Psychology of Sex and Sexuality—Lecture I
Maha Naqi
CPSY 621
19 September 2020
Dr. Oren Amitay

Dr. Amitay’s teaching philosophy: Likes to jump in organically because he does not want to pretend
that subjects like psychology are neat or tidy, and that everyone agrees on them unequivocally
- Amitay will say things with which you disagree!
- This is extremely important, very controversial material; Amitay will share the material as well
as ways of analyzing it

Two (2) main goals:
i. Make us into better clinicians, which will require you to take certain perspectives, including ones
you may disagree with
 It is okay to disagree with opinions raised, but it is imperative to have good reasons for
disagreeing; this can include “I just don’t feel right about this,” or “This seems wrong.”
ii. Make us into critical thinkers
 Amitay does not believe in allowing students’ personal biases to trump science, facts, or
evidence

Three (3) key components for which students are responsible:
i. Lectures
ii. Readings (for midterm, Ch. 1-3)
iii. Brightspace

Key issues explored in this class will include:
o Pedophilia
 This may be an emotionally and psychologically triggering issue for some individuals, but
Amitay believes that this does not mean we should not study it; science only progresses
when we have the wherewithal to analyze controversial information from a critical
perspective
 Will seek to explain that not all pedophiles are monsters and not all monsters who
attack children are pedophiles
o Trans/transgender issues
 Amitay contends that it is very interesting that an issue that affects ~0.03% of the
population (variance = ~0.02-0.06%) has captured the public’s imagination, caused so
much controversy, and caused numerous scientists and academics to eschew the
concepts of science/biology/best practices on purely ideological grounds
o Feminism
 Amitay considers himself a male feminist, though he cautions people to be wary of those
who self-describe that way because many of them are “wolves in sheep’s clothing”

Amitay’s personal history
- His mother founded Canada’s first sex store, Lovecraft
 He spent a lot of his childhood in this store; as a result, he spent a lot of his childhood
in this store, and by his estimation, comes by his views on sex and sexuality pretty
honestly
 This also informs some of his biases on the subjects of sex and sexuality, and his general
openness to them
- Amitay’s father has Bipolar Disorder
 Amitay openly and regularly describes his father as “crazy”
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 There is a purpose to this; he uses the term “crazy” with his patients (i.e., “You
are crazy,” “That’s crazy,” “What you are thinking/doing is crazy”) and
o His patients do not mind this also refers to himself this way
o He does this because he does not want his students to be stigmatized
by society; this is inevitably going to happen because people are biased
against those with mental health issues and will be ignorant and meanspirited—this is not going to change
 But what Amitay wants to help change for his patients is their
perception of themselves; he wants them to be able to inoculate
themselves against the hate, ignorance, and bigotry that exists in
society; using terms like “crazy” helps his clients build a
resistance to them
Amitay is also a parenting expert and a keen observer of familial and interpersonal dynamics
 When his wife became pregnant with their first child almost 24 years ago, he began
observing families very closely
 Amitay can clearly see the role of early family experiences—as they relate to
development (i.e., psychological, emotional, mental), sexuality, interpersonal dynamics—
largely shape how the individual sees themselves, how they relate to others, and
whether they are able to function in an adaptive way in those dynamics and
relationships
 All of this truly does start with family

Amitay believes that critical thinking is comprised of the following three (3) components:
i. Critical
ii. Skeptical
iii. Open-minded
 This is key because you have to be flexible enough to say to yourself that what you
thought was right might not be AND to acknowledge your biases, question them, and
reflect on them

Amitay used to open this class by presenting a skit
- He would begin by sharing a series of commonly cited “facts”; at the end of the skit, he would
tell the class that all of these “facts” were false
- While Amitay saw this as an effective exercise in the development of his students’
- critical thinking, he stopped doing the skit; Amitay contends that this is because “in today’s
climate, it’s very easy to be cancelled”
 Amitay was warned that, if a student didn’t know him yet and they heard what he was
saying, they might get so offended and/or triggered so as to cause psychological distress
 At first, it was about the students’ well-being; now, with “cancel culture” on the
rise, Amitay contends that he risks losing his job if 1/50 students is offended by
what he says, even if the other 49 are not
o Amitay is not a fan of this type of thinking; he believes that it makes
people weak and weak-minded
o Furthermore, he contends that it weakens the fields of psychology,
science, and sexuality

Anorexia Nervosa, Domestic Violence, Christina Hoff Sommers, and Nancy K.D. Lemon
- Though it may not seem like it on the surface-level, anorexia is a sex-related (male/female)
illness; it also impacts individuals’ sexuality
 When we think of anorexia nervosa, we should think of body image
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 Amitay has many patients—mostly females, but also some males—who have
great difficulty establishing healthy sexual relationships because of their
unhealthy body image
o Consequently, they are not able to be fully present during sex; they are
fearful about how their body is being perceived or may be perceived by
their partner and they are not able to fully engage in the experience
 They may unconsciously/unwittingly/unintentionally convey that
fear or negative emotionality to their (prospective) partner(s)
-
Christina Hoff Sommers on Anorexia and Domestic Violence
 On YouTube, she calls herself the “Factual Feminist”
 She authored the book Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women (1994)
 Amitay read this book when it first came out, and at first, didn’t like her; he saw
her as a right-wing reactionary and she “rubbed him the wrong way”
o However, as he dove into the book, he saw that she was, in fact,
exposing many frauds of academic research (so-called “quackademia”)
and some of the “lies of feminism”
 Early in her career (and in her book), Hoff Sommers criticized a Time magazine cover
story that was dealing with anorexia; the front page had a picture of an anorexic woman
next to a Holocaust victim, and said something along the lines of “man-made genocide
on women”
 The story claimed that 150,000 women died of anorexia in the United States
every year; they did so without any corroborating evidence or research
o Hoff Sommers examine autopsy/coroner’s reports to ascertain the
veracity of this claim; in every year she examined, the number of people
who died of anorexia was <100
 What accounts for this massive discrepancy?
 When confronted by Hoff Sommers, Time printed a small correction
 However, it must be noted that Hoff Sommers was not entirely honest
herself—there is also an issue with her claim that the number of people who die
of anorexia in the U.S. every year was <100
o One does not normally die of anorexia—at least, that is not what is
noted in the coroner’s report
 The noted cause of death is not “anorexia”; it is usually
something like pneumonia, kidney failure, etc., which is the
result of the anorexia and the damage it inflicts on the physical
body
- Hoff Sommers did not acknowledge this—that many
deaths that are not listed as being the result of anorexia
may in fact have resulted from it
o Thus, her given number of <100 is a
misrepresentation or underrepresentation
 Hoff Sommers also criticized a March of Dimes study that stated that the number one
cause of birth defects in America was domestic violence
 N.B.: March of Dimes is a reputable charitable organization in Canada and the
United States
 The March of Dimes study was precipitated in part by a new focus on domestic
violence as a social ill—that is, the issue is more thoroughly examined
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 Hoff Sommers did not believe the findings of the study; she thought that the
domestic violence explanation did not account for substance abuse, genetic
abnormalities, etc.
 Hoff Sommers went to March of Dimes and asked them where they got their
data
o They produced a presentation that someone had written; the report
mentioned domestic violence and mentioned that domestic violence is
more examined than it was as a cause of birth defects (it is screened for
more), but it did not say that it was more than all other factors
 Someone simply heard this, relayed the information incorrectly,
and it ended up being published by March of Dimes and
presented at professional conferences
- People did not question this information because it fit
the narrative that was being spread—that domestic
violence is both terrible and rampant
o While this is true, Amitay contends that it is
counterproductive and disingenuous to make
bad situations worse by presenting
misinformation
 In conclusion, domestic violence is NOT the number one cause of defects and
thus, also not more than all other causes combined
Nancy K.D. Lemon
 An academic at Berkeley who wrote a book called Domestic Violence Law—it is the
number one book used in law schools in the U.S. when teaching about the intersections
of law and domestic violence
 The following statistic is mentioned in the book: “Between 20-35% of women
seeking medical care in emergency rooms in America are there because of domestic
violence.”
o This statistic led the Penguin Atlas of Women in the World to rate the
U.S. as low as Haiti and Uganda re: this issue
o By contrast, the federal Centres for Disease Control and Prevention
and the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the U.S. found that ~0.01-1% of
women who attend emergency rooms do so due to domestic violence
 Nancy K.D. Lemon v. Christina Hoff Sommers
 Hoff Sommers said that she wrote to K.D. Lemon citing the aforementioned
federal stats—that 0.01-1% of women who attend emergency rooms do so due
to domestic violence
o The problem with Hoff Summers citing these statistics is that any time
there is an official statistic it is usually an underrepresentation
 Indeed, any time there is an official statistic from an
organization, and it does not explicitly say that the number is an
underrepresentation because such numbers are frequently
underreported (i.e., for sexual assault, domestic violence, etc.),
the organization is acting in bad faith and trying to mislead
 In her response to Hoff Sommers, K.D Lemon stated that the CDC stated that
the numbers were sometimes as high as 37%, so she in fact undersold the
problem
o Amitay contends that this response makes K.D. Lemon either
unintelligent or deceptive because the original claim in her book was
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that up to one-third of all women who presented in U.S. emergency
rooms were there for domestic violence/intimate partner violence
 However, the CDC statistic that K.D. Lemon was citing actually
referred to women who suffered from one or more violent
injuries and presented in the ER, not all ER visits
 Thus, the ~37% CDC figure was a measure of women coming
into the ER with violent injuries that were attributed to
domestic violence, rather than some other kind of trauma (i.e.,
a car accident)
 Clearly, women end up in the ER for lots of reasons, including
pregnancy, etc.
 ~40 million women go to the ER each year in the U.S.
- Thus, if it was truly 20-35% of woman as K.D. Lemon
suggested, that would mean that 8-14 million women
were presenting in the ER due to domestic violence
- By contrast, the CDC says that 550,000 women attend
the ER each year for violence-related injuries in general
- Using K.D. Lemon’s stats (20-35%), this would mean
that, in fact, 110,000-192,000 women were presenting
in the ER due to domestic violence
- Clearly, this is a huge discrepancy (8-14 million vs.
110,000-192,000)
 Thus, if we look at the stats, it seems that 0.05% of all ER visits are due to
domestic violence, not 20-35%
o This means that that “only” 110,000-192,000 women are presenting in
the ER due to domestic violence, not 8-14 million
 The problem with this statement is that that is still a lot of
women! The word “only” should never come before “110,000+
seeking ER treatment for domestic violence”
- This is why misinformation is such a problem, and why
Amitay is so critical of people who present it
-

According to Amitay, when academics (or “quackademics”), researchers, policymakers,
advocates, etc. present false information, it does more damage to the cause that they are
promoting than anything else
 This is because most people out there are black-and-white, non-critical thinkers; they
will assume either that the person advancing this information: (i) made a mistake, or (ii)
lied to them
 Consequently, they will believe that the numbers—be they about anorexia,
domestic violence, or any other issue—are not nearly as bad as is being said
o The paradox of this is that people then stop caring about serious
societal and public health issues that require our attention and efforts;
especially if they feel they were lied to, people will get defensive and be
unwilling to hear accurate information
o In Amitay’s view, reducing the scope and impact of these social ills is
necessary, but it cannot be done if the work is premised on falsehoods
or fantasies
What is the rate of false reporting of sexual assault by women?
- That is, “What percentage of women who claim to have been sexually assaulted are lying?”
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While some studies show 0.01%, other show 80-90%
There is only one correct answer to this question—we don’t know
 Thus, anyone who advances stats like the ones above, be they extremely low or
extremely high, is acting in bad faith
 Such statistics beg the question—how does one quantify false claims?
 Studies like the ones that show extremely high rates of false reporting (80-90%)
determine false claims by failure to prosecute or convict
o In Amitay’s view, this is unconscionable and people who determine
statistics about false reporting this way is acting in bad faith because
sexual assault is one of the most difficult claims to prove
 As a result, prosecution and conviction rates are very low
compared to other crimes
All this being said, there are a few ways that we can arrive at numbers re: sexual assault
 Run a study wherein you survey university students, asking them “Have you ever been
sexually assaulted? Have you reported it?”
 This would yield specific numbers on rate of reporting, but not what percentage
of people were sexually assaulted and did not report
o Thus, it is the same answer as above—we don’t know
 Perform a random phone survey
 Are you calling people on their cellphones? Landlines? How does this impact
demographic spread?
 Moreover, individuals are unlikely to be forthcoming about the details of their
most traumatic experiences to a stranger on the phone, which undermines
accuracy
o Imagine calling someone who is a survivor of sexual assault and asking
them, “Have you ever been sexually assaulted? Have you reported it?”
 Do we really believe that someone who has not reported it, for
whatever reason, is going to participate in a survey and admit,
“Oh yeah, I haven’t told anyone else, but I’ll tell you”?
 Examine official statistics
 As aforementioned, we know that this is going to be underrated, and thus,
inaccurate


-

Generally speaking, the majority of subjects for human sexuality studies and psychology studies are firstyear psychology students, because they are a large and readily available research pool
- According to Amitay, using university students for research is bad practice for a few reasons
 People in this age range (17-18) may be immature and lacking in life experience, selfknowledge, or general understanding of the world around them; they are thus, not
comparable to people in other age cohorts
 Moreover, research shows that university students are not demographically
representative of the population
 In theory, university students are smarter than the average person, more verbal,
interpret questions differently/in more nuanced ways than laypeople,
(historically) more likely to achieve success/have a better future, and more likely
to be white irrespective of the wider population’s racial makeup (in Amitay’s
experience, this is less true in Toronto than in most U.S. schools)
o Thus, using university students as a good indicator of what the general
population is like is nonsensical
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Rates of sexual harassment in high school and university
- There are many studies on this subject; Amitay drew attention to two during class
1. Dalhousie University study
2. Toronto High School study – Dr. Debra Pepler
 Dr. Peplar is a clinical psychologist and researcher at York University; she has
done considerable work on teens, bullying, aggression, and other forms of
violence, namely, sexual assault, and is considered an expert in these areas
 In this study, she found the same number of students reporting sexual
harassment in high school as in university, based on the Dalhousie study
 The question asked was “Have you ever been sexually harassed by a
teacher/professor/co-student?”
o The answer that Dr. Pepler got and reported was 75% (N.B.: Amitay
says that other studies have numbers ranging from 25-40%)
o What is key here is how you choose to define “sexual harassment”
 The reason that the number is so high in the Peplar study (75%)
is due to overly loose or poor operational definitions; in other
words, the definition of sexual harassment in this case was
extremely broad
- Technically, an operational definition is how you assess
or measure something
o To Amitay, an operational definition should
include a clear explanation of what you are
assessing/measuring and how you are going to
measure it (i.e., “Here’s what we’re studying
and here’s how to evaluate it.”
 N.B.: Calling someone a slur like fag, dyke, lezzie or saying they
are queer/gay in a derogatory way is ugly and ignorant, but it is
not sexual harassment necessarily (but it can inflate the
numbers).
- e.g., Imagine you are doing a survey and it says, “Have
you ever been called a fag? Gay? Queer?”
o It's very likely that there would be a high
positive response rate to this question because
that is something that many high school
students have experienced (i.e., “That’s so gay!”
“Your shoes are so gay!”)
- N.B.: It can be sexual harassment if someone is
LGBTQ+ and someone is harassing them about it; it
may also be a hate crime.
 In conclusion, if we are going to do research on terrible phenomena like sexual
harassment, we should not jack up the numbers by using poor (read: overly
broad) operational definitions
o Similarly, even if tighter operational definitions yield smaller numbers
(i.e., 20%, 30%, 40%, etc.), we should not downplay the significance of
numbers even that high
- Question: “How many women are raped in their lifetime?”
 One answer commonly given is 25%–is this accurate?
- Case Study I: A professor says to a female student, “Nice breasts.” Is that sexual harassment?
 Yes, this is a black-and-white example of sexual harassment
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 There is an obvious power differential between the two parties here and it is
inappropriate in pretty much every conceivable circumstance
Case Study II: A professor says to a male student, “Nice pecs.” Is that sexual harassment?
 In this case, the answer is less obvious to most people
 This begs the question, “Why is it that saying ‘nice breasts’ to a female student is clearly
sexual harassment, but saying ‘nice pecs’ to a male student is not as clear? Why the
double standard?”
 While pecs are not as sexualized in our culture as breasts, there is still an
argument to be made that a strong male chest can be sexualized
o What if the same professor said, “nice six-pack”?
N.B.: In the class, people made certain assumptions about the sex of the professor relative to
that of the students in these scenarios, as well as everyone’s sexual orientations (i.e.,
heterosexual); none of these were ever stated.
 Amitay drew attention to this because it is an example of people’s schemata being
triggered
 When people hear certain words, scenarios, etc., it automatically triggers their
schema/schemata—essentially, everything that someone perceives about
something (i.e., cognitive, emotional, physiological connections, etc.)

Mary Koss (1987) Research on Rape
o A researcher who did an extremely famous study which is cited in many sociology and
psychology texts, including this class’s textbook
o It was her research that led to the widely cited statistic that 25% of college students will be
sexually assaulted/raped (N.B.: Back then, they used the term “rape”)
 i.e., Take Back the Night campaigns wherein marchers chat “1 in 4,” etc.
o Questions from study:
 The following three (3) questions detail clear-cut examples of rape/sexual assault:
1. Have you ever had sexual intercourse when you did not want to because a man
threatened or used some degree of physical force, like twisting your arm, holding you
down, etc.?
2. Have you had sexual intercourse when you didn’t want to because you were mentally
or physically incapacitated by alcohol or other drugs?
3. Have you had sexual intercourse when you didn’t want to because a man used his
position of authority to make you?

The following (2) questions are NOT clear-cut examples of rape/sexual assault:
4. Have you ever has sexual intercourse when you didn’t want to because you were
overwhelmed by a man’s continual arguments and/or pressure?
o According to Amitay, if the man in question pesters someone and then
they say, “yes,” that is not rape; it may be
coercive/manipulative/toxic/pathetic, but it is not rape/sexual assault
 This changes, however, if the man pesters the person and
presents a threat of some kind (i.e., “If you don’t have sex with
me, I will show explicit images of you to your friends, family,
etc.”)
5. Have you ever had sex when you didn’t want to because a man gave you alcohol or
other drugs?
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o
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No—the question does not say that the woman was drugged (i.e.,
“roofied”) or plied with alcohol or drugs to the point of
intoxication/incapacitation
o
Koss did a study before this study where she only asked the first three questions
 According to Amitay, Koss felt that the numbers were too low
 As a result, she added the fourth and fifth questions, which consequently inflated
the numbers to the frequently cited 25% figure
o
Out of the 25% of who said “Yes” to any of the five points, only 27% of them said, “Yes, I was
raped,” when the question said, “Do you consider this rape?”
 27% of 25% is 6%, which, of course, is still very bad
 This is yet another example of someone providing misleading information using
questionable methodology because they are trying to advance an agenda, and
doing more harm than good
 This discrepancy was exposed by Hoff Sommers
o She also found that the majority of women who were “supposedly”
raped were still with their partners
 Koss responded to Hoff Sommers by saying that the women who said that they
were not raped did not know that what they experienced was rape
o Hoff Sommers responded that Koss’s response is extremely insulting to
these women because it implied that they were too stupid to know if
they were raped or not
 However, it is well-worth noting that, until the early- to mid-80s, the concept of
“date rape” did not exist in the public consciousness
o Hoff Sommers knew this when she was challenging Koss’s work in the
90s
 Thus, while Amitay appreciates Hoff Sommers for exposing the
flaws in Koss’s study, he is displeased that she denied the fact
that many of the women in this study may have genuinely been
raped and not seen it as such because, at that time, the
prevailing mindset was that you could not be raped by your
partner
- Thus, the fact that some of these women were still with
their partners was not evidence that they were not
raped
 Moreover, there are lots of people who, even today, are unsure
about whether their experiences constitute sexual assault or
rape
- This gives further credence to the idea that a person
can experience rape or sexual assault and not see it as
such
Case Study III: Imagine you're with somebody. You're on your 5th date with them. From the first
date, you have been physical intimate. Every subsequent date brought additional physical intimacy. It's
late into your fifth day and the two of you are being physically intimate at one of your homes. This is the
most physical intimacy you've shared so far. You go a little bit further than last time and you've been
progressing steadily over the course of the night. Suddenly, your partner hesitates slightly. You realize
this. As a human being whose goal biologically and psychologically is to progressed your cause sexually,
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how do you go about trying to get to that next stage tried, given that you were just gently rebuffed?
When and how do you do it?
o Typical “under 35” answer: Stop immediately, check in with partner re: their comfort, have a
conversation about what is making them potentially uncomfortable, etc.
 In Amitay’s view, the narratives that younger people have been taught about consent are
not based in the reality re: what sexual relationships are actually like, are artificial,
stilted, and unnatural, etc.
 The response to this is, “Isn’t that gaining explicit consent?”
o According to Amitay, it is, but there are other ways of gaining consent
and that’s where the problem lies, because consent can be implied; the
obvious problem with this is that would-be sexual assaulter might turn
around and say, “Person A smiled at me, which I took to be consent to
sexual activity.”

o Typical “40+” answer: Back off, wait a few minutes, and then try again; go back to the actions
where they were comfortable, stay there for a bit, and then try again—in sum, re-attempt and
see if the response is the same
 According to Amitay, in sexual situations, if you continue to try and advance your cause
in a tentative, respectful manner, that does not constitute sexual assault (assuming that
you have already received some level of consent for physical sexual touch)
 Amitay then cites the “first kiss” example
o While some people might ask for explicit verbal consent, many others
would probably just “go for it”
 Amitay suggest that technically, going into that first kiss , if you
don't receive explicit consent you are breaching more of an
interpersonal physical boundary then if you already had consent
established for physical sexual contact and they try to go further
- Thus, Amitay suggests that it is important to examine
our own thoughts and behaviours critically and to
distinguish between acts of genuine sexual breach and
prevailing narratives about the nature of consent

One major takeaway point from the above discussion is that many people are unclear on what consent
looks like and that different people approach consent differently
o According to Amitay, only a few years ago, most people agreed that it was NOT necessary to
get explicit verbal consent during the progression of a sexual relationship
 All one had to do was progress in a certain way—sometimes quickly, sometimes
slowly—and make sure that the person seemed OK with it
 i.e., If two sober people are engaging in sexual activity and neither partner
shows any type of distress or discomfort, and they seem both involved and
engaged, that would constitute implicit sexual consent
o If, as in Case Study III, Person A went a bit too far than Person B was
either wanting or expecting at the time, most people would stop for a
bit , but then they would try again tentatively to see if they could
advance their sexual costs
 According to Amitay, this is not sexual assault
 Moreover, according to Amitay, it is a common part of the
sexual script (how we expect things to play out in various contexts)
in many cultures for a woman—whether she's with a woman or
man—to play a little bit coy, or show some token amount of
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resistance, even if she is aroused and happily engaged in sexual
activity with her partner
- Of course, this changes completely if the person
explicitly says, “No”

In the 1990s in Canada, the laws re: sexual assault and consent changed
o The law evolved from a person having to clearly and explicitly say “No,” and have that “No”
ignored for a sexual assault to have occurred
 In other words, before the law changed, if Person A had sex with Person B against their
will, but Person B did not verbalize “No” explicitly, a sexual assault had not occurred

Until 2008-2009, the age of consent in Canada was 14; at this time, it was raised to 16
o That is, if a person was 14-years-old they could have sex with anyone they wanted , as long as
their sexual partner was not in a position of authority or power (i.e., a teacher , counselor,
police officer, etc.) or a member of their family (no incest)
 In cases where the partner was in a position of authority, the age of consent increased
to 18; this is still the case today
o Technically, the age of consent in Canada is actually 12 years old, so long as the partner is not
more than 2 years older
 i.e., A 12-year-old can have sex with someone 12-14 years of age.
 i.e., A 13-year old can have sex with someone 12-15 years of age.
o Similarly, 14 and 15 year-olds can have sex with someone who is not five years older
 i.e., A 14-year-old can have sex with someone up to 19 years of age.
 i.e., A 15-year-old can have sex with someone up to 20 years of age.
o However, until the year 2019, the age of consent to engage in anal sex was 18 years of age
 Effectively, what this means is that a 16-year-old can have consensual penile-vaginal
intercourse under the law , but the same 16-year-old would have been in violation of
the law if they had anal sex to which they consented
 It is also worth noting, that Amitay has not come across any case of a
heterosexual couple being charged for engaging in anal sex in Canadian legal
literature
o Until 2019, a 19-year-old man could legally have penile-vaginal sex with
a 14-year-old girl, but could not legally do the same with a 14-year-old
boy
 Given all this, between the years of 2003-2019, Canada technically discriminated more
against certain gay people than the U.S. did; the Canadian buggery laws were still on the
books
 Up until 2019, anal sex was also illegal (under section 159 of the Criminal Code) if more
than two persons were present in the room, unless sex was being filmed for commercial
purposes
 This, naturally, contributed to raids on bathhouses, which many times were
made of large rooms which were partitioned, but still technically constituted
one room
o Thus, up until 2019, as long as the police knew that more than two
people were having anal sex, it gave them the legal right at any time, any
day to engage in a raid based on the fact But criminal activity was
occurring

Sodomy and Buggery
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o
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Maha Naqi
CPSY 621
19 September 2020
In class, Amitay discussed the wide variation in penalties for the crime of sodomy in various U.S.
states, up until the year 2003 (i.e., $200 fine to 20 years in prison)
Sodomy is NOT just anal sex; it is technically defined as any non-reproductive sex (i.e., anal/oral,
sex with animals, bestiality, zoophilia, necrophilia, pedophilia, etc.)
 In many of these states, there was a lesser penalty for oral sodomy
 i.e., In Michigan, the penalty for anal sex was 15 years, while the penalty for oral
was five
In Canada, the term for sodomy is buggery
In the U.S. and in Canada especially, sodomy/buggery was only charged if the sex was coercive
or if the sex was with a minor
 That is, there is no such thing as consensual buggery in Canada because that is legal; it is
OK if you are into anal sex, oral sex, etc.
 Criminality only comes into play if a person is coerced into the act or if they are
too young to consent to it
In the states of Kansas, Montana, Nevada, Arkansas, the list of penalties has the notation “H”
next to it, meaning that they only applied to homosexual activities; this is clear example of
codified legal discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation
 Indeed, according to Amitay, there are no cases in which two consenting adults engaging
in non reproductive sexual activity were charged with sodomy
 Even though these states had anti-sodomy laws, they applied only to
homosexuals, cases of coercion, and cases involving a minor
In the year 2003, the U.S. got rid of their state sodomy laws
 This was precipitated by the landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Lawrence v.
Texas
 Facts of the Case: In 1998, John Geddes Lawrence Jr. was arrested along with an
acquaintance at his apartment in Harris County, Texas, when sheriff's deputies
found them engaging in sexual intercourse. Lawrence and his partner, Tyron
Garner, were charged with a misdemeanor under Texas' anti-sodomy law; both
pleaded no contest and received a fine.
 The Supreme Court ruled that U.S. laws prohibiting private homosexual activity,
sodomy, and oral sex between consenting adults are unconstitutional.
o The Court reaffirmed the concept of a "right to privacy" that earlier
cases, such as Roe v. Wade, had found the U.S. Constitution provides,
even though it is not explicitly enumerated.
o The Court based its ruling on the notions of personal autonomy to
define one's own relationships and of American traditions of noninterference with private sexual decisions between consenting adults.
 While the case gave individuals federal cover (i.e., any charge that was appealed
to the federal level would be struck down), many of the states that had state
anti-sodomy laws still have them on the books
Until the year 1982, married women could not be raped by their husbands under Canadian law
o Furthermore—and even more shockingly—until the same year, men could not be raped under
Canadian law, period
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