Robyn Holder, Just interests: Victims, citizens and the potential for justice
| Author | Mary Iliadis |
| Published date | 01 December 2019 |
| Date | 01 December 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0004865819865981 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
assault seriously, Sharpe remains concerned about the ways that the framing and appli-
cation of the law here reinforces a punitive state which unjustly prosecutes transgender
people and does so, not to protect people from coerced sex, but rather in the service of
shoring up gender norms and compulsory heterosexuality. Key to this argument is the
fact that sexual intimacy in these cases was not coerced but based on desire, and that the
“harm” that occurred is linked to the complainants’ sense of self-identity. The claim that
they are harmed shores up their heterosexual identity against its potential “undoing”
after pleasurable sexual intimacy with someone who was assigned the same sex as they
were at birth. But whether this is a harm that warrants the punitive and criminalising
intervention of the state and whether complainant ignorance is grounds to suggest that
consent was not granted warrant serious consideration. Sharpe asks why gender is
important in considerations of consent, when other questions do not get asked, and
why serious omissions or deceptions which may bear on consent in important ways,
such as a person’s sexual assault or other criminal history, are not prosecuted. The
outsize attention paid to gender as a basis for such prosecutions when these prosecutions
would not proceed in other contexts is highlighted through a hypothetical that Sharpe
offers. As she points out, a prosecution would unlikely proceed in a case where, for
example, a white woman sought the prosecution of a mixed-race man who did not dis-
close his race prior to sexual intimacy. In fact, some would argue that such a prosecution
would enshrine racism within the law. While debates about what information is relevant
and what is trivial in determining consent always rely on subjective determinations,
Sharpe’s analysis highlights that such determinations are always framed through cis-
and heteronormative lenses which subsequently produce legal and social injustice.
Sharpe’s rigorous analysis of these issues provides an important intervention into
these debates and contributes significantly to the queering of the law and criminal jus-
tice. From identifying the short shrift given within the law to the realities faced by
transgender people to considering the numerous ways that transgender lives are made
legally and socially incoherent, the book highlights the urgent need for the law to adopt
a more complex understanding of, and response to, gender diversity. Sharpe suggests
that only through thinking differently about sexual consent and sexual ethics – partic-
ularly by recognising cisgender privilege and fostering greater reflexivity and openness
to difference – can change occur. Sharpe is to be commended for these challenges to
legal and social orthodoxies and for opening new avenues through which queer theory,
law, and criminal justice can be drawn together to achieve social justice.
Robyn Holder, Just interests: Victims, citizens and the potential for justice. Edward Elgar
Publishing: Northampton, 2018; 288 pp. ISBN 978-1-78643-402-9, US$135.00 (hbk)
Reviewed by: Mary Iliadis, Deakin University, Australia
Victims’ perceptions and expectations of justice are complex, varied and depend upon a
range of factors relating to the individual victim, the nature and context of the offence
Book Reviews 599
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