Sex and Punishment tells the story of the struggle throughout millennia to regulate the most powerful engine of human behaviour: sex. From the savage impalement of an Ancient Mesopotamian adulteress to the imprisonment of Oscar Wilde for 'gross indecency' in 1895, Eric Berkowitz evokes the entire sweep of Western sex law. The cast of Sex and Punishment is as varied as the forms taken by human desire itself: royal mistresses, gay charioteers, medieval transvestites, lonely goat-lovers, prostitutes of all stripes and London rent boys. Each of them had forbidden sex, and each was judged – and justice, as Berkowitz shows – rarely had anything to do with it.

Are men and women who are prosecuted for similar crimes punished differently? If women are sentenced more leniently, does it vary with race and class? This work explores these issues and others by focusing on a variety of processed court cases such as homicide, robbery and drug offences.

This book traces the lived experiences of women lawbreakers in the state of Pennsylvania from 1820 to 1860 through the records of more than six thousand criminal court cases. By following these women from the perpetration of their crimes through the state’s efforts to punish and reform them, Erica Rhodes Hayden places them at the center of their own stories. Women constituted a small percentage of those tried in courtrooms and sentenced to prison terms during the nineteenth century, yet their experiences offer valuable insight into the era’s criminal justice system. Hayden illuminates how criminal punishment and reform intersected with larger social issues of the time, including questions of race, class, and gender, and reveals how women prisoners actively influenced their situation despite class disparities. Hayden’s focus on recovering the individual experiences of women in the criminal justice system across the state of Pennsylvania marks a significant shift from studies that focus on the structure and leadership of penal institutions and reform organizations in urban centers. Troublesome Women advances our understanding of female crime and punishment in the antebellum period and challenges preconceived notions of nineteenth-century womanhood. Scholars of women’s history and the history of crime and punishment, as well as those interested in Pennsylvania history, will benefit greatly from Hayden’s thorough and fascinating research.

In this book the author examines attitudes to sexuality in Britain with a special emphasis on the prudery, fear and hatred of deviance that underly those attitudes. He describes the self-hatred that often leads to persecution of homosexuals and sufferers of venereal disease, including AIDS.

Growing up, Charlayne Grenci learned to live with rejection, fear, and strict protocol. She flirted with erotica, disaster, and lived a life of rebellion and risky behavior. She worked in grey areas of the law, and consequently lost her freedom for challenging the system. In spite of her plight for 'freedom of expression', her inner power to survive and persevere gave her the imitable strength and to strive in a quest for knowledge, fame, and fortune. From a privileged, tormented childhood, coping with the temptations of adolescence, Charlayne descended into an adulthood of bizarre, sexual encounters, taboo subcultures, and decades of failed relationships. Charlayne has been frequently misunderstood by the majority, including friends, family, and occasionally by herself. Mistress Carla walked on the wild side of exploration into the dark side of human sexual behavior at her 1980's torture dungeon in Pompano Beach , Florida . Hundreds of anxious thrill-seekers living in the United States and internationally, traveled to submit and worship America 's Queen Of Domination. The famous dominatrix's clandestine business came to a shocking halt by a scandalous police raid, a witch-hunt, corrupt legal battle, and a three-ring circus trial, one of the most high-profiled, sensationalized criminal court cases in Florida 's history! Mistress Carla endured five devastating years of judicial domination, followed by a maximum jail sentence and a felony conviction as "the notorious dominatrix"!

A tale of kidnap, extreme punishment and dark pleasures.