Saving the children: (Queer) youth sexuality and the age of consent in Canada

Abstract

Recent changes to age-of-consent legislation in Canada have prompted debates focusing on youth sexuality and queer sexuality. Using as a backdrop similar debates in the United Kingdom, the author investigates the changes to the age of consent in Canada from a queer theory perspective. The author comments on how heterosexual hegemony is maintained and reproduced by these legislative changes and how a shift from an identity-based view of sexuality to a performative perspective can help better illuminate how the Canadian state has deployed paternalistic conceptualizations of childhood and sexuality, most notably embodied through a shift in legislative language from consent to protection. This sociolegal look at state policy surrounding age of consent involves an examination of the history of sexual regulation in Canada and how hegemonic formulations of normative and deviant sexual activity influence and threaten access to education on sexuality and sexual health.