Bibliograph

Sex and harm in the age of consent, Joseph J. Fischel

Type

Label

Sex and harm in the age of consent, Joseph J. Fischel

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references (pages 291-324) and index

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Sex and harm in the age of consent

Nature of contents

bibliography

Oclc number

927241644

Responsibility statement

Joseph J. Fischel

Summary

"Sex and Harm in the Age of Consent cautions against the adoption of consent as our primary determinant of sexual freedom. For Joseph J. Fischel, consent is not necessarily always ethically sound. It is, he argues, a moralized fiction, and it churns out figures for its normativity: the predatory sex offender and the innocent child. Examining the representation of consent in U.S. law and media culture, Fischel contends that the figures of the sex offender and the child are consent's alibi, its negative space, enabling fictions that allow consent to do the work cut out for it under late modern sexual politics. Engaging legal, queer, feminist, and political theory, case law and statutory law, and media representations, Fischel proposes that we change our adjudicative terms from innocence, consent, and predation to vulnerability, sexual autonomy, and "peremption," which he defines as the uncontrolled disqualification of possibility. Such a shift in theory, law, and life would be less damaging for young people, more responsive to sexual violence, and better for sex."--Publisher's description

Table Of Contents

Introduction: Sex and the ends of consent -- "Especially heinous" : politics, predation, sex panics -- Transcendent homosexuals, dangerous sex offenders -- Numbers, sex, power : age and sexual consent -- Growing somewhere? Journeys of gendered adolescence -- Conclusion: Other sex scandals

Classification