Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | L | Labour/Le Travail

Elise Chenier, Strangers in our Midst: Sexual Deviancy in Postwar Ontario.

Article Excerpt
Elise Chenier, Strangers in our Midst: Sexual Deviancy in Postwar Ontario (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2008)

STRANGERS IN OUR MIDST is an important book for it historicizes and evaluates the development of legal, psycho-medical, and public reactions to sexual deviancy. Arriving as it does on the heels of the sensationalistic 2007 trial of convicted sex offender Peter Whitmore, this is a timely academic study because historian Elise Chenier asks some trenchant, carefully framed questions about current sex offender legislation including the utility of the current laws; the difficulties and costs of obtaining treatment while incarcerated; and the efficacy of those treatment models. Furthermore, she historicizes the competing interests of the state, the psychiatric profession, prison administrators, and prisoners. Chenier has written a work that seeks to engage public debate about these matters, and in this way it expands the monograph's relevance beyond the traditional confines of the historical profession and the natural constituency of historians of sexuality, medicine, and criminology who will gravitate towards this work.

Unlike other historians of mid-20th century sexualities who have opted to utilize cultural approaches to the topic, and have tended to focus primarily on the constructions...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!