IMMORTAL PASSION - Necrophilia and the Penetration Paradox

A Salon in the Cemetery with Carla Valentine and Dr John Troyer

Necrophilia, when defined as 'the act of making love to a cadaver', is considered to be a predominantly male deviancy. Although female necrophilia is particularly infrequent in case histories it does occur, despite misconceptions as to how the act itself is accomplished.

Carla Valentine will take you on an illustrated, multi-media journey through fictional and factual female necrophiles to discuss artistic tropes and motivations.

She will also show that archaic hetero-normative sexual stereotypes, in addition to the categorisation of necrophilia as a predominantly male deviancy, have created a loophole in UK law for female necrophiles.

Dr John Troyer will uncover the history of necrophilia in the United States. In September 2006, Wisconsin police discovered Nicholas Grunke, Alexander Grunke and Dustin Radtke digging into the grave of a recently deceased woman. Upon questioning by police, Alexander Grunke explained that the three men wanted to exhume the body for sexual intercourse. In the Wisconsin state court system, the three men were charged with attempted third-degree sexual assault and attempted theft. None of the men could be charged with attempted necrophilia, however, since the state of Wisconsin had no law making necrophilia illegal.

Necrophilia is not specifically prohibited on the statute books of many other US states. Dr John Troyer will argue that the ambiguous juridical standing of the human corpse compounds the sexual monstrousness of the necrophiliac and of necrophilic acts.

Each ticket includes a delightful gin cocktail and a 20% donation towards a host of restoration projects at Brompton Cemetery.

About the Speakers:

Carla Valentine is technical curator of Barts Pathology Museum, part of the School of Medicine and Dentistry at Queen Mary University of London. She is a fully qualified anatomical pathology technician and worked in a mortuary for eight years conducting post-mortem examinations. She vlogs about the specimens on YouTube, under the name The Chick and the Dead.

Dr John Troyer is the Deputy Director of the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath. His interdisciplinary research focuses on contemporary memorialization practices, concepts of spatial historiography, and the dead body’s relationship with technology. Dr. Troyer is also a theatre director and installation artist with extensive experience in site-specific performance across the United States and Europe. He is a co-founder of the Death Reference Desk website, the Future Cemetery Project and a frequent commentator for the BBC. His book, Technologies of the Human Corpse was published in 2015.