Abstract

This article critiques the legal phenomenon of the 'Homosexual Advance Defence' by arguing that it relies upon a particular construction of the male body as bounded and inpenetrable. The article demonstrates this by reference to a reading of the High Court's decision in Green v The Queen (1997) 191 CLR 334 and then moves on to argue against certain liberal law reform tactics and in favour of a 'poetics of law reform' conceived as a reconceptualisation of the body in legal discourse.