The state as the "Top": the government's control of sex.

Regulating Sex: The Politics of Intimacy and Identity. Edited by Elizabeth Bernstein and Laurie Schaffner. New York, NY: Routledge, 2005, 313 pages. Cloth, $22.95.

During the 2004 Superbowl Halftime show broadcast on CBS, pop star Janet Jackson experienced a costume "malfunction" when singer Justin Timberlake tore her costume, exposing her breast. Though those watching the Superbowl only got a split-second glimpse of her breast before the camera zoomed out, the malfunction erupted into a firestorm of controversy and made international headlines. In addition to the $550,000 fine placed on CBS by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), a five-second delay on live broadcasts was introduced and has been enforced.

The reaction of the FCC, as well as the thousands of people who reportedly called in to issue a complaint, illuminates the United States' current perspective on the human body, sex, and sexuality. To help make sense of this perspective, Regulating Sex: The Politics of Intimacy and Identity, edited by Elizabeth Bernstein and Laurie Schaffner, is both timely and useful for understanding how sexuality is viewed in the U.S. and abroad.

Regulating Sex is a collection of diverse essays focused on topics pertaining to when, where, and how is sex regulated. The book is broken up into four sections: Part I: "The Regulation of Queer Identities and Intimacies"; Part II: "The Regulation of Sexual Commerce"; Part III: "The Regulation of Childhood and Gendered 'Innocence'"; and Part IV: "Beyond Regulation: Towards Sexual Justice." Regulating Sex shows its readers the varied ways in which governments attempt to control citizens' sexualities by limiting their sexual options. Individual essay topics range from homosexual sodomy and transgender legal status to Caribbean sexual tourism and child sexual abuse.

Scholarly works that take a different slant on commonly held beliefs and practices often are the most interesting. Most of the essays in Regulating Sex address how the manner in which we view sex is strongly influenced by governmental rules and regulations. The most appealing sections were those concentrating on the attempts of the state to control and dictate peoples' sexuality, and whether the state's control was for the protection of those in vulnerable situations, or to simply enforce sexual norms.

There were several fine essays in this anthology, but in the limited space allotted here, one stands out. This essay, "Liberalism and Social Movement Success: The Case of the United States Sodomy Statues," by Mary Bernstein, spoke most directly to the theme of the book: when and how the government dictates the relationship between the private and the public.

Sodomy laws in the U.S. have an interesting history, which Bernstein's essay discusses. Rather than just review the sodomy laws, Bernstein analyzes them from a socio-legal perspective. She details how they have changed and evolved in the U.S, addressing the cultural and social implications of sodomy's outlawed status and how these laws allowed "for a hetero-normative order." Bernstein describes the history of the social movement to eliminate the laws, and the way that notions and ideas towards sodomy have changed. When people think of sodomy, they commonly think of anal sex, and especially men participating in anal sex with other men. As a result, those early activists were not just protesting against the outlawing of a sexual practice between two consenting adults, but against the outlawing of the identity associated with that behavior.

New social movements tend to be identity-based and challenge the dominant social order. The movement to reverse the ban on sodomy went against what was perceived to be mainstream society's "sexual preferences." However, to be successful, this movement played into one of America's most sacred ideals: privacy. At the same time that the women's liberation movement claimed that "the personal is political" with regard to violence in the home, such as domestic violence and incest (which was addressed in Kerwin Kaye's "Sexual Abuse Victims and the Wholesome Family: Feminist, Psychological, and State Discourses"), the "sodomy movement" professed the opposite.

Interestingly, neither social movement focused on the mentality of the heterosexual, male-dominated society in which domestic violence was overlooked and homosexuality was frowned upon. The question Bernstein asks is, Do movements have to address the overarching issues at the root of their oppression to be successful, or can they simply frame their complaint so that it becomes a civil right? This issue is also at the heart of the recent struggle for same-sex marriage, a movement which does not attack the fundamental power arrangements within marriage and the elevated status of "family" in our society.

The movement to reverse sodomy laws was a success because it accomplished its explicit goal; however, Bernstein questions whether researchers should count such victories as successes. This movement did not confront the symbolism of heterosexism, but appealed to this nation's need for privacy. Bernstein proposes a multidimensional approach for understanding not just the movement to reverse sodomy laws, but movements in general. Her multidimensional approach fits into three categories: political and policy outcomes, mobilization outcomes, and cultural outcomes. Bernstein's discussion of social movement and new social movement theory is very strong. She does a great job of summarizing these theories as well as providing examinations and applying them to queer legal theory.

Regulating Sex was enjoyable to read, but there was one major weakness of this volume: issues of race and ethnicity were barely mentioned. There was an almost total lack of discussion of race and ethnicity and how it has influenced and, in turn, was influenced by, Americans' notions of sex and sexuality. It is unfortunate that a book that provides two essays on how sex and sexuality are regulated in two Scandinavian countries ("Child Welfare as Social Defense Against Sexuality: A Norwegian Example," by Kjersti Ericsson and "How Libertine is the Netherlands?: Exploring Contemporary Dutch Sexual Cultures," by Gert Hekma) does not have a chapter pertaining to how race or ethnicity dictates sex and sexuality.

Regulating Sex briefly touches upon race and ethnicity in two essays. "Travel and Taboo: Heterosexual Sex Tourism to the Caribbean," by Julia O'Connell Davidson and Jacqueline Sanchez Taylor, does address race, but it touches more upon the class issues associated with sexual tourism in poor Caribbean countries. Jakobsen and Kennedy's well-written and insightful essay, "Sex and Freedom," draws associations between the gay liberation movement and the Civil Rights Movement, and how they tackle social policy. In this essay, the authors focus on the different directions that movements based on civil rights and sexual freedoms can take. Jakobsen and Kennedy successfully made connections between the various civil rights movements in the U.S. and movements based on sexual freedom.

Regulating Sex is not only incredibly informative, it is also entertaining. It is a rare treat to read a book so up-to-date on issues pertaining to sex and sexuality. The strongest aspect of this book is that it forces Americans to re-think their ideas and beliefs about sexual acts, such as adult-child sex ("Capacity, Consent, and the Construction of Adulthood," by Laurie Schaffner) and prostitution and sexual commerce (all of the essays in Part II's The Regulation of Sexual Commerce).

The book prompts the reader to wonder when, if ever, sex should be illegal. When is sex just sex? The many questions that this book raises, and the answers that it provides, lend it wonderfully to use in the classroom. Many of these essays would be great for a course on sex, gender, or sexuality, as well as social movements, policy, and law.

The first sentence of the opening essay states that "[w]riting about sexuality is like writing about last evening's news. By the time one's thoughts are formulated, they may seem hopelessly out of date" (p. xi). But I beg to differ. As the essays in this book suggest, so many notions of sex and sexuality are rooted in the ideas and beliefs of society, which in turn influence laws and regulations. I would imagine that people reacted to Janet Jackson's "malfunction" the same way they would have five or even ten years ago, with similar governmental fines and enacted regulations. Although it is difficult to address sex today because the discourse surrounding it changes so often, Regulating Sex formulates interpretations and theories about governmental regulations on sex that will be relevant for years to come.

Reviewed by Angelique C. Harris, Ph.D. candidate, Graduate School and University Center, City University of New York, Department of Sociology, 365 Fifth Ave., New York, NY, 10016; e-mail: [e-mail].