Gender, "deception" and the law, pt. 2 of 3
http://polyperversity.blogspot.com/2009/05/gender-deception-and-law-pt-2-of-3.html5/8/09
In my last post, I began a discussion of the concept of sexual "deception," inspired by the pernicious suggestions of some commentators that transgender hate crime victims such as Angie Zapata themselves committed criminal sexual assault by failing to disclose their anatomy/gender history to sexual partners. I explained that the law has generally construed the concept of criminal sexual deception very narrowly, to include only deception about (a) the nature of the act itself as a sexual act, and (b) the identity of a defendant posing as another person. In this post, I will consider some other potential categories of sexual "deception." In a final post, I will discuss the handful of cases in which transgender individuals have actually been prosecuted on the basis of nondisclosure to sexual partners.
