Discipline, Punishment And The Homosexual In Law

This article examines the creation and legacy of the 1957 Wolfenden Report, arguing that current trends to simplistically address the Report, along with a long standing academic focus on Foucault and the nineteenth century, have disregarded the productive and revolutionary nature of its recommendations enacted in the Sexual Offences Act 1967. Contrary to the common emphasis placed on Victorian medical discourse, and the 1895 trials of Oscar Wilde, it was the Wolfenden Report and the twentieth century that created the homosexual identity in law – an identity created not with a view to freedom, as is regularly assumed, but with the objective of the control of recalcitrant bodies in the forms of men's homosexual sex, and women's prostitution. Dr.Kate Gleeson is Postdoctoral Research Fellow. Thanks to Helen Pringle for the heads-up on Discipline and Punish. And thanks to Aleardo Zanghellini for helping me to clarify this argument.