Virtual Library

The so-called ‘gay age of consent’ was the most high-profile issue in UK lesbian, gay and bisexual politics during the 1990s. Campaigning for an equal age of consent provoked a series of extended public and parliamentary debates, concluding with the passage of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act (2000).This article analyses these debates to reveal emerging social relationships between heterosexuality and homosexuality. It is argued that age of consent debates witnessed the ascendance of a new ‘hegemony’ supporting ‘equality at 16’, constituted through the interweaving of knowledge-claims generated within the mainstream epistemologies of biomedicine, law, criminology and child welfare.The analysis integrates critical sociological perspectives on these various forms of knowledge, with reference to epistemological transformations occurring in late modernity. Particular attention focuses on claims concerning the age at which the fixity of sexual identities is established. It is argued that the debate’s structure enabled ‘equality at 16’ to be endorsed alongside the persistent operation of rationales of containment in the political mainstream, and hence that legal equality does not imply recognition of the equal value of homosexuality and heterosexuality. The implications are examined for ongoing struggles over sex offences, Section 28, and the social status of same-sex sexualities.

Evidence for Hope makes the case that, yes, human rights work. Critics may counter that the movement is in serious jeopardy or even a questionable byproduct of Western imperialism. They point out that Guantánamo is still open, the Arab Spring protests have been crushed, and governments are cracking down on NGOs everywhere. But respected human rights expert Kathryn Sikkink draws on decades of research and fieldwork to provide a rigorous rebuttal to pessimistic doubts about human rights laws and institutions. She demonstrates that change comes slowly and as the result of struggle, but in the long term, human rights movements have been vastly effective. Attacks on the human rights movement’s credibility are based on the faulty premise that human rights ideas emerged in North America and Europe and were imposed on developing southern nations. Starting in the 1940s, Latin American leaders and activists were actually early advocates for the international protection of human rights. Sikkink shows that activists and scholars disagree about the efficacy of human rights because they use different yardsticks to measure progress. Comparing the present to the past, she shows that genocide and violence against civilians have declined over time, while access to healthcare and education has increased dramatically. Cognitive and news biases contribute to pervasive cynicism, but Sikkink’s investigation into past and current trends indicates that human rights is not in its twilight. Instead, this is a period of vibrant activism that has made impressive improvements in human well-being. Exploring the strategies that have led to real humanitarian gains since the middle of the twentieth century, Evidence for Hope looks at how these essential advances can be supported and sustained for decades to come.

From the Montgomery bus boycott to the Little Rock Nine to the Selma–Montgomery march, thousands of ordinary people who participated in the American civil rights movement; their stories are told in Eyes on the Prize. From leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., to lesser-known figures such as Barbara Rose John and Jim Zwerg, each man and woman made the decision that somethinghad to be done to stop discrimination. These moving accounts and pictures of the first decade of the civil rights movement are a tribute to the people, black and white, who took part in the fight for justice and the struggle they endured.

In Faces at the Bottom of the Well, civil rights activist and legal scholar Derrick Bell uses allegory and historical example to argue that racism is an integral and permanent part of American society. African American struggles for equality are doomed to fail so long as the majority of whites do not see their own well-being threatened by the status quo. Bell calls on African Americans to face up to this unhappy truth and abandon a misplaced faith in inevitable progress. Only then will blacks, and those whites who join with them, be in a position to create viable strategies to alleviate the burdens of racism. "Freed of the stifling rigidity of relying unthinkingly on the slogan 'we shall overcome, '" he writes, "we are impelled both to live each day more fully and to examine critically the actual effectiveness of traditional civil rights remedies.

Between one-fifth and a third of people who are transgender have been refused treatment by a medical provider due to their gender identity. Yet, we know little about the factors that shape public opinion on this issue. We present results from a nationally representative survey experiment (N = 4,876) that examines how common justifications issued by providers for the denial of healthcare, and the race and gender identity of the person being denied care, intersect to shape public opinion concerning the acceptability of treatment refusal. We find that religious objections are viewed as less acceptable compared to a medical justification, in this case, inadequate training. However, the difference between religious objections and inadequate training is larger when the person being denied healthcare is White or Asian than when the person is Black or Latinx. Analysis of open-ended responses indicates the modest effect of doctor’s rationale on attitudes toward treatment refusal with respect to Black and Latinx patients is partially attributable to a racialized, free-market logic. Respondents were more likely to advocate for a doctor’s fundamental right to refuse service when evaluating Black and Latinx patients compared to White patients. We discuss the implications of these findings for intersectional approaches to trans studies and future public opinion research.

The development of feminist jurisprudence in recent years has made a rich and fruitful contribution to legal theory. Few areas of domestic law have avoided the scrutiny of feminist writers, who have exposed the gender bias of apparently neutral systems of rules. A central feature of many western theories about law is that the law is an autonomous entity, distinct from the society it regulates. A legal system is regarded as different from a political or economic system, for example, because it operates on the basis of abstract rationality, and is thus universally applicable and capable of achieving neutrality and objectivity. These attributes are held to give the law its special authority. More radical theories have challenged this abstract rationalism, arguing that legal analysis cannot be separated from the political, economic, historical, and cultural context in which people live. Some theorists argue that the law functions as a system of beliefs that make social, political, and economic inequalities appear natural. Feminist jurisprudence builds on certain aspects of this critical strain in legal thought. It is much more focused and concrete, however, and derives its theoretical force from immediate experience of the role of the legal system in creating and perpetuating the unequal position of women.

Whether in characterizing Catharine MacKinnon’s theory of gender as itself pornographic or in identifying liberalism as unable to make good on its promises, Wendy Brown pursues a central question: how does a sense of woundedness become the basis for a sense of identity? Brown argues that efforts to outlaw hate speech and pornography powerfully legitimize the state: such apparently well-intentioned attempts harm victims further by portraying them as so helpless as to be in continuing need of governmental protection. “Whether one is dealing with the state, the Mafia, parents, pimps, police, or husbands,” writes Brown, “the heavy price of institutionalized protection is always a measure of dependence and agreement to abide by the protector’s rules.” True democracy, she insists, requires sharing power, not regulation by it; freedom, not protection.

Refusing any facile identification with one political position or another, Brown applies her argument to a panoply of topics, from the basis of litigiousness in political life to the appearance on the academic Left of themes of revenge and a thwarted will to power. These and other provocations in contemporary political thought and political life provide an occasion for rethinking the value of several of the last two centuries’ most compelling theoretical critiques of modern political life, including the positions of Nietzsche, Marx, Weber, and Foucault.

This article situates forced migration amid intersections of burgeoning human insecurities that force increasing numbers of people to leave their homes and become susceptible to exploitation. Drawing upon data on trafficking in Pakistan, the author argues that marginalized groups often go through multiple migrations that can include episodes of trafficking for sex, labor, or other purposes. The disjuncture between policies and realities on the ground, and the trend of current interventions do little to address the human security of these migrants. The article emphasizes that the human security frame provides a more nuanced human rights-based approach to analyze this form of migration and address the root causes and risks associated with the forced displacement of people.

Sociologists have long recognized that social problems do not derive solely from objective conditions but from a process of collective definition. At the core of some social issues are framing competitions, struggles over the production of ideas and meanings. This article examines competing cultural meanings about the fat body. Through frame analysis of organizational materials, I map the contested field of obesity and document three cultural frames—medical frame, social justice frame, and market choice frame—as represented by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA), and the food industry group the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF), respectively. Using the “framing matrix,” I explore each frame's key signature elements and discuss its social and cultural significance. Notably, each frame leads to different outcomes for social equality and how society thinks about fat bodies, health, and public policy.

Social and cultural changes have led to free speech claims being made in novel contexts: to challenge the validity of bans on tobacco advertising, to publish 'kiss and tell' stories about celebrities, and to resist attempts to regulate the Internet. In this fully revised and updated new edition of his classic work, Barendt considers the meaning and scope of freedom of speech. How far should free speech and expression clauses go to protect pornography, commercial advertising, and public meetings on the streets? Does this freedom cover desecration of a national flag? Does it include nude dancing?

Eric Barendt discusses the legal protection of free speech in countries including England, the United States (including recent decisions of the United States Supreme Court), Canada, and Germany. He examines the varied approaches of different legal systems and constitutional traditions to balancing free speech and freedom of the press against rights to reputation, privacy, and copyright, and explores case law in light of the philosophical and political arguments for free speech guarantees.