Provocation and `Homosexual' Advance: Masculinized Subjects as Threat, Masculinized Subjects Under Threat

Abstract

By applying queer and critical gender theories to the notion of the masculinized subject, this article theorizes the complexities of the `homosexual' threat within the Canadian legal domain of the provocation defence. The article remarks that most `homosexual' advance defences at the appellate level are rejected while only some are successfully believed. It argues that the extent to which appellate decisions have recognized this defence is predicated upon a logic of (hetero)normativity in which the threat of the `homosexual' advance is not homosexuality per se, but rather, symbolic feminization. This notion of symbolic feminization is theorized and tested through its application to appellate cases. The `homosexual' advance defence is most often rejected because it has the potential to destabilize the fiction of a (hetero)normative masculine subject as impenetrable. Nevertheless, in some appellate cases, the threat of symbolic feminization was ruled to be imminent and its deadly defence worthy of the court's consideration. In a unique case, R. v Valley (1986), the court located `homosexual' threat by recasting the violence of emasculation through the figure of the `S-M homosexual'. Fleshed out as predatory, sexually aggressive and hyper-masculinized, the `homosexual' could now pose an imaginable threat to normative masculinity.