Sex and Punishment

An “enormously informative and entertaining” history of Western sex law from ancient times through the 19th century (Boston Globe) What royal mistresses and gay charioteers, medieval transvestites and lonely goat–lovers, can tell us about the history of human desire . . . The “raging frenzy” of the sex drive, to use Plato’s phrase, has always defied control. However, that’s not to say the Sumerians, Victorians, and every civilization in between—and beyond—have not tried wielding their most formidable weapon: the law. Sex and Punishment tells the story of the struggle throughout the millennia to regulate the most powerful engine of human behavior. Writer and lawyer Eric Berkowitz uses flesh–and–blood cases—much flesh and even more blood—to evoke the entire sweep of Western sex law, from the savage impalement of an ancient Mesopotamian adulteress to the imprisonment of Oscar Wilde in 1895 for “gross indecency.” The cast of Sex and Punishment is as varied as the forms taken by human desire itself: royal mistresses, gay charioteers, medieval transvestites, lonely goat–lovers, prostitutes of all stripes, London rent boys. Each of them had forbidden sex, and each was judged—and justice, as Berkowitz shows, rarely had much to do with it. With the light touch of a natural storyteller, Berkowitz spins these tales and more, going behind closed doors to reveal the essential history of human desire. Read more