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Searching... Science | Book | 306.764 H617H 1998 | 1 | Stacks | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
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Summary
Summary
Men and women have always bargained for sex. In Hard Bargains, philosopher-lawyer Linda Hirshman and legal historian Jane Larson provide the first complete analysis ofpower in heterosexual relationships, combining an eye-opening legal history of sexual regulation with thought-provoking predictions of what the future might bring.
Hirshman and Larson tell a riveting tale that spans the centuries--from early accounts of adulterers hanging from the gibbet, to the impact of the Kinsey Reports and Hugh Hefner's playboy philosophy, to the Swinging Sixties judge who argued in favor of sex with eleven year-olds. The book examines the factors that have shaped our notions of sex, from Catholic teaching to the theories of Sigmund Freud, and it explores the Supreme Court decisions of the last few decades that revolutionized the politics of sex. And Hard Bargains not only provides a deep understanding of historical and current disputes, it also offers striking predictions of what sexual bargaining will look like in the future--rape laws replaced by laws of sexual autonomy, adultery subjected to breach of contract action, fornicators responsible for each other's rent, prostitution considered an unfair labor practice. These are a few of the surprising--and surprisingly workable--solutions the authors foresee in the 21st century.
Hard Bargains takes a forthright and level-headed look at all aspects of one of the biggest controversies in contemporary American society--heterosexual sex--and delivers a radically new perspective on the sexual lives of women and men.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The main point of this pedantic text is that "sex is political" and that white women have historically bargained their way out of their status as possessions of white men. Retracing the path of male-female relations through Western civilization, the authors conclude that contemporary "bargaining" strategies in heterosexual relationshipsthe exchanges via "force, sale [or] gift/barter" that create "sexual community"stem from the increasing presence of women in public political roles, and that heterosexual relations are, like other human relationships, based on power. Hirshman, a professor of philosophy and women's studies at Brandeis, and Nelson, a law professor at the Univ. of Wisconsin, draw on such diverse sources as J.S. Mill, Woodhull & Clafin's Weekly (an organ of 19th-century free love advocate Victoria Woodhull) and the American Law Institute's Model Penal Code to develop a densely historical, philosophical and legal portrait of sex relations. Yet despite such delvings into the cultural record, the authors fail to address adequately the significance of race to the power balance (though topics such as the Great Migration are touched on). The role of evolving homosexual, especially lesbian, identity in forming community standards of femininity or masculinity, obscenity or pornography, or even what is considered "political" receives similarly short shrift. Scientific sexology studies are reported on more fruitfully, and theological developments are touched on vis-à-vis sexuality. The final section proposes "a new structure of sexual regulation," but few beyond academe will have enough fortitude to make it that far. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Legal scholars Hirshman and Larsen focus on "regulation of sexual access between women and men" by means, primarily, of the paradigm of bargaining, often between unequal partners. They examine regulatory attitudes and behaviors in terms of three Western traditions of political philosophy--classical virtue ethics, classical liberalism, and utilitarianism--and pay special attention to different eras' regulation of three forms of sexual behavior: rape, prostitution, and fornication and adultery. In tracing the history of sexual regulation, they evaluate regulation's consequences for the relative bargaining power of women and of men in different eras. They believe the ground rules of regulation are now in transition, in part because critics of libertinism don't admit that sexual bargaining is political, and they offer thoughtful analysis of what sexual bargaining's "rules" should be in the future. Libraries with patrons requesting relatively demanding works on gender issues and legal theory may want to acquire this challenging analysis of sex, power, law, and history. --Mary Carroll
Library Journal Review
"Male-female sex can be understood as a political relationship, even though it mostly takes place in private circumstances of one-on-one bargaining," write Hirshman (Brandeis) and Larson (Univ. of Wisconsin Law Sch.) in their scholarly look at the regulation of heterosexuality in the United States. The book moves from the impact of Christianity on British Common Law in the American Colonies to the writing of visiting French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville, the laws of coverture declaring husband and wife to be one male-dominated entity, the influential philosophies of John Stuart Mill and Charles Darwin, 19th-century social purity and free love movements, and finally the "libertine" loosening of social codes since the 1960s. Although the writing is often dryly academic, the book offers an incisive look into how morality gets shaped and regulated. As such, it is an important contribution to feminist theory and U.S. social history.Eleanor J. Bader, Brooklyn, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.