Sexual Blackmail: A Modern History

ISBN-13: 9780674009240 / Angielski / Twarda / 2002 / 352 str.

Angus McLaren;McLaren

Opis

Sexual blackmail first reached public notice in the late 18th century when laws against sodomy were exploited by the unscrupulous to extort money from those they could entrap. Angus McLaren chronicles this parasitic crime, tracing its expansion in England and the United States through the Victorian era and into the first half of the 20th century. The labelling of certain sexual acts as disreputable, if not actually criminal - abortion, infidelity, prostitution, and homosexuality - armed would-be blackmailers and led to a crescendo of court cases and public scandals in the 1920s and 1930s. As the importance of sexual respectability was inflated, so too was the spectacle of its loss.