Hard Bargains

Book excerpt: Men and women have always bargained for sex. In this controversial new book, philosopher-lawyer Linda Hirshman and legal historian Jane Larson provide the first comprehensive look at the politics of heterosexual sex in the West, from Hammurabi's Code to Monica Lewinsky. Starting with an essential summary of the roots of Western sex in the ancient near East and early modern Europe, the book quickly focuses on the history of the sexual regulation in America, which it describes in unprecedented detail. Hard Bargains also offers surprisingly workable proposals for a new sexual order--rape laws replaced by laws of sexual autonomy, adultery subjected to breach of contract action, prostitution considered an unfair labor practice. Hard Bargains takes a forthright and level-headed look at all aspects of one of the biggest controversies in contemporary American society--heterosexual sex--and delivers a radically new perspective on the sexual lives of women and men.