True crimes

In his book Pink Blood, Douglas Victor Janoff exhaustively analyzes homophobic violence in Canada

by MATTHEW HAYS

Canadian gays and lesbians might be forgiven for feeling a bit complacent. After all, now that the battle over same-sex marriage has been won in Parliament, there are practically no legal battles for equality left for queer activists to fight.

But appearances are often misleading, and journalist and author Douglas Victor Janoff wants to remind gays and lesbians across Canada that, despite their many legal advances, anti-gay violence is still a very real threat. In fact, in his new book Pink Blood: Homophobic Violence in Canada (University of Toronto Press, pb, $32.95), Janoff argues that little has changed over the past quarter century in terms of frequency of homophobic hate crimes, police attitudes and community responses to the violence. The book is an exhaustive and often disturbing documentation of anti-gay hate crime in the country, an extremely important reminder that homophobia extends far beyond legal statutes. On the eve of his Montreal launch for Pink Blood, set to coincide with Divers/Cité, Janoff sat down with the Mirror to discuss what his comprehensive research revealed.

Mirror: What first led you to this idea for a book?

Douglas Victor Janoff: In 1992 a friend of mine in Vancouver was gay bashed in Stanley Park. I wrote an article for the Vancouver Sun about it. I looked for books on the topic and there were no books on the issue of gay bashing. As a writer, you're always sort of amazed when you come upon a topic that hasn't already been researched to death. I got more intrigued by the idea of doing something on it and ended up trying to figure out some way to study this more in depth. So I decided to go back to school and do graduate work at Simon Fraser University in criminology so that I could study this in greater detail.

M: What was the main thing that struck you about homophobic violence when you did the research?

DVJ: When I sat down and did the necrology at the end of the book, and examined all of the cases, it really struck me that I'd collected a very unique body of research that hadn't been done anywhere else, not here nor in the U.S. nor Australia. I was under the illusion that things were getting better. I really wanted to believe that. I looked at community-based activism across Canada. I looked at 1990 to the present. And back then, that was a time when there was a grass roots response to homophobic violence. I can see, for example, how the homophobic murders that occurred in Montreal in the '90s really galvanized the community. I could see how victim services in Toronto and Vancouver were starting to coalesce. But then I saw the pattern: aside from Toronto, these responses would begin very gung ho, and then fall apart after a while. There would be groups wearing arm bands walking down the street at night saying they would protect people from gay bashers, and then six months later there would be nothing. An ongoing institutional response rarely seemed to happen.

Random acts?

M: In the meantime, I think there was much preoccupation with AIDS, which was fair enough.

DVJ: Entirely. That got a lot of coverage in the queer press, while the murders and violence were often discreet incidents. It was rarely framed as an issue of homophobic violence, the way that AIDS was framed as a crisis for the community. It's an ongoing crisis, really. Because the violent acts tend to be random, and it's usually not a serial killer who's doing it, it becomes quite easy for those acts of violence as something that just happened randomly, rather than seeing them as a larger phenomenon.

M: Do you feel that the hate crimes law of '95 has made any difference?

DVJ: Sadly, no. When the bill was becoming law, its advocates said it was going to save people from hate crimes. The politicians all patted themselves on the back for taking a stance against hate crimes. If the judge wants to, they can increase the severity of the sentence. But this law does not compel police officers to classify crimes as hate crimes. It's entirely up to the discretion of each city police force. And some are better than others. I would argue that Montreal's police force is 15-20 years behind other cities in terms of recognition of hate crimes. The attitude here is that Quebec simply doesn't have any hate crimes, that it is simply a much more tolerant society. But the police need to be identifying these crimes as they happen, because if they don't, then the prosecutors are not presenting this evidence in court, which means the severity of the punishment will not be enhanced. But then that raises the other question, and that is: is retribution necessarily the answer? What we do need beyond any doubt is one universal definition of what a hate crime is, so police across the country are classifying them under the same definition. In the book I have 20 different categories from 20 different police departments across the country - it's intentionally confusing.

Police double standards

M: Did you come any closer to finding out why homophobic violence happens?

DVJ: I spent so much time trying to answer that question, and it's complex. That's why I took 300 pages and 1400 footnotes to analyze it. I have learned that there is no one main reason why it occurs, but rather a series of reasons. I sometimes feel I'm no closer to finding the answer to it.

M: In terms of changing police attitudes, how important has it been for cops to come out on the job?

DVJ: I think symbolically it says a lot. But I don't see a lot of it on police forces. There are a lot of double standards. You can call any police force in the country and say you're doing a story on blacks, Asians or women in the police and you will immediately be given someone to speak with. But if you say you're doing a story on gays in the police the walls go up immediately. It reflects that old style policing approach, that homosexuality is a dirty secret. If you have that much trouble acknowledging gay and lesbian people within your own ranks, doesn't that say something about how you're going to handle crimes against the victims who are coming to you to report a crime?

See Douglas Victor Janoff at The pink blood book
launch/signing on Thursday, July 28 from 5:30–7:30 p.m. at Gotha Salon Bar (1641 Amherst)