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Murdoch University Electronic Journal of Law |
Little Sisters: What the Supreme Court of Canada Really Decided
Author: | Christopher N Kendall BA (Hons), LLB, LLM, PhD Associate Professor, Murdoch University School of Law |
Issue: | Volume 7, Number 4 (December 2000) |
The intervener LEAF took the position that sado-masochism performs an emancipatory role in gay and lesbian culture and should therefore be judged from 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.I too have had an opportunity to review the materials at issue in this case. My conclusion? The Court and Equality Now got it right. If many of the materials defended by Little Sisters embody the identity defended by pro-porn and pro-gay advocates, as these groups say they do, gay porn is made through, expresses, and conditions us to enjoy a sexuality that epitomizes and promotes inequality: exploitation and degradation of others; assertiveness linked with aggression; physical power linked with intimidation; and non-consensual behaviour advanced, 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 which rejects all that is non-masculine, feminized, hence gender "female" -- an identity in which, as Andrea Dworkin explains, gay men are not only penetrated like women, but they also lust after pain and degradation like women.
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 man's dick.This passage, like many of the materials outlined above, reminds the reader that to be "male" is to be empowered, but that to be male requires conformity to a clearly defined gender norm -- a 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.
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 wouldn't 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.Similarly, the magazine Dungeon Master - The Male S/M Publication, which would also have been freely imported if Little Sisters had its way, presents men torturing other men in sexually explicit ways with hot wax, heat and fire, while sexualizing this abuse as sexually arousing for the abusers, the persons injured, and, again, for the consumer. Similarly, the magazine Mr. S/M 65 presents photographs of men being defecated on and who derive pleasure from eating and drinking excrement. The film Headlights and Hard Bodies 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. The 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, 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 very young men are shown confined to 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.