Book Review: Sexual Intimacy and Gender Identity Fraud: Re-Framing the Legal and Ethical Debate
| Author | Aleardo Zanghellini |
| Published date | 01 December 2018 |
| Date | 01 December 2018 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0964663918797377 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
other natural connections. But it does: we may very well spend a great deal of time
digging deep in classical issues of moral philosophy, but for digging in political philo-
sophy there seems to be basically no room at all in the traditional cosmology of criminal
law. When we leave moral philosophy, concerned with what we might call horizontal,
interpersonal, relations, and turn to ‘vertical’ philosophy – how should society qua
society relate to individuals – then all is already set, including a reduced picture where
criminal law should be seen as an encounter between only two actors: the State, evil or
potentially evil, and the individual, in need of protection against this State. No connec-
tions exist between them, no society creates bridges between them. If we wish – as I do –
to envisage a richer potential understanding of criminal law, then this is one further area
where criminal law scholars need to do a lot of work. Criminal law is political law, and
very much so.
To conclude, Alan Norrie’s Justice and the Slaughter Bench is highly recommended
to anyone – not least criminal law scholars – who wish to gain a deeper, more complex
(and more correct!) understanding of the mechanisms of criminal law. This is so for
scholars working in the Anglo-American tradition where Norrie is situated but also for
readers outside this tradition, in at least two distinct ways: (1) on a general level, through
the deeper understanding that the book offers regarding the criminal law’s points of
departure, mechanisms, ‘constellation’, and so on and (2) more on a particular level,
where seeing ‘the devil in the detail’ in relation to, for example, mistaken self-defense
might help to realize (a) that we somehow often have the same dogmatic problems in
various jurisdictions, (b) that we might solve them in different ways, and (c) that what
was already settled and clarified can, and should, be again discussed and perhaps again
blurred.
CLAES LERNESTEDT
Stockholm University, Sweden
ALEX SHARPE, Sexual Intimacy and Gender Identity Fraud: Re-Framing the Legal and Ethical Debate.
Routledge, Abingdon, 2018, pp. 224, ISBN 9781138502550, £115 (hbk).
In her new research monograph, perhaps the most significant work of transgender law
and queer ethics of the last decade, Alex Sharpe mounts a compelling critique of the new
legal category of gender identity fraud. A subspecies of sexual fraud, gender identity
fraud is applied to cases involving a complainant alleging that their trans, genderqueer or
otherwise gender non-conforming sexual partner deceived them into believing they were
cisgender. Successful prosecution for gender identity fraud can lead to prison sentences
of several years. This is disturbing in its own right, and even more so once we consider
that defendants tend to be vulnerable by reason of thei r gender non-conformity and
youth. Sharpe’s argument is that the criminalisation of gender identity fraud is a case
of criminal law overreach, but not only in the sense that it catches conduct that, whether
objectionable or not, should not be criminalized. Her claim is stronger: as with sodomy
Book Reviews 805
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