Consent

Whom, over the past two centuries, has society construed as sexual "victims"? Where and when did the notion of consent—so crucial for law and politics today—emerge? In this brilliantly insightful work, Pamela Susan Haag traces the evolution of public wisdom on some of society's most private and controversial matters. At once an investigation of social history, popular culture, legal doctrine, and political theory, her book shows how in contemporary America the history of sexual rights is inextricably intertwined with that of liberalism. Haag examines the nineteenth-century obsession with the perils of seduction and twentieth-century disputes over white slavery, arranged marriages, interracial relationships, and rape. The history of heterosexual modernity and identity must, she argues, be viewed as a crucial component of a much larger historical narrative—that of the ways in which individual freedom and citizenship have been continually redefined in American liberal culture. She illuminates the development of liberalism from its "classic" stage that ended after the post-Reconstruction era to a "modern" version that came to fruition with the judicial acceptance of the right to privacy. Finally, she shows how debates over the meaning of heterosexual consent and violence contributed to this transformation.

Haag's historical arguments are fascinating and clearly important, and her work offers crucial insights to feminist theorists and activists and to scholars engaged in writing histories of sexuality.... This is an important book, and it deserves to be widely read., A crucial contribution to our understanding of how race, sex, and class are inextricably intertwined in sexual politics., As this provocative study shows, the idea of rights in the self and bodily integrity is a historically new notion, and the historical construction of women's sexual self is part of this broader process. As Haag skillfully teases out of her 19th- and 20th-century case studies, the notion of personal rights and personhood emerged slowly.... This is an excellent book for nonhistorians interested in sexual politics and for historians interested in ideas of selfhood, power, and social/civil rights. It will be a major resource for graduate courses in feminist theory in a variety of disciplines.

Pamela Susan Haag is an analyst and researcher in Washington, D.C. She received a Ph.D. in history from Yale University.