Lesbianism and the Criminal Law: Three Centuries of Legal Regulation in England and Wales

ISBN-13: 9783030352998 / Angielski / Twarda / 2020 / 323 str.

Caroline Derry

Spis treści

Abbreviations 

Table of Statues 

Table of Reported Cases

1. Introduction 

1.1 What is lesbianism?

1.1.1 Anachronism

1.1.2 Definitions

1.1.3 (Not) defining individuals

1.2 Silencing

1.2.1 Legal silencing

1.2.2 Why silencing for women but not men?

1.3 Making lesbian legal history

1.3.1 Sources

1.3.2 Methodology

1.4 Arrangement of chapters

2. Mary/Charles Hamilton: eighteenth-century female husband prosecutions

2.1 Mary/Charles Hamilton, female husband

2.2 Female husbands and silencing

2.3 Identities and perceptions

2.3.1 Motivations for marriage

2.4 Wives

2.5 Sexual offences and the Bloody Code

2.6 Why were female husbands prosecuted?

2.6.1 Social change

2.6.2 Changing medical theories

2.6.3 Changes in the criminal justice system

2.6.4 Why were female husbands punished?

2.7 Conclusion: silencing and the dildo

3. Louise Mourey and the ‘Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon’

3.1 Louise Mourey 

3.2 The development of indecent assault

3.2.1 Indecency

3.2.2 Age of consent 

3.3 Social and legal context

3.3.1 Female husbands in the nineteenth century

3.3.2 Attitudes to gender and sexuality

3.3.2 Sexuality and insanity

3.3.3 The criminal justice system

3.3.4 The sexual double standard

3.4 Louise Mourey and silencing

3.5 Conclusion: the (lack of) impact of Mourey 

4. ‘Gross indecency between females’: the 1921 Parliamentary debates

4.1 The 1921 debates

4.1.1 Why was the issue of lesbianism chosen?

4.2 Lesbianism and women’s sexuality

4.2.1 Sex and danger in the First World War

4.2.2 New parallels to male homosexuality

4.2.3 Lesbian sex

4.3 Social change

4.3.1 Social class and race

4.3.2 Feminist diversity and resistance

4.3.3 Women and lawmaking

4.4 Conclusion

5. Victor/Valerie Barker: sexology and challenges to silencing

5.1 Victor/Valerie Barker

5.2 The rise of sexology and the female invert

5.2.1 Criminality and female inversion

5.2.2 Sexology in legal and popular understanding

5.2.3 Sexology and silencing

5.3 Female husbands and class

5.4 Comparison with earlier cases

5.5 Aftermath: renewed silence

5.6 Conclusion

6. The Wolfenden Report: a shift in silencing

6.1 The Wolfenden Report

6.2 Changing law: legislators and sexual offences legislation

6.2.1 From moralism to liberalism?

6.2.2 Silencing the lesbian comparator

6.2.3 Limiting political claims

6.2.4 Articulating the lesbian comparator

6.3 From congenital inversion to medicalised homosexuality

6.4 Cracks in the wall of silence?

6.4.1 Wartime regulation

6.4.2 The post-war lesbian marriage-breaker

6.4.3 The post-war unnatural friendship

6.4.3 Rights claims and an emerging movement

6.5 Conclusion

7. Allen: sexual offences prosecutions in the late twentieth century

7.1 R v Allen 

7.2 A new social context

7.3 A new legal context

7.4 Court attitudes

7.4.1 Jennifer/Jimmy Saunders

7.4.2 Perversion and corruption

7.4.3 Questioning as harm

7.4.4 Lesbianism as embarrassment 

7.4.5 Sentencing comparisons

7.5 The Sexual Offences Act 2003

7.5.1 Liberal principles

7.5.2 Key offences under the Act

7.5.3 Prosecution and sentencing guidelines

7.6 Conclusion

8. McNally: sexual offences, gender and consent

8.1 R v McNally 

8.2 Modern female husbands?

8.2.1 The cases

8.2.2 Overlapping identities

8.2.3 Prosthetic penises

8.2.4 Pervert or paedophile?

8.2.5 Heterosexuality and abuse 

8.3 Fraud and consent

8.3.1 Why are these allegations credible to the criminal justice system?

8.3.2 Why are gender deceptions criminalised?

8.3.3 Is a focus on the sexual act adequate?

8.4 Conclusion

9. Conclusion

Index

O autorze

Caroline Derry is Lecturer in Law at the Open University, UK. She taught for fifteen years at London Metropolitan University where she was a senior lecturer in Criminal and Evidence Law and Gender and Law, and LLB course leader. She has been a visiting lecturer in Criminal Law at SOAS and at Paris Descartes. She is a co-author of Complete Criminal Law (OUP, 2018) and Gender and Law (Routledge, 2018).

Blurb

This book offers a comprehensive examination of the ways in which the criminal justice system of England and Wales has regulated, and failed or refused to regulate, lesbianism. It identifies the overarching approach as one of silencing: lesbianism has not only been ignored or regarded as unimaginable, but was deliberately excluded from legal discourses. A series of case studies ranging from 1746 to 2013 from parliamentary debates to individual prosecutions shed light on the complex process of regulation through silencing. They illuminate its evolution over three centuries and explore when and why it has been breached. The answers Derry uncovers can be fully understood only in the context of surrounding social and legal developments which are also considered. Lesbianism and the Criminal Law makes an important contribution to the growing bodies of literature on feminism, sexuality and the law and the legal history of sexual offences.