Literature and Politics

In the twenty-first century in the United States, the bureau of Justices Statistics’ annual victimization reports shows that violent crime, including sexual assault and rape is more widely reported presently than it has been since the survey was founded in 1973.  In 2003, the rate of rape and sexual assault victimization was distributed amongst races, however, those with lower household incomes were much more likely to be victims of these crime. Most of these victims are women, and most of the assailants are nonstrangers.

Michel Foucault considered how our sexual values and beliefs are constructed and argued that rather than a being a biological entity governed by natural laws, sexuality is an idea that is culturally and historically specific. Sexuality in the 21st Century United States is complicated in the sense that whilst some personal freedoms are increasingly granted, the society often requires us to assess, reaffirm and justify a sexual identity that will be critically viewed by the norms and values of the society at large and also within the smaller components of household, communities and regions within the society at large. Gendered double standards remain politically active in policies that are biased in favor of heterosexual relationships and a social upholding of myths regarding stronger, sometimes uncontrollable sexual urges of males underpins attitudes towards women’s bodies. In Sex as Crime, Letherby, Williams, Birch and Cain, call for further criminal analysis of sex and crime, “given the tension and ambiguity of the complicated definitions and meanings surrounding sex and sexuality and crime and deviance.”

The crime literature represented by the winning fiction and true crime texts of the Edgar Allen Poe Awards in the 21st Century include crimes of sexual natures, rooted in inequality and ranging from the late nineteenth  century to the present. The authors of these works, living and writing in contemporary America have personal experience, historical knowledge and access to the latest findings and political happenings regarding sexual inequality as sources of questioning and understanding the society in which they live. In writing these criminal accounts of sexual inequality, do their portrayals represent contemporary social issues of sexual inequality? Do they reflect awareness of these problems and if so how so? Maybe most importantly is the fact that these crimes are intensely represented and refused to be ignored so as to remind the readers that we still have much to gain in understanding the sexual politics of ourselves and others and how to live in tolerance and respect within diverse contexts.