The War on Sex

<div>The past fifty years are conventionally understood to have witnessed an uninterrupted expansion of sexual rights and liberties in the United States. This state-of-the-art collection tells a different story: while progress has been made in marriage equality reproductive rights access to birth control and other areas government and civil society are waging a war on stigmatized sex by means of law surveillance and social control. The contributors document the history and operation of sex offender registries and the criminalization of HIV as well as highly punitive measures against sex work that do more to harm women than to combat human trafficking. They reveal that sex crimes are punished more harshly than other crimes while new legal and administrative regulations drastically restrict who is permitted to have sex. By examining how the ever-intensifying war on sex affects both privileged and marginalized communities the essays collected here show why sexual liberation is indispensable to social justice and human rights.</div> <div><i>Contributors</i>. Alexis Agathocleous Elizabeth Bernstein J. Wallace Borchert Mary Anne Case Owen Daniel-McCarter Scott De Orio David M. Halperin Amber Hollibaugh Trevor Hoppe Hans Tao-Ming Huang Regina Kunzel Roger N. Lancaster Judith Levine Laura Mansnerus Erica R. Meiners R. Noll Melissa Petro Carol Queen Penelope Saunders Sean Strub Maurice Tomlinson Gregory Tomso</div>