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The Guilt Project: Rape, Morality, and Law
An English court in 1736 described rape as an accusation “easily to be made and hard to be proved, and harder to be defended by the party accused, though never so innocent. ”To prove the crime, the law required a woman to physically resist, to put up a “hue and cry,” as evidence of her unwillingness. Beginning in the 1970s, however, feminist and victim-advocacy groups began changing attitudes toward rape so the crime is now seen as violent in the legal definition of rape now includes everything from the sadistic serial rapist to the eighteen-year-old who has consensual sex with a fourteen-year-old.This inclusiveness means there are now more rapists among us. And more of rape’s camp the prison-makers, the community watchdogs, law-and-order politicians, and the real-crime/real-time entertainment industry. Vanessa Place examines the ambiguity of rape law by presenting cases where guilt lies, but lies uneasily, and leads into larger ethical questions of what defines guilt, what is justice, and what is considered just punishment. Assuming a society can and must be judged by the way it treats its most despicable members, The Guilt Project looks at the way the American legal system defines, prosecutes, and punishes sex offenders, how this Dateline NBC justice has transformed our conception of who is guilty and how they ought to be treated, and how this has come to undo our deeper humanity
- GenresNonfictionWomensSociety
331 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2010
7 people are currently reading
207 people want to read
About the author
Vanessa Place
47 books71 followersVanessa Place is a writer, a lawyer, and co-director of Les Figues Press. She is author of Dies: A Sentence (Les Figues Press, 2006), La Medusa (Fiction Collective 2, 2008), and Notes on Conceptualisms, co-authored with Robert Fitterman (Ugly Duckling Press, 2009). Her nonfiction book, The Guilt Project: Rape, Morality and Law is forthcoming from Other Press/Random House. Information As Material will be publishing her trilogy: Statement of Facts, Statement of the Case, and Argument. Statement of Facts will also be published in France by éditions è®e, as Exposé des Faits. Place is described by critic Terry Castle as “an elegant vessel for experimental American writing of an extraordinarily assured and ingenious sort.”
Author Interviews:
--http://avantwomenwriters.blogspot.com...
--http://www.joshmaday.com/2009/04/blak...
Author Interviews:
--http://avantwomenwriters.blogspot.com...
--http://www.joshmaday.com/2009/04/blak...
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
i-want-money
November 17, 2015In a new edition. A review from the LARB ::
"Jessica Pishko on The Guilt Project : Rape, Morality, and Law
Especially Heinous: Guilt and the Prosecution of Sex Crimes"
https://lareviewofbooks.org/review/es...
I recommend the reading of the review. The book I want to get to.
Vanessa Place is quickly becoming a hero of mine. I also think I need to read that Scarlet Letter book.
"Jessica Pishko on The Guilt Project : Rape, Morality, and Law
Especially Heinous: Guilt and the Prosecution of Sex Crimes"
https://lareviewofbooks.org/review/es...
I recommend the reading of the review. The book I want to get to.
Vanessa Place is quickly becoming a hero of mine. I also think I need to read that Scarlet Letter book.
January 3, 2021
Not everything she says is correct, some is a little dated (this was written 7 years ago after all), but all of it is worth your time and consideration.
"Child molesters used to be the shadow lurkers and tot snatchers of M or A Tree Grows in Brooklyn: the stranger you weren’t supposed to talk to, the man with the candy you shouldn’t take. This is still the most popular cultural image. The media prefer to focus on the statistically rare tragedy of a five-year-old being kidnapped, raped, and murdered by a passerby than to report the more common horror of habitual incest. But the crime of child molestation includes not only the predatory uncle or familiar friend, but eighteen-year-olds who have agreed-upon sex with fourteen-year-olds, eleven-year-olds who fondle ten-year-olds, and fifteen-year-olds appropriately groping each other. This categorical elasticity means there are now more rapists and molesters among us. There may be more people willing to report being raped, but there are also more behaviors classified as rape, more ways to become a rapist or molester than every before. We think we’re surrounded, but we’ve surrounded ourselves"
And:
"The elevation of the crime of child pornography was not quite so great as press and politicians made out: the offense went from a straight-up misdemeanor to what’s called a “wobbler,” a felony that can be sentenced either as a misdemeanor or a felony, depending on the judge. The sacrificial lamb motivation and justification for making possession a potential felony was provided by the parents of “Courtney,” a twelve-year-old who was raped and murdered six years earlier. The killer had been involved in child pornography, and, the logic goes, had he been arrested on (and presumably convicted of) that charge (as a felony) he might not have gotten to the kidnap-rape-murder stage of sex offending. The same rationale was once used for felonizing possession of marijuana -that it would stunt the future crop of dope fiends. Let’s agree that child pornography-real child pornography, the stuff that differs from its adult version only in levels of body hair and the size of the protuberances-is an abomination. Its production a crime in itself, as its creation documents a molestation, and its dissemination exponentially furthers the abuse. But possession, purely private possession, of something called child pornography may be something else. And that something else may be a concern for us as a society, but may not be something we want to feed our state prisons with.
Let’s also clarify terms: child pornography in the popular cultural imagination is a seven-year-old shown giving a man a blow job, that is, hard-core porn involving young children. Child pornography as statutorily defined in California is any medium depicting someone under the age of eighteen “personally engaging in or simulating sexual conduct,” sexual conduct defined as intercourse, any vaginal/rectal penetration by any item, masturbation “for the purpose of sexual stimulation of the viewer,” sadomasochistic abuse for that same purpose, “exhibition of the genitals or the pubic or rectal area of any person for the sexual stimulation of the viewer,” defecation/urination for the purpose, et cetera. Possession of child pornography is having the stuff and knowing the person depicted is under eighteen. This has led, on more than one occasion, to police experts testifying about the relative ages of male Thai actors, and medical doctors testifying about buds versus non-buds, and stop-motion analyses of pubic development. Though it would seem that if you’re counting hairs, the issue of knowledge of the actor’s majority is up for grabs. (But please note the cutoff age is eighteen. Legally, kiddie porn also includes the murkier area of money shots involving fifteen-, sixteen-, or seventeen-year-olds.)
The “exhibition of genitals” provision is the most problematic, or used to be, back when film kiosks were forever turning in photos of four-year-old Billy’s bum arched enticingly skyward as he showed off his pantless cartwheel, or three-year-old Anyesha standing spread-leg proud staring at the camera in her Mama’s (too cute) bra top and no panties. Depending on the camera eye level, the cops would visit the parents and, depending on the home creep factor, (a) hook them up and toss them into the grinning maw of justice; (b) scare them silly with the possibility of (a); (c) scare them silly with the possibility that unscrupulous photo-kiosk employees could be hawking snaps of Billy/Anyesha to the salivating pedophile community; (d) explain to them patiently the facts of life relative to (b) and (c), and back in the squad car, wonder “What the hell were these people thinking?”
The fact is, there is very little commercial hard-core child porn produced these days. Most of the gunk your spam filter catches consists of young-looking young women and men dressed or undressed up as youth with titles that fabricate their minority. (My quick Google search for “teen porn” results in 4.12 million hits, “teen girl porn”
2.01 million hits, “virgin porn” 1.65 million, “schoolgirl porn” 1.39 million, and the catchall, “young girl porn” 4.90 million.) So the average kiddie porn connoisseur is a ham-handed fellow with a generous imagination and a willingness to go along for the ride. Whereas the hard-core kiddie porn connoisseur is hooked up via the Internet to private file sharing featuring real live little girls and boys.
A fair amount of the hardest child pornography involves certain photos that have been circulating and recirculating for years, and the bulk of the new porn is homemade. Anyone with a taste for molestation, a digital camera, and a computer can become a child pornographer, which is why the kiddie-porn connoisseur is hardly ever nabbed for simple possession. Like the dope fiend, there’s another reason he comes to the attention of law enforcement, and it’s usually the nastier allegation of sexual abuse, or production/dissemination of child pornography. So the possession charge is almost always an ancillary charge, enabling prosecutors to plea-bargain a bit, or allowing the State to slap on an extra three years per image onto that twenty-five-to-life sentence. And if kiddie-porn possession was the only charge of conviction, there’s no reason in the world to believe that conviction would deter a murder. There are many shoplifters. There are many, though not as many, robbers. There are some robbers who, after taking the till, put the barrel of the gun beneath the chin of the store clerk, and shoot. There are some who rape them first. There are some who do worse. There are monsters, and monsters aren’t deterred by a three-year hop in the joint. The only way a felony kiddie-porn rap is going to stop a potential child kidnapper/rapist/killer from becoming a child kidnapper/rapist/killer is if someone happens to shank him in the shower. (90-93)"
for example
I also found this art piece of hers actually interesting to sit through and see how I responded: https://www.artforum.com/words/id=67539
(she sounds almost exactly like Laurie Anderson)
******
KIRKUS REVIEW
Drawing insight from a career defending “the most loathed of the loathsome,” a California appellate attorney looks at crime and punishment under our sex laws.
By definition all of the author’s sex-offender clients are legally guilty. Once apprised of the particulars of their felonies—to spare the queasy, especially lurid details are confined to appendices—many readers will decline to consider them further. But Place (La Medusa, 2008, etc.) expands the notion of guilt, examining its other dimensions—factual, ethical, moral—and asks whether we’ve allowed dubious science, conflicting cultural messages and out-of-control political passions to distort our sex laws. How is it, she asks, with the spotlight never brighter on preventing sex crimes, there are seemingly more offenders than ever? “We have pimps,” she writes, “because we want whores. Just as, sometimes, we make victims because we want perpetrators.” The current crusade for conviction valorizes science—DNA and polygraph testing—in place of the “acts of individual thought and logic” the law requires for judgment about sex crimes. Moreover, there’s money to be made in anything related to sex, whether in the privatization of prisons, in the newspaper series covering the latest local outrage, or in the cable-news shows—Place dismantles Dateline: To Catch a Predator—which flirt with entrapment and form uncomfortably close relation with law enforcement. Where the law has traditionally focused on conduct, not character, we enact rules that permit evidence of prior offenses and statutes that increasingly infantilize women and make no allowances for the messy and complicated fact patterns that frequently lead to rape. We make no protest as judges sanctimoniously impose grossly disproportionate, 1,000-year sentences for sex offenses. And so it goes. In a sex-soaked culture, our law becomes ever more draconian. Place detects something desperate in all this, and in richly allusive, frequently witty prose, she asks important questions about what it is exactly we want from our criminal laws.
A sophisticated, brave look at a topic that too often provokes merely panic, prejudice and posturing.
"Child molesters used to be the shadow lurkers and tot snatchers of M or A Tree Grows in Brooklyn: the stranger you weren’t supposed to talk to, the man with the candy you shouldn’t take. This is still the most popular cultural image. The media prefer to focus on the statistically rare tragedy of a five-year-old being kidnapped, raped, and murdered by a passerby than to report the more common horror of habitual incest. But the crime of child molestation includes not only the predatory uncle or familiar friend, but eighteen-year-olds who have agreed-upon sex with fourteen-year-olds, eleven-year-olds who fondle ten-year-olds, and fifteen-year-olds appropriately groping each other. This categorical elasticity means there are now more rapists and molesters among us. There may be more people willing to report being raped, but there are also more behaviors classified as rape, more ways to become a rapist or molester than every before. We think we’re surrounded, but we’ve surrounded ourselves"
And:
"The elevation of the crime of child pornography was not quite so great as press and politicians made out: the offense went from a straight-up misdemeanor to what’s called a “wobbler,” a felony that can be sentenced either as a misdemeanor or a felony, depending on the judge. The sacrificial lamb motivation and justification for making possession a potential felony was provided by the parents of “Courtney,” a twelve-year-old who was raped and murdered six years earlier. The killer had been involved in child pornography, and, the logic goes, had he been arrested on (and presumably convicted of) that charge (as a felony) he might not have gotten to the kidnap-rape-murder stage of sex offending. The same rationale was once used for felonizing possession of marijuana -that it would stunt the future crop of dope fiends. Let’s agree that child pornography-real child pornography, the stuff that differs from its adult version only in levels of body hair and the size of the protuberances-is an abomination. Its production a crime in itself, as its creation documents a molestation, and its dissemination exponentially furthers the abuse. But possession, purely private possession, of something called child pornography may be something else. And that something else may be a concern for us as a society, but may not be something we want to feed our state prisons with.
Let’s also clarify terms: child pornography in the popular cultural imagination is a seven-year-old shown giving a man a blow job, that is, hard-core porn involving young children. Child pornography as statutorily defined in California is any medium depicting someone under the age of eighteen “personally engaging in or simulating sexual conduct,” sexual conduct defined as intercourse, any vaginal/rectal penetration by any item, masturbation “for the purpose of sexual stimulation of the viewer,” sadomasochistic abuse for that same purpose, “exhibition of the genitals or the pubic or rectal area of any person for the sexual stimulation of the viewer,” defecation/urination for the purpose, et cetera. Possession of child pornography is having the stuff and knowing the person depicted is under eighteen. This has led, on more than one occasion, to police experts testifying about the relative ages of male Thai actors, and medical doctors testifying about buds versus non-buds, and stop-motion analyses of pubic development. Though it would seem that if you’re counting hairs, the issue of knowledge of the actor’s majority is up for grabs. (But please note the cutoff age is eighteen. Legally, kiddie porn also includes the murkier area of money shots involving fifteen-, sixteen-, or seventeen-year-olds.)
The “exhibition of genitals” provision is the most problematic, or used to be, back when film kiosks were forever turning in photos of four-year-old Billy’s bum arched enticingly skyward as he showed off his pantless cartwheel, or three-year-old Anyesha standing spread-leg proud staring at the camera in her Mama’s (too cute) bra top and no panties. Depending on the camera eye level, the cops would visit the parents and, depending on the home creep factor, (a) hook them up and toss them into the grinning maw of justice; (b) scare them silly with the possibility of (a); (c) scare them silly with the possibility that unscrupulous photo-kiosk employees could be hawking snaps of Billy/Anyesha to the salivating pedophile community; (d) explain to them patiently the facts of life relative to (b) and (c), and back in the squad car, wonder “What the hell were these people thinking?”
The fact is, there is very little commercial hard-core child porn produced these days. Most of the gunk your spam filter catches consists of young-looking young women and men dressed or undressed up as youth with titles that fabricate their minority. (My quick Google search for “teen porn” results in 4.12 million hits, “teen girl porn”
2.01 million hits, “virgin porn” 1.65 million, “schoolgirl porn” 1.39 million, and the catchall, “young girl porn” 4.90 million.) So the average kiddie porn connoisseur is a ham-handed fellow with a generous imagination and a willingness to go along for the ride. Whereas the hard-core kiddie porn connoisseur is hooked up via the Internet to private file sharing featuring real live little girls and boys.
A fair amount of the hardest child pornography involves certain photos that have been circulating and recirculating for years, and the bulk of the new porn is homemade. Anyone with a taste for molestation, a digital camera, and a computer can become a child pornographer, which is why the kiddie-porn connoisseur is hardly ever nabbed for simple possession. Like the dope fiend, there’s another reason he comes to the attention of law enforcement, and it’s usually the nastier allegation of sexual abuse, or production/dissemination of child pornography. So the possession charge is almost always an ancillary charge, enabling prosecutors to plea-bargain a bit, or allowing the State to slap on an extra three years per image onto that twenty-five-to-life sentence. And if kiddie-porn possession was the only charge of conviction, there’s no reason in the world to believe that conviction would deter a murder. There are many shoplifters. There are many, though not as many, robbers. There are some robbers who, after taking the till, put the barrel of the gun beneath the chin of the store clerk, and shoot. There are some who rape them first. There are some who do worse. There are monsters, and monsters aren’t deterred by a three-year hop in the joint. The only way a felony kiddie-porn rap is going to stop a potential child kidnapper/rapist/killer from becoming a child kidnapper/rapist/killer is if someone happens to shank him in the shower. (90-93)"
for example
I also found this art piece of hers actually interesting to sit through and see how I responded: https://www.artforum.com/words/id=67539
(she sounds almost exactly like Laurie Anderson)
******
KIRKUS REVIEW
Drawing insight from a career defending “the most loathed of the loathsome,” a California appellate attorney looks at crime and punishment under our sex laws.
By definition all of the author’s sex-offender clients are legally guilty. Once apprised of the particulars of their felonies—to spare the queasy, especially lurid details are confined to appendices—many readers will decline to consider them further. But Place (La Medusa, 2008, etc.) expands the notion of guilt, examining its other dimensions—factual, ethical, moral—and asks whether we’ve allowed dubious science, conflicting cultural messages and out-of-control political passions to distort our sex laws. How is it, she asks, with the spotlight never brighter on preventing sex crimes, there are seemingly more offenders than ever? “We have pimps,” she writes, “because we want whores. Just as, sometimes, we make victims because we want perpetrators.” The current crusade for conviction valorizes science—DNA and polygraph testing—in place of the “acts of individual thought and logic” the law requires for judgment about sex crimes. Moreover, there’s money to be made in anything related to sex, whether in the privatization of prisons, in the newspaper series covering the latest local outrage, or in the cable-news shows—Place dismantles Dateline: To Catch a Predator—which flirt with entrapment and form uncomfortably close relation with law enforcement. Where the law has traditionally focused on conduct, not character, we enact rules that permit evidence of prior offenses and statutes that increasingly infantilize women and make no allowances for the messy and complicated fact patterns that frequently lead to rape. We make no protest as judges sanctimoniously impose grossly disproportionate, 1,000-year sentences for sex offenses. And so it goes. In a sex-soaked culture, our law becomes ever more draconian. Place detects something desperate in all this, and in richly allusive, frequently witty prose, she asks important questions about what it is exactly we want from our criminal laws.
A sophisticated, brave look at a topic that too often provokes merely panic, prejudice and posturing.
December 15, 2015
An important book, everyone should read it.
Is it obscene to even consider the humanity of sex criminals? There seems to be a broad consensus, both left and right, that these people represent absolute evil, for which no punishment can possibly be too severe. Ms. Place bravely pushes back against this hysteria. She works as a criminal defense attorney, and her book proceeds as a series of case studies. She has no illusions about her clients. Each chapter includes a detailed account of their crimes. These range from a mentally challenged eighteen-year-old having sex with another teenager to truly heinous cases of serial rape and torture. Along the way Place is able to highlight serious lapses in justice, both legal and cultural, in how our society treats its most despised members. To me it seems clear we need to collectively rethink our understanding of evil, and to reassert the rights of the accused, even when the crime is truly unspeakable.
On a personal note, this book came to my attention at an opportune moment (thank you, GR friend Nathan); this past month I found out that a man I used to know back in Minnesota has been charged with sexually trafficking a 15-year-old girl. Allegedly he was sleeping with her and selling her sex through Craigslist as part of a "business arrangement," and when she wanted out he wouldn't let her go. I became aware of the story through social media. The man and I fell out of touch (on amicable terms) about seven years ago. When I knew him best he was homeless and a crack addict with a criminal history. He certainly had his demons, but I really liked him. I'd say we were friends. He was smart and funny, and the father of twin boys he genuinely seemed to love. Now that he's been charged with something so awful there's a predictable chorus of voices has on the internet calling for the man's violent death, etc.
My thoughts/feelings about my old friend are in a confused state. Even if he did do everything he's accused of, I still feel I must keep alive my own private memories of the person he was, not succumb to this idea that now he's a monster plain and simple. It's a lonely task, and I personally feel grateful for Vanessa Place's book for existing.
Is it obscene to even consider the humanity of sex criminals? There seems to be a broad consensus, both left and right, that these people represent absolute evil, for which no punishment can possibly be too severe. Ms. Place bravely pushes back against this hysteria. She works as a criminal defense attorney, and her book proceeds as a series of case studies. She has no illusions about her clients. Each chapter includes a detailed account of their crimes. These range from a mentally challenged eighteen-year-old having sex with another teenager to truly heinous cases of serial rape and torture. Along the way Place is able to highlight serious lapses in justice, both legal and cultural, in how our society treats its most despised members. To me it seems clear we need to collectively rethink our understanding of evil, and to reassert the rights of the accused, even when the crime is truly unspeakable.
On a personal note, this book came to my attention at an opportune moment (thank you, GR friend Nathan); this past month I found out that a man I used to know back in Minnesota has been charged with sexually trafficking a 15-year-old girl. Allegedly he was sleeping with her and selling her sex through Craigslist as part of a "business arrangement," and when she wanted out he wouldn't let her go. I became aware of the story through social media. The man and I fell out of touch (on amicable terms) about seven years ago. When I knew him best he was homeless and a crack addict with a criminal history. He certainly had his demons, but I really liked him. I'd say we were friends. He was smart and funny, and the father of twin boys he genuinely seemed to love. Now that he's been charged with something so awful there's a predictable chorus of voices has on the internet calling for the man's violent death, etc.
My thoughts/feelings about my old friend are in a confused state. Even if he did do everything he's accused of, I still feel I must keep alive my own private memories of the person he was, not succumb to this idea that now he's a monster plain and simple. It's a lonely task, and I personally feel grateful for Vanessa Place's book for existing.
February 14, 2013
in america, there are many different levels of murder. 1st degree, 2nd degree, manslaughter, etc. but with rape, there is just rape - our sexual assault laws have evolved only in that they have become more draconian, less fluid and more likely to end in hundred-year or even thousand-year sentences. in "the guilt project: rape, morality and law," vanessa place asks important questions about our current rape laws, which have placed even greater responsibility on men to read a woman's mind and less responsibility on women to be in charge of the situations they place themselves in. we've also seen laws become so stringent that now a 17-year-old boy who has sex with his 14-year-old girlfriend can be charged with child molestation and placed on the sex-offender registry for LIFE, effectively ruining his life.
*in most states, the minute a woman becomes intoxicated, even if she says "yes," the law determines that she doesn't have the capacity to say yes, and having sex with her is considered a crime. but if a man is intoxicated, he is still expected to be in control of himself and of her. as women, how does this treat us equally?
*should a 21-year-old be forced to spend his life on the sex-offender registry for having consensual sex with his 17-year-old girlfriend, even if he clearly poses no threat to anyone?
*is there a difference between a man grabbing a woman off the street and raping her and a man who doesn't stop when a woman that he's on a date with says no in the middle of sex she had already consented to? no is certainly no, but is this not a different degree of rape? is the woman in no way accountable?
by putting all of the onus on the man, are we teaching our girls that they have no responsibility for their own actions, for their own safety? that they can go as far as they want and stop whenever they want, knowing that no matter what, the man can be blamed? does the pimp/ho culture in movies and music videos teach our boys and girls that this is the way to have a relationship - that women are chattel, or that women can use their bodies as currency?
place poses these questions and many more, offering clear analysis on the most pressing parts of our rape laws and of our culture. her writing is like poetry, and you will be transfixed at what she has to say. a must read for a parent of a son or daughter, anyone concerned with morality and law, or anyone with an interest in our society and human rights. fantastic.
*in most states, the minute a woman becomes intoxicated, even if she says "yes," the law determines that she doesn't have the capacity to say yes, and having sex with her is considered a crime. but if a man is intoxicated, he is still expected to be in control of himself and of her. as women, how does this treat us equally?
*should a 21-year-old be forced to spend his life on the sex-offender registry for having consensual sex with his 17-year-old girlfriend, even if he clearly poses no threat to anyone?
*is there a difference between a man grabbing a woman off the street and raping her and a man who doesn't stop when a woman that he's on a date with says no in the middle of sex she had already consented to? no is certainly no, but is this not a different degree of rape? is the woman in no way accountable?
by putting all of the onus on the man, are we teaching our girls that they have no responsibility for their own actions, for their own safety? that they can go as far as they want and stop whenever they want, knowing that no matter what, the man can be blamed? does the pimp/ho culture in movies and music videos teach our boys and girls that this is the way to have a relationship - that women are chattel, or that women can use their bodies as currency?
place poses these questions and many more, offering clear analysis on the most pressing parts of our rape laws and of our culture. her writing is like poetry, and you will be transfixed at what she has to say. a must read for a parent of a son or daughter, anyone concerned with morality and law, or anyone with an interest in our society and human rights. fantastic.
August 29, 2014
This book opened my mind to see many things differently in regard to the "justice" system. I'll probably read it again someday
July 13, 2014
This is interesting not only for its content and politics but also for its style.
I wish more non-fiction texts could be written with such verve and passion as well as accuracy.
Scientists and medical writers should be forced to read this, to see what is possible.
I wish more non-fiction texts could be written with such verve and passion as well as accuracy.
Scientists and medical writers should be forced to read this, to see what is possible.
September 2, 2024
Challenging content but absolutely worth it.
September 25, 2021
I confess Vanessa Place's novel, La Medusa has been sitting in my "Currently Reading" shelf for years now. I started but did not continue reading it. Not for lack of interest; I just wasn't in the mood, or simply didn't have the time. Now, years later, I thought it better to begin with her non-fiction to get me "in the mood." She didn't disappoint: she's got a way of slicing through societal shortcomings with wisdom and wit.
The Guilt Project could be described as a Appellate Criminal Defense Attorney's considered response to the perennial question asked of them: "How can you stand to defend a heinous criminal [read: rapist, murderer, child predator] you believe to be guilty?" I'm oversimplifying here, but Place's "Project" is fundamentally an ethical one: she is calling on her readers to cultivate empathy for the actually guilty criminal. Whether this practice gets us to sympathy or eventually mercy remains unknown--and it's not at all clear those are desirable goals--but it may very well be the condition for the possibility of either.
The Guilt Project could be described as a Appellate Criminal Defense Attorney's considered response to the perennial question asked of them: "How can you stand to defend a heinous criminal [read: rapist, murderer, child predator] you believe to be guilty?" I'm oversimplifying here, but Place's "Project" is fundamentally an ethical one: she is calling on her readers to cultivate empathy for the actually guilty criminal. Whether this practice gets us to sympathy or eventually mercy remains unknown--and it's not at all clear those are desirable goals--but it may very well be the condition for the possibility of either.
July 3, 2020
Guilt Project is full of interesting opinions, ideas, and anecdotes, but for some reason I felt unable to jive with the writing style. Vanessa Place is part poet part lawyer which makes the writing very unique. As someone who studies sex offenders and sex offender policy, I understand Place's sentiments of frustration and injustice with how sex offenders are managed in the US. However, this book is very much about her experience and does not include substantive discussion on the changes she imagines would fix these issues, which I think would have added substantially to this book. The recommendations she does make have more to do with age of consent laws, which I felt was not well developed from any perspective (e.g. legal, common sense, or feminist) and not something I agree with. In the end, it is great to pick up a book that makes your think, even if you do not fully agree with the author (perhaps especially so). Would still recommend to others interested in sexual violence, and would love to hear others' opinions about the writing style (is it just me??)
February 8, 2010
“A California appellate attorney looks at crime and punishment under our sex laws… Place expands the notion of guilt, examining its other dimensions—factual, ethical, moral—and asks whether we’ve allowed dubious science, conflicting cultural messages and out-of-control political passions to distort our sex laws...Place detects something desperate in all this, and in richly allusive, frequently witty prose, she asks important questions about what it is exactly we want from our criminal laws. A sophisticated, brave look at a topic that too often provokes merely panic, prejudice and posturing.”—Kirkus Reviews
June 16, 2016
Vanessa Place is most well-known as a (controversial) conceptual poet. She is also, however — and perhaps more importantly — a public defender working in the appellate court system. Meaning: she works with "the guilty." (People who have been found guilty.) Her specialty: sex offenders. This is an eye-opening critique of the criminal justice system where sex offenses are concerned. Will really up-end your thinking on the subject.
April 2, 2010
There wasn't too much I didn't know in this book given my profession, but it's probably really interesting for someone who is open-minded and hasn't really thought about who qualifies as a "sex-offender" or questioned what the media tells us we "know" about recidivism rates and sexual predators who are strangers stalking our children.
March 20, 2016
It was okay, nothing more. Dry and tedious at times, with an almost overwhelming use of large statistics. I understand the points she as trying to make, and I agree with most. I just wish it had been written in a more fluid way. Content gets four stars, writing style two. Going with three stars overall.
Read
July 16, 2010My perceptions were a bit skewed about the law... I enjoyed it.
July 24, 2013
But interesting, if you're interested.
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September 1, 2013Vanessa Place's Lyrical "I"
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