Consent: Sexual Rights and the Transformation of American Liberalism

Pamela Susan Haag

Published by Cornell University Press 1999

Consent

Sexual Rights and the Transformation of American Liberalism

Pamela Susan Haag

https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501725401

Overview
Contents

About this book

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...

Author / Editor information

Pamela Susan Haag is an analyst and researcher in Washington, D.C. She received a Ph.D. in history from Yale University.

Reviews

Martha Minow, Harvard Law School:

With the publication of this book, no worthwhile discussion of the history of heterosexuality, sexual violence, or consent can occur without drawing on Pamela Haag's arguments, which recast these topics in new terms. Her juxtapositions of political and sexual ideologies are breathtaking. She also provides a significant challenge to conventional treatments of American liberalism and individualism.

Regina Kunzel, Williams College:

This book makes a substantial contribution to perhaps the most important and as yet understudied project among historians of sexuality: the history of heterosexuality. The variety of evidence that Pamela Haag brings to this project-including the records of seduction trials, the works of liberal theorists, and popular fiction-is dazzling.

As this provocative study shows, the idea of rights in the self and bodily integrity is a historically new notion, and the historical construction of women's sexual self is part of this broader process. As Haag skillfully teases out of her 19th- and 20th-century case studies, the notion of personal rights and personhood emerged slowly.... This is an excellent book for nonhistorians interested in sexual politics and for historians interested in ideas of selfhood, power, and social/civil rights. It will be a major resource for graduate courses in feminist theory in a variety of disciplines.

Renee Heberle:

A crucial contribution to our understanding of how race, sex, and class are inextricably intertwined in sexual politics.

Beth Bailey, University of New Mexico:

Haag's historical arguments are fascinating and clearly important, and her work offers crucial insights to feminist theorists and activists and to scholars engaged in writing histories of sexuality.... This is an important book, and it deserves to be widely read.

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction: What Part of "No" Don't You Understand? Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
Part I. Feudal to Classic Liberal Precedents
1. "Chastity Is Only Good for the Work It Can Do": Seduction, Consent and the Private Self Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	3
2. "Victim or Victimizer?" The Dilemma of Seduction in Classic Liberal Culture Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	25
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 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	63
4. "Alleged Husbands" and Bona Fide Cases: Arranged Marriage, Pure and Simple Consent, and the Modern Social Contract Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	94
Part III. Modern Liberal Precedents
5. The First Sexual Revolution: Two Views Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	121
6. "Race Lust in Paradise" and "Sex Trouble:" Meanings of Sexual Liberty and Violence in the Early 1930s Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	143
Epilogue Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	177
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	185
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	227

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 256
Keywords: U.S. History; Gender Studies

eBook

Published: September 5, 2018
ISBN: 9781501725401