He had to be a poofter or something : violence, male honour and heterosexual panic

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    Abstract

    Since the late 1980s, there have been claims of a marked increase in violence directed against homosexual men, lesbians and other sexual minorities in a variety of nations (Comstock 1991; Herek and Berrill 1992; Theron 1994; Ordonez 1995; Mott 1996; Mason and Palmer 1996). Some observers have even conjectured about a new epidemic of such "hate" crimes that reflects recent hysteria about the spread of HIV/AIDS and the further mobilisation of extreme Right organisations in North America and Western Europe (Levin and MacDevitt 1993; Hamm 1993, 1994). Conservative sex panics do not assume a uniform pattern across different parts of the globe, but Australia's culture, political life and criminal justice system are also characterised by elements of the homophobia and heterosexism which these events reflect. A growing body of local research signals that high levels of assault and harassment are experienced by Australian homosexual men and women, and that low levels of official reporting and monitoring reflect histories of general community indifference and police and legal hostility towards victims (Cox 1990, 1994; Schembri 1992; Baird et al. 1994; GLAD 1994; Sandroussi and Thompson 1995). These same major features of the historical response to assaults-indifference and hostility-have marked the popular and official reactions to attacks which result in death. In the recent past, this issue only surfaced in the public arena with sensationalised media accounts of the lifestyles and sexual behaviour of homosexual victims and iconic though unconmon cases of slaying by an apparently homosexual offender. Alongside this lurid voyeurism, the great bulk of these fatal attacks, in which the sexual identity and marginal social status of an apparent homosexual victim had a significant relation to the motives of offenders, have been disregarded or downplayed. Not uncommonly, the social inferiority of homosexuals has resulted in lax policing, unjust legal fmdings and even a disturbing degree of Australian community sympathy for the brutality of offenders. It is these killings and the links to the various forms of masculinity reflected in these violent acts and in the social and legal response to them, that have been studied in detail by the author since 1994 (Tomsen and George 1997). The sources of data for this ongoing research have comprised New South Wales Police Service records of "gay-hate" killings, press records concerning homicides that have occurred since 1980, Coroner's records for unsolved incidents, and the official transcripts of the criminal trials of accused killers. From these, a larger picture of the many cases in which victims are killed on the basis of motives shaped around the belief that they are homosexual was drawn.
    Original languageEnglish
    Number of pages15
    JournalJournal of Interdisciplinary Gender Studies
    Publication statusPublished - 1998

    Keywords

    • Australia
    • gays
    • hate crimes
    • homophobia
    • lesbians
    • violence

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