JurisTalk | Redeeming Rape: Sex Panic and Celebrity Sexual Violence

• In-person event
• D492, Loeb Building, Carleton University
• 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6

Redeeming Rape: Sex Panic and Celebrity Sexual Violence

Heidi Mathews, Assistant Professor, Osgoode Hall, York University

Both the public and intellectual reaction to the recent wave of sexual assault and harassment allegations against male celebrities has been overwhelmingly unnuanced. Accusatory, moralizing and legalistic, the commonsense position that has emerged leaves little room for reflective inquiry into larger questions of structure and agency, guilt and shame, punishment and forgiveness, power and desire, reckoning and accountability. This paper will map the mainstream response, arguing that the sex panic it invokes is unhelpful and dangerous in navigating the complexity of male – and female – desire in sociolegal terms.