John Robin Sharpe: sexual outlaw

Feminist anthropologist Gayle Rubin observed in her seminal 1984 work Thinking Sex: Notes For A Radical Theory Of The Politics Of Sexuality, that there exist two separate worlds when it comes to sexual politics. 

She noted that “the most despised sexual castes include transsexuals, transvestites, fetishists, sadomasochists and sex workers… and the lowliest of all, those whose eroticism transgresses generational boundaries.” 

John Robin Sharpe, an outlaw of generational boundaries and self-styled rebel pervert, no doubt falls into this last category. The former planner, college teacher and self-employed home renovator, better known for successfully challenging Canada’s child pornography laws, died on August 27 in Victoria, BC of liver cancer and other illnesses. He was 82.

In addition to the interest generated by his legal battles, we remember Sharpe as a passionate interlocutor and thinker, who embraced the margins with his transgressive writing.

Born in Kelowna, BC, and raised in the midst of the Depression by parents who owned an apple orchard, Sharpe lived most of his life in Victoria. His participation in the counter-culture in the 1960s endured in his life-long efforts to decriminalize pot, activities which also brought him into contact with the emerging punk scene on the West Coast. In the late ‘70s and early ‘80s he hung out with the guys from the Victoria-based band Dayglo Abortions and put up the funds to release their first album, Out of the Womb, in 1981. 

Although initially wary of the older gent, the band members, all of whom were straight guys, had grown very fond and close to Sharpe, and welcomed his generous attention and support for their music and left politics.

But it was his short stories involving youth that brought the force of Canada’s child pornography law to his door. In April 1995, police also found him in possession of photographs of nude teenage boys, as well as erotic short stories and manuscripts. The then 61-year-old retired city planner was living in Vancouver at the time. 

His initial conviction by a lower court in 1996 was quashed by the BC Supreme Court, which found the law violated the freedom of expression provisions of the Charter. That decision, however, would later be overturned by the Supreme Court of Canada, which found that the Charter violation was justified given the law’s objective to protect children.

Sharpe’s legal troubles continued after a further investigation into his case uncovered one of the young people in his photographs, leading in 2002 to charges of gross indecency and indecent assault. That conviction was partially overturned by the BC Court of Appeal in 2007, but by then Sharpe had already served the two-years-less-a-day sentence handed down by the court. 

Nevertheless, opinion among observers and in political queer circles was divided on the case. Some could not fathom that a young person could have the ability to truly understand consent, and so Sharpe could only be a criminal. Others who followed the trial were not convinced of Sharpe’s criminality, in part because the plaintiff admitted in court to no harm.

We not only tracked the legal details of his case in our research interests, we also read his work and had many conversations with him about his writing. Critics of Canada’s child pornography laws foretold that the criminalization of simple possession, which was unique in Canadian obscenity law, would be vulnerable to a Charter challenge and the provision would (and did) put artists at risk.

Still, media constructions of Sharpe concentrated mostly on his age and the fact that he was gay, while leaving out important details such as the fact that his writings were private, unpublished novels. (They only became public online after the charges against him were quashed.) 

Interest in Sharpe’s legal battles was sparked in part by his defiant and impertinent public persona. That he wrote so shamelessly about his transgressions made his work political. Critical observers and researchers of sexual citizenship like us were attracted to his case because of his refusal to accept creative limits on literature and art. 

Canada has a history of censoring any pornographic literature. In the 1950s, texts like John Cleland’s Fanny Hill and the works of the Marquis de Sade were censored and had to be smuggled into Canada. Sharpe came to develop his own writing in a moral climate that curtailed any wide circulation of his work. In conversations with us, Sharpe expressed his motivation to write despite the social and legal risks that much of his writing faced. In his words, “I communicate. I have an idea for a reader, an imaginary reader. I can have an audience of one….”

In 2008, Sharpe moved to Montreal. His health became increasingly compromised, making it difficult for him to travel. We visited him in the hospital in January 2013 and guessed it would be our last meeting. However, his health improved and he returned to BC to be closer to family, and despite his deteriorating state was determined to get better and return to his much-loved Montreal. He continued to write poetry and pen his political “rants” as he called them, on a range of subjects.

Although deemed a pedophile by detractors, Sharpe, in an interview published in Shannon Bell’s Fast Feminism, spoke of the abstractions brought about by the label. “It’s a technical term applied to [people attracted to] pre-pubescents, who don’t interest me. [But I am not] trying to establish that ‘I am not one of them,’” he added. “I believe in defending people’s freedom rather than carving out a niche for myself.” 

Sharpe certainly unsettles. But Sharpe’s legal struggles raise important questions about the ready-made narratives of monsters and innocents.                              

Maria-Belén Ordóñez is an assistant professor at the faculty of liberal arts and science and the school of interdisciplinary studies at OCAD U. Robert Teixeira is a sessional instructor with the faculty and doctoral candidate in sociology at York University. They have both researched issues of youth and sexuality. Ordóñez interviewed Sharpe for her doctoral research.   

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