ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the author's students' reactions to homophobic and homoerotic homo-sociality at the Royal Military College of Canada (RMC) as it manifested itself in the literature classroom. The Canadian military granted equal rights to gay, lesbian and bisexual servicemen and women in 1992 in complete compliance with The Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Canadian Human Rights Act. The chapter outlines how cadets react to and make use of literature in ways that allow them to interrogate and assess the homosocial, homoerotic, and homophobic culture of the greater and immediate worlds around them. It deals with the homophobic response to literature in general. It then illustrates the relationship between intimate bodily functions and male bonding through cadet responses to Hanif Kureishi's My Beautiful Laundrette and Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front. Canadian Forces (CF) policy implicitly aligned itself with the belief in the humanizing and liberalizing effects of university education.
