Papers by Annette Houlihan
This Article examines how criminal law trats sadomasochism (sm) and sexuality with particular ref... more This Article examines how criminal law trats sadomasochism (sm) and sexuality with particular reference to the legal construction of consent to violence and 1ffVnsk It will outline how Other sexual bodies have been crmnalised thmugh offences against the peison and how the notion of consent has been given different meanings within vaious cases of s/m. Heterosexual men have ofen been exculpated froim violence committed against women during sex. Furthermore, penetrative vagmal mitewourse has been legally validated over Other sexualities in several ways. Generally heterosexual males have been afforded protection from crimnal punishment because they were engaging in what the common law rather narrowly defmes as penetrative vaginal heterosex. Ye same-sex desing men have been subjected to rather extreme punishment because their sadomasochism desires were placed outside of these delnitional boundanes of sex, blending male same-sex sadomasochism with assault In addition, IHVnsks have been used to compound the notion of sexual harm between same-sex desiring bodies, even though therisks oflIHVinfection were minimal.
This paper examines the criminalisation of HIV infection. HIV transmission offences exist in all ... more This paper examines the criminalisation of HIV infection. HIV transmission offences exist in all Australian states and territories, but the bulk of prosecutions have occurred in Victoria. This paper outlines criminal legal responses to the virus in that state with an overview of the legislation and case law. Victoria has several HIV specific and nonspecific offences which may be applied to situations of HIV infection risk. It is the HIV non-specific offences which have been successfully used to prosecute HIV infection risks. The case law outlines several instances where HIV positive bodies have been charged with offences for placing others at risk of HIV infection. These charges have been applied in several cases regardless of whether the complainants seroconvert. Those charged have been same-sex desiring men or African-born men who engaged in sex with Caucasian women. There are marked differences in the sentences which have been applied to these defendants, which are based on the sexuality of the defendant and complainant. This demonstrates the heterosexist and Eurocentric character of the performance of these laws. These offences do not operate in isolation to sociality, rather this area of law embodies many cultural panics about the Other. HIV transmission offences signal socio-legal panics about sexuality, race/ethnicity and disease, situating certain bodies at greater risk of crimino-legal punishment.
This paper examines the criminalisation of HIV infection. HIV transmission offences exist in all ... more This paper examines the criminalisation of HIV infection. HIV transmission offences exist in all Australian states and territories, but the bulk of prosecutions have occurred in Victoria. This paper outlines criminal legal responses to the virus in that state with an overview of the legislation and case law. Victoria has several HIV specific and nonspecific offences which may be applied to situations of HIV infection risk. It is the HIV non-specific offences which have been successfully used to prosecute HIV infection risks. The case law outlines several instances where HIV positive bodies have been charged with offences for placing others at risk of HIV infection. These charges have been applied in several cases regardless of whether the complainants seroconvert. Those charged have been same-sex desiring men or African-born men who engaged in sex with Caucasian women. There are marked differences in the sentences which have been applied to these defendants, which are based on the sexuality of the defendant and complainant. This demonstrates the heterosexist and Eurocentric character of the performance of these laws. These offences do not operate in isolation to sociality, rather this area of law embodies many cultural panics about the Other. HIV transmission offences signal socio-legal panics about sexuality, race/ethnicity and disease, situating certain bodies at greater risk of crimino-legal punishment.
Sexuality Research & Social Policy: Journal of NSRC, 2005
This paper investigates the first documented case of non-transfusion-related surgical HIV transmi... more This paper investigates the first documented case of non-transfusion-related surgical HIV transmission in a developed country, Australia. In 1989, four women were infected with HIV as a result of surgical procedures in a private clinic. A subsequent medical tribunal failed to establish medical negligence or a failure of infection control procedures on the part of the surgeon. We use this case to interrogate some of the assumptions about human culpability that feature in both HIV epidemiology and criminal law approaches to HIV transmission. We argue that these models for explaining viral spread overestimate the role of human agency and underestimate the importance of anonymous, contingent, material relations between viruses, bodies, and technologies. We suggest that the medical tribunal model, with its implicit recognition of viral agency and the impossibility of eliminating risk, offers an alternative model of justice to the criminal justice system, with its exclusive focus on human agency.
Using lenses of Black and Brown feminisms, this article examines popular music artist Chris Brown... more Using lenses of Black and Brown feminisms, this article examines popular music artist Chris Brown’s 2009 assault of his then partner, Rihanna. Since the assault, Rihanna’s identity has been continually written and represented as both inherently victimised and somehow responsible for provoking Brown’s violence. The article draws attention to young Black and Brown women’s constructions as both ‘at-risk’ and ‘risky’, and how Rihanna’s ‘risqué’ public personae has been misinterpreted by some sectors of the community, including the media, as victim (‘at-risk’) and provocateur (‘risky’). Rihanna’s ‘risquéness’ is constructed on her gender (female), race, ethnicity and nationality (Bajan, Black, Carribean, islander, migrant). Due to her gender, race and overtly ‘sexual’ positioning, Rihanna has been subjected to victim-blaming at the hands of the media, but her implied ‘risquéness’ was also demonstrated through
hyper-surveillance by the media after the assault. This representation is both highly gendered and racialised. Despite being subjected as ‘at-risk’ and objectified as ‘risky’, Rihanna found a voice to document and voice her experience of violence. This article unpacks these scripts
about her experiences of violence to recognise similar issues young Black and Brown women experience within intimate relationships and to further open up the dialogue in this area.
This chapter analyses three U.S. television crime dramas, Criminal Minds, Dexter and Law & Order:... more This chapter analyses three U.S. television crime dramas, Criminal Minds, Dexter and Law & Order: SVU, to demonstrate how popular culture distorts understandings of gender and violence through the lens of sadistic serial killers. Popular cultural fictions of violence often involve serial killers who seek out random victims, perpetuating the 'stranger danger' myth. Recently, a more terrifying killer has emerged within television crime dramas; the sadistic serial killer. Sadism is interpolated as a metaphor for torture, furnished on characteristics which bear no resemblance to sadomasochistic desire as defined by those who practice it. Instead, sadism is an allegory of strangeness, staged upon criminal, cultural and sexual difference.
Abstract: This article examines HIV transmission jurisprudence in the Australian state of Victori... more Abstract: This article examines HIV transmission jurisprudence in the Australian state of Victoria. It details the development of criminal legislation to respond to the issue of HIV and the application of these offences to prosecute charges of HIV transmission in Victoria. It also outlines the case law in Victoria. The article questions the juridical handling of consensual sexuality and HIV risk, within broader frameworks of moral panics about the Other. Same-sex desiring and African men have been the central characters within successful HIV transmission prosecutions, which attribute liability for infectivity within antiquated epidemiological narratives. In those narratives, gay communities and the African nation were positioned as original and perpetuating sources of infections. Medico-scientific discourses have since identified some behaviours as more risky for infection. Infectivity has also been measured as haphazard and random However, crimino-legal narratives of HIV still rely on hydraulic and definitive conceptualisations of transmission, combined with panics about other racial and sexual bodies.
… Research and Social …, Jan 1, 2005
Details: Title 1 of 1-Australia & New Zealand Critical …, Jan 1, 2009
Talks by Annette Houlihan
HIV/AIDS has been criminalised in many jurisdictions, including Australia. HIV transmission offen... more HIV/AIDS has been criminalised in many jurisdictions, including Australia. HIV transmission offenders have been constructed upon panics about cultural, medical and legal Otherness. Dis-eased bodies are prosecuted because of compound transgressions – HIV status, race and sexuality. The HIV transmission story is reflected and imagined through the textual crimes of offences against the person. This crimino-legal tale flickers its own imagination onto the cultural landscape where consensual desires are silenced in honour of the tragedy of the reckless or intentional HIV transmission offender. HIV infectivity is translated as an injury committed by one party against another. But, the crimino-legal narrative of HIV transmission offences speaks about the policing of desire, just as much as it does about the regulation of Other infectious bodies – as illness and illegality. This paper explores the trajectory of the infamous Neal case in Victoria. The defendant, Michael Neal, was sentenced to 18 years jail for inter alia HIV-related offences in 2009, which was reduced to 12 years jail on appeal. It begins with an examination of media coverage of the case, in which Neal was portrayed as an evil, vindictive criminal in television and newspaper reports. His monstrous culpability was compounded by the sub-text of bisexuality and hedonism, but also his implied transcendence from heteronormativity to homodeviance. He was described as a (heterosexual) grandfather who was married for many years before succumbing to a predatory life of homosexual recklessness. Neal became the noughties poster-boy of debauchery and criminal sexuality. His sexuality was located within various esoteric, depraved and rapacious imaginations, such as sadomasochism, gay orgies and conversion parties. He became a simulacrum of the ‘grim reaper’ of early Australian AIDS campaigns whereby he signified an indeterminate HIV risk for multiple unknown innocents. He was both risky and culpable. This paper will explore the construction of his risky criminal identity within the socio-legal imagination of HIV transmission criminality. The talk will conclude with a discussion of the appeal. This has been one of the very few HIV-related criminal cases that has gone to appeal, with most other defendants entering guilty pleas. The paper will explore possible legal ramifications this appeal may have for future prosecutions and how this judgment could challenge the criminalisation of HIV risk.
Music videos are abundant with sexualised images of women, however these scenes also contain mess... more Music videos are abundant with sexualised images of women, however these scenes also contain messages which speak to female empowerment, racial identity, belonging, displacement, and friendship. Music provides an outlet for women to speak, but also provides more fluid and complex contemporary socio-cultural discourses about relationships. Music videos also document the intricate negotiations women face when navigating legal responses to abusive relationships, which are often masculine, heterosexist and Eurocentric. Music may be a terrain for all women to challenge mainstream feminist ideals about intimate partner abuse, as well as highlighting the complex issues for reporting abusive partners within a wider context of the law’s violence. This paper will examine how more complex representations of women challenge the restrictive socio-legal engagements with gendered violence and how these images increase dialogues about the law’s role in reducing intimate partner abuse.
This paper examines how criminal law treats sadomasochism (s/m) and sexuality with particular ref... more This paper examines how criminal law treats sadomasochism (s/m) and sexuality with particular reference to Q v Jean Margaret Meiers (Unreported, Supreme Court of Queensland Trial Division, Lyons J, 8 August 2008). Using feminist philosophies of law and contemporary theories of s/m, it will explore legal constructions of violence. Sadomasochism has received considered legal academic inquiry since R v Brown, much of which applies queer theories of the heterosexist character of law. In Meiers, the female defendant was found guilty of manslaughter and received a three year sentence suspended after 12 months. The complainant (her husband) died from asphyxiation when she bound and gagged him at his request. The sentencing judge gave comments about the couple’s relationship indicating the victim had a history of violence towards the defendant. This paper will consider the construction of (feminine) culpability for (a fatal act of) sadomasochism, questioning her consent to enact his fantasy and whether she was able to deny his request.
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Papers by Annette Houlihan
hyper-surveillance by the media after the assault. This representation is both highly gendered and racialised. Despite being subjected as ‘at-risk’ and objectified as ‘risky’, Rihanna found a voice to document and voice her experience of violence. This article unpacks these scripts
about her experiences of violence to recognise similar issues young Black and Brown women experience within intimate relationships and to further open up the dialogue in this area.
Talks by Annette Houlihan
hyper-surveillance by the media after the assault. This representation is both highly gendered and racialised. Despite being subjected as ‘at-risk’ and objectified as ‘risky’, Rihanna found a voice to document and voice her experience of violence. This article unpacks these scripts
about her experiences of violence to recognise similar issues young Black and Brown women experience within intimate relationships and to further open up the dialogue in this area.