Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Sex and Harm in the Age of Consent is a strongly original, frequently brilliant, cross-disciplinary study of the limitations of consent for measuring sexual freedom and sexual harm."—Tim Dean, University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign
"Joseph J. Fischel’s Sex and Harm in the Age of Consent offers a breathtakingly queer account of sex, perversion, innocence, and consent. His careful and complex reading of the social and legal meaning of the ‘sexual predator’ boldly challenges the common wisdom about the justifications for and consequences of regulating outlaw sexuality."—Katherine Franke, director, Center for Gender & Sexuality Law, Columbia Law School
"A very well-researched book . . . I applaud the author for the depth and breadth of his scholarship."—PsycCRITIQUES
"A carefully written, intellectually challenging argument... A must read for queer and feminist scholars."—CHOICE
"Through his proposal of autonomy, peremption, and an adolescence not isolated from social and historical contexts of inequality yet distinguishable from childhood, Fischel effectively moves the debate on what constitutes sexual harm well beyond the dichotomy of consent and predation." —PoLAR
"The book is deeply compelling in its capacity to weave a legal archive and a popular culture archive, and in its compelling close-readings of both case law (and policy) and visual culture."—Political Theory
"Sex and Harm in the Age of Consent should be considered required reading for anyone committed to thinking age as a central determinant of sexuality in consensual times."—GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies
Table of ContentsContents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Sex and the Ends of Consent
1. “Especially Heinous”: Politics, Predation, Sex Panics
2. Transcendent Homosexuals, Dangerous Sex Offenders
3. Numbers, Sex, Power: Age and Sexual Consent
4. Growing Somewhere? Journeys of Gendered Adolescence
Conclusion: Other Sex Scandals
Notes
Bibliography
Index
