Sexual Blackmail: A Modern History

The central premise of this carefully researched volume is that sexual blackmail-the attempt to extort money by threatening to expose sexual secrets-has a past. McLaren, author of Twentieth-Century Sexuality: A History and a professor at the University of Victoria, has delved extensively into court documents and news archives to furnish hundreds of examples of his subject. >From 18th century England to 20th century America, he details blackmail threats built around homosexuality, adultery, prostitution, abortion and interracial affairs. Sexual blackmail is a crime without much of a present, though, and so McLaren's work is unlikely to hit the sort of nerve that tips an academic book into mass readership. He mentions Autumn Jackson, who in 1997 was convicted of attempting to extort money from the comedian Bill Cosby by threatening to publicize her claim to be his illegitimate daughter. But that case was an exception, and the author shows persuasively that in an era of greater sexual tolerance, sexual blackmail has lost its bite. Unsurprisingly, President Clinton's political survival after his affair with Monica Lewinsky is cited to show how little we now judge a public figure's private behavior. McLaren's most useful cautionary tale is that blackmail flares up in times when widely practiced sex acts are most stigmatized. 12 b&w illustrations. (Nov.)