Sex and punishment : four thousand years of judging desire / Eric Berkowitz.

Sex and punishment : four thousand years of judging desire / Eric Berkowitz.

Berkeley, CA : Counterpoint : Distributed by Publishers Group West, [2012]

©2012

456 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

"The 'raging' frenzy of the sex drive, to use Plato's phrase, has always defied control. However, that's not to sat that every civilization has not tried, using its most powerful weapon: the Law. At any given point in history some forms of sex were condoned while others were punished mercilessly. Jump back or forward a century or two or cross a border and the harmless fun of one society becomes the gravest crime in another. {Title} tells the story of the struggle to regulate the most powerful engine of human behavior. Writer and lawyer Eric Berkowitz has accomplished what no scholar has yet achieved: to use flesh and blood cases--much flesh, 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 [title] includes royal mistresses, gay charioteers, medieval transvestites, misbehaving government officials, lonely goat-lovers, priests, prostitutes, and London rent boys. Each had forbidden sex, and each was judged--though justice as Berkowitz shows, rarely has 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."--Publisher's website.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 411-434) and index.

STA

K5194 .B47 2012

English

9781582437965
1582437963
9781908906007 paperback
1908906006 paperback