which holds that egalitarianism [and] non-violence … are
basic to any human interaction … is clearly justified in controlling … any
medium … which violates these principles.4
In Little Sisters, Little Sisters Bookstore (and many of the interveners that
supported it) rejected the claim that same-sex pornography could result in the types of
harms that result from the distribution of heterosexual pornography.5 This paper
3 [1992] 1 S.C.R. 452, 89 D.L.R. (4th) 449 [Butler cited to S.C.R.]. Pursuant to subsection 163(8)
of the Criminal Code (R.S.C., 1985, c. C-46), any publication a dominant characteristic of which is
the undue exploitation of sex, or of sex and any one of the following subjects, namely, crime, horror,
cruelty and violence, is deemed to be obscene. Donald Butler, a distributor of pornography in
Winnipeg, Canada, challenged this provision as a violation of subsection 2(b) of the Canadian
Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Part I of the Constitution Act, 1982, being Schedule B to the
Canada Act 1982 (U.K.), 1982, c. 11), the section guaranteeing free expression. The Court upheld the
legislation pursuant to section 1 of the Charter, reasoning that although the section did limit free
expression, it was a justifiable limit because pornographic materials harm women (by undermining
their right to equality) and hence harm society because they enhance pre-existing gender hierarchies.
The Court specifically rejected morality as the measure of harm and opted instead for an equality
context within which to interpret expressive means. This paper will not provide an in-depth analysis
of Butler, nor the sex discrimination analysis of pornographic harm offered in that case. This has been
done elsewhere. See generally Catharine A. MacKinnon, Sex Equality (New York: Foundation Press,
2001) [MacKinnon, Sex Equality]; Kendall, Gay Male Cooperation, ibid.; Christopher N. Kendall,
Real Dominant, Real Fun?: Gay Male Pornography and the Pursuit of Masculinity (1993) 57 Sask.
L. Rev. 21 [Kendall, Real Dominant]; Christopher N. Kendall, The Harms of Gay Male
Pornography: A Sex Equality Perspective Post Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium (2001) 10 Gay
& Lesbian L.J. 43 [Kendall, Harms of Gay Male Pornography].
4 House of Commons, Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs, Report on Pornography
in Minutes of Proceedings and Evidence, No. 18 (22 March 1978), cited in Butler, ibid. at 493.
5 An exceptional overview of the harms of heterosexual pornography can be found in the factum of
the intervener, Womens Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF) in Butler, supra note 3 (Factum
of the Intervener LEAF) [LEAF Butler Factum]. Copies of the LEAF Factum are available from the
LEAF National Office, 415 Young Street, Suite 1800, Toronto, Ontario, M5B 2B7. Focusing
specifically on the sex equality harms that result from the production and distribution of pornography,
LEAF argued in Butler that
pornography lies about women and their sexuality: for example, that women live to be
raped, love to be hurt, and are fulfilled by abuse. Pornography silences womens
expression and inhibits truth-seeking and works to deprive women of public regard.
Sex toys do not generally run for Prime Minister. The pervasive presence of
pornography thus deters womens equal access to participation in community life.
…
2004] C. KENDALL GAY MALE PORNOGRAPHY AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE
examines this claim and does so specifically within the context of gay male rape and
domestic violenceissues that have received little analysis by gay male writers,
either before or after Little Sisters.6
881
My comments will be directed specifically at gay men and their defence of gay
male pornography for a number of reasons. To begin with, I am one and have a vested
interest in the outcome of those litigation and social reform strategies allegedly
undertaken on my behalf. In addition, despite claims that the feminist movement has
abandoned its fight against pornography, much has been written in recent years, by
lesbian feminists in particular, outlining in considerable detail the harms that result
from the production and distribution of lesbian pornography.7 Much of their analysis
is helpful to the arguments I make with respect to gay male pornography, although it
does not often address it squarely. I will focus on the central argument posed by gay
activists and their supporters post-Butler and throughout Little Sisters: that gay male
pornography is central to all that is gay male identity; that it can liberate us from the
[P]ornography promotes systemic discrimination against women through systematic
bias and subordination. The status and treatment of women is affected even for those
who do not experience abuse related to pornography directly. When reduced to their
sexual parts and seen in terms of how they can be sexually used, women are forced to
live in a social climate of disrespect, denigration and comparative deprivation of
human regard. Womens opportunities for autonomy and self-determination are
undermined throughout society (at paras. 53, 59).
6 I have argued elsewhere that gay male pornography, like heterosexual pornography, amounts to a
practice of sex discrimination and that, as such, gay men need to rethink their defence of gay male
pornography as a source of gay male liberation. In this paper, I aim to promote discussion on the
specific physical harms we risk both justifying and normalizing should we fail to undertake such an
analysis. For a more detailed analysis of the claim that gay male pornography amounts to a practice of
sex discrimination, see Christopher N. Kendall, Gay Male Liberation Post Oncale: Since When Is
Sexualized Violence Our Path to Liberation? in Catharine A. MacKinnon & Reva B. Siegel, eds.,
Directions in Sexual Harassment Law (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004); Christopher N.
Kendall, Gay Male Pornography/Gay Male Community: Power Without Consent, Mimicry Without
Subversion in Joseph A. Kuypers, ed., Men and Power (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 1999);
Christopher N. Kendall, Educating Gay Male Youth: Since When Is Pornography a Path Towards
Self-Respect? J. Homosexuality [forthcoming in 2004]; Kendall, Gay Male Cooperation, supra
note 2; Kendall, Real Dominant, supra note 3; Kendall, Harms of Gay Male Pornography, supra
note 3. See also John Stoltenberg, You Cant Fight Homophobia and Protect the Pornographers at the
Same TimeAn Analysis of What Went Wrong in Hardwick in Dorchen Leidholdt & Janice G.
Raymond, eds., The Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism (New York: Pergamon Press, 1990)
184; John Stoltenberg, Gays and the Pro-Pornography Movement: Having the Hots for Sex
Discrimination in Michael S. Kimmel, ed., Men Confront Pornography (New York: Crown
Publishers, 1990) 248 [Stoltenberg, Pro-Pornography Movement]; Robert Jensen, Getting It Up
for Politics: Gay Male Sexuality and Radical Lesbian Feminism in Sara Miles & Eric Rofes, eds.,
Opposite Sex (New York: New York University Press, 1998).
7 On the harms of lesbian pornography generally, see Sheila Jeffreys, The Lesbian Heresy: A
Feminist Perspective on the Lesbian Sexual Revolution (Melbourne: Spinifex Press, 1993); Irene Reti,
ed., Unleashing Feminism: Critiquing Lesbian Sadomasochism in the Gay Nineties (Santa Cruz:
HerBooks, 1993).
[Vol. 49
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oppressions we face; and that any attempt to regulate it is both homophobic and
discriminatory on the basis of sexuality. Siding with the Supreme Court of Canada
and those who have long argued that all pornography is an issue of sex
discrimination, I will reject these assertions, arguing instead that gay male
pornography will only achieve that which the homophobe has strived to do all along:
silence gay men by encouraging masculine mimicry and the public expression of the
antithesis of equality. The net effect of gay male pornography, particularly given the
high incidence of gay male domestic violence and gay male rape within the gay male
community, thus merits more critical inquiry.
I. Gay Male Pornography: Different Audience, Therefore Non-
Harmful?
In 1996, the British Columbia Supreme Court was asked by Little Sisters Book
and Art Emporium, a Vancouver-based bookstore specializing in the sale of lesbian
and gay books, magazines, and videos, to determine the constitutional validity of the
legislative scheme that allows Canada Customs to restrict the importation of
pornography into Canada.8 The law governing the importation of goods into Canada
is found in the Canada Customs Act,9 and the Customs Tariff.10 Section 114 of the
Customs Tariff prohibits the importation of any goods enumerated or referred to in
Schedule VII of that statute. Schedule VII lists classes of prohibited goods and
assigns each class a code number. Code 9956(a) deals with obscene material and
prohibits the importation of those goods which can be described as:
Books, printed-paper, drawings, paintings, prints, photographs or
representations of any kind that: (a) are deemed to be obscene under subsection
163(8) of the Criminal Code.
Subsection 163(8) of the Criminal Code was judicially interpreted and defined by the
Canadian Supreme Court in R. v. Butler.11 Essentially, Code 9956(a) forbids the
importation of materials caught by the Butler sex equality analysis for pornographic
harm. Customs officials responsible for determining the legality of imported goods
are expected to find guidance in Customs Memorandum D9-1-1, entitled Interpretive
Policy and Procedures for
the Administration of Tariff Code 9956. This
memorandum incorporates a generally accurate summary of the present state of the
law relating to obscenity, particularly in light of Butler, and is aimed at ensuring that
8 Little Sisters Book & Art Emporium v. Canada (Minister of Justice) (1996), 18 B.C.L.R. (3d) 241,
131 D.L.R. (4th) 486 (S.C.).
9 R.S.C. 1985 (2d Supp.), c. 1.
10 R.S.C. 1985 (3d Supp.), c. 41.
11 Butler, supra note 3.
2004] C. KENDALL GAY MALE PORNOGRAPHY AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE
customs officials apply the sex equality reasoning in Butler when determining
whether pornography, straight or gay, can be imported into Canada.12
883
In hearings before the Supreme Court of Canada, the appellant, Little Sisters,
raised two main constitutional arguments, relevant to both section 163 of the Criminal
Code and the administrative procedures in place for applying section 163 at the
Canada-US border. Both arguments related to the appellants perception that its
section 2 and 15 Charter rights were unjustifiably infringed by Canada Customs
legislation and the application of that legislation. The Court summarized these
questions as follows:
[T]he appellants argue that the harm-based interpretation given to s. 163 of
the Criminal Code in Butler, does not apply to gay and lesbian erotica in the
same way as it does to heterosexual erotica, or perhaps at all. Because the
prohibition against importation of obscene goods contained in the Customs
legislation is rooted explicitly in s. 163 of the Criminal Code, acceptance of
this argument would mean that gay and lesbian publications would not be
subject to the ordinary border regime applicable to other forms of expression.
Secondly, the appellants say that the procedure laid down in the Customs
legislation is so cumbersome and procedurally defective that it is incapable of
being administered consistently with the protection of their Charter rights.13
Little Sisters was supported on both issues by six interveners. These included Equality
for Gays and Lesbians Everywhere Canada (EGALE) and the Womens Legal and
Education Action Fund (LEAF), the same group that had successfully argued in
1991, in Butler, that pornography violated the Charters sex equality provisions. Apart
from the Attorney General of Canada, the only intervener seeking to uphold the sex
equality arguments raised in Butler was the international feminist rights group,
Equality Now.
In addressing Little Sisters arguments, the Court supported the submission of
Equality Now, ruling that:
My conclusion on the first branch of the appellants attack is that the Butler
analysis does not discriminate against the gay and lesbian community. Butler is
directed to the prevention of harm, and is indifferent to whether such harm
arises in the context of heterosexuality or homosexuality. Nor in my view is the
gay and lesbian community discriminated against in the Customs legislation,
which is quite capable of being administered in a manner that respects Charter
rights. The government is entitled to impose border inspections of expressive
material. The obstacles experienced by the appellants and detailed at length by
12 An overview of the customs legislation and the need for it to be applied in a non-discriminatory
manner is discussed in Kendall, Gay Male Cooperation, supra note 2. See also Catharine A.
MacKinnon & Andrea Dworkin, Statement on Canadian Customs and Legal Approaches to
Pornography in Diane Bell & Renate Klein, eds., Radically Speaking: Feminism Reclaimed
(Melbourne: Spinifex Press, 1996) 218.
13 Little Sisters (S.C.C.), supra note 2 at 1154.
884
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the trial judge were not inherent in the statutory scheme. The obstacles were,
however, very real and in the end quite unjustified.14
In sum, the Court found that lesbian and gay male pornography could not be
distinguished from heterosexual pornography, that the legislative scheme under
review was constitutionally valid, but that the way in which the legislation had been
applied was discriminatory against lesbians and gay men. With respect to the
constitutionality of the legislation itself, the majority held that it would be
inappropriate to invalidate constitutionally sound legislation, but that steps must be
taken to ensure that it was applied correctly and fairly (i.e., in accordance with the
equality rights to which the appellants were entitled). On this point, three members of
the court (Iacobucci, Arbour, and LeBel JJ.), while still agreeing that lesbian and gay
male pornography should not be seen as any less harmful or any more important than
heterosexual pornography, held that the customs legislation was so vague as to
constitute the source of any misapplication and that, as such, the legislation should be
struck out as unconstitutional. The minority in this instance would have preferred that
regulation remain a criminal matter determined only once pornographic materials had
already entered the country.
The Little Sisters case raises a number of constitutional issues. Of interest here is
the Courts finding that same-sex pornography violates the Butler standard for
pornographic harm, and its finding that immediate action needs to be taken to stop
what are clearly discriminatory and high-handed actions on the part of Canada
Customs officials against lesbians and gay men. This latter finding makes it clear that
the issue of how best to regulate the inequality arising from the production and
distribution of pornography will not simply go away now that Little Sisters has been
heard. Reform is required and it must, if it is to be effective, involve all persons with
an interest in ensuring fairness and equality.15 What is also clear, however, is that,
insofar as gay men and lesbians are concerned, the type of discussions needed to
ensure effective change will not occur until the lesbian and gay communities rethink
their present commitment to pornography as a central platform in the struggle for
liberation. This paper aims to encourage such an analysis and does so specifically
14 Ibid., Binnie J.
15 This paper will not examine what these reforms should look like or how they should be
implemented as I have addressed these issues elsewhere. See Christopher N. Kendall, Gay Male
Pornography: An Issue of Sex Discrimination (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004) [Kendall, Gay Male
Pornography]. Briefly, my own preference is to see the implementation of a civil rights-based
approach to pornographic harm that would allow pornographys victims to sue civilly or via a human
rights tribunal system for the harms they have suffered as a result of the distribution and production of
pornographyboth heterosexual and homosexual. See also MacKinnon, Sex Equality, supra note 3;
MacKinnon & Dworkin, In Harms Way, supra note 1. Rather than focus on this issue, this paper
seeks only to provoke a necessary rethinking of what gay male pornography is, what it does, and
why, like heterosexual pornography, it is harmful within the context of gay male domestic violence
and male rape. Until such an analysis occurs and until these harms are both discussed and accepted as
real by gay men and their supporters, any attempt to implement necessary legal reforms that ensure
equality and equal application of the law will prove futile.
2004] C. KENDALL GAY MALE PORNOGRAPHY AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE
within the context of the types of materials defended by pro-pornography activists and
academics as harm free and hence Butler-proof. Focusing on gay male domestic
violence and rape, this paper contends that, far from being a source of pride and
liberation, gay male pornography risks inducing the same harms found to arise from
the production and distribution of heterosexual pornography.
885
In its factum before the Supreme Court of Canada in the Little Sisters case, Little
Sisters argued that
[t]here is solid academic criticism of the equation of homosexual pornography
with mainstream pornography. Erotica produced for a homosexual audience
does not and cannot cause the kind of anti-social behaviour generally or
through stereotyping and objectification of women and children that Parliament
apprehended might be caused in heterosexual obscenity. While heterosexual
obscenity is often misogynist that cannot be said of homosexual material.16
This hypothesis warrants more analysis.
In arguing that there is a link between gay male pornography and violence, the
first obstacle encountered is a considerable reluctance within the gay male community
to acknowledge that some of the violence experienced by gay men is at the hands of
other gay men. In Glad Day Bookshop Inc. v. Canada (Deputy Minister of National
Revenue, Customs and Excise),17 for example, Kyle Raye, then a Toronto city
councillor and director at the Community Centre for Lesbians and Gay Men, was
asked if the presentation of violent behaviour in gay male pornography might
encourage some men to replicate this behaviour. Raye testified that he had never
received complaints about violence between gay men or about abusive sexual
behaviour between gay males. Given that Toronto has the largest lesbian and gay male
population in Canada, and given that, in North America, gay male domestic abuse is
the third largest health problem facing gay men,18 Rayes opinion is questionable.
More alarming, however, is the testimony of Barry Adams, a professor of sociology at
the University of Windsor. In Glad Day, Adams testified that if a gay man wanted to
avoid violence in a relationship, he could do so by not staying in the relationship,
and that although there is coercive sex in the gay community, there is underlying
consent and it is sexual theatre.19
These comments are not unusual. As rape education counsellor Michael Scarce
explains, there is little appreciation or willingness to deal with the realities of intra-
community violence. Describing one media report on the topic, Scarce writes:
As with sexual violence, not everyone sympathizes or recognizes the
victimization of same-sex domestic violence. In the December 10, 1996, issue
16 Little Sisters (S.C.C.), supra note 2 (Factum of the Appellant at para. 63) [Little Sisters Factum].
17 [1992] O.J. No. 1466 (Ont. Ct. (Gen. Div.)) (QL) [Glad Day].
18 See David Island & Patrick Letellier, Men Who Beat the Men Who Love Them: Battered Gay
Men and Domestic Violence (New York: Harrington Park Press, 1991) at 1.
19 Glad Day, supra note 17.
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of the Chicago Tribune, columnist Mike Royko described his lack of concern
for gay men who are battered by their partners because he believes men should
have the power and privilege to simply walk away from an abusive
relationship, regardless of the circumstances:
It seems to me that if Bill lives with Joe and Joe makes a practice of
pummeling Bill, then Bill would have the good sense to just pack a
suitcase and get the heck out of there. It should be easier for a man to
walk away from an abusive relationship than for a woman since men
dont get pregnant and have babies.20
Royko continued by saying that if a battered partner chooses to stay with his partner,
for any reason, that is his choice and I respect itso long as he is not my neighbour
and doesnt scream for help or pound on my door at night.21
These assumptions make the task of trying to draw a link between pornography
and violence both frustrating and difficult. Add to this the fact that, to date, little
research has been conducted on the effects of gay male pornography per se, and one is
left with little support from gay activists for the argument that harmful behaviour is
encouraged by gay male pornography, or that pornography promotes those practices,
attitudes, and stereotypes that undermine social equality.
In attempting to get gay men to rethink their position, it is worth noting that,
although no social science data exists with respect to gay pornography specifically, if
these gay male materials were heterosexual materials, and presented women with men
rather than men with men, the evidence would be overwhelming. The legal briefs
submitted in the Butler case provided the Supreme Court with profuse social and
scientific evidence on the harmful effects of heterosexual pornography on women,
men, and thus on society as a wholeresearch from which the Court concluded that
there is sufficient reason for Parliament to believe that pornography amounts to a
practice of sex discrimination.22 This evidence indicates that when rape is normalized
as sex in pornography, women are more likely to be raped and subjected to sexual
20 Michel Scarce, Male on Male Rape: The Hidden Toll of Stigma and Shame (New York: Insight
Books, 1997) at 67-68 [Scarce, Male on Male Rape], citing Mike Royko, 500,000 Gay Men Dont
Have to Take Abuse from a Partner Chicago Tribune (10 December 1996) 3.
21 Ibid.
22 This is an impressive and thorough body of work. A compilation of these findings can be found
in MacKinnon, Sex Equality, supra note 3 at 1532-630. See also MacKinnon & Dworkin, In Harms
Way, supra note 1; Catherine Itzin, ed., Pornography: Women, Violence and Civil Liberties (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1992); Diana E.H. Russell, Against Pornography: The Evidence of Harm
(Berkeley: Russell Publications, 1993) [Russell, Against Pornography]; Gail Dines, Robert Jensen &
Ann Russo, eds., Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality (New York:
Routledge, 1998) [Dines et al., Production and Consumption of Inequality]; Susan G. Cole, Power
Surge: Sex, Violence and Pornography (Toronto: Second Story Press, 1995); Andrea Dworkin,
Pornography: Men Possessing Women (New York: Plume Books, 1989) [Dworkin, Men Possessing
Women]; Susanne Kappeler, The Pornography of Representation (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1986).
887
2004] C. KENDALL GAY MALE PORNOGRAPHY AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE
violence.23 Findings on materials that are not violent but that are nonetheless
degrading or dehumanizing further indicate that pornographic materials lower
inhibitions on aggression by men against women, increase acceptance of womens
sexual servitude, increase sexual callousness toward women, decrease the desire of
both sexes to have female children and increase the belief in male dominance in
intimate relationships.24 The testimonies of women harmed during the production of
pornography bolster these findings, as do the experiences of those whose partners
have humiliated or terrorized them into imitating pornographic materials and who
have been battered and psychologically abused by these same partners when they
have refused to do so.25 Moreover, the testimonies of those women who report that
pornography renders them open to harassment, or unable to function as equals in a
society ripe with sexual inequality, strengthen the argument that pornography is a
practice of sex discrimination and gender inequality.26
These studies, accepted by the Court, prove that the result of exposure to
heterosexual pornography is sexual abuse, the sexualization of violence, and a lack of
respect for the integrity of the other presented as sexual stimulus and practice.
There is also considerable research indicating that the production and distribution of
23 See MacKinnon, Sex Equality, ibid. at 1532-651. See also Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will:
Men, Women and Rape (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975); Andrea Dworkin, Pornography Is a
Civil Rights Issue for Women (1987/88) 21 U. Mich. J.L. Ref. 55; Russell, Against Pornography,
ibid.; Diana E.H. Russell, Pornography and Rape: A Causal Model, in Diana E.H. Russell, ed.,
Making Violence Sexy: Feminist Views on Pornography (1993) 120; Diana E.H. Russell, Sexual
Exploitation: Rape, Child Sexual Abuse, and Workplace Harassment (Beverly Hills: Sage
Publications, 1984); Diana E.H. Russell, Dangerous Relationships: Pornography, Misogyny, and
Rape (Thousand Oakes, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1998).
24 MacKinnon, Sex Equality, ibid.
25 As LEAF noted in Butler:
Many women report that men abuse them through pornography. For example, in a
study of 105 women staying in battered womens shelters in Ontario, 25% of the
women reported being forced to perform acts which their partners had seen in
pornography. In another study, specific pornography was spontaneously mentioned by
rapists during the course of the rape in 25% of 193 rapes reported by 200 street
prostitute. Further studies find a substantial percentage of all Canadian women report
they have been upset by someone trying to do something to them that came from
pornography (LEAF Butler Factum, supra note 5 at para. 46, citing Minneapolis City
Council, Government Operations Committee, Public Hearings on Ordinances to Add
Pornography as Discrimination Against Women, 12-13 December 1983).
See also Evelyn K. Sommers & James V.P. Check, An Empirical Investigation of the Role of
Pornography in the Verbal and Physical Abuse of Women (1987) 2 Violence and Victims 189; Mimi
H. Silbert & Ayala K. Pines, Pornography and Sexual Abuse of Women (1984) 10 Sex Roles 857.
26 See generally MacKinnon & Dworkin, In Harms Way, supra note 1 and the victim impact
testimonies and works cited in MacKinnon, Sex Equality, supra note 3 at 1550-62. As MacKinnon
notes, With pornography, evidence from the real world shows the same results and dynamics as
those found in laboratories and also documents a circular relation between production and
consumption harms (ibid. at 1550).
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heterosexual pornography increases violence against women on an individual level
and that the gender hierarchies and stereotypes promoted in pornography undermine
systemic equality on the basis of sex on a social level.27
[Vol. 49
The question for gay men is whether these findings are applicable to gay male
pornography. That is, does the gay in gay male pornography make the pornography
less pornographic in the harms-based equality analysis or is there something so
qualitatively different about pictures of men violating other men that gay male
pornography is harm-free and legally Butler-proof?
In arguments before the Supreme Court of Canada in support of Little Sisters
Bookstore, EGALE attempted to exempt same-sex pornography from the application
of Butler, arguing that its test was intended to apply to heterosexual pornography
only:
The specific materials at issue in Butler consisted of mainstream
pornography produced for a heterosexual, predominantly male audience. In
contrast, this case involves the systematic detention and seizure of sexually
explicit homoerotic imagery and text, produced by and for lesbians, gays and
bisexuals. The expression conveyed by the Butler videos echoed the dominant
27 As LEAF explained in Butler:
[I]t is uncontroversial that exposure to such materials increases aggression against
women in laboratory settings, increases attitudes which are related to violence against
women in the real world, and increases self-reported likelihood to rape. As a result of
exposure, a significant percentage of men, many not otherwise predisposed as well as
the 25-35% who report some proclivity to rape a woman, come to believe that violence
against women is acceptable. Such materials hence constitute direct threats of violence.
…
Materials which combine sex with aggression have perceptual effects which
disadvantage women in society. They desensitize consumers to rape trauma and sexual
violence. In one study, simulated juries after exposure were less able than the real juries
to perceive an account of a rape as an account of a rape (LEAF Butler Factum, supra
note 5 at paras. 34, 44).
See also Edward Donnerstein & Leonard Berkowitz, Victim Reaction in Aggressive Erotic Films as
a Factor in Violence Against Women (1981) 41 J. Personality & Social Psychol. 710; Neil M.
Malamuth & James V.P. Check, The Effects of Mass Media Exposure on Acceptance of Violence
Against Women: A Field Experiment (1981) 15 J. Res. Personality 436; Neil M. Malamuth, Factors
Associated with Rape as Predictors of Laboratory Aggression Against Women (1983) 45 J.
Personality & Social Psychol. 432; Neil M. Malamuth & James V.P. Check, The Effects of
Aggressive Pornography on Beliefs in Rape Myths: Individual Differences (1985) 19 J. Res.
Personality 299; Neil M. Malamuth & James V.P. Check, Penile Tumescence and Perceptual
Responses to Rape as a Function of the Victims Perceived Reactions (1980) 10 J. Applied Social
Psychol. 528; Dolf Linz & Jennings Bryant, Effects of Massive Exposure to Pornography in Neil
M. Malamuth & Edward Donnerstein, eds., Pornography and Sexual Aggression (New York:
Academic Press, 1984) 115.
2004] C. KENDALL GAY MALE PORNOGRAPHY AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE
889
refrain on sexuality, while the expressions conveyed in the materials at issue in
this case are those of dissenting minority voices.28
Similarly, Little Sisters argued that the Court in Butler did not substantively or
seriously consider gay and lesbian material.29 Relying on the work of lesbian legal
academic Brenda Cossman, EGALE also argued that the research undertaken to date
on the harm of pornography was exclusively directed at heterosexual pornography:
It is an understanding of harm set in a heterosexual framework. The
pornography is male heterosexual pornography, and its harm is that
heterosexual men are likely to mistreat women. The feminist literature on
which this understanding of harm is based has similarly operated within this
heterosexual discursive framework.30
EGALE continued by arguing that the Butler analysis of harmful effects of
mainstream pornography is so embedded in a heterosexual context that it does
nothing to elucidate the effects of lesbian, gay, and bisexual pornography and that
because gay pornography does not involve heterosexual representations, it cannot
eroticize a gendered power imbalance of male domination over women. 31
It is worth noting at this stage that the material before the Court in Butler was not
limited to heterosexual sex acts. Rather, the videotapes at issue in that case included
violent and degrading sexual acts between men. Same-sex material in Butler was not
restricted to so-called lesbian sex, produced specifically for heterosexual male
28 Little Sisters (S.C.C.), supra note 2 (Factum of the Intervener EGALE at para. 34) [EGALE
Factum].
29 Little Sisters Factum, supra note 16 at para. 69.
30 Brenda Cossman, Feminist Fashion or Morality in Drag?: The Sexual Subtext of the Butler
Decision in Brenda Cossman et al., eds., Bad Attitude/s on Trial: Pornography, Feminism, and the
Butler Decision (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997) 107 at 128.
31 EGALE Factum, supra note 28 at para. 40. In concluding, EGALE relied on the work of Leslie
Green, who has argued that
[w]hatever role straight pornography plays in the complex causal network that keeps
women in their place, gay pornography obviously plays a much different role [if any]
in keeping gay people in their place, for that is by and large the work of straight people.
Here, the oppressor class, if there is one, is in the wrong socio-erotic location.
…
[I]f we begin with the new paradigms view of the harm that pornography causes
women, we will find that the analogous harms suffered by gay men are not in the main
caused by gay men. They are caused by heterosexual women and men whose attitudes
are not significantly influenced by gay male pornography. Thus, while in the gender-
dominance theory of pornography the oppressor class and the class of consumers of
pornography strongly overlap, in the reality of lesbian and gay life, the oppressor class
and the class of consumers of gay pornography are disjoint (Pornographies (2000) 8
J. Pol. Phil. 27 at 41-42).
[Vol. 49
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audiences, as Little Sisters claimed.32 Nor has the feminist anti-pornography/sex
equality literature relied on by the courts ever drawn a distinction between non-gay
and gay pornography when describing and analyzing the harms of pornography as the
harms of sex inequalityquite the opposite.33 In any event, even if Butler had not
focused on same-sex pornography and even if the research and writing undertaken on
pornography thus far had only focused on heterosexual pornography, the question
remains: is this analysis applicable to same-sex pornography? In particular, does
something about gay pornography ensure that it does not present issues of sex
discrimination and gender inequality and does not produce individual and systemic
harm?
In 1985, the Special Committee on Pornography and Prostitution presented its
report (the Fraser Report) to the Canadian federal minister of justice. The committee
observed that sexually violent and degrading pornography is not limited in its focus
to the abuse of women. There is some material produced in which similar conduct is
depicted in a homosexual context.34 The committee concluded that these materials
offend the value of respect for human dignity of which Quigley J. spoke in the case of
R. v. Keegstra,35 a case involving the constitutionality of Canadas anti-hate speech
laws, and that the social harm to which the prohibition on pornography in the
Criminal Code is directed is based on respect for human dignity in general and is not
restricted to human dignity in the heterosexual context.36 Accepting this, the Canadian
32 Little Sisters, supra note 2 (Factum of the Intervener Equality Now at para. 19) [Equality Now
Factum]. See generally Karen Busby, LEAF and Pornography: Litigating on Equality and Sexual
Representations (1994) 9 C.J.L.S. 165 at 179-80; LEAF Butler Factum, supra note 5 at para. 5.
33 In this regard, see the arguments presented in LEAF Butler Factum, ibid. at para. 48 (the text of
this paragraph is quoted in connection with note 75 infra). See also Catharine A. MacKinnon, Toward
a Feminist Theory of the State (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989) [MacKinnon,
Feminist Theory of State]; Andrea Dworkin, Women Hating (New York: Plume, 1974); Joseph
Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc., 523 U.S. 75, 118 S. Ct. 998 (1998) (Brief of Amici
Curiae, National Organization on Male Violence) [MacKinnon, Amici Curiae Brief]; Andrea
Dworkin, Right Wing Women (New York: Perigee Books, 1978); Jeffreys, supra note 7; MacKinnon
& Dworkin, In Harms Way, supra note 1; MacKinnon, Sex Equality, supra note 3.
34 Canada, Pornography and Prostitution in Canada: Report of the Special Committee on
Pornography and Prostitution, vol. 1 (Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, 1985) at 268.
35 [1990] 3 S.C.R. 697, 2 W.W.R. 1 [Keegstra cited to S.C.R.].
36 Keegstra concerned the interpretation and application of sections 318 and 319 of the Criminal
Code. These provisions make it an indictable offence to communicate statements that willfully
promote hatred against any identifiable group. In Keegstra, the Supreme Court held that although
these provisions do infringe the right to free expression, the infringement is nonetheless justified
because of the threat to equality posed to target groups and to society at large from speech aimed at
undermining equality (ibid. at 747). Much has been written on the Keegstra decision. See generally
Tamsin Solomon, Anti-Semitism as Free Speech: Judicial Responses to Hate Propaganda in Zundel
and Keegstra (1995) 13:1 Australian-Canadian Stud. 1; Kathleen Mahoney, R. v. Keegstra: A
Rationale for Regulating Pornography? (1992) 37 McGill L.J. 242; Richard Moon, Drawing Lines
in a Culture of Prejudice: R. v. Keegstra and the Restriction of Hate Propaganda (1992) 26:1 U.B.C.
L. Rev. 99; Bruce P. Elman, Combating Racist Speech: The Canadian Experience (1994) 32 Alta.
891
2004] C. KENDALL GAY MALE PORNOGRAPHY AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE
courts, prior to Little Sisters, recognized that lesbian and gay male pornography could
cause harm and that the sexual orientation of the material was irrelevant.37 In Little
Sisters, on appeal to the British Columbia Court of Appeal, MacFarlane J.A. extended
this analysis, arguing that harm was not reduced simply because the materials were
only shown to or used by lesbians and gay men. Specifically, quoting the decision of
Wilson J. in R. v. Towne Cinema Theatres Ltd.,38 where she reasoned that [i]t is not …
open to the courts … to characterize a movie as obscene if shown to one constituency
but not if shown to another.39 This argument was also raised by the Attorney General
of Canada in Little Sisters who argued that MacFarlane J.A. was correct when he said:
If the appellants argument is that Parliament had no reasoned basis for
apprehending harm because no harm results from the receipt and use by the
gay/lesbian community of obscene material, then I must reject it. Harm is not to
be determined by the standard of the gay/lesbian community but by application
of a general community standard. The question is not whether harm will be
caused to the gay and lesbian community by the importation of obscene
material, but whether harm to society generally may be caused by importation
and proliferation of such material. The objective of the legislation is not to
prohibit non-obscene gay and lesbian literature, but to prohibit importation of
obscene material as defined in s. 163(8) of the Criminal Code.40
To some extent, the Attorney Generals support of these comments risks implying
that, in some circumstances, gay pornography can be harmless for gay men
themselves but nonetheless harmful to society as a whole. With respect, I find this
reasoning somewhat illogical. Given what we know about the links between
homophobia and sex discrimination, it is unreasonable on its face to distinguish
between the harm-producing effects of heterosexual as compared to homosexual
pornography. Logically, it would seem that each of these two categories of
pornography should either stand or fall together when subjected to the sex equality
analysis outlined in Butler; that is, either both kinds of pornography are harm-
producing (in which case the distribution of both types should be prohibited), or
neither is harm-producing (in which case neither should be prohibited). In other
words, to the extent that the harms produced in both heterosexual and homosexual
pornography derive from sexist gender hierarchies, it is reasonable to conclude that
the harms to women that have been ascribed to heterosexual pornography produce
analogous harms to gay men in the context of homosexual pornography.
L. Rev. 623; Bruce MacDougall, Queer Judgments: Homosexuality, Expression, and the Courts in
Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000) at 146.
37 Note, for example, the comments of Paris J. in R. v. Scythes, [1993] O.J. No. 537 at para. 6 (Ont.
Ct. (Gen. Div.)) (QL) [Scythes].
38 [1985] 1 S.C.R. 494, 18 D.L.R. (4th) 1 [Towne cited to S.C.R.].
39 Ibid. at 521.
40 Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium v. Canada (Minister of Justice) (1998), 160 D.L.R. (4th)
385 at 406, [1999] 12 W.W.R. 445 (B.C.C.A.) (Factum of the Intervener Minister of Justice in Little
Sisters (S.C.C.) at para. 59).
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This line of reasoning is also problematic because there is a possibility of
ignoring the very real risks to gay men that might in fact result from gay male
pornographyharms that, in turn, feed into the types of broader systemic sexual
inequalities referred to above. Hence, it is futile to attempt to address the wider social
harms of pornography unless we recognize and address the extent to which the
attitudes and inequalities promoted in gay pornography harm gay men and, in so
doing, then serve to reinforce the biases and inherent gender hierarchies that result in
the systemic inequality referred to in Butler, through which both gay men and all
women are harmed.
There are other aspects of the Attorney Generals submissions in Little Sisters that
are problematic. In addressing the claim that no proof exists that gay male
pornography is harmful, for example, the Attorney General again relied on
MacFarlane J.A.s conclusion that:
the argument of the appellants that no causal link has been demonstrated
between homosexual erotica and harm, and that there is no evidentiary
foundation to support Parliaments view that harm may result from the
proliferation of obscene matter, must fail … Butler holds, at pp. 501-502, that a
causal link may be impossible to establish and that harm may be presumed.
There are references throughout the reasons of Sopinka J. in Butler to
difficulties in proof, and to the controversial opinions held by those trained in
the social sciences. In the end, the evidence is inconclusive … [but]
[c]onclusive evidence from social scientists is not required.41
This claim that there is no causal connection between harm and pornography merits
clarification. Although there is, of yet, no social science data on the links between gay
male pornography and harm per se, there is irrefutable evidence to this effect with
respect to heterosexual pornography. This is an important point and one that should
not be overlooked. It is important because it raises the question of whether gay male
pornography can be proven harmful by way of analogy. In Little Sisters, EGALE
argued that an analogy could not be drawn because of the way in which same-sex
pornography is used by gay men and lesbians, the way and reason for which it is
produced, and the different socialization processes that occur prior to and when gay
men and lesbian women use pornography.42
This rejection of any analogy-based argument is interesting given that gay men
themselves have long argued that an analogy should be drawn between the harms of
racial hate speech, for example, and anti-gay hate speech. There is, of yet, no absolute
scientific proof that racist hate speech causes harm and yet gay men have argued that
when the courts recognize such speech as harmful, an analogy should be drawn
41 Ibid.
42 A more detailed overview of the arguments raised by EGALE and the other interveners in Little
Sisters is provided in Kendall, Gay Male Pornography, supra note 15.
2004] C. KENDALL GAY MALE PORNOGRAPHY AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE
between it and anti-gay hate speech, despite the fact that no absolute proof of harm
for either form of speech exists.43
893
In the pornography context, the analogy would seem to be even stronger given
that heterosexual pornography has been proven harmful. Indeed, researchers have
long argued that although harms-based research has thus far relied on the effects of
heterosexual pornography, the reality of gay men generally (already affected by
pervasive homophobia and resulting self-hate44), once influenced by what gay
43 See generally N. Kathleen Sam Banks, Could Mom Be Wrong? The Hurt of Names and
Wrongs: Hate Propaganda and Freedom of Expression (1999) 6:2 Murdoch U.E.J.L., online:
Murdoch U.E.J.L.
France Major, Sexual Orientation Hate Propaganda: Time to Regroup (1996) 11:1 C.J.L.S. 221.
Arguing for the inclusion of sexual orientation in section 319 of the Criminal Code, the provision that
criminalizes racial vilification, Banks continues:
Hate propaganda represents a serious threat to a free and democratic society through its
messages calculated to divide, demean and discriminate. Individuals who are the target
of hate speech lose their dignity, self-worth and sense of belonging to the community,
the targeted group suffers a loss of cultural identity and group reputation, and society as
a whole is damaged by its messages encouraging division, prejudice and intolerance.
Equality and inherent human dignity are not tentative concepts: without protection
from the harms of hate propaganda, these ideas themselves are demeaned and
marginalized. On balance, our commitments to equality, multiculturalism and social
harmony are enhanced rather than diminished by expanding s. 319 (2) of the Criminal
Code to include sexual orientation within its prohibitions (ibid. at para. 89).
As Major notes, there is little reason to believe that anti-gay prejudice does not manifest the same
social and psychological damage as racial and other ethnic prejudices (ibid. at 227). See generally
Gregory M. Herek, Religious Orientation and Prejudice: A Comparison of Racial and Sexual
Attitudes (1987) 13 Personality & Soc. Psychol. Bull. 34; Gregory M. Herek, Hate Crimes Against
Lesbians and Gay Men: Issues for Research and Policy (1989) 44 Am. Psychologist 948; Gary B.
Melton, Public Policy and Private Prejudice: Psychology and the Law on Gay Rights (1989) 44
Am. Psychologist 933.
44 The links between racial vilification and low self-esteem are well documented. As Lawlor notes:
People … seem to have only a blunted sense of what racial insult and discrimination do
to the self-esteem, aspirations, and modes of life of the targeted individual or groups,
and especially to the children. It can be and is too often devastating; they are treated as
less than human, they are dehumanized. They react aggressively in anger, which
usually only worsens the situation, frustrates the victim and drives the injury deeper; or
supinely, they come to accept their stigmatization, as a fated fact of life, with all the
misery and degradation that that entails (Patrick Lawlor, Group Defamation:
Submission to the Attorney General (Toronto, March 1984) at 17 [unpublished, on file
with author]).
Similar findings hold true for homophobia and self-hate. As Plummer notes:
To be called a homosexual is to be degraded, denounced, devalued or treated as
different. It may well mean shame, ostracism, discrimination, exclusion or physical
attack. It may simply mean that one becomes an interesting curiosity of
permissiveness. But always, in this culture, the costs of being known as a homosexual
must be high (Kenneth Plummer, Sexual Stigma: An Interactionist Account (London:
Routledge, 1975) at 175).
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pornography says about appropriate gay male sexual behaviour, suggests that findings
on the sex-based harms of heterosexual pornography are applicable within the context
of gay male pornography. As Dr. Neil Malamuth explains:
[Vol. 49
there may be similar processes operating regardless of the sexual orientation of
the material. I therefore suggest that it may be appropriate to generalize from
this research to the specific content in question, even though there are some
differences in content. In keeping with considerable research I am suggesting
that processes of influence, attitude change, normative effects, consequences of
arousal, etc. do not differ fundamentally as a function of a persons sexual
preference. Therefore, in many areas, similar theoretical models may be
applied to both heterosexuals and gays. Furthermore, there are many
similarities among gay and straight people in motives for various behaviours,
including sexual activity and in problems of sexual and non-sexual coercion.45
In Little Sisters, the trial judge, accepting this argument, concluded that there was
sufficient evidence to support Parliaments reasoned apprehension that homosexual
A recent report by the Western Australian AIDS Council, entitled Here for Life: Youth Sexuality
Project, notes that the process of realizing a same-sex orientation typically results in: damaged self
esteem, distancing from family and peers, attempts to avoid disclosure, distortion of nearly all
relationships, increasing sense of isolation and a sense of inferiority and self loathing. A copy of the
Report is available from the Western Australian AIDS Council, 664 Murray Street, West Perth, WA,
Australia, 6005 or via e-mail at waac@highway1.com.au. See also U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services statistics, as quoted in Kevin Jennings, Becoming Visible (Boston: Alyson
Publications, 1994) at 264; U.S.A. Task Force on Youth Suicide, Final Report, specifically the
chapter by P. Gibson, Gay Male and Lesbian Youth Suicide (U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services, 1989).
Martin and Hetrick quote Erving Goffman to substantiate the proposition that the effect of anti-
gay stereotypes on a nave, developing adolescent is to produce a form of cognitive dissonance that
radically undermines the adolescents sense of self. As Goffman notes:
[T]he standards he has incorporated from the wider society equip him to be intimately
alive to what others see as his failing, inevitably causing him, if only for moments, to
agree that he does indeed fall short of what he really ought to be. Shame becomes a
central possibility, arising from the individuals perception of one of his own attributes
as being a defiling thing to possess (Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the
Management of Spoiled Identity (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963) at 7,
cited in A. Damien Martin & Emery Hetrick, The Stigmatization of the Gay and
Lesbian Adolescent (1988) 15:1-2 J. Homosexuality 163 at 167).
See also Christopher Bagley, Suicidal Behaviours in Homosexual and Bisexual Males (1997) 18:1
Crisis 24; Gary Remafedi, Risk Factors for Attempted Suicide in Gay and Bisexual Youth (1991)
87:6 Pediatrics 869; Virginia Uribe & Karen M. Harbeck, Addressing the Needs of Lesbian, Gay
and Bisexual Youth: The Origins of Project 10 and School-Based Intervention (1991) 24:3-4 J.
Homosexuality 9; Ron MacDonald & Trudi Cooper, Young Gay Men and Suicide (1998) 17:4
Youth Stud. Australia 23; Jonathon Nicholas & John Howard, Better Dead Than Gay (1998) 17:4
Youth Stud. Australia 28; Gary Remafedi et al., The Relationship Between Suicide Risk and Sexual
Orientation (1998) 88:1 Am. J. Public Health 57; Neil Buhrich & Carlson Loke, Homosexuality,
Suicide, and Parasuicide in Australia (1988) 15:1-2 J. Homosexuality 113.
45 Testimony of Dr. Neil Malamuth in Scythes, supra note 37.
2004] C. KENDALL GAY MALE PORNOGRAPHY AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE
pornography could cause the types of harms at issue in Butler. The Supreme Court of
Canada affirmed this finding.46
895
It is important to note that Malamuth and others are not suggesting that the result
of exposure to gay male pornography is exactly the same as the result of exposure to
heterosexual pornography. What they are saying is that it is not unreasonable to
conclude that scenarios of violence and degradation might lead to increased violence
against real people. Although the resulting harms are not exactly the same (because
gay men are not in the same social position as women), an analogy can nonetheless be
drawnan analogy that says that exposure to certain forms of visual material causes
certain behaviours and that these behaviours result in harm inflicted on real people. If,
as I will argue, masculinity is the defining and preferred construct in gay male
pornography, does this not simply reinforce those male-female stereotypes that result
in systemic inequality? Is this not particularly problematic when used by gay men
men who are already encouraged socially to buy into these stereotypes? If the
presentation of what is acceptable male behaviour in heterosexual pornography is a
source of male aggression against women, can it not be readily inferred that some gay
men, already subject to the rejection resulting from being socially defined as non-
masculine, might also be negatively affected by a medium that encourages the use of
46 The Supreme Court of Canada rejected the arguments put forth by Little Sisters and those
interveners arguing on their behalf, ruling that there is nothing about the harm that results from
lesbian and gay pornography that distinguishes it from the harms that result from the production and
distribution of heterosexual pornography. Rejecting LEAFs position on sado-masochism, for
example, the Court noted:
The appellants, supported by the interveners LEAF and EGALE, contend that
homosexual erotica plays an important role in providing a positive self-image to gays
and lesbians, who may feel isolated and rejected in the heterosexual mainstream.
Erotica provides a positive celebration of what it means to be gay or lesbian. As such, it
is argued that sexual speech in the context of gay and lesbian culture is a core value
and Butler cannot legitimately be applied to locate it at the fringes of s. 2(b) expression.
Erotica, they contend, plays a different role in a gay and lesbian community than it
does in a heterosexual community, and the Butler approach based, they say, on
heterosexual norms, is oblivious to this fact. Gays and lesbians are defined by their
sexuality and are therefore disproportionately vulnerable to sexual censorship (Little
Sisters (S.C.C.), supra note 2 at 1159).
The Court then continued:
The intervener LEAF took the position that sado-masochism performs an emancipatory
role in gay and lesbian culture and should therefore be judged by a different standard
from that applicable to heterosexual culture.
…
The portrayal of a dominatrix engaged in the non-violent degradation of an ostensibly
willing sex slave is no less dehumanizing if the victim happens to be of the same sex,
and no less (and no more) harmful in its reassurance to the viewer that the victim finds
such conduct both normal and pleasurable (ibid. at 1163-64).
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male power over others, with the potential to result in rape, domestic violence, and
other forms of male hostility and aggression against other men?
[Vol. 49
II. Gay Male Pornography: What It Says, What It Does
A. Why a Description Is Necessary
It is helpful, at this point, to discuss and describe what gay male pornography is.
Although to some this might at first seem unnecessary given the amount of
pornography readily available to those who care to look for it, the need for description
and discussion does become evident once the paucity of existing analysis seeking to
interrogate the conception of masculine identity championed by those advocating the
sale and distribution of gay male pornography is acknowledged. Indeed, a careful
reading of the evidence and analysis presented in Little Sisters reveals a rather unsettling
omission on the part of those defending the materials in issue before the Court.
Despite considerable effort to defend gay male pornography as a source of
equality, justice, and freedom before, during, and after the Little Sisters hearings, there
has been little description of what the materials in issue in this case look like, what
their message is, and how these materials work individually and socially. If gay male
pornography is a source of affirmation, as its proponents claim, then the question that
needs to be addressed is: what type of gay identity does it affirm and what is it
specifically about the materials defended in Little Sisters that allegedly makes them
represent all that is gay male identity? If these materials are empowering, what is it
about them that makes them so? In other words, how do these materials promote and
produce equality?
I have had an opportunity to review the materials at issue in the Little Sisters case,
in addition to other materials that, while not specifically defended before the Supreme
Court of Canada, would nonetheless be legal now had Little Sisters convinced the
Court to allow the unrestricted distribution of gay male pornography in Canada. I
summarized these materials in October 1999 over a two-day period at the Civil
Exhibits Division of the British Columbia Court of Appeal. A sampling of some of the
gay male pornographic materials at the centre of the Little Sisters litigation is
described and analyzed below.47
47 Much of the pornography quoted in this paper comes from the pornography exhibits defended in
the Little Sisters case, argued before the Supreme Court of Canada in 2001. What is offered here is a
sampling of magazines, videos, and books that had been detained by Canada Customs since 1985. In
October, 1999, I flew from Perth, Australia to Vancouver, Canada to view these exhibits. The exhibits
had been classified illegal and were being detained at the Civil Exhibits Division of the British
Columbia Court of Appeal. I was given permission by the Federal Department of Justice to view the
exhibits. I had approximately two days to do so. There were approximately 200 exhibits in the Little
Sisters litigation. Of these, this paper offers a summary of or quotations from a very small sample. I
2004] C. KENDALL GAY MALE PORNOGRAPHY AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE
Little Sisters ordered, and Canada Customs excluded as socially harmful, many of
the materials described below. Others are materials ordered by other gay importers,
such as Glad Day Bookstore in Toronto, and similarly prohibited as harmful. Still
others are examples of materials that could be freely imported into Canada had the
remedy requested by the appellant in Little Sisters been granted. Many were presented
as exhibits at trial and were available to the Supreme Court of Canada when deciding
whether or not gay pornography violates the Butler sex equality standard. My aim in
providing these summaries is to offer a diverse overview of some of the materials now
897
also offer other examples of materials that Little Sisters would have sold if it had proven victorious
before the Supreme Court of Canada.
Some of the materials before the Court clearly did not violate the Butler equality mandate but
were nonetheless detained by Canada Customs. This was recognized by the Court and is an issue that
I have addressed elsewhere when analyzing how best to implement the Butler equality test in a way
that is not discriminatory. See Kendall, Gay Male Cooperation, supra note 2. For the time being,
however, it is worth noting that of the 200 exhibits before the Court, many did violate Butler. Despite
this, Little Sisters, LEAF, EGALE, and others drew no distinction between harmful and non-harmful
materials, requesting, instead, the dismantling of an entire regulatory system aimed at stopping
pornographic harm. This litigation strategy would allow the distribution of pornography (heterosexual
or homosexual) into Canada, regardless of the effect this would inevitably have on those harmed by
the production and use of those materials that result in the injury caused by systemic inequality on the
basis of sex and sexual orientation.
The quotations provided from those materials that were exhibits in the Little Sisters case were
read into a tape recorder in Vancouver and later typed upon my return to Perth. As far as is possible,
the quotations offered from these exhibits are accurate summaries of what appears in the materials I
was allowed to view. I say as far as possible because I was working under a very tight time frame in
legally constrained conditions. Each exhibit was bought to me individually in a locked room. I was
then allowed to dictate into a tape. I was not allowed to photocopy more than a few pages of the
written materials because Canada Customs had ruled that these materials were illegal under Canadian
law. I was not allowed to remove the materials from the courthouse and could only view one exhibit
at a time. Some of these exhibits did not list the authors, years of publications, et cetera because pages
had been removed or blacked-out in earlier court proceedings. If they did provide this information, I
often did not record all of it because my aim was to use specific quotes for the purpose of critical
analysis and I had no opportunity to re-check the quotations once the materials were removed from
the room I had been allocated. I could not later return to find this bibliographic information because,
once the Supreme Court ruled that Canada Customs could detain these materials, they were either
destroyed after subsequent court proceedings or returned to the United States, from whence they
came. Many of these materials were also dated (as far back as 1985) and it was not possible to find
the specific magazines in Canada, even in those stores that would have continued to sell them
illegally. I have tried to track down some of the magazines in Australia but this is difficult without full
bibliographic details. Many of the magazines are now out of stock and, I might add, illegal in Western
Australia, where I now live. I was thus reluctant to purchase them even if I could find them. They
would also now be illegal in Canada as a result of the Little Sisters case. It is also worth noting that
because of the nature of the pornography industry, the names of authors are often fictional. This
makes getting verification from individual writers extremely difficult. In my summaries, I thus tend to
provide only the name of the magazine, book, or video and the exhibit number from the case, where
applicable. Any mistakes made during dictation are entirely my own. For these reasons, the editors of
the McGill Law Journal were not able to verify the extent to which passaged excerpted from the
exhibits at issue in Little Sisters have been reported verbatim.
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available, some of which were defended by Little Sisters, all of which would be
considered legal if the Court had accepted the appellants argument that gay male
pornography is harm-free and hence Butler-proof.
[Vol. 49
B. Inequality and Violence Normalized Through Sex
If the materials defended in Little Sisters typify the gay identity defended by pro-
pornography and pro-gay advocates, as they say they do, what has the Supreme Court
of Canada just been told about homosexual identities? In answering this question, it is
worth noting the quotation below, found in an article in Manscape Magazine, not in
issue in Little Sisters, but available nonetheless from the plaintiffs bookstore. It, like
many of the materials defended in Little Sisters, reminds the reader that to be male
is to be empowered, but that maleness requires conformity to a clearly defined gender
norma gender role according to which some are entitled to sexually abuse and
control, while others, because they are descriptively less male, are socially less
relevant, less equal, and not entitled to the respect, compassion, and human dignity
that only true equality can provide:
I pushed him lower so my big dick was against his chest; I pushed his meaty
pecs together. They wrapped around my dick perfectly as I started tit-fucking
him like a chick. His hard, humpy pecs gripped my meat like a vice. Of all the
things I did to him that night … I think he hated that the most. It made him feel
like a girl.
I sighed, Oh, my bitch got such pretty titties! They was made for tittie
fuckin, made to serve a mans dick.48
As in a great deal of written or pictorial gay male pornographic presentations,49 what
48 William Willcox, That Old Time Religion Manscape Magazine 10:11 (1995) 4 at 15.
49 I am not suggesting that the type of harm arising from pictorial or video presentations is the same
as that which arises from purely written or descriptive pornography. On the contrary, pornography
that presents real people does just thatit presents and uses real people. Regarding the abuse and
exploitation of gay male pornographic models, see Christopher N. Kendall & Rus Funk, Gay
Pornographys Actors: When Fantasy Isnt in Melissa Farley, ed., Prostitution, Trafficking, and
Traumatic Stress (Binghamton, N.Y.: Haworth, 2003); Roger Edmonson, Boy in the Sand: Casey
DonovanAll American Sex Star (Los Angeles: Alyson Books, 1998); Charles Isherwood, Wonder
Bread and Ecstasy: The Life and Death of Joey Stefano (Los Angeles: Alyson Publications, 1996).
Having said this, however, I should also not be seen as saying that non-pictorial presentations are not
a threat to gay male equality, hence not socially harmful. This was a claim made by Little Sisters in
their Supreme Court of Canada factum. Specifically, the store argued that
the apprehension of harm supposedly avoided by the impugned [Criminal Code]
provisions is further attenuated when textual material is involved. The trial Judge said
Butler could not be distinguished on this basis since the material under consideration
there included magazines. However, there were no books at issue in Butler, and most of
the evidence in this case concerned books, a medium that strictly involves the
imagination of both the writer and reader. No one is exploited or in any way harmed in
the writing of a book. Even if text can give rise to a reasonable apprehension of harm,
2004] C. KENDALL GAY MALE PORNOGRAPHY AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE
one gets from the above excerpt is a source of affirmation in which the physically
more powerful, ostensibly straight male is glorified. The linking of manliness with
heterosexuality and overt masculinity is a common theme throughout many of these
materials, where masculinity is often gained at the expense of a woman or ostensibly
gay males safety and self-worth. The misogynistic overtones in these materials are
clear.
899
The December 1989 edition of Advocate Men,50 a magazine which is modelled
along the lines of Playboy and Penthouse magazines, includes both features and photo
spreads of youthful, muscular, well-toned men. The article accompanying one of these
collections of photographs reads:
The first thing people notice about Glen Fargus, apart from his stern
masculinity and animal sexuality is those muscles of his. It is easy to resent him
when he remarks that he has never lifted weights but all is forgiven when Glen
gives the reason for his physique. I like to fuck a lot, he says. He is described
as working as a foreman and although this requires a lot heavy lifting, this is
nothing compared to the work I put into pumping some young studs butt. …
Sometimes my muscles get me in trouble. Some guys say Im too rough
during sex. I get into it and all the other guys end up all bruised. Like they say,
no pain no gain.51
An article in the same magazine entitled Perfect Husband tells the story of a
young gay mans attraction to another ostensibly married (read: non-gay) man who is
described as so hetero its unbelievable. Jack (the married, heterosexual man) is
described in terms that make it clear that he is a real man in this relationship. We are
told for example, that he cannot cook because that is his wifes duty and forte. The
story describes Jack having anal sex with his young gay male companion. The gay
man is described performing oral sex on his straight friend. Jack is quoted as saying to
such texts will be sufficiently rare that they can be left to the normal criminal law
process (Little Sisters Factum, supra note 16 at para. 74).
This is a statement that, like many of the arguments made during this trial, seems to have been made
with little or no appreciation of the materials in question. Within the context of this case, subsection
163(8) of the Criminal Code, supra note 3, which both defines obscenity and is incorporated by
reference into the Customs Tariff, supra note 10, applies equally to books and visual materials. Butler
did not confine its analysis of harm to visual materials. Also, while the use of real people to make
pornography can, and often does, result in considerable harm to that person, it can also result in harm
to others negatively impacted as a result of the attitudes conveyed by the presentation of another
persons abuse. Similarly, when the abuse, torture, dehumanization, or sexual exploitation of people is
promoted in such a way as to sexualize this abuse and inequality and present it as positive, normal,
even liberating, then abusive and anti-egalitarian behaviour toward others is also promoted. The risk
is not eliminated, however, simply because real people are not used to market the harm promoted.
50 Little Sisters Trial Exhibits, Exhibit number 198, Advocate Men, December 1989, published by
Liberation Publications.
51 Ibid. at 66.
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this man, You were right … Men are better at it than women and a mouth has no sex.
You know I dont feel any guilt at all. Its great.52
[Vol. 49
Another quotation from the same article reads:
Usually Jack brings over a porn flick to watch while I take my sweet time
sucking him off. The tapes always star the same large breasted, incredibly pink
females. I cant see the action very well but I dont mind at all. My taste in porn
is quite different. Jack comes around for my services just often enough that
neither of us becomes bored or frustrated by lack of action. He does get
awfully excited even a bit brutal when he shoots his wad. But I dont mind at
all. Rather the contrary. And he is considerate, always keeping the scotch well
supplied, casually dropping a gift on me now and then. And sometimes stock
market tips, all of which have proved to be good ones. He is always deliciously
clean and good smelling. I am so lucky. He is a wonderful gentleman and a
good provider. I couldnt ask for more. He is the perfect husband.53
Similar themes to those raised in Perfect Husband are emphasized in the next
story in the same magazine. Titled Night Watchman, this story describes a gay man
who has a number of sexual experiences with married men. One quotation from that
article describes one non-gay male encouraging another non-gay male to rape a gay
man. It reads: Now, fuck that hard ass man he told me yanking my cock hard and
placing it against his hole. Shove that big cock up there until he screams. Fuck him
man, you know how bad he wants it. Just do it until he screams and you load him full
of cream.54 The article continues: The mans got a tight, tight pussy man, Phil told
me. He wrenched his hand free and slapped Saul in the back. Lean over and show
this man your pussy ass.55
Another article, The Plan, describes the sexual encounters of a young gay man
in drag. It details how he is sexually used by another older man (who is represented as
not gay). The theme, like those described above, draws a clear distinction between
who is and is not the man in the sexual relationship and outlines what it takes to fit
either the masculine or feminine role. In one quotation, the straight male says to the
ostensibly transsexual male in drag:
What you want is me putting you on your knees. You want me stuffing money
down your bra and fucking your face until cum runs down your chin while you
are creaming your panties. You want fancy motel rooms and big double beds
and my meat rammed up your ass. You want drive in movies with petting and
kissing and my dick in your mouth. You want to be a lady and a tramp right?56
52 Ibid. at 26.
53 Ibid.
54 Ibid. at 39
55 Ibid. at 40.
56 Ibid. at 56.
2004] C. KENDALL GAY MALE PORNOGRAPHY AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE
At one stage, the younger man is forced to have sex in public. When he explains that
he is worried about what people might see and say, the older man says, Fuck em.
Youre my cunt. Not theirs.57
901
Frequently, sexual subordination is enforced through extreme forms of torture and
violence, with masculinity again epitomized and celebrated in men who ridicule and
emasculate others in the name of sexual pleasure. Those who are emasculated in these
materials are often specifically described as gay males, while those who abuse them
and who are held out as sexual role models are described as straight (read: real)
men. Note, for example, MACH 19: A Drummer Super Publication, Volume 19.58
This magazine contains an article entitled Prisoner that details the torture and sexual
mutilation of prisoners of war during a fictional military coup. Many of the prison
officers are described as straight and real men whose masculinity is shown
through the sexual abuse of their prisoners, most of whom are belittled as gays,
queers, sissies, et cetera. The rape and torture of one these men is described as
follows:
The next day they started on him early. Hi, Im Sam, the man poked his head
in the doorway. Yer goin to be seein a lot of me. My friend Barney says ya got
a tight ass, his sadistic sneer spelled trouble. Sam was tall and lanky with a
country-hick shuck of brown hair, large nose and thick lips. He slipped off his
belt. I jes love to beat faggot ass, he smirked, swinging the leather across
Steves chest.
Steve grabbed the strap and pulled, trying to wrest the damn belt from the
bastard. Sam tugged back, grinning, and Steve realized hed made a mistake.
I like faggots with spunk, Sam jerked the belt. Makes me relish puttin em in
thar place, he kneed Steve in the groin.
Steves ears rang. He gasped for breath and tried to scrunch into a tight knot to
ward off the incessant blows. The belt stripped across his arms and side. He
yelped helplessly Please, he cried, and Sam kicked him in the ribs. Steve
slumped over.
Fuckin queer! Sam yelled.
Sam kicked him again. Show me that faggot ass, Sam yelled.59
A similar theme is found in Bear: Masculinity Without the Trappings, Issue 9.60
The emphasis in this magazine is on overt, hyper-masculinity. Like MACH 19, many
of the themes in this magazine mock gay men, describing them in strongly feminine
57 Ibid.
58 Little Sisters Trial Exhibits, Exhibit number 49, MACH 19: A Drummer Super Publication,
Volume 19, January 1990, published by Desmodus [MACH 19, Exhibit number 49].
59 Ibid. at 24.
60 Little Sisters Trial Exhibits, Exhibit number 197, Bear: Masculinity Without the Trappings, Issue
9, 1989, published by COA.
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terms. One article, for example, quotes a trucker who, while bragging about the men
who have serviced him at truck stops, says:
[Vol. 49
truckers sure know about the clean finger nail faggots taking up stalls all day
playing footsies, tossing toilet paper and love notes at any pair of boots along
side. Most truckers ignore them. Some want to kill them and others figure a
blowjob for free is one hell of a lot better than tossing dollars at a whore.61
This publication, like many others, promotes violence and aggressive, non-egalitarian
behaviour. The personals in the classified section at the back of this magazine typify
this inequality in action. The theme throughout is hyper-masculinity achieved at the
expense of someone elses liberty and self-worth. Merit is found in degradation and
rewards are attached to ones ability to use or be used. Equality is found only, if at all,
in reciprocal abuse.
All of these examples provide a sexualized identity politics that relies on the
inequality found between those with power and those without it; between those who
are dominant and those who are submissive; between those who are top and those
who are bottom; between straight men and gay men; between men and women. From
these and other materials, we are told to glorify masculinity and men who meet a
hyper-masculine, muscular ideal. The result is such that men who are more feminine
are degraded as queer and faggots and subjected to degrading and dehumanizing
epithets usually invoked against women, such as bitch, cunt, and whore. These
men are in turn presented as enjoying this degradation. In sum, these materials
reinforce a system in which, as MacKinnon explains, a victim, usually female,
always feminized is actualized.62 Insofar as sex equality is concerned, the result is the
promotion and maintenance of those gendered power inequalities that reject a non-
assimilated gay male sexuality and that ensure that homophobia and sexism remain
intact.63
61 Ibid.
62 MacKinnon, Feminist Theory of State, supra note 33 at 141.
63 On the links between homophobia and sexism and the need to fight both simultaneously, see
Suzanne Pharr, Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism (Berkeley: Chardon Press, 1988); Diana Majury,
Refashioning the Unfashionable: Claiming Lesbian Identities in the Legal Context (1994) 7
C.J.W.L. 286; Lynne Pearlman, Theorizing Lesbian Oppression and the Politics of Outness in the
Case of Waterman v. National Life Assurance: A Beginning in Lesbian Human Rights/Equality
Jurisprudence (1994) 7 C.J.W.L. 454; Andrew Koppelman, Why Discrimination Against Lesbians
and Gay Men is Sex Discrimination (1994) 69 N.Y.U.L. Rev. 197; Andrew Koppelman, The
Miscegenation Analogy: Sodomy Law as Sex Discrimination (1988) 98 Yale L.J. 145; Marie Elana
Peluso, Tempering Title VIIs Straight Arrow Approach: Recognizing and Protecting Gay Victims of
Employment Discrimination (1993) 46 Vand. L. Rev. 1533; Francisco Valdes, Queers, Sissies,
Dykes, and Tomboys: Deconstructing the Conflation of Sex, Gender and Sexual Orientation in
Euro-American Law and Society (1995) 83 Cal. L. Rev. 3; Mary Anne C. Case, Disaggregating
Gender from Sex and Sexual Orientation: The Effeminate Man in the Law and Feminist
Jurisprudence (1995) 105 Yale L.J. 1; Elvia R. Arriola, Gendered Inequality: Lesbians, Gays and
Feminist Legal Theory (1994) 9 Berkeley Womens L.J. 103; Amelia A. Craig, Musing About
903
2004] C. KENDALL GAY MALE PORNOGRAPHY AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE
In examining the exhibits before the Supreme Court of Canada in Little Sisters,
many of which were defended by Little Sisters and their supporters, and all of which
would have been legal had Little Sisters arguments been accepted, we also find
sexually explicit materials that sexualize racist stereotypes and degrade members of
racial minorities for the purpose of sexual arousal. The message conveyed is one in
which gay Asian men, for example, are presented as smaller and more feminine than
their Caucasian counterparts and thus willing to be sexually subordinated by a more
dominant, stereotypically white male. An example of this type of publication is found
in the magazine Oriental Guys (OG). This magazine, as its title indicates, consists
of photographs and written collections of articles about Asian men. A quick review of
the magazine makes it clear, however, that, although about Asian men, the magazine
is directed at the Caucasian gay male market.
OG presents photographs of young Asian men, usually posing by themselves.
These photo spreads are often accompanied by articles with titles like Be My Sushi
Tonight64 or Behind Bars in Thailand,65 which discusses sex for sale in that
countrya country where the sale and sexual use of young boys via sex tourism is
rampant. The magazine does not present more than one young man at any one time.
There is no apparent presentation of violence or physical pain. The magazine does,
however, focus on and sexualize the youth and race of those used to produce this
publication with stories throughout the magazine describing, among other things,
older white men cruising Asian boys and male prostitutes. In this context, young
Asian men are described as pearls of the orient, easy to find, accessible, and
available. Often, the photo spreads of young Asian men, shown face down with
buttocks elevated, are accompanied by news articles that tell the reader how, for
example, to recruit young Balinese men.66 These, in turn, are accompanied by letters
to the editor that detail successful overseas conquests of young Asian men by the
magazines readers.
The entire focus and content of this publication sexualizes racism and sexual
exploitation. This is its intended result, and it is marketed as such. Although degrading
to Asian gay men, the theme promoted also justifies through sex the types of attitudes
and inequalities that make racism and sexism a powerful and interconnected reality.
The white male is described as one who seeks out an inferior Asian other; the young
Asian is described and presented as ready and willing to serve his sexual needs and
Discrimination on Sex and Sexual Orientation as Gender Role Discrimination (1995) 5 S. Cal. Rev.
L. & Womens Stud. 105; James D. Wilets, Conceptualizing Private Violence Against Sexual
Minorities as Gendered Violence: An International and Comparative Law Perspective (1997) 60 Alb.
L. Rev. 989; Patricia A. Cain, Feminist Jurisprudence: Grounding the Theories (1989) 4 Berkeley
Womens L.J. 191.
64 Little Sisters Trial Exhibits, Exhibit number 262, Oriental Guys, Issue 4, Spring 1989 at 10
[Oriental Guys, Exhibit number 262].
65 Little Sisters Trial Exhibits, Exhibit number 6, Oriental Guys, Issue 6, Spring 1990 at 10.
66 See e.g. Oriental Guys, Exhibit number 262, supra note 64.
MCGILL LAW JOURNAL / REVUE DE DROIT DE MCGILL
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fantasies. The white male is superior; the Asian male inferior. The resulting harm is an
affront to all persons seeking equality.
[Vol. 49
In many of these materials, rape is normalized and consent implied. In the story,
Sucks Brother Off Before Wedding from Juice: True Homosexual Experiences, for
example, the writer describes being raped by his older brother when he was eight-
and-a-half:
He crawled between my legs with that fuck pole of his. He located the hole and
started to push. Naturally I felt like he was making a new hole. I must have
been very resilient from a very early age because he did get it in eventually the
whole length. I felt like I truly had a telephone pole up there. The pain was
excruciating but for some reason I enjoyed the thrill of debasement. I knew
instinctively that I was a fucking slut. He fucked for what seemed like hours,
and with the mixed feeling of pain and whoredom I survived.67
Explaining that this formed the basis of his preferred sexual experiences in adulthood,
the reader then details another of his sexual encounters as follows:
Once when I was about 25 I got raped by a powerful young guy that I had
taken home to blow. I always say that was the best sex I ever had. Rape at that
stage of the game was enjoyable. God he was good. He knew just what to do to
a willing asshole that kept saying no. He took me with force and I fought him
right to the bitter end andthank Godhe won out. When he got through with
my asshole I knew I had had it. The bastard never came back though.68
The identity sold in these materials is one in which violence by one man against
another man or men is presented as sexual for both the persons involved and the
consumer of these materials. Sexualized violence is a common theme. Note, for
example, the book Entertainment for a Master, specifically defended by Little Sisters,
in which reciprocal battery, pain, and abuse are promoted as a form of equality:
Then I struck out at him. The leather was longer than a belt would have been. It
allowed me to use it on the whole of both his cheeks. It left one broad stripe of
red across the white expanse of muscle. He reared up. No amount of
preparation would have steeled him so well that he wouldnt scream at the
shock of the whipping. When, he moved, he jerked the rawhide holding his
balls to Glen and the chains that joined the nipple, forcing his lover to
experience a jolt of pain himself.69
Similarly, the magazine Dungeon MasterThe Male S/M Publication,70 that would
have been freely imported into Canada had Little Sisters had its way, presents men
torturing other men in sexually explicit ways with hot wax, heat, and fire while
67 Little Sisters Trial Exhibits, Exhibit number 213, Juice: True Homosexual Experiences, Volume
5, 1984.
68 Ibid.
69 Little Sisters Trial Exhibits, Exhibit number 19, Entertainment for a Master, by John Preston,
1986.
70 Little Sister Trial Exhibits, Exhibit number 48, Dungeon Master: The Male SM Publication, No.
39, 1990, published by Desmodus [Dungeon Master, Exhibit number 48].
905
2004] C. KENDALL GAY MALE PORNOGRAPHY AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE
portraying this abuse as sexually arousing for the abusers, the persons injured, and,
again, for the consumer. The magazine Mr. S/M 6571 presents photographs of men
being defecated on and who derive pleasure from eating and drinking excrement. The
film Headlights and Hard Bodies72 includes footage of men sexually using other men
who are being pulled by neck chains, hit and whipped while tied to poles, penetrated
by large objects, and/or subjected to clamping, biting, and pulling of their nipples and
genitals. Men presented as slaves are shown in considerable pain but finding sexual
enjoyment from the abuse inflicted on them by others. Those released from bondage
kiss the man or men who beat them and thank them for putting them in their place
with whips and verbal degradation. MACH magazine,73 in turn, glorifies sexually
explicit torture in a military setting while detailing the kidnapping, torture, and sexual
mutilation of prisoners of war. In a photograph in the same magazine, two young men
are shown confined in a cage. One, face down and bent over, is being slapped by an
older man in a Nazi military uniform. Another is chained and hung in stirrups with a
hand shoved down his throat.
What one sees in these and other examples of gay male pornography is an almost
pervasive glorification of the idealized masculine/male icon. Cops, truckers, cowboys,
bikers, and Nazis are eroticized; racial stereotypes are sexualized and perpetuated;
muscles, good-looks, and youth are glorified; and ostensibly straight (or at least
straight acting) men beat, rape, and/or humiliate descriptively (frequently
stereotypical) gay men. Sadism, bondage, water sports, fisting, bootlicking, piercing,
bestiality, slapping, whipping, incest, branding, burning with cigarettes, torture (of the
genitals and nipples with hot wax, clamps, and the like), child sexual abuse, rape, and
prison rape are presented as erotic, stimulating, and pleasurable. In most, if not all of
these materials, it is the white, physically more powerful, more dominant male who is
romanticized and afforded role model status. In those scenarios where male sexual
partners take turns being the top, the characteristics of dominance and non-
mutuality remain central to the sexual act. In those photos where men are alone,
positioned, and posed, humanity is removed and objectified. As Men Against Rape
and Pornography, a US activist group, accurately explains, the man exposed becomes
non-human, an object waiting for another to do something to him or wanting to do
something to another because he has what it takes to do so. The message conveyed is
that some people want and deserve to have sex forced on them. They both solicit and
deserve this treatment.74 In all cases, the result is a sexuality that is depicted as
hierarchical and rarely compassionate, mutual, or equal. This conclusion was first put
forward by LEAF in its submission to the Supreme Court in Butler in 1991.
Specifically, in summarizing the materials before the Court in that case, LEAF argued:
71 Little Sister Trial Exhibits, Exhibit number 216, Mr. S/M 65.
72 Little Sister Trial Exhibits, Exhibit number 192, Film: Headlights and Hard Bodies, produced by
Zeus Video.
73 MACH 19, Exhibit number 49, supra note 58.
74 See Men Against Rape and Pornography (MARAP), Looking at Gay Porn (1993), available
from MARAP, P.O. Box 8181, Pittsburgh, PA, 1517.
906
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A small number of the subject materials present men engaging in sexual
aggression against other men, analogous to the ways women are treated in the
materials described above. Men are slapped with belts. A man is anally
penetrated with a rifle. Men are presented as being raped. Mens genitals are
bound. They are in dog collars and in chains. Men lick other mens anuses and
are forced to lick urinals during anal intercourse. Men are presented as gagging
on penises down their throats. Men urinate on men and ejaculate into their
mouths. Boys are presented with genitals exposed, surrounded by toys.75
These materials lead LEAF to conclude that
[i]ndividual men are also harmed by pornography. … LEAF submits that much
of the subject of pornography of men for men, in addition to abusing some men
in the ways that it is more common to abuse women through sex, arguably
contributes to abuse and homophobia as it normalizes male sexual aggression
generally.76
An overview of the materials, available since Butler was first heard, reveals that little
has changed, other than perhaps LEAFs somewhat disappointing decision to defend
the very materials it opposed in Butler as sexist, misogynist, and racist.77
The materials summarized here, many of which were defended in Little Sisters as
free of harm and central to gay liberation, and all of which would have been legal had
Little Sisters won, provide but a small overview of the content of the types of
pornography available to and consumed by gay men. They are, however, indicative of
what is available and, if Little Sisters, and those who intervened in the case on their
behalf, prove successful in their bid to throw out the Supreme Court of Canadas
75 LEAF Butler Factum, supra note 5 at para. 5.
76 Ibid. at para. 48.
77 It should be noted that, despite the claims of some of the litigants in Little Sisters, some of the
materials seized from Donald Butlers store were magazines and videos intended for sale to gay men.
LEAF was widely (and unfairly) criticized in the gay community for using them as part of its
argument before the Court in Butler.
An overview of LEAFs strategy and a response to the claim that the group appealed to judicial
homophobia in order to win the case is found in Busby, supra note 32. With respect to the gay male
pornography relevant to the Butler case, Busby notes that, because the analysis LEAF offered was
one based on equality (a point that the Court accepted), to omit any discussion of gay pornography
would have been to omit a necessary discussion of the role these materials have, not only on gay
communities, but also within a broader social context. An analysis of the materials before the court
more than justifies this stance. As Busby explains:
Some of the seized materials in Butler involved sex between men, and some of these
materials were extremely violent. The depictions included gay bashing, penetration
with a rifle, gang rape scenes, and prison rape scenes. None of the materials portrayed
safe sex. One magazine featured a nude teenage boy surrounded by childrens toys
(ibid. at 179).
Busbys justification is well-founded. As such, one is left to query why LEAF, nine years later in the
Little Sisters case, found itself able to justify a litigation strategy which, if accepted, would have
allowed the unlimited circulation throughout Canada of the very materials that the group earlier
criticized as a violation of societys sex equality interest.
2004] C. KENDALL GAY MALE PORNOGRAPHY AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE
Butler-based sex equality analysis of pornographic harm, would be readily available
throughout Canada.
907
These materials typify the identity that pro-pornography litigants, academics, and
activists defend when they seek to strike down anti-pornography legislative regimes
on the basis that gay male pornography is co-extensive with gay male identity.78 In the
name of liberation and equality, these pro-pornography supporters advocate the
dissemination of a form of expression that plainly creates, packages, and resells a
sexuality that epitomizes inequality: exploitation and degradation of others;
assertiveness linked with aggression, strength equated with violence, physical power,
and the right to overpower; intimidation, control of others, lack of mutuality and
disrespect, humour found in the sexual debasement of another, and being hurt
presented as pleasurable; violating and being violated presented as identity politics;
and aggressive, non-consensual behaviour advanced as normal and sexually promoted
as liberating. In sum, gay male pornography merges with an identity politics that
personifies all that is masculine, hence gender male, and that rejects all that is non-
masculine, feminized, and hence gender femalean identity through which, as
Andrea Dworkin explains, gay men are not only penetrated like women, but are
expected to lust after pain and degradation like women are thought to under male
dominance.79
By referring to the presentation of gay men as feminized and therefore
female, I am not suggesting that gay men and women are equally oppressed. Nor
am I suggesting that the harms of gay porn are exactly the same as those that result
from the production and sale of heterosexual pornography. As Andrea Dworkin
explains, devalued males can often change status, escape; women and girls
cannot.80 What I am saying, however, is that to the extent that some gay men reject
socially defined male behaviour and express a sexuality and politics that has the
potential to subvert male gender supremacy, their behaviour is deemed unacceptable
and is devalued as such. The gay male who does so is, as John Stoltenberg explains,
stigmatized because he is perceived to participate in the degraded status of the
female.81 Once smeared with female status, the gay male assumes a position
inferior to those who, not feminized, reap the benefits of male-female polarity.82
Feminized men thus assume an inferior position in a gendered power hierarchy, and
herein lies one of the very real harms of the gay porn defended in Little Sisters: it tells
gay men that in order to become more valued, they must become more male, less
78 On gay male pornography as gay male identity, see, in addition to the pro-pornography authors
and arguments noted throughout this paper, Carl Stychin, Exploring the Limits: Feminism and the
Legal Regulation of Pornography (1992) 16 Vt. L. Rev. 857; Jeffrey G. Sherman, Love Speech:
The Social Utility of Pornography (1995) 47 Stan. L. Rev. 661; John R. Burger, One-Handed
Histories: The Eroto-Politics of Gay Male Video Pornography (New York: Haworth Press, 1995).
79 Dworkin, Women Hating, supra note 33 at 89.
80 Dworkin, Men Possessing Women, supra note 22 at 61.
81 Stoltenberg, Pro-Pornography Movement, supra note 6 at 250.
82 Ibid. at 251.
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female. It encourages them to do what they can do: change status. In doing so,
gay male pornography, like all things homophobic, acts as a weapon of sexism.
[Vol. 49
III. But Is It Harmful?
The courts 1992 Butler decision has stuck us with the
burden of common law that says images lead to action and
that violent images lead to violent actionusually by
straight men against straight women.
Perhaps the best (but most unlikely) argument is that sex
between men, and sex between womenand all the kinky
representations of it we can musteris indeed an exception.
Nobody wants to be a separatist, but Butler leaves little
room. For gay men and lesbians, sexual expression takes
place in a self-contained, idyllic universe that has little effect
on how women are treated in society.
In homo couplings, societal inequalities between the
genders dont come into play. There is more freedom in
queer relationships, less worry about power going awry; the
Supreme Court needs to acknowledge it.83
The summary of the content of gay male pornography provided in this paper is
indicative of what gay male pornography is. Although content and presentation vary
in degree and explicitness from one medium to another, what one gets from the above
is an overview of what gay male pornography says and does. In arguing, as they did
before the Supreme Court of Canada, that gay male pornography should be exempt
from the sex equality standard set by the Court in Butler, Little Sisters Bookstore and
others defended, or would have allowed, the production and distribution of the same
kinds of pornography described in the preceding section, and they defended it on the
grounds that it expressed gay male identityan identity which equals, promotes,
encourages, hence is violence, cruelty, degradation, exploitation, assertiveness linked
with aggression, strength equated with violence, physical power and the right to
overpower, intimidation, control of others, lack of mutuality and disrespect, being hurt
presented as pleasurable, violating and being violated presented as identity politics,
and aggressive, non-consensual behaviour advanced as normal, liberating, and
sexually promoted as such.
In sum, gay male pornography encourages all that is socially defined as
masculinity (male) and rejects that which is non-masculine (female). Like
heterosexual pornography, it thus glorifies those in our society who have always had
the most power and who have always benefited from dominance and social
inequalitywhite, able-bodied, middle-class, straight men. Like homophobia, it
83 Paul Gallant, We Need a Porn Plot Twist: I Thought Pro-Sex Feminists Had Won Editorial,
Xtra! Magazine (13 January 2000) 15.
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silences those who either refuse or who are excluded from being able to so benefit.
The result for society, once accepted, is a sexual politics based on a male-female
dichotomyin essence, a remarkably accurate description of what it takes to get and
maintain both power and heterosexual male privilege.
909
Having looked at what gay male pornography is and what it says, and given its
similarities with heterosexual pornography, it requires considerable self-denial for gay
men to argue that gay pornography is not harmful in much the same way that other
forms of pornography are harmful. Indeed, in that its message is that manliness is the
only real virtue [and] other values are contemptible,84 one must ask whether this gay
male identity will result in liberation or whether, in the name of liberation, we are
promoting homophobic, and therefore sexist, politics that result in individual and
systemic harms. In Little Sisters, the Supreme Court of Canada accepted that harm
would result. The remainder of this paper offers support for this finding.
A. Gay Male Rape
One of the arguments advanced against the production and distribution of
heterosexual pornography is that it makes men more tolerant of sex as violence,
resulting in higher rates of sexual assault and abuse against women. Pornography
does much more than interact with sexual fantasies; it is not purely ideational, but
rather shapes and produces actual sexual practices. As the brief analysis of the
attitudes of and about men who rape men and who are raped by men below indicates,
the risk of harm resulting from gay male pornography, like the harms that result from
heterosexual pornography, is real. This is particularly true given what gender
inequality, now sexualized, has come to mean socially and the effect of sex role
stereotypes on gay men in particular. Specifically, if we look at what rape is, what it is
about, and what it says about male aggression generally, it does not require much to at
least infer that any expressive medium that eroticizes male sexuality as dominance,
inequality, abuse, and hierarchy might result in physical and psychological harm to
others.
In his insightful and much needed book on male rape, Michael Scarce explains
that [a]lthough it remains uncertain, evidence suggests gay men are more likely to be
raped than straight men. Despite the fact that heterosexual men far outnumber gay
men in sheer masses, gay men seem to be more at risk, on average, than their
heterosexual counterparts.85 In a 1989 study by psychologist Caroline Waterman at
84 Seymour Kleinberg, The New Masculinity of Gay Men, and Beyond in Michael Kaufman, ed.,
Beyond Patriarchy: Essays by Men on Pleasure, Power, and Change (Toronto: Oxford University
Press, 1987) 120 at 123.
85 Scarce, Male on Male Rape, supra note 20 at 65. See also Michael Scarce, The Reality of Male
Rape (Winter 1993) National Coalition Against Sexual Assault J. 7; Michael Scarce, Same-Sex
Rape of Male College Students (1997) 45:4 J. Am. C. Health 171; Michael Scarce, Harbinger of
Plague: A Bad Case of Gay Bowel Syndrome (1997) 34:2 J. Homosexuality 1.
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the University of Albany, twelve per cent of thirty-four men in gay relationships
reported being victims of forced sex by their current or most recent partner.86
Similarly, in another study conducted the following year, researchers found that gay
college students reported significantly higher
lifetime prevalence of sexual
victimization than did heterosexual men participating in the same study.87 Finally, in a
study of 930 gay men living in England and Wales, 27.6 per cent reported they had
been sexually assaulted at some point in their lives.88
[Vol. 49
It is clear that rape is a gay male issue and one that must be taken seriously.
Although this might seem to some like a restatement of the obvious, what becomes
apparent from a reading of the testimonies offered in Scarces book is that the horrors
experienced by some gay men risk being dismissed as mere sexual theatre by those
who defend pornography as harm-free. This risk increases so long as gay men
sexualize inequality and powerlessness. By sexualizing masculinity and femininity
through pornography, gay men do exactly this by making the masculine-feminine
interaction sexy to gay men. Consuming pornography is done sexually, experienced
sexually, as sexuality, the practices of which are virtually identical to the top-bottom
sexuality of male dominance. It is the sexuality of male dominance that gay male
pornography promotes and eroticizes, and the result is male dominance in action with
all the harms, including rape, that flow from and sustain it. In his work, for example,
Scarce provides an account of one man, Darren, who was abducted by two men in
the car park outside his gym. The men held a gun to Darrens head and forced him
into their van, handcuffed him, and drove him to a house where they proceeded to
sexually humiliate, abuse, and ultimately, rape him. His ordeal says much about
power, abuse, and the effect of sexualized gender dichotomies in his life and in the
lives of his attackers. That he continues to survive is miraculous. That he is willing to
talk about his ordeal in order to assist others shows an inner strength perhaps known
only by those who have survived similar abuse. As such, his words deserve repeating
and all gay men would do well to think critically about the tortuous events he
describes:
They took me down to the basement, and they had a platform in the center of
the room. They made me stand up on it, my hands still cuffed behind me. They
walked around and looked at me and told me they were going to uncuff my
hands. At this point they both had guns, and one of the guys uncuffed my
hands. They told me to pull off my gym shorts and I did. They made me pull
my T-shirt back behind my neck. All I had on was gym shoes, socks, and a jock
strap. They made me get into different poses and positions for them for a long
86 Caroline K. Waterman, Lori J. Dawson & Michael D. Bologna, Sexual Coercion in Gay Male
and Lesbian Relationships: Predictors and Implications for Support Services (1989) 26:1 Sex Res.
118.
87 See David F. Duncan, Prevalence of Sexual Assault Victimization Among Heterosexual and
Gay/Lesbian Students (1990) 66 Psychol. Rep. 65 at 66.
88 See Ford C.I. Hickson et al., Gay Men as Victims of Nonconsensual Sex (1994) 23 Archives of
Sexual Behav. 281.
2004] C. KENDALL GAY MALE PORNOGRAPHY AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE
911
time. They held the guns on me the whole time. I was really scared because I
was afraid the guns might even go off accidentally. I kept thinking I didnt
know what they were going to do to me, that they might cut me up or mutilate
me. They were touching themselves with one hand, masturbating while they
were watching me.
One of the guys started talking about how he was going to fuck my butt. They
put me over a wooden sawhorse and made me lie across it. They pulled my
jockstrap off and then tied my hands and legs to it so I was over it. Then they
both took turns raping me. That went on for a long, long time, an hour and a
half or so.
They seemed angry when they were fucking me because they did it so hard,
with so much force. Earlier when they were using the switch on me, it was like
they were trying to get every piece of anger or rage they had out on me. The
rest of the time they were more sarcastic or condescending, more trying to
humiliate or degrade me than angry.89
Darrens experience is not pornography. After reviewing the materials outlined above,
however, it is clear that it could be. From an equality perspective, if this description of
a rape appeared in a gay male pornography magazine and was sold and used as sexual
practice, it would be pornography, particularly as it encourages the sexualization of
sexual assault. And to the extent that individuals use pornography and then act out the
kinds of abusive scenarios portrayed, their victims should be taken seriously when
they question the right of those who produced and published such materials to do
so.
Indeed, if the above passages had appeared in the previous section of this paper,
the reader could be forgiven for mistaking Darrens horror for the pleasure
defended as sexuality and liberation in quite a few of the exhibits defended in the
Little Sisters trial: a young, attractive, physically fit male is abducted in a car park. His
captors, threatening to kill him and laughing at his fear, drive him to their rape
house. They handcuff him, make him perform and masturbate while watching him.
Stripping him naked, they objectify his body, sexualize his fear, and act out their most
vivid pornographic fantasies. Handcuffed, the young man is whipped with switches,
then tied to a sawhorse where he is brutally raped. Degraded and ridiculed
throughout, he is made to service men who, while simultaneously sexualizing and
condemning his sexuality, find validation by inflicting abuse as a means of
reaffirming their masculinity through violence, humiliation, and the stripping away of
another mans manhood.
Darrens experience, like that of many men who have been raped, says a great
deal about the dangers inherent in a society that sexualizes inequality. What his story
89 Scarce, Male on Male Rape, supra note 20 at 128-30. See also Fred Pelka, Raped: A Male
Survivor Breaks His Silence in Patricia Searles & Ronald J. Berger, eds., Rape and Society:
Readings on the Problem of Sexual Assault (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995) 250.
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epitomizes is misogyny gone mad. Feminizing him in order to both condemn and use
him as an unequal, while at the same time reasserting their own masculinity by acting
out sexualized violence, these men play out the sexual logic of male dominance. By
degrading Darren and mocking him sexually for going to gyms (for daring to be more
masculine than thema masculinity that they eroticize), these men, through violence,
dehumanization, and rape, successfully put Darren back in his place, thereby
empowering themselves as men. By feminizing and stripping Darren of his manhood,
they prop up their own. Their actions typify homophobia and self-hate in action,
sexism made sexy.
These conclusions are further supported by the work of those who have detailed
those factors that motivate the rapist. In a 1980 study on men who rape men, for
example, Groth and Burgess90 outline the following motivating factors for men
convicted of raping other men:
1. Conquest and control. All assaults served as an expression of power and
mastery on the part of the offender. …
2. Revenge and retaliation. In some cases of male rape, the offense is activated
by the assailants anger toward his victim and is regarded by him as some
form of retaliation. …
3. Sadism and degradation. For some assailants, aggression itself becomes
eroticized, and they find excitement in the sexual abuse and degradation of
their victim. …
4. Conflict and counteraction. Another component in some male rapes is the
assailants attempt to punish the victim as a way of dealing with his
unresolved and conflicting sexual interests. … 91
In the same study, the authors describe the views of one man detailing his attitude
toward his victim as follows: I had the guy so frightened I could have made him do
90 A. Nicholas Groth & Ann Wolbert Burgess, Male Rape: Offenders and Victims (1980) 137 Am.
J. Psychiatry 806. It is not my purpose here to offer a detailed analysis of male rape. This has been
done elsewhere, most recently by Scarce, ibid. See also Arthur Kaufman et al., Male Rape Victims:
Noninstitutionalized Assault (1980) 137 Am. J. Psychiatry 221; Deryck Calderwood, The Male
Rape Victim (1987) 7 Med. Aspects Hum. Sexuality 53; Gillian C. Mezey & Michael B. King, Male
Victims of Sexual Assault (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Peter F. Goyer & Henry C.
Eddleman, Same-Sex Rape of Nonincarcerated Men (1984) 141 Am. J. Psychiatry 576.
91 Groth & Burgess, ibid. at 808. As Richie McMullen further notes:
[I]n many cases, it is the feared or actual loss of positive power and aggression which
motivates the offender to behave negatively. It is as though the offender is over
compensating for any other potential hurts to his otherwise already fragile masculinity.
Being unable to find the resources in himself to deal with feared or actual loss, he must
act out or externalise his fears in such a way as to be seen to be more dominant, more
masculine … (Male Rape: Breaking the Silence on the Last Taboo (London: GMP,
1990) at 26).
2004] C. KENDALL GAY MALE PORNOGRAPHY AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE
anything I wanted. I didnt have an erection. I wasnt really interested in sex. I felt
powerful, and hurting him excited me. Making him suck me was more to degrade him
than for my physical satisfaction.92
913
Similarly, in analyzing the rape of men by men in prisons, Susan Brownmiller
notes that to talk of rape as violence only, without acknowledging the extent to which
that violence is gendered, risks overlooking the extent to which the sex in the
expression sex crime is very much socially constructed and enforced by sexism and
the homophobic desire for male supremacy. Within the context of gay male
pornography, any analysis that omits gender also risks valorizing, sexualizing, and,
thus, normalizing violence. Brownmiller notes, for example, that prison rape can be
seen as an acting out of power roles within an all-male, authoritarian environment in
which the weaker, younger inmate … is forced to play the role that in the outside
world is assigned to women.93 As MacKinnon explains, [T]his lowers the victims
status, making him inferior as a man by social standards. For a man to be sexually
attacked, by placing him in a womans role, demeans his masculinity; he loses it, so to
speak … What he loses, he loses through gender, as a man.94 To this, one would only
add that a male who perpetuates acts of sexual violence against other men seeks to
confirm his status as a real man and, thus, to reaffirm his masculinity. What he
maintains or gains, he gains through gender, as a man. Hence, when a man sexually
abuses another man, his actions are gender-based, thus sexual. Male domination of
some men over other men is therefore part of the social system of gender whereby
men dominate women and through which straight men dominate gay men. Hence,
male rape, like anti-gay violence generally, is also a weapon of sexism, finding its
source in the social institutions that prop up masculinity and, in so doing, suppress
any sexual expression that threatens it. As McMullen concludes:
The general attitudes inherent in this rapists words remind me so much of
various school bullies from my own childhood. How males see themselves as
male, and how that perception is enabled in the family, schools and other
institutions, is central to any understanding of male rape. Male upon male
bullying in schools is all too often positively sanctioned and treated by both
parents and teachers as normal behaviour. It is, of course, not right for one
person to bully another. How often one hears the unqualified male-propelled
phrase boys will be boys used to justify such bullying. Undefined and
therefore confused notions of what it means to be a masculine, powerful,
dominant man echo through our culture like football chants, arbitrary and self-
congratulatory.95
92 Groth & Burgess, ibid.
93 Brownmiller, supra note 23 at 258. See also Mary Willcox, The Sexually Assaulted Prisoner
(1986) 12 New Eng. J. Crim. & Civ. Confinement 349; Peter Nacci & Thomas Kane, The Incidence
of Sex and Sexual Aggression in Federal Prisons (1984) 48 Fed. Probation 46; David Heilpern, Fear
or Favour: Sexual Assault of Young Prisoners (Lismore, N.S.W., Aust.: Southern Cross Press, 1998).
94 MacKinnon, Amici Curiae Brief, supra note 33 at 10.
95 McMullen, supra note 91 at 27.
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Some of the work outlined above is not specific to gay men who rape gay men.
This does not, however, make their risk of being raped any less real. Indeed, given
these findings, gay men might well discourage, rather than sexualize, the harms
documented. Unfortunately, gay men are not discouraging them. And so I ask: in
examining what gay male pornography is, should we not acknowledge that harm is at
least possible given that this medium is intended for an audience of gay men who are
socially feminized, told they are inferior, and, as such, likely to take quite seriously
the message conveyed in a medium that fuses dominance with sexuality and promotes
male empowerment by dictating that power is to be found in a sexuality in which he
who dominates is powerful while he who succumbs deserves to be dominated?
Should we not be concerned that gay male pornography represents sexuality generally
and it is this sexuality, the sexuality of male dominance, that is at the root of all that is
anti-woman and anti-gay, but pro-male? Gay male pornography encourages this
hierarchy, from which harm seems inevitable.
Consider, for example, the following images and stories contained in some of the
gay male pornography magazines at issue in the Little Sisters case. The first is of a
young office worker, dressed in suit and tie, who leaves his office and enters his car.
From behind he feels a knife. In his rear-view mirror he sees two men, both dressed in
leather, army boots, and studded jackets. He is urinated on, raped orally and anally,
but described throughout as enjoying it and anxious for more. The story reads:
Hands on my waist he rammed, slamming the unlubricated head and the whole
dry shaft deep inside me. It hurt like hell. I moaned … in agony. It was tearing
me apart like a chisel in the crack of a stone. I felt myself splitting into two
halves and I could do nothing to stop it and I felt my cock stiffen in response.
He was ramming into me now like a man possessed, sliding in and out without
attention to my screams of pain. It felt like a goddamned log, bark and all,
being slid up my crack. I heard his friend screaming, fuck him, fuck the hell
out of him and I loved it.96
In another magazine exhibit, a slave training manual teaches the reader the proper
etiquette for training a slave over the phone. It reads:
Whenever he phones his Master, the slave should be naked, kneeling and
wearing tit clamps. When phoned by his Master, the slave should always
immediately drop to his knees and continue the call, looking downwards and
with his spare hand behind his back. Alternatively, the slave can be taught that
when his Master phones, the slave should always, ring off, strip naked except
for tit ring and then phone his Master back from a kneeling position of course.
The Master should always stand up when making telephone calls to his slave.
A curious fact acknowledged by business psychologists is that standing up
while conducting a phone conversation increases the apparent authority of the
speaker, particularly if the receiver is not standing up. Conversely, kneeling
96 MACH 19, Exhibit number 49, supra note 58.
2004] C. KENDALL GAY MALE PORNOGRAPHY AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE
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will increase the apparent servility of the speaker. When one party stands and
the other kneels, the Master servant relationship is powerfully enforced.97
As the activist group Men Against Rape and Pornography explains, this type of
material provides a users manual on how to get and keep power through sex and
sexualitytransmitting messages that, given the level of anti-gay violence within the
community, can only hinder the call for equality:
Although unrecognized and hidden well within our community, rape is
very common. Typically, as with male-female rape, the rape is likely to happen
on a date or other situation where the rapist and victim already know each
other. … One man is at another mans apartment and he is pressured or forced to
have sex. This is rape. One man tries to talk his partner into trying a new
position he has seen in porn. The partner says no because of the pain; the first
man continues anyway against his partners will. This is rape. One man insists
on tying another man to the bedpost and says that he needs to do this in order
to really get off. He saw this done to someone else in a video. This is rape. It
is about power, domination, force, and control over another person, which has
been sexualized.98
Building on this analysis, it is also clear that a number of myths about male rape
are reinforced through gay male pornography. These myths, once sexualized, both
encourage and undermine attempts to prevent rape. Central in this regard is the myth
that no means yes. The effects of this stereotype are of particular concern when it
is a gay man who says no because, according to this myth (propagated through
pornography), gay men actually enjoy rape. According to this stereotype, rape is sex
so all sex is therefore consensual and enjoyable.99 Another myth assumes that men are
entitled to sex with their partners whenever they want, even to the extent their
partners refuse. Any guilt attached to non-consensual sex is mitigated by the myth that
ejaculation or the appearance of sexual arousal during sex connotes enjoyment and
desire and cannot, therefore, constitute rape. This myth is perpetuated despite the fact
that the opposite attribution is often warranted. As Scarce notes, an erection should
not be equated with consent, particularly if an erection and subsequent ejaculation is
caused by the adrenaline build up expected in situations of intense fear or a belief that
ejaculating will signify and lead to an end of the assault.100
If we look at the messages conveyed in gay male pornography and compare them
to reports of the actual experiences of rapists and rape victims, it becomes evident that
gay male pornography promotes a sexuality that encourages gay males to covet a
97 Dungeon Master, Exhibit number 48, supra note 70 at 13.
98 Men Against Rape and Pornography, supra note 74.
99 Greater analysis of the rape myths outlined here is given in Allson Salmon, Sharon Isle & Trevor
Morton, Sexual Assault in the Gay and Lesbian Community West Side Observer [of Perth, Western
Australia] (October 1994) 11.
100 Scarce, Male on Male Rape, supra note 20 at 61. See also D.E. Redmond, T.R. Kosten & M.F.
Reiser, Spontaneous Ejaculation Associated With Anxiety: Psychopathological Considerations
(1983) 140 Am. J. Psychiatry 1163.
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form of social powerone that fundamentally depends on the violent degradation of
otherstraditionally denied to them. By sexualizing degradation, gay male
pornographyincluding the materials that gay rights advocates would have us defend
as non-harmfulincreases the probability that consumption of these materials will
culminate in rape. Gay male pornography also teaches the rapist that other men enjoy
the violation through which he can seek empowermentthat he will both find and
deliver pleasure through acts of violence committed against another. Rape,
normalized though sex, becomes gay sex and in so doing, ensures that gay sex does
little more than prop up the sexual hierarchies that make homophobia and sexism sexy
and the cornerstone of inequality on the basis of sex. Finally, gay male pornography,
produced by and sold to a community in which sexual violence is common, continues
to promote materials that tell those who have been raped that they should enjoy and
want this abuse. When rape is equated with sex and subsequently with gay male
identity, equality (both within the gay community and in society generally) is not
afforded a meaningful role to play.
B. Gay Male Domestic Violence
Similar concerns arise when we analyze the harms resulting from gay male
domestic violence. In a study of 105 women staying in battered womens shelters in
Ontario, twenty-five per cent of the women interviewed reported being forced to
perform acts that their partners had seen in pornography. Although similar statistics
have not been recorded within the gay male context (in part because no one has yet
seen fit to offer safe shelters for male victims of violence, making it rather difficult for
these men to talk safely about their experiences), we do know that there exists a
massive consumption rate of gay pornography in our community.
Worldwide, sales of gay pornography represent a disproportionately high
percentage of the pornography market.101 In an informal US survey conducted in
101 See Ronald Weitzer, Sex for Sale: Prostitution, Pornography, and the Sex Industry (New York:
Routledge, 2000) at 49. Pornography is big business and gay male pornography sales are growing at a
phenomenal rate. Mickey Skee reports that the industry as a whole raked in approximately US $2.5
billion. Of that, it is estimated that one-third to one-half of all profits were from the sale and rental of
gay male video pornography through mail order services and video stores. See Mickey Skee, Tricks
of the Trade Frontiers Magazine (22 August 1997) at 43. See also Will Harris, Porn Again
Campaign Magazine (December 1993) 47 at 48. An excellent overview of the economics of the
pornography industry is provided in Ann Russo, Feminists Confront Pornographys Subordinating
Practices: Politics and Strategies for Change in Dines et al., Production and Consumption of
Inequality, supra note 22. See also Catherine Itzin, Entertainment for Men: What It Is and What It
Means in Itzin, supra note 22 at 27-53. This may in fact be an understatement. As columnist Will
Harris explains within the context of the Australian market (a market comparable to that found in
Canada),
today the Californian group sex scenes by the pool are only a fraction of the diversity
of the mostly US-produced gay porn videos on the market. Now there are literally
hundreds of titles on the shelves of the gay pornography outlets, catering to just about
917
2004] C. KENDALL GAY MALE PORNOGRAPHY AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE
1979, half of the 1,038 gay men surveyed stated that they used pornography for
masturbation. In 1997, more than half of the gay men who participated in a Frontiers
Magazine survey stated that they used pornography videos as a prelude to sex.102
These surveys did not take account of the amount of pornography being accessed on
the Internetan amount that cannot be discounted. It is believed the pornography
industry has grown during the last twenty-five years from approximately US $2
billion in total annual revenue to at least US $10 billion; some go so far as to argue
that this industry may now be worth as much as US $20 billion. Of that total, adult
Web sites contribute an estimated US $1 to $2 billion a year.103 Applying the surveys
conducted thus far on gay male pornography use, there is little reason to believe that,
of this amount, gay male use of pornography available on the Internet is not as
significant as that of heterosexual men.
Examined within both the context of gay male domestic violence and the
overview of pornographic content thus far provided, these figures are alarming. A
1991 study on gay male domestic violence, for example, reported that there are
350,000 to 650,000 victims of gay male domestic violence in the United States each
year.104 These statistics establish gay male domestic violence as the third largest health
problem facing gay men in the United States today.105 Insofar as an analysis of gay
male pornography is concerned, the studys most revealing findings pertain to the
every known sexual proclivity. Canberra-based Champions Video has more than 800
titles on its shelves, selling videos on group sex, nude wrestling, foot fetishes, bondage
and S & M (Harris, ibid.).
When you take into account the fact most people are probably unwilling to tell research companies
how much they spent on foot fetishes etc. in the last financial year, the total sale estimates are
probably conservative (Harris, ibid.). Indeed, the average number of entries at the Gay Video Guide
Erotic Video Awards exceeds 500 videos every year and Adult Video News reviews as many as 400
gay, bisexual, and transsexual videos each year. Add to this the sale of magazine and paperback
products like those in issue in Little Sisters and the downloading and sale of gay pornography from
the Internet, and what emerges is the picture of a remarkably lucrative business in which what you
want is quite literally what you get.
102 See Skee, ibid. at 62.
103 See Frederick S. Lane III, Obscene Profits: The Entrepreneurs of Pornography in the Cyber Age
(New York: Routledge, 2000) at xiv-xv. See also MacKinnon, Sex Equality, supra note 3 at 1509;
Marti Rimm, Marketing Pornography on the Information Superhighway (1995) 83 Geo. L.J. 1849.
104 Island & Letellier, supra note 18. For more information on gay male domestic abuse, see also
Waterman, Dawson & Bologna, supra note 86; Battered Lovers The Advocate (4 March 1986) at
42-45; H. Donat, Domestic Violence Strikes Gay Relationships Sentinel (2 August 1990) at 5;
Pierce Reed, Naming and Confronting Gay Male Battering Gay Community News (16-22 April
1989); T. Kingston, Breaking the Silence: Gay Domestic Violence Coming Up! (February 1989) at
10-11.
105 As Island and Letellier explain:
Domestic violence is a big problem for Americas 9.5 million adult gay men. We
estimate that as many as 500,000 gay men are victims, and, of course, equal numbers
are also perpetrators. Thus, only substance abuse and AIDS adversely affect more gay
men, making domestic violence the third largest health problem facing gay men today
(Island & Letellier, ibid. at 1).
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characteristics of abusers, including how abusers perceive themselves and why. The
conclusions reached say a great deal about any medium that reinforces the idea that
masculinity is equated with dominance, while feminized non-masculinity is equated
with subordination.
[Vol. 49
Gay men who batter and abuse their partners have specific ideas about
masculinity and what it means to be male. This is in part a reaction to a complete
lack of positive gay role models, a homophobic environment in which being gay
means being non-masculine, and the internalization of social rejection and self-
hate.106 Gay men, growing up in a world with little or no positive reinforcement, are
106 It is worth noting that much of the literature draws out the link between violence and perceived
gender violations or the need to prove gender adequacy and masculine conformity. Herek, for
example, notes that the ideological link between sexuality and gender has at least three consequences:
First, gay people are stigmatized not only for their erotic behaviours but also for their
perceived violation of gender norms. Second, because homosexuality is associated
with deviation from something so natural as masculinity or femininity, its labelling as
abnormal receives further justification. Heterosexuals with deep-seated insecurities
concerning their own ability to conform to cultural standards for masculinity or
femininity may even perceive homosexuality as threatening their own sense of self as a
man or woman. Third, a dual pattern of invisibility and hostility, denial and
condemnation, is associated with gender that parallels that for cultural heterosexism.
People who do not conform to gender rolesregardless of their actual sexual
orientationoften are labelled as homosexual and stigmatized or attacked. Fear of
such labelling leads heterosexuals and homosexuals alike to monitor their own
behaviour carefully to avoid any appearance of gender nonconformity (Gregory Herek
& Kevin Berrill, eds., Hate Crimes: Confronting Violence Against Lesbians and Gay
Men (New York: Sage Publications, 1992) at 260).
See also Plummer, supra note 44 at 175. These costs often result in an attempt to mimic the social
stereotype of what a real man is, for as Pharr explains, misogyny gets transferred to gay men with
a vengeance and is increased by the fear that their sexual identity will bring down the entire system of
male dominance and compulsory heterosexuality (Pharr, supra note 63 at 18). Pharr continues by
explaining that homophobia, which finds expression in gay bashing, employment discrimination, and
both familial and social ostracization, reminds all men that if they break ranks with males through
bonding and affection outside the arenas of war and sport, they will be perceived as not being real
men, that is, as being identified with women, the weaker sex that must be dominated and that over
the years has been the subject of male hatred and abuse (ibid. at 19). The gay male, socially
feminized, internalizes this misogyny and seeks to mimic, because he can, those behaviours and
characteristics that will, he hopes, allow him to pass for the male he is supposed to be. Within the
context of gay male domestic violence, this need to mimic, to prove ones masculinity, can result in
catastrophic results. Internalizing societys hatred of ones perceived non-conformity brings with it a
high price. For as Plummer explains:
To be called a homosexual is to be degraded, denounced, devalued or treated as
different. It may well mean shame, ostracism, discrimination, exclusion or physical
attack. It may simply mean that one becomes an interesting curiosity of
permissiveness. But always, in this culture, the costs of being known as a homosexual
must be high (Plummer, ibid. at 175).
Gay men, internalizing this societal reaction often act out in ways that can prove both self-damaging
and harmful for those closest to them. On the effects that this pairing has on gay male domestic
2004] C. KENDALL GAY MALE PORNOGRAPHY AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE
inundated with a value system that equates masculinity (as the determinant of
appropriate male behaviour) with aggression, control, and frequently with violence.
As Island and Letellier explain:
919
Hollywood, television, sports, the military, advertising, music, and many
visible male heroes and leaders are all guilty of making this unfortunate
connection … Negative ideas about masculinity popular in America include
acting tough at all times, not showing tender feelings at all. The lean, mean
super-cool, stoic cowboy is a perfect example of this … view of masculinity.
Another particularly obnoxious interpretation of masculinity teaches men to get
their way by flexing muscles, drinking to excess, getting angry, and hitting
people. To some men, being masculine means to intimidate, to dominate, and to
do what they damn well want to, no matter what the consequences to
themselves and to other people. To these men, being masculine is their attempt
to control others so that they are sure that no one controls them, because being
influenced by others is scarily unmasculine.107
Nowhere is this cultural logic more evident than in the pornography used by these
men. Made sexy, masculinity itself becomes a turn-on. Gay male pornography is
comprised of values including strength, power, lack of tenderness, vulnerability of
the other, control, and non-mutuality. A re-examination of the masculine ideal held by
those men who psychologically abuse, rape, beat, and sometimes kill their partners
reveals that their practices and value systems bear a striking resemblance to the
values promoted in gay male pornography. This means, quite literally, that gay male
pornography promotes and sexualizes this view of masculinitythe same view that
results in gay men abusing and killing the men who love them. Although no research
has been conducted to determine if gay men who abuse other gay men use gay male
pornography, there is no evidence that they do not. To my mind, the fact that gay male
pornography uses sex to promote the macho as a value means that this message,
once interpreted by men who may not fit the desired norm, but who are nonetheless
told and feel that they can and should through sex, has the potential to cause
considerable harm.
For some gay men, overcompensation for their sense of non-worth becomes
inevitable. Applying what they believe will provide control, power, and social
acceptance, those who ultimately do batter quite literally come to embody the value
system that they equate with masculinitysomething that society thinks is more
socially male, hence appropriate.108 According to Island and Letellier, [a]s real-live
violence, see Island & Letellier, ibid. For more information on gay male domestic abuse, see
Waterman, Dawson & Bologna, supra note 86; Battered Lovers, supra note 104; H. Donat,
Domestic Violence Strikes Gay Relationships Sentinel (2 August 1990) at 5; Pierce Reed, Naming
and Confronting Gay Male Battering Gay Community News (16-22 April 1989); T. Kingston,
Breaking the Silence: Gay Domestic Violence Coming Up! (February 1989) at 10-11.
107 Island & Letellier, ibid. at 50.
108 As lesbian feminist Susanne Pharr explains, this is not surprising given the intended effects of
homophobia. Pharr writes, anti-gay stereotypes can be seen to silence the public expression of non-
heterosexual sexual identities and both foster and maintain appropriate gender-role behaviour
[Vol. 49
MCGILL LAW JOURNAL / REVUE DE DROIT DE MCGILL
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puppets, [gay men who overcompensate] perform a role, read a script and
mechanically act out whatever their ideas are about masculinity.109 For some, the
result is an effort to become the masculine prototype. These men interpret
assertiveness to mean aggression (and hence ignore the rights and feelings of others),
think of strength as a licence to be sexually violent or intimidating, see power as a
licence to terrorize, and view mutuality as a threat to these privileges.110 They follow a
prescription, a recipe for masculinity made sexy and normal through pornography
and, after beating their partners, excuse their behaviour by claiming that their actions
are sexually acceptable.
Although much of the above also applies to heterosexual men, the effects of this
masculinity as norm myth for the gay male already affected by deeply embedded
stereotypes are particularly significant. Indeed, while one might think that it is only
those who already conform to the masculine prototype who beat their partners, studies
reveal quite the opposite. Many gay male domestic batterers do not fit the
stereotypical super-macho man.111 Rather, they suffer from what can only be termed
failed macho syndrome.112 Socially rejected for their failure to conform, they feel
that they do not reach the masculine ideal of dominance and coolness113 and, in an
(supra note 63 at 18), ensuring that women and men do not violate those gendered norms central to
male power and that all lesbians and gay men are suppressed and punished to the extent that they do.
As Pharr goes on to explain:
To be a lesbian is to be perceived (labeled) as someone who has stepped out of line,
who has moved out of sexual/economic dependence on a male, who is woman-
identified. A lesbian is perceived as someone who can live without a man, and who is
therefore (however illogically) against men. A lesbian is perceived as being outside the
acceptable, routinized order of things. She is seen as someone who has no societal
institutions to protect her and who is not privileged to the protection of individual
males … A lesbian is perceived as a threat to the nuclear family, to male dominance and
control, to the very heart of sexism (ibid.).
Pharr further explains that gay men are also perceived as a threat to male dominance:
[A]nd the homophobia expressed against [gay men] has the same roots in sexism as
does homophobia against lesbians. Visible gay men are the objects of extreme hatred
and fear by heterosexual men because their breaking ranks with male heterosexual
solidarity is seen as a damaging rent in the very fabric of sexism. They are seen as
betrayers, as traitors who must be punished and eliminated. In the beating and killing of
gay men we see clear evidence of this hatred (ibid. at 19).
The desire to be identified as a man and reap the benefits of male privilege is, in a homophobic
society, socially appealing. No one should underestimate the power of homophobia and the extent to
which it literally terrorizes gay men into wanting to pass as real men. Nonetheless, gay men must
reject the pressure to do so. A failure to resist this pressure only results in considerable individual and
systemic harms. Gay men would do well to take these findings seriously, whether the harm that
results from hyper-masculine role-play takes the form of abuse directed at women or at other men.
109 Island & Letellier, supra note 18 at 52.
110 See ibid. at 52-53.
111 Ibid. at 51.
112 Ibid.
113 Ibid.
2004] C. KENDALL GAY MALE PORNOGRAPHY AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE
effort to reach the desired norm, attempt to control other people, often through sex,
in an effort to become that which society has told them they are not.114
921
These findings say a great deal about the power of systemic homophobia as a
social force aimed at limiting same-sex sexual activity. Gay men, to the extent that
they threaten to undermine masculine-feminine polarity, are terrorized as a means of
diffusing this threat. Ridiculed as feminine and defined as socially inferior to real
men, gay men are silenced so as to ensure that they do not reveal their sexual
orientation and that those who do are systematically attacked.115 Left with few
114 The perception of verbal and physical abuse is correlated with the experience of this dynamic.
See Roy Gibson, Gay Man Was Battered Wife The West Australian (8 February 1996) 11.
115 The extent to which others will go to ensure the silencing of those who do not conform is well
documented. In its submission before the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Keegstra, dealing with
hate speech, LEAF argued that the wilful public promotion of hatred inhibits truth seeking because it
intimidates disadvantaged persons from seeking the truth:
[H]atred promotes … disadvantage and, as such, is a practice of discrimination …
enmity, ill-will, intolerance and prejudice produce exclusion, denigration and
subordination. Stereotyping and stigmatization … through hate propaganda shapes their
social image and reputation, often controlling the opportunities of [individuals] more
powerfully than their individual abilities (Factum of the Intervener Womens Legal
Education and Action Fund (LEAF) in Keegstra, supra note 35 at para. 9).
To some extent, LEAFs arguments on the need to restrict speech that silences and produces violence
relied on the earlier work of Patrick Lawlor who, in 1984, had written a comprehensive report on hate
speech and group defamation for the Attorney General of Ontario (Lawlor, supra note 44). In this
document, Lawlor argues that target groups are entitled to protection, not only against the actual
physical violence against minority groups caused by hate speech, but also against calumny, fear, and
threat that infects and diminishes their lives.
Lesbians and gay men are well aware that people do listen to hate and that it does result in harm,
both physical and psychological. As Kirk and Madsen note with respect to anti-gay propaganda in the
United States, the excitable masses are listening and there is no dearth of evidence to prove their
point. The authors provide the following examples:
While witnesses look on, a young mana gardener for the city of San Franciscois
stabbed to death by four youths shouting Faggot! Faggot! In the same city, a lesbian
is beaten in the face, knocked to the ground and kicked repeatedly while attackers
scream dyke and bitch.
In New Jersey, three college-aged men are charged with entrapping a twenty-year-old
gay at midnight in a shopping mall; after working him over and burning cigarettes in
his face, they allegedly tied him by the ankles to their truck and dragged him down the
road.
…
In Winston-Salem, the killer of a gay man is released on probation, then murders
another by cutting his throat and planting a butcher knife in his chest. (Prosecutors
reportedly let the killer plea-bargain after concluding that jurors wont impose a stiff
sentence for cutting a gay mans throat).
…
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options, the result for many is fear, confusion, and self-hate. They are told that they
can reject the masculine norm and be further harassed, or they can attempt to become
it (and, in so doing, hide any distinct, non-misogynistic gay male identity), thus
making themselves (as gay) invisible. Unfortunately, the pervasiveness of anti-gay
male violence and discrimination means that many gay men may overcompensate
through sex and attempt to adhere to those sexual values that they believe will make
them less visible, more male. As Island and Letelliers findings indicate, this
overcompensation can result in some particularly destructive behaviours, causing
physical and emotional harm to others. They also ensure that male dominance, now
sexualized, hence normalized, remains in place.
Conclusion
To date, our community has shown an apparent unwillingness to take seriously
the very real harms of intra-community rape and domestic violence. There are
undoubtedly a number of reasons for this tendency. The question I have attempted to
pose in this paper, however, is whether our inaction can be explained, to some extent,
by the perceived need to defend pornography as central to gay male identity and
liberation. The facts seem to support this assertion. The materials in issue in Little
Sisters were defended by many as indicative of what it means to be a gay male today.
If this is the case, the only conclusion one can draw is that we have become so
obsessed with defending pornography that many of the most serious subjects are
A statistical report of antigay violence in the Bay Area catalogs the following
favorite implements of assault: knives, guns, baseball bats, bottles, crowbars, large
boards without nails, large boards with nails, and chains (Marshall Kirk & Hunter
Madsen, After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the
90s (New York: Doubleday, 1989) at 103-104).
For further evidence, see Martin Kazu Hiraga, Anti-Gay and Lesbian Violence, Victimization, and
Defamation: Trends, Victimization Studies and Incident Descriptions in Laura Lederer & Richard
Delgado, eds., The Price We Pay: The Case Against Racist Speech, Hate Propaganda and
Pornography (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995); Gary David Comstock, Violence Against Lesbians
and Gay Men (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991); Herek & Berrill, supra note 106; Gail
Mason & Stephen Tomsen, Homophobic Violence (Sydney: Hawkins Press, 1997); People for the
American Way, Hostile Climate: A State by State Report on Anti-Gay Activity (Washington: People
for the American Way, 1997).
Although few statistics exist in Canada for anti-gay attacks, there is little reason to believe that
similar stories are not as pervasive and real within the Canadian context and much reason to believe
that the incidence of such attacks is comparable. While Lawlor notes and accepts that hate speech
results in violence, he also argues persuasively that almost as hurtful as the physical attacks upon
minorities is their perception, resulting from what they hear, what they are told and what they
witness, that their fellows do not care, that they are abandoned to their fate, that no protection is
forthcoming (Lawlor, supra note 44 at 6). Not surprisingly, many do then feel the need to conform,
often resulting, as Island and Letellier point out within the context of domestic violence, in serious
harm inflicted on those against whom they act out their own insecurities and fears.
2004] C. KENDALL GAY MALE PORNOGRAPHY AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE
sexualized, trivialized, or worse (as in the case of anti-gay violence), glorified as a
source of sexual empowerment.
923
For many pro-pornography advocates, gay male pornography is harm-free. To
these people, I ask: is it unreasonable to assume that materials promoting a conception
of masculinity according to which male sexuality is defined as aggression, violence,
and the degradation of others might encourage gay men, taught by a homophobic
society to believe in their social inferiority, to compensate for feelings of low self-
worth by expressing increased levels of non-mutuality in their sexual practices?
Although disturbing and easy to ignore, the consequences of male rape and gay male
domestic abuse remain too real and too serious for us to simply assume that the effect
of gay male pornography is non-harmful.
In many ways, this paper calls for gay men to reject the violence endemic in our
community, to question both its causes and where we go from here. Gay rights today,
as exemplified by the Little Sisters litigation, has come to mean male dominant rights,
the very essence of all that is anti-gay. Defined by the pornographic sexual
exploitation of others, from whose presentation and use we are told to define our
identity and community, we have now acceptedand promotea model of identity
that is more concerned with the use and abuse of others found in the form of sexual
hierarchy than with liberation from that hierarchy. Ultimately, gay men may find that
they have at last achieved manhood and the power that comes with it. But at what
price? Becoming a man, learning to be one, does nothing for gay male liberation. It
ensures only that some of us become more heterosexually acceptablea liberation
tactic devoid of strategy and which is neither radical nor empowering.
