Sex and punishment : four thousand years of judging desire

The Resource Sex and punishment : four thousand years of judging desire

Label

Sex and punishment : four thousand years of judging desire

Title remainder

four thousand years of judging desire

Statement of responsibility

by Eric Berkowitz

Language

eng

Summary

The "raging frenzy" of the sex drive, to use Plato's phrase, has always defied control. However, that's not to say that the Sumerians, Victorians, and every civilization in between and beyond have not tried, wielding their most formidable weapon: the law. At any given point in time, some forms of sex were condoned while others were punished mercilessly. Jump forward or backward a century or two (and often far less than that), and the harmless fun of one time period becomes the gravest crime in another. Judging Desire tells the story of the struggle throughout the millennia to regulate the most powerful engine of human behavior. Writer and lawyer Eric Berkowitz uses flesh-and-blood cases- much flesh and even more blood - to evoke the entire sweep of Western sex law, from the savage impalement of an Ancient Mesopotamian adulteress to the imprisonment of Oscar Wilde in 1895 for "gross indecency." The cast of Judging Desire is as varied as the forms taken by human desire itself: royal mistresses, gay charioteers, medieval transvestites, lonely goat-lovers, prostitutes of all stripes, London rent boys. Each of them had forbidden sex, and each was judged- and justice, as Berkowitz shows, rarely had much to do with it. With the light touch of a natural storyteller, Berkowitz spins these tales and more, going behind closed doors to reveal the essential history of human desire

Cataloging source

UKMGB

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

LC call number

HQ23

LC item number

.B344 2012

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography

Context

Context of Sex and punishment : four thousand years of judging desire

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