Breaking Boundaries: Women’s Lives In and Out of the Closet

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Originally published in TEACH Magazine, 50th Anniversary of the Decriminalization of Homosexuality in Canada Special Issue, 2019

By Elise Chenier

When the Canadian government updated the criminal code in 1954, it made a small but significant change to the law regarding gross indecency. It removed the phrase “male person.”

Gross indecency was a catch-all statute used to charge someone with behaviour deemed indecent according to the morals and values of mainstream society, but it was most commonly used against men who engaged in sexual acts with other men. During World War II (1939–1945), it became more widely known that women also engaged in same-sex relations, partly because the war brought many women into single-sex environments, like military barracks. After the war, a flood of paperback novels, most of which were written by men, popularized the image of sex-crazed lesbians preying on unsuspecting and naïve women.

For the first time, lesbians were viewed as more than just sinful and repulsive. They were a danger to society. By removing the phrase “male person” from the crime of gross indecency, the Canadian government declared sex between women a crime.

The law was revised yet again in 1969, this time eliminating gross indecency as a crime when the two individuals involved were over the age of 21 and engaged in sexual relations in private. Did women breathe a sigh of relief? Yes and no. The change in law mattered, but not because lesbians were able to be open about their sexuality. It mattered because it signalled the beginning of a new era of greater freedom and acceptance, and, for the first time, allowed women to hope for better days ahead.

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Elise Chenier is a Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, BC, where she is the founder and Director of the Archives of Lesbian Oral Testimony (alotarchives.org). She has been researching and writing on the history of sexuality for thirty years, and is currently writing a book on same-sex marriage from the 1950s to the 1980s.

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Elise Chenier
Elise Chenier
Elise Chenier is a Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, BC, where she is the founder and Director of the Archives of Lesbian Oral Testimony (alotarchives.org). She has been researching and writing on the history of sexuality for thirty years, and is currently writing a book on same-sex marriage from the 1950s to the 1980s.

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