New labour, new Britain, new sexual values?

Social Epistemology 15 (2):113 – 126 (2001)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

This article investigates changing parameters of 'privacy' in Britain and their relevance for the redrawing of boundaries between 'acceptable' and 'unacceptable' sexualities. Drawing on Berlant's distinction between 'live' sex acts and 'dead identities', the article suggests that some hitherto 'live' sex act may 'die', leaving others to be rejected and policed, perhaps even with renewed vigour. This may not, however, mean that the normative status of conjugal (hetero)sexuality is moribund: it may merely be reinvented. The article focuses primarily on the heated and often sensationalized public debate on the homosexuality of Members of Parliament which gripped the UK during October and November 1998. Tony Blair's Labour government was elected to power in 1997 under the campaign slogan 'New Labour, New Britain', and the public reaction to the homosexuality of MPs in 1998 led many commentators to conclude that British sexual values were undergoing a profound liberalization. It is questionable, however, whether these 'new' sexual values were actually as new, or as liberal, as they appeared.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,221

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

The political philosophy of New Labour.Matt Beech - 2006 - New York: Distributed in the U.S. by Palgrave Macmillan.
A sociology of sex and sexuality.Gail Hawkes - 1996 - Philadelphia: Open University Press.
Exploitation via Labour Power in Marx.Henry Laycock - 1999 - The Journal of Ethics 3 (2):121--131.
The division of moral labour and the basic structure restriction.Thomas Porter - 2009 - Politics, Philosophy and Economics 8 (2):173-199.
The Division of Moral Labour.Samuel Scheffler & Véronique Munoz-Dardé - 2005 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 79 (1):229-284.

Analytics

Added to PP
2009-01-28

Downloads
23 (#581,410)

6 months
1 (#1,027,696)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations