Inducing Intimacy
Deception, Consent and the Law

A history of legal responses to deceptively-induced sex and intimate relationships which offers insights for contemporary debates.

Chloë Kennedy (Author)

9781009361057, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 17 April 2025

276 pages
24.4 x 17 x 1.5 cm, 0.481 kg

'Chloë Kennedy's imaginative and meticulously argued book breaks new ground by situating its analysis of deceptive sex within the broader canvas of law's construction of induced intimacy from the mid 18th Century to the present day. Encompassing both criminal and civil law responses, this highly original book is a model of socio-legal history, and one which has important implications for law's treatment of induced intimacy today.' Nicola Lacey, Professor of Law, Gender and Social Policy, London School of Economics

Kennedy presents a new way of evaluating the regulation of deceptively induced intimacy, that is, sex and sexual/romantic relationships, on the basis of an innovative genealogy of legal responses to this conduct. This book traces the development of a range of civil and criminal laws across c. 250 years, showing how using deception to induce intimacy has been legally understood, compensated and punished. It offers an original interpretation of the form and function of these laws by situating them in their social and cultural contexts. It argues that prevailing notions of what makes intimacy valuable, including the role it plays in self-construction, have shaped and constrained the laws' operation. It shows how deceptively induced sex has come to be treated more seriously while the opposite is true of deceptively induced relationships and concludes by presenting a new framework for deciding whether and when deceptively induced intimacy should be regulated by law today.

1. Inducing intimacy: an introduction
Part I. Marriage: 2. Making Marriage
3. Promising Marriage
4. Faking Marriage
Part II. Sex: 5. Eliciting Sex
6. Procuring Sex
7. Imposing Sex
8. Inducing intimacy: a conclusion.

Subject Areas: Law & society [LAQ]