#eric berkowitz

[bornitereads]

Sex and Punishment - Eric Berkowitz

Read: March - April 2017

So I walked by this at Chapters, I was like “That looks interesting” and then I couldn’t stop thinking about it the whole time I was there. After about five minutes I knew was going home with it, but I played that “But maybe I’ll find something better” game with myself for the next hour. That aside, I like learning about sex and I like history. So this was a pretty good combination of those two interests. 

Berkowitz goes through major shifts in sex laws throughout history, starting with ancient Middle-Eastern laws - which was were the oldest recorded sex laws have been found. He spends a little time talking about how there were obviously laws regarding sex before this, but as was the case with most human endeavours before the Ancient Mesopotamian cultures who wrote things down, it was oral tradition. One point I liked that he made was when he poked at the idea of “universal” or “natural” sex laws. Not every society followed all the so called “natural” sex laws (i.e. incest taboos). He proceeds from there forward through time until close to present day.

The only drawback to this book is that Berkowitz contains his historical survey of sex laws largely to Europe and later the United States. I would have loved to have seen a more global look through. I realize that such a work would necessarily be very large and involved and translations aren’t readily available. As much as I would have found a global look very interesting, I found this book to be interesting regardless. Especially since I personally have lived under the laws that came from the historical context being discussed. I think it would be an interesting read for anyone living under Western sex laws.

Info: Counterpoint, 2012.

[earthlings1997]

Eric Berkowitz Charged in Murder-for-Hire Plot to Kill Ex-Girlfriend and Two Other Men She Dated

A Pennsylvania man is facing multiple criminal charges after authorities say he attempted to orchestrate a murder-for-hire plot targeting his former girlfriend and two men she dated following their breakup. The case, announced by the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office, centers on allegations that Eric Berkowitz, 41, of Dresher in Upper Dublin Township, planned to arrange the killings…

Eric Berkowitz Charged in Murder-for-Hire Plot to Kill Ex-Girlfriend and Two Other Men She Dated

[wholesomeobsessive]

Sparta had no such preoccupations with adultery. Because men there spent so much time with their military units, it was impossible to expect women to remain faithful and still guarantee a steady supply of babies. Marriage was an institution meant to deliver warriors to the state, not heirs to the father. The Spartan government couldn’t care less where a woman’s child came from, so long as the father was a citizen.

Sex and Punishment by Eric Berkowitz

[wholesomeobsessive]

The body of Jewish law is immense, so broad that it is virtually unknowable to any individual. I shall concentrate here mostly on the rules that were supposedly dictated, word for word, to Moses by God—in particular the book of Leviticus, where most of Judaism’s most significant rules concerning sex are to be found. Maddening in its repetitious hodgepodge of demands, threats, and curses, Leviticus is one of the foundations of Hebrew life, and, along with the rest of the Torah, is meant to be an indispensable guidebook to a godly existence. Nothing before or since has so effectively equated the body, the state, and the collective moral soul.

Sex and Punishment by Eric Berkowitz

[wholesomeobsessive]

A man’s honor was a fragile bloom to be pampered and kept on display. Courts in the contemporary United States and United Kingdom often reject what is called “character evidence” on the grounds that a person’s reputation does not indicate how he or she will act. The opposite was true in small, gossipy Athens, where a man’s reputation was always up for review.

Sex and Punishment by Eric Berkowitz

[wholesomeobsessive]

The celebrants drifted from sexual vice to sorcery and other crimes. “From this storehouse of villainy,” Livy wrote, they plotted frauds and forgeries, committed murders, and cast dark spells. The men predicted the future as their bodies contorted on the ground. The women, their hair disheveled, ran down to the river, where they plunged blazing torches into the water and then pulled them out still burning. The bacchanals couldn’t hide their revels—bacchanalia—in the crowded city, so they beat drums and crashed symbols to make sure that “none of the cries uttered by the persons suffering violence or murder could be heard.” Those percussive noises had become common of late: The cult’s celebrations had increased to five times per month from three days per year.

Sex and Punishment by Eric Berkowitz

[wholesomeobsessive]

This story of Aebutius and Hispala, told by Livy about two hundred years after the events took place, is too dramatic to be entirely credible. An aristocratic boy—the hope of Rome—is rescued from his thieving parents at the last minute by a whore with a heart of gold; a heroic consul takes action to save the boy, and Rome, from perdition. It’s too much. Yet whether or not Livy gilded the narrative lily is beside the point. However the subject of bacchanalian excesses got to Postumius, the cult was made to order as an excuse for a decisive exercise of state police authority. Young male Roman citizens were now involved: That changed everything.

Sex and Punishment by Eric Berkowitz

[wholesomeobsessive]

The cult was infecting Rome like a disease, Postumius warned, and had to be put down. The Senate gave him, and Rome’s other consul, unprecedented powers to root out suspects, and to execute them without the possibility of appeal. Almost immediately, the consuls unleashed a massive wave of terror that lasted two years and claimed about seven thousand lives throughout Italy. The crackdown, which included political enemies as well as fornicators, caused panic and mass suicides. Suspects trying to flee Rome were arrested by guards posted outside the city and thrown in prison. The majority were quickly sentenced to death. The men were executed by the state; the women were delivered to their homes for punishment.

Sex and Punishment by Eric Berkowitz