ABSTRACT
The ethical stances of academics, in tune with the wider and global shifts in values and morals, have diversified, pluralised and become more incommensurable. This has widened scope for controversy and conflict in research. Meanwhile governments, responding to genuine calls to regulate immoral activities around sex, namely, trafficking of women, enforced prostitution, domestic violence, date rape, hate crimes, and paedophilia, have sought to extend legal governance and regulation. The academic community has witnessed the fall out of such a dangerous situation in recent debates over male rape, the evolutionary imperative of men to rape; male scholars’ right and capacity to research and teach on rape and domestic violence; the rights of academics to access primary sources, in the field of paedophilia in particular (Crotty, 1998, pp. 173-182; Ashenden, 2002, pp. 197-222; Hacking, 1999, pp. 253-288).
