Eric Berkowitz Libri

The book explores the impact of speech restrictions on culture, highlighting how censorship serves as a mechanism for authority to reinforce class and gender inequalities. It delves into historical and contemporary examples, illustrating the ongoing struggle for free expression and the consequences of silencing dissenting voices. Through this analysis, it reveals the intricate relationship between power dynamics and the regulation of speech in society.

A fascinating examination on how restricting speech has continuously shaped our culture, and how - regardless of political leanings - every individual can act as both the suppressors and the suppressed.

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. Eric Berkowitz is a lawyer and journalist. He has published investigative pieces in the Los Angeles Times and maintains a public interest law practice, where he represents victims of domestic violence as well as homosexuals seeking political asylum in the United States.