Abstract Since the #MeToo movement, prominent men accused of sexual misconduct have frequently brought defamation claims against their accusers and media companies that have published the allegations. This trend has generated a wealth of debate and scholarship, but little research has placed such cases within a historical context. This article seeks to fill this gap in legal history by examining men’s sexual misconduct defamation claims in the nineteenth-century United States. By analysing numerous court records and connecting them with shifts in work patterns and models of masculinity, it argues that men’s claims for sexual misconduct defamation were increasingly connected to the rise of the professions during the nineteenth century. Whereas ideas of ‘male fortitude’ in the face of sexual accusations were central to judicial adjudication of rural men’s claims—particularly farmers—courts took the vindication of the sexual reputations of urban, professional men more seriously. Such scandals had the capacity not just to insult or wound individual feelings or threaten bonds of community or kin, but they could imperil respect for the emerging professions and undermine the authority of social institutions. Scandals involving professors could erode the repute of universities, reports about doctors could undermine respect for medicine, rumours about lawyers could breed distrust of the courts, and news articles about teachers could threaten the education system. Defamation cases show that men’s sexual transgressions mattered most when they questioned the authority of professional expertise and republican projects of other men.
Jessica Lake (Thu,) studied this question.