This course deals with the issue of Sexuality and how it relates to the Law, examining the role of legal institutions, legislation, rules and standards in regulating, controlling, forming and conforming Sexuality. The aim is to critically analyze and to historically contextualize the political, moral and ideological factors that produce the norms regarding Sexuality, while properly comprehending the key concepts of gender, identity, body and sexual practices. Contemporary debates located at the intersection of Law and Sexuality — like the recognition of prostitution as legitimate labor, access to abortion, legalization of marriage for non-heterosexual couples, the rights concerning transgender people, to name a few — are discussed against a twofold underpinning, which is gradually developed: first, how the liberal theory that guided capitalism formation has universalized and de-historicized Law, separating the legal from the political and creating an abstract subject that suppresses a plurality of subjectivities; second, how Sexuality has traditionally been a central battle field where political struggles concealed as legal/ juridical disputes have been dealing with the tension between assimilation and anti-capitalism resistance.
Course Outline
August 28 // Introductory Class
Presentation of the syllabus and course outline
August 30 // Class 01 : History of Law and Sexuality
- We “Other Victorians”, Michel Foucault, in The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, pp. 3-13
Extra Material: Why Women Had Better Sex Under Socialism, Kristen R. Ghodsee, in NYT, 8/22/2017
Confrontation: Paris, 1968, Documentary by Seymour Drescher, 2012, available on YouTube
Sex, Drugs & Rock & Roll, Episode from the Series The Sixties, available on Netflix
September 4 // No class (Labor Day Holiday)
Section I: Marriage
September 6 // Class 02 : Private Property, Primitive Accumulation and the Oppression of Women
- Of Property, John Locke, in The Second Treatise of Government, pp. 285-302
- The So-called Primitive Accumulation, Karl Marx, in Das Kapital , chapters 26-28
- Introduction; The Accumulation of Labor and the Degradation of Women, Silvia Federici, in Calliban and the Witch, pp. 11-17; 82-115
- The Point of View of Historical Materialism, Simone de Beauvoir, in The Second Sex, chapter 3, pp. 62-68
Extra Material: Fear and Loathing in Homer and Rockville, Episode 621 of Podcast This American Life
September 11 // Class 03 : Masculinities and Heteronormativity
- A Magnified Image, Pierre Bourdieu, in Masculine Domination, pp. 5-53
- Is Kinship Always Already Heterosexual?, Judith Butler, in Undoing Gender, pp. 102-130
Extra Material: Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber, James Damore
September 13 // Class 04 : Puritanism and Regulation of Sexuality
- From Puritanism to the Pursuit of Happiness; The World of the Framers: A Christian Nation?, Geoffrey R. Stone, in Sex and the Constitution, pp. 74-108
Extra Materials: Our Trouble with Sex: a Christian Story?, Anette Gordon-Reed, in The New York Review of Books, 8/17/2017
The Malleus Maleficarum of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger (selections)
Welcome to Tingletown: ASMR is YouTube’s Most Controversial Secret Community, S.E. Smith, Bitch Media Issue 70
September 18 // Class 05 : Housework and Emotional Labor
- Marx’s Hidden Abode, Nancy Fraser, in New Left Review 86, pp. 55-78
- Housework or Domestic Work; Continuities and Discontinuities in Marriage and Divorce, Christine Delphy, in Close to Home: a Materialist Analysis of Women’s Oppression, pp. 78-105
- Theorizing Race, Class and Gender: The New Scholarship of Black Feminist Intellectuals and Black’s Women’s Labor, Rose M. Brewer, in Materialist Feminism: A Reader: Class, Difference, and Women’s lives, pp. 236-247
Extra Material: A Modest Proposal for a Fair Trade Emotional Labor Economy: A Proposal about Care Labor for Everyone, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, in Bitch Media Issue 75
September 20 // Class 06 : Final Discussion on Marriage
- Marriage and Love, Emma Goldman
- Sexual Relations and the Class Struggle; Communism and the Family, Alexandra Kollontai, in Selected Writings, pp. 237-249; 250-260
Extra Materials: Marrying Your Peer, a Tougher Prospect for Black Women, Gillian B. White, in The Atlantic, 4/2015
Interview: A Queer Argument Against Marriage, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, in Tell me More, NPR, 6/10/2010
Gay Marriage Has Not — and Will Not — Cause Assimilation, Kevin Joffré, in Outward, 6/18/2015
The Queers Left Behind: How LGBT Assimilation Is Hurting Our Community’s Most Vulnerable, Colin Walmsley, in HuffPost, 7/21/2017
Section II: Reproductive Autonomy
September 25 // Class 07 : Patriarchy and Social Contract
- The Social Contract, Books 1 and 2, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, pp. 1-29
- The Fraternal Social Contract, Carole Pateman, in The Disorder of Women, pp. 33-53
Extra Material: A Gay Trans Man and his Partner Open Up about Being Pregnant With Their First Child, in HuffPost 6/9/2017
September 27 // Class 08 : Sex, Sexuality and Control of the Bodies
- Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality, Gayle Rubin, in From Gender to Sexuality, chapter 9, pp. 143-178
- Sympathy for the Devil: Why Progressives Haven’t Helped the Sex Offender, Why They Should, and How They Can, Judith Levine, in The War on Sex , pp. 126-164
Extra Materials: KSR, The Good Wife, Season 7, Episode 10
Tell Me I’m Fat, This American Life Podcast, Episode 589
The Daily, Podcast Episode on August 11 2017
L’Origine du Monde Sparks Legal Battle, Artnet News
October 02 // Class 09 : Sexuality, Technology and Reproduction
- The Dialectic of Sex: The Ultimate Revolution: Demands and Speculations, Shulamith Firestone, in The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution, chapters 1 and 10, pp. 1-12; 175-216
- Toward a Cybernetic Communism: The Technology of the Anti-Family, Nina Power
Extra Material: Working Woman and Mother, Alexandra Kollontai
October 4 // Class 10 : Labor and Social Reproduction
- The Reproduction of Labor Power, Lise Vogel, in Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Toward a Unitary Theory, pp. 141-156
- Social Reproduction, Surplus Populations and the Role of Migrant Women, Sara R. Farris, in View Point Magazine, 11/1/2015
- Vagabond Capitalism and the Necessity of Social Reproduction, Cindi Katz, in Antipode 33(4), pp. 709-728
Extra Materials: The Rise of Childlessness, The Economist, 7/27/2017
‘It’s the Breaking of a Taboo’: the Parents Who Regret Having Children, Stefanie Marsh, in The Guardian, 02/11/2017
October 9 // Class 11 : Liberalism and Sexual Rights
- White Slavery or the Wages of Sin? The Reinvention of the Privacy and Sexual Violence in the Modern Liberal Context, Pamela Haag, in Consent: Sexual Rights and the Transformation of American Liberalism, chapter 3, pp. 63-93
Extra Materials: The Abortion Battlefield, Marcia Angell, in The New York Review of Books
Reproductive Rights Corner: Body Blows, Anbi Zeisler, in Bitch Media, issue n. 75
Inside the Painful, Lonely Experience of Birth Trauma, Catherine Pearson, in HuffPost, 06/07/2016
Misunderstanding Miscarriage, Lara Freidenfleds, in Nursing Clio, 4/1/2014
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence Signed a Law this Year that Mandated Funerals for Fetuses, Emily Crockett, in Vox, 10/3/2016
October 11 // Class 12 : Final Discussion on Reproductive Autonomy
- Merely Cultural, Judith Butler, in New Left Review, I/227, pp. 33-44
- Heterosexism, Misrecognition and Capitalism: a Response to Judith Butler, Nancy Fraser, in Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis, pp. 175-188
Extra Material: No Disrespect: Black Women and the Burden of Respectability, Tamara Winfrey Harris, Bitch Media Issue 70
Section III: Transgender Citizenship
October 16 // Class 13 : Defining Citizenship
- Citizenship and Social Class, H. Marshall, pp. 17-27; 44-49
- The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man, Hannah Arendt, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, pp. 267-302
- Displacing the Distributive Paradigm, Iris Marion Young, in Justice and Politics of Difference, pp. 15-38
Extra Materials: Rights in Transition: Making Legal Recognition for Transgender People a Global Priority, Human Rights Watch World Report 2016
Hatred of LGBTQ People Still Infects Society. It’s No Time to Celebrate, Owen Jones, in The Guardian, 7/27/2017
October 18 // Class 14 : Citizenship, Sexuality and State Violence
- Making Nazi Flags and Citizens, James Q. Whitman, in Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law, pp. 37-72
- The Judicialization of Politics, Ran Hirschl, in The Oxford Handbook of Law and Politics, pp. 119-37
Extra Materials: President Trump, Trans People in the Military are Here to Stay, Chelsea Manning, in NYT, 7/27/2017
Letter from Moscow: Forbidden Lives, Masha Gessen, in The New Yorker, 7/3/2017
October 23 // Class 15 : Exercising Transgender Rights
- Transnational Transgender Rights and Immigration Law, Aren Z. Aizura
- Transgender Policy in Latin American Countries: An Overview and Comparative Perspective on Framing, Jacob R. Longaker and Donald P. Haider-Merkel
- Introduction to Fixing Sex , Katrina Karkazis
Extra Materials: What Qualifies a Woman to Compete as a Woman? An Ugly Fight Resumes, in The New York Times, 8/4/2017
No Games for Women with “Too Much Testosterone”, Episode at The Stream, Aljazeera, 9/3/2014
Looking at and Talking about Genitalia: Understanding Where Physicians and Patients Get their Ideas about What’s Normal and What Isn’t, Katrina Karkazis
October 25 // Class 16 : Queer Marxism
- The Reification of Desire: Toward a Queer Marxism:Introduction, Kevin Floyd, pp. 1-38
Extra Material: How Dirty is that Auden Poem that was Too Dirty for the Times Book Review?, in Vulture, 3/17/2008
October 30 // Class 17 : Transgender Citizenship and the Limits of the Law
- Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law, Dean Spade, 1-19; 38-72
Extra Material: XXY, Movie, directed by Lucía Puenzo, Argentina
November 1 // Class 18 : Final Discussion on Transgender Citizenship
- The Micropolitics of Gender in the Pharmacopornographic Era, Paul B. Preciado, in Testo Junkie, pp. 333-398
Extra Material: Testosterone, Podcast This American Life, Episode 220
Section IV: Prostitution and Pornography
November 6 // Class 19 : Subjectivities and Hegemony
- Cultivation of the Self, Michel Foucault, in The History of Sexuality, Vol. 3, pp. 39-68
- The Category of the Subject, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, pp. 114-122
- Bare Subjectivity: Faces, Veils, and Masks in the Contemporary Allegories of Western Citizenship, Leticia Sabsay, in Vulnerability in Resistance, pp. 236-252
- Permeable Bodies: Vulnerability, Affective Powers, Hegemony, Elsa Dorlin, in Vulnerability in Resistance, pp. 278-297
Extra Materials: What is Art? Follow-up: What is Porn?, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, 11/13/2015
Hidden Meanings in The Garden of Earthly Delights, BBC Culture
November 8 // Class 20 : Politicization of Vulnerability
- A Man in the House: the Boyfriends of Brazilian Travesti Prostitutes, Don Kulick, in Social Text No. 52/53 Queer Transexions of Race, Nation, and Gender, 133-160
Extra Material: America’s Hidden H.I.V. Epidemic: Why do America’s Black Gay and Bisexual men have a Higher Rate than Any Country in the World?, Linda Villarosa, in NYT, 6/6/2017
November 13 // Class 21 : Sex and Exploitation of Labor
- The Material of Sex, Rosemary Hennessy, in Profit and Pleasure: Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism, pp. 37-73
- Bloody Legislation Against the Expropriated, from the End of the XV Century, Forcing Down of Wages by Acts of Parliament, Karl Marx, in Das Kapital, chapter 28
Extra Material: Red Umbrella Project Report: Criminal, Victim, or Worker? The Effects of New York’s Human Trafficking Intervention Courts on Adults Charged with Prostitution-related Offenses
November 15 // Class 22 : Labor and Precarious Work
- Precarious Labor: A Feminist Viewpoint, Silvia Federici, in In the Middle of a Whirlwind
- Prostitution Nation: The State of Prostitution in the Netherlands, Janice G. Raymond, in Not a Choice Not a Job, pp. 79-119
November 20 // Class 23 : Pornography and the First Amendment
- The Fatally Flawed Feminist Anti-Pornography Laws; Posing for Pornography: Coercion or Consent?; Why Censoring Pornography Would Not Reduce Discrimination or Violence Against Women, Nadine Strossen, in Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women’s Rights, pp. 59-82; 179-198; 247-264
- Not a Moral Issue, Catharine MacKinnon, in Applications of Feminist Legal Theory, pp. 37-58
Extra Materials: Pornography: An Exchange, Catherine A. MacKinnon, in The New York Review of Books, 3/3/1994
Jon Ronson on Bespoke Porn: “Nothing is Too Weird. We Consider All Requests”, in The Guardian, 7/29/2017
November 22 // No class (Thanksgiving Holiday)
Section V: Rape and Consent
November 27 // Class 24 : Feminist Legal Theory and Violence Against Women
- Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics and Violence Against Women of Color, Kimberlé Crenshaw, in Applications of Feminist Legal Theory, pp. 363-377
- A Forgotten History, Judith Herman, in Trauma and Recovery: the Aftermath of Violence – from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror, pp. 7-32
- Feminist Theory and the Law, Judith A. Baer, in The Oxford Handbook of Law and Politics, pp. 437-448
Extra Materials: Enough, movie based on the novel Black and Blue, by Anna Quindlen, 2002
“Drawings Were the Only Witnesses to My Years of Abuse”, interview with Rosalind Penfold, in The Telegraph, 1/22/2006 (some of the drawings are included in a pdf file)
NYC Mayor’s Office to Combat Domestic Violence 2016 Annual Report
WHO Report on Domestic Violence 2016
November 29 // Class 25 : Gender Violence and the Neoliberal State
- Neoliberalism and Neoconservatism; Sexual Violence, Alison Phipps, in The Politics of the Body, pp. 7-48
December 4 // Class 26 : Feminism and Capitalist Appropriation
- In an Abusive State: How Neoliberalism Appropriated the Feminist Movement Against Violence, Kristin Bumiller, pp. 1-15; 36-62
- Feminism, Capitalism and the Cunning of History, Nancy Fraser, in Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis, 209-226
Extra Material: Invisible War, documentary directed by Kirby Dick, USA, 2012
December 6 // Class 27 : Rape, Coercion and Consent
- Rape: On Coercion and Consent, Catharine MacKinnon, in Applications of Feminist Legal Theory, pp. 471-483
- The Active Social Life of “Muslim Women’s Rights”, Lila Abu-Lughod, in Gender and Culture at the Limit of Rights, pp. 101-119
December 11 // Class 28 : Sexual Assault on Campus
- Introduction: Sexual Paranoia on Campus; Sexual Miseducation: A Plea for Grown-Up Feminism, Laura Kipnis, in Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus, pp. 1-35; 185-220
Extra Materials: The Trump Administration’s Fraught Attempt to Address Campus Sexual, Jeannie Suk Gersen, in The New Yorker, 7/15/2017
Laura Kipnis’s Battle Against Vulnerability, Christine Smallwood, in The New Yorker, 4/2/2017
Short Takes: Provocations on Public Feminism, Laura Kipnis’s Unwanted Advances, in Signs
December 13 // Class 29 : Final Discussion on Rape and Consent
- Lenin on the Women’s Question, Clara Zetkin
December 18 // Class 30 : Final Discussion on Law and Sexuality
Mayra Cotta is a PhD Student in the Politics Department at the New School for Social Research
