Violence and Socio-Legal Interventions in Gender and Sexuality
| Author | Alexander Maine,Chris Ashford |
| DOI | 10.1177/00220183221086354 |
| Published date | 01 April 2022 |
| Date | 01 April 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Editorial |
Violence and Socio-Legal
Interventions in Gender
and Sexuality
Chris Ashford
Northumbria University, UK
Alexander Maine
University of Leicester, UK
Violence, Miller has argued, ‘is foundational to gender, and vice versa’,
1
whilst Gersen and Suk noted in
the US context following Lawrence v Texas
2
that ‘violence and subordination are now the key concepts
for illegal sex’
3
with Fischel observing that ‘sex laws are today more calibrated to routing subordination
and violence than to preserving marriage and morality’.
4
In other words, as the legal landscape regulating
gender and sexuality has shifted, so too have the justifications relating to law. However, power –and its
regulation through criminal law –can be seen as a key concept worthy of further exploration for the
varying ways that the criminal law constructs and contests its operation.
Brooks has noted that ‘sexuality is a space in which bodies do suffer’and this ‘suffering’comes from
talking about sex ‘in a real way’.
5
These scholars have in different ways recognised the complexity of
violence and socio-legal interventions in gender and sexuality. This has presented challenges for the crim-
inal law. Zylan has previously argued that ‘law eschews complex social reality for categorical elegance;
this makes sense for lawyers, but it does violence to lived social experience’.
6
This special issue seeks to
explore some of the ‘messiness’and complexity relating to contemporary understandings of violence and
highlights the broad constructions of this concept.
Following the advent of familial reform for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Queer (LGBTQ) people
and the encouraging of dyadic coupling and legal recognition,
7
it may be argued that the law has
Corresponding author:
Chris Ashford, Law and Society, Northumbria University, UK.
Email: chris.ashford@northumbria.ac.uk
1. T. Miller, Violence (Routledge, London 2020) 38.
2. 539 US 558 (2003).
3. J. Gersen and J. Suk, ‘The Sex Bureaucracy’(2016) 104 California Law Review 881, quoted in J.J. Fischel (ed), Screw Consent:
A Better Politics of Sexual Justice (University of California Press, Oakland 2019) 79.
4. J.J. Fischel, Screw Consent: A Better Politics of Sexual Justice (University of California Press, Oakland 2019) 79.
5. V. Brooks, Fucking Law: The Search for Her Sexual Ethics (Zero Books, Winchester 2019) 22.
6. Y. Zylan, States of Passion: Law, Identity, and the Social Construction of Desire (Oxford University Press, Oxford 2011) 61.
7. C. Ashford, A. Maine, and G. Zago, ‘Normative Behaviour, Moral Boundaries, and the State’in C. Ashford and A. Maine (eds),
Research Handbook on Gender, Sexuality and Law (Edward Elgar, Cheltenham 2020); A. Maine, ‘The Hierarchy of Marriage
and Civil Partnerships: Diversifying Relationship Recognition’in F. Hamilton and G Noto La Diega (eds) Same-Sex
Relationships, Law and Social Change (Routledge, London 2020) 209.
Editorial
The Journal of Criminal Law
2022, Vol. 86(2) 57–59
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/00220183221086354
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