Consent : Sexual Rights and the Transformation of American Liberalism / Pamela Susan Haag.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Haag, Pamela Susan, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sexual rights--United States.

Sexual rights.

Liberalism--United States.

Liberalism.

Women's rights--United States.

Women's rights.

Sexual consent--United States.

Sexual consent.

Sexual ethics--United States.

Sexual ethics.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Whom, over the past two centuries, has society construed as sexual "victims"? Where and when did the notion of consent-so crucial for law and politics today-emerge? In this brilliantly insightful work, Pamela Susan Haag traces the evolution of public wisdom on some of society's most private and controversial matters. At once an investigation of social history, popular culture, legal doctrine, and political theory, her book shows how in contemporary America the history of sexual rights is inextricably intertwined with that of liberalism. Haag examines the nineteenth-century obsession with the perils of seduction and twentieth-century disputes over white slavery, arranged marriages, interracial relationships, and rape. The history of heterosexual modernity and identity must, she argues, be viewed as a crucial component of a much larger historical narrative-that of the ways in which individual freedom and citizenship have been continually redefined in American liberal culture. She illuminates the development of liberalism from its "classic" stage that ended after the post-Reconstruction era to a "modern" version that came to fruition with the judicial acceptance of the right to privacy. Finally, she shows how debates over the meaning of heterosexual consent and violence contributed to this transformation.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

Introduction: What Part of "No" Don't You Understand?

Part I. Feudal to Classic Liberal Precedents

1. "Chastity Is Only Good for the Work It Can Do": Seduction, Consent and the Private Self

2. "Victim or Victimizer?" The Dilemma of Seduction in Classic Liberal Culture

Part II. Classic Liberal to Modern Liberal Precedents

3. White Slavery or the Wages of Sin? The Reinvention of the Privacy and Sexual Violence in the Modern Liberal Context

4. "Alleged Husbands" and Bona Fide Cases: Arranged Marriage, Pure and Simple Consent, and the Modern Social Contract

Part III. Modern Liberal Precedents

5. The First Sexual Revolution: Two Views

6. "Race Lust in Paradise" and "Sex Trouble:" Meanings of Sexual Liberty and Violence in the Early 1930s

Epilogue

Notes

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 15. Jun 2019)

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781501725401

1501725408

OCLC:

1132226792