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February 5, 2006
A review of Regulating Sex: The Politics of Intimacy and Identity by Aagje Leven. The review say that there is a common theme which runs throughout the book.
Central to this theme is the observation that liberal states presuppose sexuality: they deem it a 'natural' thing and therefore relegate it to the presocial or private domain. Liberalism considers sex as neither a political subject, nor a public activity. The main line of argument in Regulating Sex, however,is that states consider sex as natural only when it is practiced in private, within the context of a heterosexual monogamous relationship between adults. It is observed that sexual expressions transgressing these implicit norms are controlled, suppressed or even criminalized. The various essays prove this normativity to be socially constructed through a complex interplay between family, social, criminal and other laws, on the one hand, and public discourses, institutions and social actors, on the other.
The book argues that sex is political and an important subject of public debate, and so it challenges the traditional private/public divide.I say traditional because the assumption here is that contemporary liberalisim is classical liberalism, when it is a neo-liberalsim.
Isn't sex just one market amongst others for neo-liberals? Do they not turn the family and the social into a market in which homo oeconomicus operates as an economic-rational individual sensitive to changes in the balance of profit and loss? Such an individual operates within the rules of the game of the market, which is made into the organizational principle for the state and society.The family and civil society are encoded as a form of the economic domain, where cost-benefit calculations and market criteria can be applied to decision-making processes
within the family, married life, sexuality, crime, professional life, etc.
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