Sex-Positive Law

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“…This case's emphasis on the potential "dangerousness" of BDSM embodies sex-negative reasoning in that it frames BDSM "sexuality and sexual practices primarily as risky" and "difficult to manage" (Williams et al, 2015, p. 6). This type of reasoning is not unique to this case but instead reflects the sex-negativity of the broader legal approach to BDSM (Kaplan, 2014). Law has historically treated BDSM as a type of dangerous "violence" rather than sex (Hanna, 2000(Hanna, -2001 and has criminalized injurious BDSM activities despite the consent of participants (Ridinger, 2006;Kaplan, 2014;Haley, 2015).…”

“…This type of reasoning is not unique to this case but instead reflects the sex-negativity of the broader legal approach to BDSM (Kaplan, 2014). Law has historically treated BDSM as a type of dangerous "violence" rather than sex (Hanna, 2000(Hanna, -2001 and has criminalized injurious BDSM activities despite the consent of participants (Ridinger, 2006;Kaplan, 2014;Haley, 2015). That consent typically makes other "violent" injurious activities lawful, such as body modification and contact sports (Weinberg, 2016), reveals that BDSM is nevertheless treated differently due to a negative evaluation of its perceived sexual "immorality" (Egan, 2007) and "deviance" (Kaplan, 2014, pp.…”

Insert Sexy Title Here: Moving Toward a Sex-Positive Criminology

“…Because we are interested in the answers to these questions, we urge feminist criminologists to imagine what a sex-positive approach might look like when considering individuals and populations. For example, recent legal developments (e.g., California’s Senate Bill 967 that mandates affirmative consent educational standards) provide evidence that the law is moving (slowly) away from sex-negativity, yet the crimino-legal system remains a potentially negative and repressive force in the lives of many people (Kaplan, 2014). In the following sections, we discuss sex-positivity, explain how this approach may enrich feminist criminology, and investigate how an expanded and intersectional notion of positive sexuality could be conceptualized through a brief case study that examines the criminalization of teen sexting.…”

Going Wild: Law and Literature and Sex

“…The escalating legislative attention now trained on campus sexual assaults should sharpen these messages and deepen their personal resonance (Tuerkheimer, 2015). Second, most students never attend to the pervasive links between law and sex even if legal scholars have occasionally taken up the task of connecting the relevant dots (Kaplan, 2014;Posner, 1992;Posner & Silbaugh, 1996). Our course tries to elaborate this Foucaultian approach (Foucault, 1988), while more pointedly interrogating the liberation of sex promised in Lawrence v. Texas (2003), 5 with help from commentary that exposes how law continues to limit and construct sex (Franke, 2004(Franke, , p. 1414Rosenbury & Rothman, 2010), even as the continuous evolution of sexual practices transforms law and exposes law's limits (Plummer, 2002).…”