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Details
Title
Sexual Blackmail : A Modern History / Angus McLaren.
Author
ISBN
9780674275256
Published
Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2002]
Copyright
©2002
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource (352 p.)
Item Number
10.4159/9780674275256 doi
Dewey Decimal Classification
364.16/5
Summary
Sexual blackmail first reached public notice in the late eighteenth 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 twentieth century. The labeling 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. Charting the rise and fall of sexual taboos and the shifting tides of shame, McLaren enables us to survey evolving sexual practices and discussions. He has mined the archives to tell his story through a host of fascinating characters and cases, from male bounders to designing women, from badger games to gold diggers, from victimless crimes to homosexual outing. He shows how these stories shocked, educated, entertained, and destroyed the lives of their victims. He also demonstrates how muckraking journalists, con men, and vengeful women determined the boundaries of sexual respectability and damned those considered deviant. Ultimately, the sexual revolution of the 1960s blurred the long-rigid lines of respectability, leading to a rapid decline of blackmail fears. This fascinating view of the impact of regulating sexuality from the late Victorian Age to our own time demonstrates the centrality of blackmail to sexual practices, deviance, and the law.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics
text file PDF
Source of Description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 01. Dez 2022)
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Record Appears in
Table of Contents
Frontmatter
CONTENTS
ILLUSTRATIONS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
1 SODOMY AND THE INVENTION OF BLACKMAIL
2 THE MODERN MANIA FOR MORALITY
3 WOMANIZING ACROSS CLASS LINES
4 ENTRAPPING THE JAZZ-AGE AMERICAN MALE
5 THE HOMOSEXUAL TARGET BETWEEN THE WARS
6 EXPLOITING RACIAL ANXIETIES
7 BLACKMAIL AND THE NEW WOMAN
8 CAUTIONARY TALES OF ADULTERY AND ABORTION
9 DISARMING THE POSTWAR BLACKMAILER
10 THE GAY MOVEMENT'S ATTACK ON VICTIMIZATION
11 FROM BLACKMAIL TO TABLOID EXPOSÉ
CONCLUSION
NOTES
INDEX
CONTENTS
ILLUSTRATIONS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
1 SODOMY AND THE INVENTION OF BLACKMAIL
2 THE MODERN MANIA FOR MORALITY
3 WOMANIZING ACROSS CLASS LINES
4 ENTRAPPING THE JAZZ-AGE AMERICAN MALE
5 THE HOMOSEXUAL TARGET BETWEEN THE WARS
6 EXPLOITING RACIAL ANXIETIES
7 BLACKMAIL AND THE NEW WOMAN
8 CAUTIONARY TALES OF ADULTERY AND ABORTION
9 DISARMING THE POSTWAR BLACKMAILER
10 THE GAY MOVEMENT'S ATTACK ON VICTIMIZATION
11 FROM BLACKMAIL TO TABLOID EXPOSÉ
CONCLUSION
NOTES
INDEX