3rd Global Conference: Sex and the State
Friday 17th October 2014 – Sunday 19th October 2014, Montreal,
Quebec, Canada
Call for Presentations:
What are the parameters of “good” sexual citizenship?
How do we legally define “good” and “bad” sexual behaviour?
What ethical grounds are adopted to distinguish between good sex and
bad sex in the Law?
How have former “sexual outlaws” challenged their exclusion and
gained the status of full citizens?
How do we define and regulate sex crime and how do we seek to deter
it?
These sorts of questions lie at the centre of this project, which
explores the issue of sexual citizenship and its terms of belonging
and exclusion. We wish to critically engage with the ways in which
proper sexual citizenship, or “erotic civility”, and sex crime, or
“erotic incivility”, have been articulated and regulated, in a
manner that moves beyond simple disciplinary attentions to policy,
social norms and values. The terrain of sex Law, its prohibitions and
its sanctions, will be examined with a particular focus on the dual
function of the Law, its normative and its executive functions, which
define the parameters of good erotic citizenship while policing the
“erotically uncivil”, by intervening in instances of deviation
from normative erotic civility.
We also wish to make central the issue of Ethics and examine its role
in guiding prohibitions, permissions and regulations of different
sexual conduct and sexualities, to flesh out the complex ways states
and social institutions regulate sexual conduct in contemporary
societies. Specifically we aim to explore the ways in which the Law
and other forms of regulation have been used to police and repress
desire and pleasure, and the ways in which such prohibitions and
regulations have been changed, subverted, challenged or transgressed.
Proposals, papers, presentations, workshops and pre-formed panels are
invited on issues related to any of the following themes:
1. Sex Crime and the Law
-Rape and the law against sexual coercion and violence
-Sex laws and diversity in sexual identity and conduct
-Sex laws and comparative research on sex and sexuality in different
societies
-The relationship between sex law and notions of good or ethical
sexuality
-Sex laws and sexual pathology and prejudice in contemporary societies
-Sex law and the lessons of historical legal prohibitions or
regulations of sex and sexuality
2. Sex Law and Its Agencies
-Sex law and the judicial process
-Sex Law and policing sex and sexualities
-Sex Law and the selectivities of the state
– Sex Law and the role of the state in regulating and prohibiting sex
and sexualities
-Sex Law and the discretion within criminal justice systems
3. Ethics and the Principles of Sexual Conduct
-What are the principles and standards of sexual ethics?
-What sex and sexualities should be prohibited, regulated or
permitted?
-What forms of sexual orientations, behaviours and relationships are
ethical or unethical?
-How should ethics relate to sex law and what other ideas of
principles should inform sex law apart from ethics?
-Can we have ethically unsound sex that is legally permissible?
-What are the problems of talking ethically about desire and pleasure?
4. Sex Law and Regulating Desire
-Sex law and Sex Work – pornography and prostitution
-Sex Law and Sex Acts – permissible and impermissible sex
-Desires, pleasures and the conceptual bases for ethical or legal
forms of prohibition or regulation
-Regulation through knowledge – sex education and institutional
sexual regulation
-Regulation of particular sexual agents – disability, mental illness
and other regulatory discourses
-Regulation and culture – representing good and bad sex
5. Sex Crime and Its Agents
-Understanding and treating the perpetrators of sex crime
-Support and services for the victims of sex crime
-Sex crime and the impact on survivors
-Sex crime and its impact upon police and support agencies
-Justice and obligation – the legal system and its impact on sex
crime perpetrators and victims
The Steering Group particularly welcomes the submission of pre-formed
panel proposals. Papers will also be considered on any related theme.
In order to support and encourage interdisciplinary and
transdisciplinary engagement, it is our intention to create the
possibility of starting dialogues between the parallel events running
during this conference.
What to send:
300 word proposals should be submitted by Friday 11th July 2014. If an
abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be
submitted by Friday 17th September 2014. Abstracts should be submitted
simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word or
RTF formats with the following information and in this order
a) author(s), b) affiliation as you would like it to appear in
programme, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of
abstract, f) up to 10 keywords.
E-mails should be entitled: SS3 Abstract Submission.
Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using
footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as
bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all
paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a
week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be
lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative
electronic route or resend.
Organising Chairs:
Serena Petrella: serep@inter-disciplinary.net
Rob Fisher: ss3@inter-disciplinary.net
The conference is part of the Gender and Sexuality programme of
research projects. It aims to bring together people from different
areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions
which are innovative and exciting. All papers accepted for and
presented at the conference must be in English and will be eligible
for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be developed for
publication in a themed hard copy volume(s). All publications from the
conference will require editors, to be chosen from interested
delegates from the conference.
Inter-Disciplinary.Net believes it is a mark of personal courtesy and
professional respect to your colleagues that all delegates should
attend for the full duration of the meeting. If you are unable to make
this commitment, please do not submit an abstract for presentation.
For further details of the conference, please visit: