Against Nature, against Consent
A Sexual Politics of Debility
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4976211 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Joseph J Fischel (corresponding author), Joseph Fischel |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 24 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 55-103 |
| Publication date | 2013-05-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | differences (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1040-7391 • E-ISSN: 1527-1986 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/10407391-2140591 |
| OpenAlex | W2164065407 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 43 |
This essay argues that the "consenting adult," while politically seductive and exonerative, is ultimately a perverted figure for progressive sexual politics. Valorized, the "consenting adult" generates a moralized portraiture of good and bad sexual personae rather than propelling political engagement. The author proposes supplanting (temporarily, partially) the consenting adult with comparatively unsexy, less parsimonious elucidations of fairness and debility as provisional first principles of progressive sexual politics. Taking fairness and debility seriously would rightly extend our political sympathies and energies without triggering the quarantining moralism-the liberal logic-of the figure of the consenting adult. The first part of this essay, "Offending Sex in Orleans Parish," describes a legal peculiarity and its ensuing politicization that is the motivating case study of the project. The second part, "The Political Perversity of the Consenting Adult," more carefully contemplates how and to what effect the sexual politics and rhetorics of sexuality observed in New Orleans are contoured by an apotheosis of the consenting adult. The final section, "Fairness, Debility, and Sexual Justice Politics," considers how sex workers (or persons convicted of soliciting sex), sex offenders, and other queers might find points of political solidarity irreducible to sexual identities subsumed under the consenting adult. Fairness and debility, the author submits, could hold out more promising political visions and arrangements
Criminology · Debility · Human sexuality · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Gender Studies · Law · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy · Medicine · Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology
Justice as Fairness
Doing Time Together
The Effect of Megan’s Law on Sex Offender Reintegration
Social Context, Sexual Networks, and Racial Disparities in Rates of Sexually Transmitted Infections
Discipline and Punish
Stigma
The vulnerable subject
The Moral Magic of Consent
Contract and Domination
Democratic Rights
Collateral Consequences of Sex Offender Registration
The Politics of Disablement
The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader
Punishing the Poor
Frontiers of Justice
The Sexual Contract
The Illusion of Free Markets
Pedophiles and Cyber-predators as Contaminating Forces
Megan's Law
Two Concepts of Rules
The New Jim Crow
Vulnerability and Human Rights
Justice as fairness
Politics, Philosophy, Culture
To Kill a Thief
Rawls on Politics and Punishment
Suffering Rights as Paradoxes
Prognosis time
Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens
Disability/postmodernity
Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State
The Boundaries of Blackness
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,22 |
| Citation span | 2017 - 2017 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |