Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, is hosting an online webchat today, Tuesday, June 26 at 3 p.m. Eastern (12 p.m. Pacific), on their webpage about what the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the Federal Abortion Ban means for Americans.
-Bridget Crawford and Amanda Kissel
A woman arrested two years ago for topless while walking in New York City has settled her civil rights case against the city for $29,000. The plaintiff, Jill Coccarro, was arrested and held in jail for 12 hours despite a 1992 court decision, People v. Santorelli, that granted women the same right as men to appear shirtless in public. Cnn.com has more here.
-Bridget Crawford and Amanda Kissel
Jennifer A. Drobac has been a professor at the Indiana University School of Law-Indianapolis since 2001 and also currently serves on the Kaiser Family Foundation Board of Trustees. In 2005, Professor Drobac finished her first textbook, Sexual Harassment Law: History, Cases and Theory. She was named a John S. Grimes Fellow in 2006-07 and a Dean’s Fellow in recognition of scholarly excellence in 2005-2006. Professor Drobac also received the 2005 Indiana University Trustees’ Teaching Award.
Professor Drobac answered these questions for Feminist Law Professors.
FLP: What is your educational and professional background?
JAD: I have four academic degrees from Stanford University (BA 1981, MA & JD 1987, JSD 2000). I clerked for a federal district court judge after an educational trip around the world. A couple of years later I opened my own law practice. I began full time teaching in 2001 and just received tenure and promotion to full professor.
FLP: What courses do you teach?
JAD: Sexual Harassment Law, AIDS Law, Family Law & Juvenile Law
FLP: How does feminism influence your teaching/scholarship/service?
JAD: This question is like asking how breathing influences my work. Feminism makes my existence in this life possible. Feminism made my entry into this field possible; it gives me perspectives that permeate my scholarship; and it causes me to engage– whether teaching or serving– in a way that is both nurturing and powerful.
FLP: Has feminism reached the limits of what it can accomplish via the law? Should feminists focus on issues other than the law (i.e., culture, youth education, etc.)?
JAD: Absolutely not, feminism can accomplish much more via the law (and must)! For example, we need many more feminists (either male, female, or trans) on the Supreme Court to interpret the law in ways that adequately recognize the constitutional and federal civil rights of women and feminine persons. Moreover, feminists must influence culture, education, the media, and politics– as well as the law– to further enlighten all avenues concerning equality, difference, tolerance, and unity.
FLP: What are you working on now?
JAD: Being a feminist of whom I can be proud.
– Bridget Crawford and Amanda Kissel
16th Women & Society Conference – 2007October 26 & 27, 2007
Marist College, Poughkeepsie New York
Proposals and abstracts are being solicited for the 2007 Women & Society Conference. This feminist conference is interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary, covering all aspects of women & gender being studied in the academy. The conference mentors and models feminist inquiry/scholarship for undergraduate students so joint faculty/student papers and excellent student papers are also considered, undergraduates may attend at no cost.
Please send your 250 word abstract with a brief bio. Papers, workshops, roundtables and panels are welcome, please include abstracts and bios for all participants, with one contact person. Please include all contact information–including home and e-mail addresses for summer correspondence to:
Women & Society Conference c/o JoAnne Myers Fontaine, 315 School of Liberal Arts, Marist College Poughkeepsie, NY 12601.
Proposals must be postmarked no later than July 13, 2007.
-Bridget Crawford
I’m traveling, with only sporadic Internet access. Apologies that comments are slow to post and e-mails don’t get answered promptly.
–Ann Bartow
A senior at East Side High School in Newark, NJ, had purchased (for $150, no less) a page in the school’s yearbook to commemorate his high school experiences. Included among the montage of photos printed on that page was one of him kissing his boyfriend on the lips (at left).
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But, before the yearbook was distributed, school officials had that photo blacked out with a marker in every copy of the yearbook, deciding that it was easier to black out the”suggestive”photo than to tear out the whole page (which was apparently their first reaction). Nevertheless, the school officials left untouched the photos of heterosexual couples kissing that appear in the yearbook, including one that appeared on the page right after the blacked out photo of the gay couple kissing.
Yet, perhaps the most galling line from this story in the Star-Ledger has the superintendent of schools stating that she will apologize to the student”if he believes the district did something to hurt him because of his orientation.”Translation: objectively speaking, the superintendent believes that the school did nothing wrong; however, if, for some reason, the student somehow feels hurt by this action, then she will apologize to him in order to make him feel better. Apparently, the superintendent has not the first clue of what an”atmosphere of tolerance for gay students”might look like, despite claiming to foster just such an atmosphere in Newark’s schools.
-Anthony C. Infanti
Democratic NY Assemblyman Felix Ortiz has introduced a bill that would require the Labor Department to develop a “dance performer” permit and registry. Under the bill, “exotic dancers” would need to apply for employment permits using their real names every three years.
According to Ortiz, the purpose of the bill is to monitor “places where commercial sexual exploitation occurs” and to ensure that dance performers are of legal age, legally documented, and not victims of sex trafficking.
Sanctions for “un-permitted dancers” (other than victims of human trafficking) would face fines of up to $20 for a first-time violation and $50 for subsequent violations; however, the bill does not specify exactly what constitutes a violation. Exotic dancers who are found to be victims of human trafficking would not be fined for performing without a permit.
Check out more details of the bill here.
Why target the women and not those who employ them or patronize their performances? The bill hardly provides meaningful monitoring of “places where commercial sexual exploitation occurs.” And although there may be some women who strip because they choose to do so, let’s face it: women sell themselves in the absence of other meaningful economic opportunities. This bill does nothing to enhance women’s economic well-being.
-Bridget Crawford and Amanda Kissel
FeministLawProf Regina Austin has posted to bepress her article, “Super Size Me and the Conundrum of of Race/Ethnicity, Gender, and Class for the Contemporary Law-Genre Documentary Filmmaker,” 40 Loy. L.A. L. Rev. 683 (forthcoming 2007). Here is the abstract:
According to director Morgan Spurlock, the idea for “Super Size Me,” the hugely popular documentary that explored the health impact of fast food, originated from a news report about Pelman v. McDonald’s, one of the fast food obesity cases. Over the course of his month-long McDonald’s binge, Spurlock became the literal embodiment of fast-food’s ill-effects on the seemingly generic American adult physique. Spurlock’s take on the subject, however, ignores the circumstances that contributed to the overweight conditions of the Pelman plaintiffs who were two black adolescent females who ate their fast food in the Bronx. One of them was homeless during the relevant time period.
The paper discusses what the circumstances of the Pelman plaintiffs might have been, including the incidence of obesity and overweight and related diseases in minority populations, the correlation between obesity and food insecurity, the significance of fast food restaurants in poor urban minority communities, the relationship between fast food and soul food, race-specific cultural attitudes regarding women’s weight, and race/ethnicity-related restraints on leisure. To be sure, based on past experience, a white male filmmaker like Spurlock might have found it difficult to tackle these subjects (especially in a film that is otherwise lighthearted and humorous) without encountering substantial criticism. Furthermore, most of the factors are irrelevant to the law of products liability, which pays little attention to inequities in the demographic distribution of risk. However, allowing generally disempowered subjects like the Pelman plaintiffs an opportunity to reveal their reflexivity about their situations is one way of combating disapproval and prompting deeper analysis of a social problem; Spurlock’s television series 30 Days is a fine example of that. Alternatively, filmmakers like Spurlock might display more reflexivity or critical self-assessment about their techniques for bringing only part of a complex issue to the screen . . . on the screen itself.
The full article is available here.
Professor Austin is one of the legal academy’s clearest and most consistent voices for those who – because of their gender, race, class and/or sexual orientation – are omitted from much law-talk. Consider these six succinct paragraphs:
(1) The incidence of obesity and obesity-related illnesses is greater in minority communities, especially among women.
(2) Obesity is associated with poverty and food insecurity, though that connection is not often made. This may produce a general misunderstanding about the sources of the obesity of the inhabitants of low-income minority communities.
3) Fast-food restaurants have a special nutritional significance in communities with a scarcity of grocery stores and supermarkets and a dearth of restaurants of other kinds. Fast-food outlets also have a special social significance as sites of entertainment and amusement. The poor, the elderly, and the homeless particularly benefit from these advantages. However, after a slow start, influenced by what some regard to be racism, fast food chains have established franchises in such numbers that local ordinances are being considered to regulate their presence in communities like the Bronx.
(4) Furthermore, given the emphasis on fried fare, fast food greatly resembles soul food. Fast food is also served in a relaxed, informal setting that is conducive to the good fellowship blacks associate with eating soul food. The linkage between soul food and fast food is problematic, however, as both are associated with food-related chronic conditions like hypertension and diabetes.
(5) Controlling weight or even determining what is a healthy weight is a culturally loaded subject for black women, among other minority women. On the one hand, black cultural norms appreciate curvaceous women; this may be salutary for their self-esteem but leaves them carrying more weight than is good for their health. On the other hand, black culture, in addition to mainstream culture, denigrates large, sassy women who speak their minds; this stereotype is bad for black women’s psyches, although it does challenge the conceit that respect is a matter of size. General admonitions to heavy black female teenagers to eat healthy and watch their weight may not be as effective as those aimed at young white women who do not have to negotiate the same sort of middle course between acceptance and ill-health.
(6) Finally, the residents of poor minority urban communities may also have difficulties controlling their weight with exercise. Restraints on leisure have a number of sources including cultural norms that limit physical exertion by women, governmental barriers to access, and the lack of private investment in recreational space in poor and minority communities.
Wow.
-Bridget Crawford
Here are the top three contenders for the FeministLawProfs theme song. Cast your vote by Thursday, June 28 at 5:00 p.m.
-Bridget Crawford and Amanda Kissel
The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting here that Elizabeth Edwards has broken with her husband (and Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton) on the issue of same-sex marriage. The paper reportsher as saying,”I don’t know why somebody else’s marriage has anything to do with me.”And,”I’m completely comfortable with gay marriage.”It was also refreshing to see Edwards describe her husband’s position:against same-sex marriage, but in favor of civil unions:as”frustrating,”especially when, again in her words, he claims to have a”deeply held belief against any form of discrimination.”
-Anthony C. Infanti
FeministLawProf Katharine Baird Silbaugh (Boston University) has posted to ssrn her article “Women’s Place: Urban Planning, Housing Design, and Work-Family Balance.” Here is the abstract:
In the past decade a substantial literature has emerged analyzing the role of work-family conflict in hampering women’s economic, social, and civil equality. Many of the issues we routinely discuss as work family balance problems have distinct spatial dimensions. “Place” is by no means the main factor in work-family balance difficulties, but amongst work-family policy-makers it is perhaps the least appreciated. This article examines the role of urban planning and housing design in frustrating the effective balance of work and family responsibilities. Nothing in the literature on work-family balance reform addresses this aspect of the problem. That literature focuses instead on employer mandates and family law reforms. This article fills the gap by evaluating the effect of “Ëœplace” on work-family balance and the role law plays in creating our challenging geography. I argue that effective work-family balance requires attention to the spatial dimensions of the work-family conflict.
The full article is available here. Silbaugh has been a leading scholar in the field of women and work for over 10 years now, starting back in 1996 with “Turning Labor Into Love: Housework and the Law,” 91 Northwestern University Law Review 1. If you haven’t read that one yet, do.
-Bridget Crawford
That’s the terminal tag line (see bottom right hand corner) for these ads for Sony Playstation 2:
Via the f-word.
–Ann Bartow
So last year’s list of YLS visitoring law profs was 90% male. According to Leiter, this is the 2007-08 roster:
Yale Law School
William LaPiana (New York Law Sch.)
Mitchel Lasser (Cornell University)
Thomas Merrill (Columbia University)
Theodore Ruger (University of Pennsylvania)
Edward Zelinsky (Cardozo Law School)
The South Carolina faculty is about half the size of Yale’s, and we still have more women in real numbers, not just as a percentage.
–Ann Bartow
Update: In response to a couple of e-mails: “Visitoring” is not a typo, it’s an effort to have fun with language. Deal. Also, NYU’s list is notably male heavy as well – looks like 18 out of 20.
Hillary Clinton has announced the winner of her campaign theme song here, and we at FeministLawProfs are not far behind.
Here are the songs that received at least two votes in the first round of our poll. Choose your favorite from this list by Monday, June 25 at 5:00 p.m. The top three vote-getters will advance to the “final round.”
That’s the title of a very informative post by Ann Friedman at Feminsting about errors in sex education programs.
From the FLP mailbox:
“The Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy is proud to announce the publication of its latest issue, “Gender, Sexuality & the Military.”… “Gender, Sexuality & the Military” explores such timely topics as the exemption of women from direct ground combat, the Solomon Amendments, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and consensual sex crimes in the Armed Forces. …”
David S. Cohen is an Associate Professor of Law at the College of Law at Drexel University. In a recent interview with FeministLawProfs, Professor Cohen discussed his educational and professional background and how feminism affects the way he teaches.
FLP: What is your educational and professional background?
DC: I graduated from Dartmouth College, majoring in philosophy with a minor in women’s studies. I went to Columbia for law school and followed that with two years of clerking – one year for Justice Alan Handler of the New Jersey Supreme Court and then for Judge Warren Ferguson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. After that, I spent seven years as a staff attorney at the Women’s Law Project, a small women’s rights legal organization in Philadelphia. At the Law Project, I worked on cases touching on a large variety of feminist issues. In particular, I focused on cases involving abortion rights, Title IX, and drugs and pregnancy. For four years while at the Law Project, I also adjuncted at Penn – in the Law School, teaching sex discrimination and the law (four years) and the undergraduate school teaching the same course but geared toward undergrads (two years). I was hired in 2005 as an associate professor to be a part of Drexel University College of Law’s inaugural faculty.
FLP: What courses do you teach?
DC: I currently teach Constitutional Law I and II. As Drexel grows, my course load will expand as well.
FLP: How does feminism influence your teaching/scholarship/service?
DC: It influences everything I do as a professor. It guides most of my research agenda (so far about Title IX but broadening in the future); it affects what examples I use in class and how I interact with students; and it influences which organizations I am faculty adviser for (Drexel Choice, Drexel NLG).
FLP: When did you first make a connection between feminism and the law?
DC: In a philosophy of feminism class I took as an undergrad. We read plenty of feminist legal scholars, including Patricia Williams, Kimberle Crenshaw, Catharine MacKinnon, and others. Those authors plus Backlash by Susan Faludi inspired me to go to law school.
FLP: What are you working on now?
DC: I’m working on a project that will investigate the way that conceptions of masculinity helped to shape last year’s change in Title IX that now allows greater opportunities for single-sex education. The narrative was one of a very dominant, essentialized, and heterosexual masculinity. I plan on showing how this narrative is problematic compared to other threads of Title IX’s jurisprudence and general constitutional norms against sex stereotyping as well as inconsistent with a feminist view of gender/masculinity.
FLP: Could you recommend at least one book/article/theorist to law students who are interested in feminism’s relationship to the law?
DC: I’ll go back to Backlash by Susan Faludi. It’s dated, but it gives the essential tools on how to critically consume media and popular claims about women, feminism, and social movements more generally.
-Bridget Crawford and Amanda Kissel
“Fangirl Geekery” at One Good Thing.
“Two Medical Truths” at Doctor Mama.
“A Shameful Confession” at A Gentleman’s C.
“We’d Chew Off One of Our Own Legs If We Thought We Could Be a Manager” at Rate Your Students.
“Letter to an Anonymous Blogger” at Tenured Radical and also
“Am I That Name? Why the AHA’s Gender Policies Make Sense To Some of Us” at Tenured Radical.
“Pride for Sale” at Center of Gravitas.
“Feelin’ Groovy” at Professing Mama.
You can read this interesting essay on microcredit programs here. Below is an excerpt:
… The evidence on whether microcredit can empower women is inconclusive. According to the World Bank, because microcredit gives women more control over household assets and resources, they enjoy increased autonomy and decision-making power, which in turn enables them to participate more fully in public life. This defense of microcredit stands or falls on stories of individual success, which feature women who have used their loans to start small-scale enterprises by renting a stall in the local market or buying a sewing machine to assemble piece goods. There is no doubt that when women succeed in business, they and their families are better off than they were before they became microdebtors.
However, access to credit is not the sole determinant of women’s empowerment. Credit can increase women’s dual burden of market and household labor. It may also increase conflict within the household if men, rather than women, try to control the use of the loans. Moreover, conflict among women can be exacerbated by the pressure of group repayment obligations. These structural realities of microdebtors’ economic lives suggest that microcredit by itself will not empower poor women.
We wonder how the Nobel Committee could have overlooked the impressive achievements of India’s 700,0000-member Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), founded in 1972 by some of the poorest women workers in India, including those whose work arrangements leave them without legal protection from exploitation. SEWA engages in a range of activities:not just microcredit:organized by and for women. Based on Gandhian principles, it addresses the full spectrum of structural and institutional practices that reproduce women’s poverty. According to Elibah Bhatt, SEWA’s first leader,
The basic elements of SEWA are organizing poor self-employed women through work, building economic organizations for them like unions and cooperatives, creating viable links between a country’s grassroots and its macro policies, and combining struggle and development through peaceful means.
One can hardly find a clearer contrast in approaches to gender equity, women’s self-sufficiency, and the alleviation of poverty than those represented by the Grameen Bank and SEWA. Progressive groups like SEWA argue that poverty is structural. Consequently, successful antipoverty programs, rather than adjusting individual behavior, must focus on creating the conditions for women’s positive inclusion in social life. Expanding collective efforts through public funding for initiatives that provide a functional infrastructure are, they argue, the best way to reduce poverty. In contrast, in the neoliberal view represented by the Grameen Bank and Yunus, restricting state aid is the way to help women help themselves. …
Read Dahlia Lithwick’s article, “Gag Order” at Slate for the details. Twisty has some related commentary at IBTP. And, see also.
Read Jennifer Barrigar’s essay here at “On the Identity Trail”.
This WJS op-ed analogizes the Duke Lacrosse rape allegations to the “Scottsboro Boys” case in Depression era Alabama. Corey Rayburn Yung has a reaction here, at Sex Crimes.
On this Saturday, June 23, the NYC Dyke March begins at 5 pm sharp on 42nd street and 6th avenue (at Bryant Park).
This march is for gay women and for all women who believe in the freedom of sexual orientation and pride.
According to the website, “The dyke march is a protest march, not a parade — we don’t ask for a permit, because we have the right to protest. As lesbians, we recognize that we must organize amongst ourselves to fight for our rights, our safety, and for visibility. Thousands of dykes take over the streets every year in celebration of lesbians and to protest against ongoing discrimination, harassment, and anti-lesbian violence in schools, on the job, in our families, and on the streets.”
-Bridget Crawford and Amanda Kissel
That seems to be the message that opponents are taking away from Maine’s experience with the addition of sexual orientation to its anti-discrimination law 18 months ago. A story in the Portland Press-Herald reports that, since December 28, 2005, the Maine Human Rights Commission has only received 34 complaints of sexual orientation-based discrimination. This constitutes only 2.5% of the total discrimination claims filed in Maine. Based on these figures, opponents conclude that the law is”an unnecessary measure that combats discrimination that hardly exists.”But before patting themselves on the back too quickly for being so open-minded, opponents might consider some of the alternative explanations for the ostensibly low number of complaints (e.g., that the law serves as a deterrent, that cases may be settled before reaching the complaint stage, or that victims of discrimination may not wish to press their claims for fear of being outed). (And, it is worth noting that the story does a good job of laying out these alternative explanations.)
One thing that the story does not touch on, however, is the possibility that it may be misleading to focus on the raw number of complaints at all. William Rubenstein (of UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute) did a really interesting piece on this issue a few years back titled Do Gay Rights Laws Matter?: An Empirical Assessment, 75 S. Cal. L. Rev. 65 (2001). Rubenstein’s insight was simple, but illuminating:”If fifty workers file sexual orientation discrimination complaints, it is important to know whether those are fifty workers out of a total of 500 or 500,000 gay workers in the workforce.” Focusing on employment discrimination protections, Rubenstein attempted to determine the percentage of all lesbian and gay workers who filed discrimination complaints and then compare that percentage to the percentage of women in the same workforce who filed gender discrimination complaints and to the percentage of people of color in the same workforce who filed race discrimination complaints. Rubenstein’s research showed that:
Using a low-end estimate of the number of gay people in the workforce, I find that in six of ten surveyed states, the incidence of sexual orientation filings falls somewhere between the incidence of sex and race discrimination filings. In two other states, the prevalence of sexual orientation filings exceeds that of both race and gender. In only two states does the incidence of sexual orientation filings fall below both race and gender filings. Even assuming a high portion of gay people in the workforce, the frequency with which gay workers file claims of sexual orientation discrimination is far closer to the rates at which women file gender discrimination claims and people of color file race discrimination claims than the raw numbers suggest.
It would be interesting to see how Maine’s experience would fare under this approach.
-Anthony C. Infanti
Yesterday, the New York State Assembly passed a bill to legalize same-sex marriage by a wide margin (i.e., 85-61). That bill is now expected by all to go off to the New York State Senate to die. Nonetheless, the New York Times’ City Room provides a snapshot of yesterday’s Assembly debate over the bill. This snapshot is worth reading because it really seems to mirror where we are as a society on this issue (not to mention on other lesbian and gay issues). It includes the tearful pleas of an openly gay assemblyman, an assemblywoman’s story about coming to grips with her own son’s homosexuality, the objections of those who find themselves rooted (cemented?) into religious and traditionalist opposition to same-sex marriage, and those who parrot the absolutely inane arguments proffered by reactionaries in their zeal to confound the debate over same-sex marriage (and this person actually seems to come up with a new one in the process).
-Anthony C. Infanti
From Yahoo News:
A pharmacist who claimed she was fired by Wal-Mart after asking to be paid the same as her male colleagues has won a nearly $2 million award against the retail giant.
A Berkshire Superior Court jury concluded Wal-Mart discriminated against Cynthia Haddad and awarded her nearly $1 million in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages Tuesday.
“It sends a message that you can’t treat people poorly because of who they are,” said David Belfort, Haddad’s attorney.
Wal-Mart’s attorneys didn’t comment after the verdict.
Haddad was fired in April 2004 after more than 10 years at a Wal-Mart store in Pittsfield. She claimed in court that she was fired because she asked to be paid the same as her male counterparts, including a bonus given to pharmacy managers. The company paid the bonus, then fired her two weeks later.
Lawyers for the retailer said she was fired because she left the pharmacy unattended and allowed a technician to use her computer security code to issue prescriptions during her absence, including a fraudulent prescription for a painkiller.
Haddad’s lawyers argued that the prescription was filled 18 months before she was dismissed and without her knowledge, and that more severe infractions by male pharmacists went unpunished.
Here is the abstract:
This paper addresses the sexual abuse of women in custody as a more contemporary manifestation of slavery and discusses the congruencies and the differences that exist between the sexual abuse of women in custody and slavery. The paper charts the history of the parallel abolition and prison reform movements and examines their divergent paths arguing that the women’s movement abandonment of prison advocacy has harmed the women in prison movement. The article concludes that the embrace of human rights norms has assisted in providing new avenues for redressing the sexual abuse of women in custody.
The paper is downloadable here. Via The Legal History Blog.
At a banquet:
Person A: What IS this? It kind of tastes like grits.
Person B: I think it is polenta.
Person A: What is polenta?
Person B: Italian grits.
At a private residence:
Person A: What’s you cat’s name?
Person B: Atticus.
Person A: Atticus? Y’all are liberals, then.
Person B: Yes.
At the airport:
Person A: Have y’all been to France before?
Person B: No, the only time I’ve ever been out of the country was when I went to Hawaii.
–Ann Bartow
According to this report from the local CBS affiliate in San Francisco, an Air Force lab in Ohio proposed in 1994 that the Defense Department develop a “Gay Bomb,” a hormonal weapon intended to “turn” all enemy soldiers into homosexuals who would be “more interested in sex than in fighting.” The proposal failed.
Geoff Kors of Equality California had this reaction to news of the proposed “Gay Bomb:”
Throughout history we have had so many brave men and women who are gay and lesbian serving the military with distinction, so, it’s just offensive that they think by turning people gay that the other military would be incapable of doing their job. And its absurd because there’s so much medical data that shows that sexual orientation is immutable and cannot be changed.
-Bridget Crawford and Amanda Kissel
Via Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog:
Sexual Politics, Kate Millet (1968)
The Politics of Housework, Pat Mainardi (1970 )
Feminism Old Wave and New Wave, Ellen Dubois (1971)
Why I Want A Wife, Judy Syfers (1971)
The BITCH Manifesto, Jo Freeman (1972)
and many more from the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union Herstory Archive.Also:
The Dialectic of Sex, Chapter One, Shulamith Firestone (1970)
The Personal is the Political, Carol Hahnisch (1970, new introduction 2006)
Here is the TOC:
Articles
The Parentage Puzzle: The Interplay Between Genetics, Procreative Intent, and Parental Conduct in Determining Legal Parentage
Deborah H. Wald, Esq.
“Not Quite One Gender or the Other”: Marriage Law and the Containment of Gender Trouble in the United Kingdom
Dr. Lisa Fishbayn
A Gendered Update on Women Law Deans: Who, Where, Why, and Why Not?
Laura M. Padilla
Taking The “Banks” Out of Banks v. Gonzales: DNA Databanks and the Fourth Amendment Prohibition on Unreasonable Searches and Seizures
Heather Bennett
FeministLawProf Anthony C. Infanti (Pittsburgh) has posted to ssrn.com his forthcoming article”Tax Equity.” Here is part of the abstract:Simply put, this article stands the traditional concept of tax equity on its head. Challenging the notion that tax equity is an unequivocal good, this article deconstructs the concept of tax equity to reveal the subtle, yet pernicious ways in which it shapes tax policy debates and impinges upon contributions to those debates. The article describes how tax equity, with its narrow focus on “income” as the sole relevant metric for judging tax fairness, presupposes a population that is homogeneous along all other lines. Through this insidious homogenization, tax equity performs both a sanitizing and a screening function in the tax policy debate: In effect, tax equity forecloses consideration of non-economic forms of difference (e.g., of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or physical ability) when determining the appropriate allocation of tax –– and, by extension, societal –– burdens. Paradoxically, with its ostensible concern for fairness, tax equity is often the most logical avenue for introducing critical concerns into tax policy debates; yet, tax equity has been defined in such a way as to bar entry to precisely these types of concerns. It should come as no surprise, then, that mainstream tax scholars tend to be so resistant -– and, at times, openly hostile -– to critical contributions to tax policy debates.
Professor Infanti is a creative scholar and one of the leading thinkers in critical tax theory. For anyone who who has ever wondered about the relationship between taxation and social justice, this article nails it.
The full article is available here.
-Bridget Crawford
Haven’t heard about AT&T’s bargain ten dollars per month DSL? The Consumerists theorizes this is because AT&T doesn’t want you to know about it:
As part of a concession made to the FCC in order to get its mitts on BellSouth, AT&T is required to offer basic DSL for $10 a month to its entire 22 state coverage area for a period of 2 years.
The plan provides download speeds of up to 768 kilobits per second and upload speeds of up to 128 kbps, matching AT&T’s basic plan.
If you can’t find the plan listed on the website, don’t worry. AT&T wants it that way. …
Yahoo News has more here, noting: “Another concession to the FCC is yet to come: a plan for DSL that doesn’t require local phone service. AT&T has another six months to introduce that option, which should cost at most $19.95 per month.”
You can sign up for the $10 per month deal here if you qualify.
Rebecca Tushnet is a professor of law at Georgetown University. She obtained her J.D. at Yale Law School in 1998, where she was an editor of the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism and an articles editor of the Yale Law Journal. During her summers at Yale, Professor Tushnet worked for the Center for Reproductive Law & Policy and for Bredhoff & Kaiser, a labor law firm. After graduating, she clerked for Chief Judge Edward R. Becker of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and for Associate Justice David H. Souter. She practiced intellectual property law at Debevoise & Plimpton, then taught at NYU for two years before moving to Georgetown.
Professor Tushnet has published many interesting articles, including “Rules of Engagement” (Yale L.J. 1998), which addressed the law governing engagement rings. The Supreme Court of Montana later relied on the note to reject the modern rule that a woman always has to return the ring after a broken engagement, on the grounds that the rule was rooted in discriminatory attitudes.
Professor Tushnet answered these questions for FeministLawProfs:
•How does feminism influence your teaching/ scholarship/service?
Pervasively, I hope. I think of my work as focusing on how ordinary people experience the law, or fields regulated by the law, like trademark, copyright and advertising law. Feminism asks us to examine the effects of formally neutral rules on real people in practice, and I try to apply that to intellectual property. My work on fan fictionis an example of looking at a predominantly female creative practice for lessons for the law. I’m also very proud of my recent article on sex, gender, and fair use in copyright law.
I am very privileged in other ways, and feminism encourages me to pay attention to those privileges as I try to teach a diverse group of students.
•What are you working on now?
My major project is an analysis of false advertising law from the perspective of First Amendment doctrine, but without the usual assumption in free speech literature that the First Amendment has it right and that most restrictions on speech are illegitimate. I’m also working on articles on trademark dilution, the right of attribution in copyright, and teaching intellectual property with audiovisual materials.
• Could you recommend at least one book/article/theorist to law students who are interested in feminism’s relationship to the law?
Catharine MacKinnon’s Feminism Unmodified. Disagree or agree with her (and there’s plenty of room for both), MacKinnon’s work is required reading for anyone who wants to understand American feminist jurisprudence. It is also a stellar example of powerful rhetoric, and has a lot to teach about persuasive speech.
-Bridget Crawford and Amanda Kissel
Here is the abstract:
The central behavioral claim in Wrongful Life actions is that a mother would have chosen to have a therapeutic abortion rather than given birth to a severely impaired child. Wrongful Life actions are brought by or on behalf of infant-plaintiffs who are suing the physicians who allegedly negligently allowed them to be born by failing to provide the mother with sufficient information about the health of her fetus while she was still legally able to terminate the pregnancy. Social psychological models of health behavior and evolutionary theory, including inclusive fitness, parental investment, the theory of reasoned action, and the theory of planned behavior, are addressed to assess the claim that a child, due to its severe defects, could be better off dead and that the mother would have willingly terminated the pregnancy if full information was disclosed. These theories ultimately support the behavioral claims made in Wrongful Life actions.
Springer’s paper can be downloaded here.
That’s the title of a post I have up at Prawfsblawg, where I am guesting through the end of this week. Happy to read responses here, there, or anywhere; a focus on issues rather than scathing personal attacks is always appreciated!
–Ann Bartow
That is a question Anxious Black Woman ponders here.
Someone who can draw needs to do the law school adaptation of this cartoon.
Any surprise that the Fox network doesn’t understand women’s health? Trojan, the condom company, has a new hip ad (no more”Beavis and Butthead”condom ads, more”Sex and the City”) that they’re shopping to network television. ABC, NBC, and nine cable networks will air it, but Fox and CBS have turned it down. Why? Let’s let Fox’s spokesperson explain: “Contraceptive advertising must stress health-related uses rather than the prevention of pregnancy.”
Apparently, over at Fox, pregnancy, particularly unwanted pregnancy, is not a women’s health issue. All the complications, the mental and physical toll, the abortions, the deliveries (after all, even with the most joyful, complication-free pregnancy, there will be a health-related procedure at the end), the almost two decades of taking care of another human being’s health – nope, not health related at all.
– David S. Cohen
Probably the most interesting thing that I saw at PrideFest yesterday was the”fAg”bug. Erin Davies came to Pittsburgh from Albany, New York in her VW Beetle, which had been vandalized this past April 18th. Because Erin has a rainbow sticker on her car, someone painted”fAg”and”u r gay”on the hood and driver side of her car. Rather than cave into hate and clean the paint off of her car, Erin decided to leave the car as is in an effort to raise awareness about hate crimes and sexual prejudice. Erin is traveling around the country to gauge people’s reactions to her car:keeping a daily blog on her web site :and she will be making a documentary about her experiences in driving her car.
-Anthony C. Infanti
Today was Pittsburgh PrideFest. The difference between PrideFest when I moved to Pittsburgh seven years ago and today is striking. Many more people participate in the parade and show up to the activities afterwards, although the turnout along the parade route this year was rather poor (especially compared to last year). The visibility of the parade has also increased. When I first moved here, the parade went through one or two of the neighborhoods away from downtown. Now, the marchers go right through downtown Pittsburgh.
-Anthony C. Infanti
Writing for the editorial board of the Atlanta Journal Constitution, staff writer Maureen Downey expresses outrage here at the appeal taken by the Georgia AG in the case of Genarlow Wilson (pictured above left):
A decade or two ago, few prosecutors would have taken up the cause of a black teenage girl who admitted going to a hotel room with her overnight bag to drink and party with a bunch of boys, and who later cried rape. But to [Douglas Co., Ga District Attorney David] McDade’s credit, he took the claim seriously. He felt sure that a jury would convict because he had a videotape of several sex acts that night, including … [a] 15-year-old girl engaging in oral sex.
The video failed to persuade the jury that the drunken 17-year-old had been incapable of giving consent. But jurors did find that Wilson, then 17, had participated in oral sex with the 15-year-old girl. Because of a glitch in state law, that meant that Wilson was guilty of aggravated child molestation, with a sentence of 10 years in prison and permanent classification as a sexual predator.
Ten years in prison for a consensual sex act between teenagers is clearly excessive. (Wilson has already served two years of that sentence.) The Legislature later recognized that fact, changing the law so that today that same act would be regarded as a misdemeanor with a maximum sentence of a year. A Monroe County Superior Court judge reached that conclusion as well this week, ordering Wilson’s release. Attorney General Thurbert Baker has appealed that sensible ruling, and McDade continues to insist that the original conviction was justified.
One Georgia prosecutor defends the actions of the Georgia AG, Thurbert Baker (pictured at right), in this letter to the editors: 
In the hysteria surrounding this case, important facts and principles are buried or overlooked by the media. Like it or not, Wilson committed aggravated child molestation. * * *
While some might argue that the law under which Wilson was convicted has since been changed, the law changed after Wilson committed the offense and was convicted. It is the law in effect at the time the crime is committed that governs.
Others have emphasized that this was a “consensual” act by the victim. As a society, however, we have determined by law that children under 16 years of age lack the maturity to legally consent to sexual acts. * * *
The day we begin to make exceptions for one person is the day we become a nation of men, not of laws. Thanks to an agenda-driven media frenzy, that day may not be far off.
The Georgia prosecutor’s assertion that the Georgia Attorney General has a “sworn duty to appeal the court’s ruling” to reduce the charges against Mr. Wilson and his 10-year sentence overlooks the basic fact that prosecutorial discretion requires those who wield it to exercise judgment, not to make mechanical appeals. In this article in the Lewis & Clark Law Review in 2005, Professor Bennett L. Gershman wrote,
[A] prosecutor’s fiduciary duty requires the prosecutor to exercise professional judgment, as the ABA Criminal Justice Standard directs, “solely for the benefit of the client–the people–free of any compromising influences or loyalties.” Thus, a prosecutor’s personal or private loyalties, or her political or ideological beliefs, must not be allowed to impede the lawful and professional performance of her official duties.
(Citations omitted.)
But then in the comments to this article at about.com, one netizen says:
Ya know as a black man in America, I can say with all honesty if this was a white 17 y/o having sex with a unconscious or intoxicated black girl, he would be called a rapist by the black community, especially if there was a video tape showing a limp black girl being dragged to the bathroom to have sex with his buddies.
To see the text of Genarlow Wilson’s appeal, click here. NPR’s coverage of the story is here. Professor Elizabeth Anne Wood’s blog, Sex in the Public Square, follows the story here.
-Bridget Crawford
The USA Today article of this title is available here. Below is an excerpt:
… In a study completed last month, a Yale researcher found that male congressmen with daughters are more likely to support women’s issues than those without daughters.
The findings, an update to a study published last year by the National Bureau of Economic Research, also show that the more daughters a congressman had, the more likely he was to vote for reproductive rights, says Ebonya Washington, an assistant economics professor at Yale.
Her new research, not yet published, expands on an analysis she did of roll-call votes during the 105th Congress in 1997-98 when she examined family composition and compared the data with voting records compiled by other groups. She used rankings by the National Organization for Women, based on votes on 20 women’s issues such as equal rights, women’s safety, economic security, education, health and reproductive rights. She also reviewed voting data from the National Right to Life Committee.
Her new analysis included congressional votes through 2004 and added information from another group: the American Association of University Women. She again found voting record support for a daughter-to-father influence. …
Anxious Black Woman posted on her blog this link to a video advertisement in India for “Fair and Lovely” skin bleaching cream. ABW writes:
Reading through some of the YouTube comments on the Indian video, I don’t know which is worse: the ones saying that skin-bleaching is no big deal because it’s analogous to white people getting suntans or the ones proclaiming what a horrible thing this is because dark people should be true to themselves since Indians are so much better looking with their “exotic brown” skin.
The whole post, Whatever Happened to “Dark & Lovely” and “Black is Beautiful”?, is worth a read.
-Bridget Crawford
Read it here at abyss2hope.
In the words of Governor Deval Patrick,”[i]n Massachusetts today, the freedom to marry is secure.”(Click here for the NY Times story.) The Massachusetts legislature today rejected, by a margin of only five votes, a proposal to place a constitutional amendment before the state’s voters that, if it had been passed, would have prospectively banned same-sex marriage in Massachusetts. Just this past January, when the proposed constitutional amendment came up for the first of two votes necessary to place it on the ballot, it passed by a margin of 12 votes. Had the proposal passed the legislature a second time today, it would have been placed before the state’s voters for consideration next year.
Unsurprisingly, lesbian and gay rights organizations have already declared this a”victory.”(Check out the announcements about the vote on the HRC and NGLTF web sites.) To me, such a declaration is premature. In my mind, there is a significant qualitative difference between, on the one hand, a gain secured through a clear defeat of your opponent and, on the other, temporarily staving off an attempt by your opponent to recapture something that you have only recently obtained and over which you only have a shaky grasp. As the New York Times story notes, opponents of same-sex marriage have already stated that they are”not going away.”They are, of course, free to renew their efforts to get the Massachusetts legislature to place the constitutional amendment on the ballot in the future. There is even talk that they may explore the possibility of instituting legal challenges to the vote based on the inducements used to get several lawmakers to change their votes at the eleventh hour. So, this is not a time to declare victory, but rather to breathe a sigh of relief that we appear to have avoided what could have been a bruising and costly fight in Massachusetts next year.
If anything, this episode only underscores how precarious the legal position of lesbians and gay men remains in the United States today. After same-sex marriage became legal in Massachusetts, the conventional wisdom seemed to be that opposition would abate as time passed and opponents realized that the sky had not fallen. But the Massachusetts legislature’s passage of the proposal to place the constitutional ban on the ballot last January seriously undermined this idea. That the outcome of the vote today was not clear even a few hours before it was taken only further erodes support for the idea that time is on our side and that we can simply wait out our opponents.
Indeed, for the past couple of years, I have been working on a book titled Everyday Law for Gays and Lesbians (And Those Who Care About Them) (Paradigm Publishers, forthcoming November 2007) (click here to read a draft of the introductory chapter). My work on this project has driven home the many ways in which the law does more (to harm) or less (to help) lesbians and gay men than appearances might at first indicate.
Under the rubric of laws that do less (to help), I think of President Clinton’s executive order that grants unenforceable employment discrimination protections to lesbian and gay federal employees. Conversely,”Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”does far more (to harm) than appearances indicate. DADT was sold to the public as an improvement over the prior ban on lesbians and gay men in the military. But DADT is no better than the prior ban; in fact, it is arguably worse because it operates as a trap for the unwary, who are led to believe that lesbians and gay men are now welcome to serve in the military so long as they do so silently.
My experience in writing this book has imbued me with a healthy skepticism. It has made clear to me that, before declaring victory, we need to realistically examine what, if anything, we actually have won.
-Anthony C. Infanti
That’s a quote from this NYT article about gynecomastia.
