Feminist Law Professors

This is the fourth and final blog post in a series that discusses discrimination and harassment in cyberspace, its perpetrators, and its consequences.  The first post, “Identity and Ideas,” is available here.  The second post, “Anonymity and Abuse,” is available here, with a short addendum here.  The third post, “Privilege and Passivity,” is available here.

In my final post, I’ll discuss some of the options for people targeted by identity-based online harassment.  I intend this post to complement the broader social responsibilities I outlined in my previous post.

One of my starting premises is that there isn’t a “right” way to respond when you are the target of identity-based online harassment.  People who experience such harassment have a range of legitimate reactions, and differences in individual circumstances may dictate the best approach for a given individual.  I’ve tried a number of these options myself, and I’ll share my experiences–not as a definitive assessment of the merits of each option, but simply as a way of highlighting some of the potential advantages and disadvantages.

Before I do that, I want to address a point with which some readers seem to struggle.  By calling attention to identity-based online harassment, I am not denying that some people who engage in such harassment, and who have engaged in such harassment of me, also have substantive things to say.  What I am saying is that the mere fact that people have something substantive to say doesn’t entitle them to engage in identity-based harassment, nor does it excuse them from turning a blind eye when others do so in threads they start or on blogs they administer.  Lots of  infamous people have had lots of substantive things to say–Ted Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, is one example.  That doesn’t mean these people should be excused for the hateful ideas intertwined with their substantive ones.  My point is obviously not that anonymous online harassment is equivalent to, for example, a nationwide bombing campaign.  The point is that having substantive things to say doesn’t give you a free pass to spew racism and misogyny, and that criticizing people for refusing to engage substantively in forums that tolerate such harassment is a weak attempt to deflect attention from the harassment itself.

With that said, I’ll move on to some strategies for dealing with identity-based online harassment.

1. Ignore.

Many harassers have short attention spans, and will move on if you ignore them.  Certainly this has happened with respect to some of the people who have posted racist and sexist comments about me.  Sometimes, however, for whatever reason, one or more harassers becomes really fixated on you.  I waited for over a year for my most persistent harasser to move on.  He showed no sign of doing so.  That’s when it might be time to take other action.

Even if you ultimately find it impossible to completely ignore pervasive harassment, there are ways of limiting its salience to your daily life.  As a colleague suggested to me, one can ask a trusted friend or family member to monitor the forums where harassment takes place.  I found this advice very useful.  Alternatively, one might choose to visit certain sites only occasionally to check for statements that contain an imminent threat.

I want to emphasize that it’s not a sign of personal weakness or mental frailty if you’re unable to ignore identity-based online harassment targeted at you.  The claim that women and people of color are “too thin-skinned” when they don’t overlook racist and misogynistic remarks is an old standby, but that doesn’t make it true.  Perhaps it would make things easier if everyone could ignore the bad things said about them.  But when ignoring is impossible, there are other options.

2. Engage.

Other people find engaging with harassers to be empowering, productive, and even enjoyable.  Bina Shah, for example, offers useful advice for smacking down trolls on twitter.   Linda Tirado, who writes about poverty under the name Killer Martinis, often takes a different approach, responding to hysterical commenters with dignity and empathy (see here for an example, particularly the first comment and response).

My own limited experience with engaging with harassers have been mixed.  The reality is that, like many people, I have minimal time to engage with anonymous and pseudonymous purveyors of hate speech in poorly-read forums.  As something of an experiment, I posted two brief comments in one forum, which produced an entertaining outburst of juvenile rage.  (One of my favorites:  “Lady Leong, this isn’t Afghanistan!  You can’t come in here, drop a few bombs, and then leave!”)  The downside, of course, is that harassers get angry when someone calls out their unacceptable behavior, and that can produce more harassment.

3. Use the law.

As I discussed in my previous post, we need a legal mechanism that wholly addresses the problem of identity-based online harassment.  Right now, such a mechanism doesn’t exist.  There are, however, various other legal doctrines that can address some of the harms of identity-based online harassment.  None of this is meant as legal advice, but here are some legal options that may be worth considering in individual situations:

First, if online harassment includes credible threats to your safety or the safety of those close to you, it becomes a matter for law enforcement.  I am fortunate that I have not experienced this firsthand, with the exception of one arguably threatening phone call from a blocked number, but other people certainly have experienced awful threats of rape and other violence.

Likewise, many states either have criminal cyberstalking or cyberharassment statutes that may cover identity-based online harasssment, and when laws specific to cyberspace are unavailable, more conventional criminal stalking and harassment statutes may apply.  A recently-updated list of such statutes appears here.  The scope of such laws varies considerably, so it’s important to examine the particularities of your jurisdiction, but some of them are quite useful.   Moreover, it is not necessarily an obstacle if a harasser is in a different state than you; many statutes explicitly provide that if an electronic transmission is either sent or received in a particular state, the statute applies.

Copyright law can provide another vehicle to address identity-based online harassment.  I succeeded in having a blog composed of pictures of me taken without permission from various online sources removed on the ground that it violated my copyright.  I also succeeded in having thread containing a 1000-word cut and paste of my writing, with no additional commentary, removed from a website where it provoked an outburst of racist and sexist vitriol.  I accomplished this by sending take-down notices, which non-lawyers can read more about here.  Fair use is, of course, a defense, but it would likely be unavailing in situations where, for example, harassers simply copy and paste photographs or large portions of written material and there is nothing transformative about the use of the material.  Moreover, website administrators will sometimes remove content even when fair use is debatable if the use in question is racist, sexist, or otherwise harassing.

And finally, defamation law can provide recourse if the statements about you are false and harmful to your reputation.  (“She slept with someone to get her job” is an example.)  Defamation law is notoriously slippery, and there are various practical obstacles to lawsuits that one must overcome.  But in some situations it may be the best alternative.  The Electronic Frontier Foundation offers a useful brief summary of defamation law that can provide a starting point for someone who thinks that she has been defamed.

4. Investigate.

A lot of harassers are anonymous, but others write under pseudonyms.  Sometimes pseudonymous harassers and abusers build up entire personalities around their pseudonymous identities–for example, Violentacrez on Reddit, the instigator of popular subreddits “Creepshots” and “Jailbait”, later unmasked as Michael Brutsch.

Many pseudonymous people who engage in identity-based online harassment are trying to have it both ways.  That is, they are trying to have the benefits that come with having a known identity–the community recognition; the ability to form relationships with others; the claim to speak authoritatively on certain topics–as well as the benefits associated with anonymity–namely, the ability to avoid any consequences for racist and misogynistic comments in real life.

I encountered several such pseudonymous individuals in my own experience with online harassment.  Once I began paying attention to the various repeat players, certain rather disturbing preoccupations emerged.  For example, one pseudonymous commenter stated the following* about a recent female law graduate:

I hope I don’t have to explain why fantasizing about exploiting a recent law school graduate’s financial vulnerability to perform a violent sexual act is profoundly troubling.  Likewise, in previous posts, I’ve already referenced one of this particular commenter’s remarks about me, and noted that such a comment would constitute harassment in the workplace:

This specific comment is just one example; I’m making no effort to publicize all of them.  Over the course of about fifteen months, this particular harasser commented about me approximately 70 times on at least five different websites, frequently remarking on my physical appearance.  He started several derogatory threads devoted exclusively to me, in which other commenters also targeted me with racist and sexist harassment.  He wrote two lengthy plays about me.  The threads he started often attracted dozens or even hundreds of comments.  His sustained attention to me also incited other pseudonymous members of a blog where he often posts to author lengthy racist and sexist posts about me, which, again, often attracted large numbers of comments about me, including comments from him.  Moreover, he wrote offensive profiles of a dozen other law professors who were–so far as I could tell, with one exception–all women or people of color or both.  And, of course, these were just the comments under his pseudonym.  It would not surprise me to learn that some of the many anonymous comments about me were also by him, although I haven’t taken the time to investigate this.  This sustained attention and the ideas it contained became increasingly disturbing to me, and eventually I decided to figure out who he was.

Many people underestimate the ease with which they can be linked with their anonymous or pseudonymous comments on the Internet.  Kashmir Hill has described how to bait and catch a troll using a blog and IP address tracker–a relatively straightforward process even for someone with only limited technological capabilities.  For many people who experience online harassment, such techniques could provide a viable option.

With respect to my various harassers, even this rudimentary technique turned out to be unnecessary.  The pseudonymous individual I mentioned above had posted specific information about his alma mater, the city where he lived, his job, various professional organizations to which he belonged, and other miscellaneous information.  It took fifteen minutes to find out who he was using google and other publicly available databases.  The result was troubling in itself: he was a public defender in his late forties who apparently has nothing better to do than harass an untenured professor.

It was equally easy to identify a few other people who posted about me.  Indeed, someone had created a website dedicated to identifying one of them two years before he first crossed my radar.

There are a few lessons here.  One is that even in the online world harassers often feel compelled to develop continuous and stable personalities, perhaps as a way of compensating for the social deficiencies in their actual lives.  Another is that a lot of harassers are repeat offenders–that is, if someone is harassing you, odds are that you aren’t the first.

Particularly if identifying a pseudonymous harasser is minimally time-consuming, it can be a reassuring exercise.  I was glad to know that none of the pseudonymous harassers I identified were people who I had met or who lived anywhere near me.  Investigating and identifying a harasser is also valuable because it opens up other possibilities for addressing the situation, to which I will now turn.

5. Confront.

After I discovered the identity of my most persistent harasser, I decided to give him a call, which is something that adults do when they have a disagreement to discuss.  I did this for several reasons.  One was that I wanted to talk to him so that I could try to understand why an untenured professor he had never met could become the subject of a year-plus obsession.  Another reason was pure curiosity.  I have always been interested in what causes people to hate one another–or, at the very least, to write hateful things about other people, especially those they have never met.  But the main reason was simply that I truly wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.  People’s lives are complicated by mental illness, loneliness, personal hardship, and grief.  Although I have tried without success to find a definitive source for the saying “be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle,” the words resonate with me and I try to live them.  My hope was that the person who had written so many hateful things about me was a good person who–prompted by difficult personal circumstances–had made a mistake.

To my regret, my harasser refused to speak to me.  I called him at his office (once) and left a message with the person (not him) who picked up the phone simply leaving my name and number and asking him to call me.  He didn’t call back.  A few days later I emailed him (once), explaining that I had identified him and that I wished to discuss his Internet posting activities.  The email was difficult to write.  It triggered emotions relating to an experience confronting a person who abused me many years ago.  I did my best to keep the email polite and professional and–to the extent I could–I tried to express some sympathy for circumstances in his life of which I might not be aware.  If anyone finds themselves in similar circumstances, they are welcome to borrow any of the language of my email (larger image available here):

Of course, I can only guess at the real reason my harasser refused to speak with me.  Was he really afraid to speak with an untenured professor nearly fifteen years his junior who had already explicitly stated that she wished to give him the benefit of the doubt?  If so, why?  His refusal leads me to think that perhaps John Kang’s assessment is correct.  But I may never know the answer.

6. Elevate.

Sometimes harassers are subject to various sources of discipline besides the law itself.  A number of professions, ranging from doctors to mental health providers to lawyers, are bound by profession-specific rules of conduct.  A few of my harassers turned out to be attorneys.  An examination of the rules of professional conduct in the states where one of them is licensed–followed by consultation with a couple of legal ethicists and an attorney staffing the ethics hotline–suggested that this attorney was in violation of multiple ethics provisions.  And so I decided to file a formal complaint with the bars in the states where he is licensed.

I don’t know what will happen as a result of my complaint.  Many state bars hesitate to stir up controversy, and attorney discipline is relatively rare.  But I do feel that it is important for others closer to his situation to have knowledge of his online behavior so that they can make an informed decision about what to do.

7. Expose.

Disclosing the identities of anonymous or pseudonymous Internet posters–also known as “outing”–is one of the most controversial issues confronting the Internet today.  One line of thinking is that cyberharassers deserve to live with their online behavior in the light of day.  A contrary position is that we have a strong social interest in anonymous speech, and that a regular practice of outing would chill such speech.

I think there are particular ethical concerns associated with using technological means to expose an individual, particularly if you administer a website that ostensibly does not log IP addresses.  In the interest of time, I’m not going to address that issue here, although I hope to write more about it later.  It’s a completely different issue when a pseudonymous person has disclosed so much information about himself online that ignoring his real-life identity would involve willful blindness on the part of anyone who knows how to use google.  It amazes me that someone who engages in racist and misogynistic behavior online would attempt to claim that the very people he is harassing owe him an ethical or moral duty to refrain from exposing him.  Such an argument is intellectually incoherent.  That is, I think it is ethically permissible to expose the name of a person who has engaged in unacceptable behavior online.

I thought about publishing the names of some of my harassers.  Several colleagues, both within and outside the academy, urged me to do so, particularly with respect to my most persistent harasser, and particularly after they learned that he was a public defender.  As one eloquently explained:  “This person is a public servant with a very important job. His work has a very direct effect on the lives and freedom of his clients. Even if this person is struggling with a mental illness, if that illness is manifesting itself as bigotry, then it’s important that his clients, the courts and his employer know that.”  Another agreed: “Out his ass. He is an officer of the court with duties and obligations to his ENTIRE community. People have a right to know. You do not control what is done with the information thereafter.”  And another:  “Public defenders have an incredibly important job and need to be held to incredibly high standards.”

I struggled with this decision for a long time.  Ultimately, however, I decided against publishing the person’s name for the reasons I have already described.  Without full information, I hesitate to expose someone else’s life to the permanent censure of the Internet.  I see a fairly obvious irony in the situation: I am protecting the online reputation of someone who has shown nothing but contempt for me and many other women and people of color, and who has polluted my google search results with hateful and disparaging statements.

But ultimately I found Leo Traynor’s riveting account of his decision not to report an awful troll to the police enlightening.  Justice is important, but so is mercy.  And I would much rather someone improve his behavior and learn from his mistakes than the alternative.

I have enjoyed blogging about these important issues, and am grateful to the Feminist Law Professors blog for providing a platform for me to do so.  I’ll continue to write about identity-based harassment, discrimination, and other issues both here and on my personal website.

* I have chosen not to link to, or to identify, the sources of the material I reference in this post because I do not want to drive traffic to websites that tolerate racial and sexual harassment.  If you would like more information, please feel free to contact me.

The deadline for the 2014-2016 Columbia Law School – Center for Reproductive Rights Fellowship (CRR-CLS Fellowship) has been extended to February 28, 2014!

The CRR-CLS Fellowship is an exciting opportunity for recent law school graduates who are interested in careers in teaching law. Please keep your eye out for promising scholars and keep in mind that experience in reproductive rights is not required. You can download the application here.

Here is our track record thus far:

• 2008-2010 Fellow, Professor Khiara Bridges is teaching at Boston University School of Law in a tenure-track position with a joint appointment to the Anthropology Department;
• 2010-2012 Fellow, Professor Elizabeth Sepper is in a tenure-track position at Washington University School of Law;
• 2011-2013 Fellow, Professor Erez Aloni is teaching at Whittier Law School;
• 2012-2014 Fellow, Margaux Hall is in residence; and
• 2013-2015 Fellow, Rana Jaleel is in residence.

Here is a little more information about the Fellowship:

The CRR-CLS Fellowship is a two-year, post-graduate fellowship offered by the Center for Reproductive Rights (the Center) and Columbia Law School (CLS). Those committed to women’s rights and/or human rights would be a great fit for this fellowship – although we don’t require experience in these areas. More than anything, this is a fellowship for serious emerging academics. Fellows will be affiliated with the Center and CLS, and will participate in the intellectual life of both programs. Applicants do not need to be graduates of Columbia Law School to be eligible for this program and do not need prior experience in reproductive rights.

The deadline for applications for the 2014-2016 cycle is now February 28, 2014.

If you would like to learn more about CRR’s Law School Initiative, which supports the Fellowship, please visit our website here; email the Senior Director of the Law School Initiative, Diana Hortsch, atdhortsch@reprorights.org; or email Columbia Law School’s Center for Gender & Sexuality Law, gender_sexuality_law@law.columbia.edu.

We would be grateful if you could forward these materials to your colleagues and to promising recent graduates interested in academic careers.

This is the third in a series of four blog posts that discuss discrimination and harassment in cyberspace, its perpetrators, and its consequences.  The first post, “Identity and Ideas,” is available here.  The second post, “Anonymity and Abuse,” is available here, with a short addendum here.

Suppose you run a website, and the anonymous commenters on your site start hurling racial and sexual slurs at someone they’ve targeted.  Or suppose you start a thread in an online forum, and you notice that the commenters are engaging in identity-based harassment of someone–either a participant in the thread or otherwise.  Or suppose you didn’t start the thread, but you went to the site and you read it.

For anyone new to this series, when I talk about identity-based harassment, I’m talking about comments like the ones below, which are all comments about me:

Or this:

Or this:

Or this:

I confess that I am not particularly concerned with what “shithead” and “froyolo” think of me.  Their comments, however, helpfully provide a concrete context for my opening questions.  Suppose you encountered these comments.  What should you do?  Framed more broadly, what are the social and legal responsibilities triggered by identity-based online harassment?

I’ll start with the social responsibilities.  These are things you should do, not (necessarily) because they’re legally required, but as part of being a good person.  My definition of being a good person includes actively opposing racism, misogyny, and other forms of identity-based abuse.  If you disagree with this definition, I’m afraid the rest of this post may be difficult for you.

Here are some social responsibilities:  If you start a website and it turns into a rancid cesspool of racist and misogynistic vitriol,  it’s your responsibility to clean it up.  If you start a thread and the comments turn ugly, it’s your responsibility to intervene.  And if you read a thread and see the commenters abusing someone, it absolutely is your responsibility to call out the abuse.

Opposing racism and sexism is inconsistent with passivity in the face of online abuse.  Nobody gets to sit on the sidelines.  If you administer a website, you don’t get to sit back and play clockmaker god while your creation devolves into a racist monstrosity.  If you start a thread that turns into a misogynistic cybermob, you don’t get to shrug your shoulders and look away.  Or, to put it differently, of course you can do these things, but you can’t do them and still hold tight to your moral authority.  Your privilege–the privilege that you enjoy because the comments aren’t about you–doesn’t entitle you to blameless passivity.  I’m reminded of this message from a law firm partner to an administrator of the infamous AutoAdmit website:  “We expect any lawyer affiliated with our firm, when presented with the kind of language exhibited on the message board, to reject it and to disavow any affiliation with it. You, instead, facilitated the expression and publication of such language.”  In other words, we have a responsibility to act when we see identity-based online harassment.  This is particularly true for attorneys, and even more so for attorneys who represent vulnerable populations.  (I’ll have more to say about this in my next and final post.)

I am well aware that what I am proposing is a significant departure from current online norms.  Most people don’t call out racist and sexist comments–even people who would never make such comments themselves–because they prefer not to have to deal with the consequences. To justify their passivity, they hide behind platitudes, like “there will always be assholes on the Internet,” or “don’t feed the trolls,” or simply “it’s not my problem.”  But this is exactly my point.  You can decide it’s not your problem, or you can oppose racism and sexism.  You can’t do both.

I am also well aware that some of the things I posit as social responsibilities are arguably difficult to do.  For example, website administrators may find it burdensome to monitor comments.  But plenty of websites–from the New York Times to Jezebel—do manage to maintain a commenting environment largely free of targeted racism and misogyny, which suggests that the problem is not ability but effort. And even websites noted for awful comments are making progress in the right direction.  Moreover, technological tools are in the works that can make the task of moderation easier for everyone.  And if it’s really that difficult for a particular website to eliminate identity-based online harassment, perhaps that site should simply close down its comments.

Likewise, individuals may find it psychologically burdensome to call out identity-based online harassment, either in threads they started or in threads they read.  Obviously there are practical limits–everyone has only so much bandwidth to call out harassment–but I think it should be a shared burden, distributed evenly among everyone.  If you have the psychological wherewithal to start a thread–or read one–then surely you can also write a one-sentence comment calling out identity-based harassment.  It’s true that lengthy, detailed responses, might, in some circumstances, perpetuate a tornado of race- or gender-based abuse.  But even a short anonymous statement such as “This is sexist and I disagree” has many positive benefits.**  Such a statement lets the target know he or she is not alone.  It forces other readers to acknowledge the comments for what they are.  And sometimes it may shame the authors of such comments into silence.

Depending on the circumstances, calling out harassment might sometimes require a more involved response–including, for example, contacting the target to see whether he or she has a preference about the way the harassment should be handled.  The larger point is that good people don’t sit and scroll and sip their coffee and watch an online mob savage someone else’s life without doing anything about it.

Some people become enraged at the mere notion of moderating or closing down comments.  Some people become defensive at the idea that they have an affirmative duty to intervene in instances of identity-based online harassment.  But the alternative is to require women and people of color (among other marginalized groups) to bear a vastly disproportionate burden.  My previous posts have explained why, if we really care about having a robust marketplace of ideas, this disparate burden should be unacceptable to us.

On that note, I’ll turn to the legal implications.  Everything I have mentioned to this point involves private actors and therefore doesn’t implicate the First Amendment.  But I also think that–following the model of Title VII–Congress could legislate narrowly to proscribe online behavior whose purpose is to harass a specific person on the basis of traditionally protected categories including but not limited to race, gender, national origin, and religion.  As I have already mentioned, Title VII proscribes such targeted harassment in the workplace.  Cyberspace, of course, is not the workplace.  But it is a space where many of us do a lot of our work, and for many of us it’s a space that’s inextricable from our professional identities.

Other scholars have already devoted a great deal of time and careful thought to identity and online harassment.  In a previous post, I mentioned Saul Levmore and Martha Nussbaum’s anthology The Offensive Internet, which includes several essays that address these themes.  Daniel Solove’s outstanding monograph The Future of Reputation examines privacy, reputation, rumor, and freedom in cyberspace.  Jerry Kang’s work “Cyber-Race” examines the way that racial identity functions in online ecosystems.   And Danielle Citron emphasizes the notion of “Cyber Civil Rights“–the idea that identity-based online harassment “ought to be understood and addressed as a civil rights violation.”  I won’t retread ground that other commenters have already covered.  As a scholar of identity and discrimination, however, I would like to add an illustration of why we should think of identity-based harassment as a civil rights violation.  Consider the following three statements:

Statement One:  “Leong didn’t get that law professor position on her own merit.”

Statement Two: “Leong slept with someone to get herself a law professor position.”

Statement Three:

All three statements are false and defamatory.  Whether they are actionable is, of course, a different question, as there are various doctrinal and practical obstacles to defamation suits.  But my focus here is on whether the doctrinal mechanism, at least in theory, captures the injury.  The idea behind defamation nicely captures the problem with the first statement.  It’s a false statement that, if believed, would damage my reputation.  Defamation falters, however, with respect to the second statement.  It is defamation, but there’s more to it than that.  The statement no longer treats me as an individual, but instead applies offensive stereotypes about women’s presumed incompetence.  I simply could not have gotten that position on my own merit, I must have slept with someone, because however else could a mere woman get a law professor position?  And the third statement adds a racial dimension to the prior injuries of defamation and misogyny by very cleverly coupling my last name with a phrase that Asian women supposedly say, according to some white guys who make movies.  Asian women are stereotyped as sexually available: that’s why there are books like this, and songs like this atrocity, and documentaries like this, and AMA performances like this one.

It’s a simple point, but worth repeating: defamation doesn’t address the identity-based harms suffered by historically marginalized groups.  And this is why we need a civil rights regime for the Internet, not unlike the one we have in the workplace: to capture the unique identity-based harms that take place here.  Ignoring the fact that some identity groups enjoy greater privilege ignores reality.  As Louis CK explains, “I’m a white man!  You can’t even hurt my feelings.”

My final post will discuss the various avenues that people targeted by identity-based online harassment can pursue.

* I have chosen not to link to, or to identify, the sources of the material I reference in this post because I do not want to drive traffic to websites that tolerate racial and sexual harassment.  If you would like more information, please feel free to contact me.

**UPDATE: A thoughtful reader suggested the wording “This is sexist and unacceptable.”  I like that suggestion very much, and probably more than my original wording.

– Nancy Leong

Columbia Law School’s Center for Gender & Sexuality Law seeks a Project Director for its new Public Rights/Private Conscience Project.  The Director would lead the Project’s research and advocacy on the multiple contexts in which assertions of conscience and/or religious convictions are used to carve out exceptions to otherwise universally binding rights of equality and sexual liberty.

Responsibilities:

1. Develop strategy on a local, state and federal level to respond to the uses of religion to limit the scope of reproductive and sexual rights;
2. Develop model policy language and ideal workplace practices for dissemination in settings such as employees who seek to refuse services on the basis of a religious or conscience-based objection, or professional/medical ethics policy on conscience-based refusals of service;
3. Create a Best Practices toolkit for LGBT and women’s rights advocates aimed at offering model language for religious exemptions policies and legislative language;
4. Undertake legal analysis of proposed religious exemption laws to provide to affected stakeholders such as hospital general counsels, professional associations, and others explaining not only the complex interactions between rights and religion, but also the complications of hospital accreditation and licensing as well as other unintended consequences that may flow from the assertion of religion as an exemption from otherwise secured rights;
5. In conjunction with the Center’s Co-Directors, the incumbent will undertake and coordinate scholars in the field of law, religion, medical ethics, and civil/constitutional rights to generate analysis, arguments and research that contextualizes and re-frames the current polarized arguments for and against religious liberty;
6. Promote new understanding and support for frameworks developed through engagement in public sphere through op-eds, media appearances, symposia, articles in general and scholarly publications and reports;
7. Lead coalition work among key stake-holders (such as policy staff for educational, medical and other professional organizations, hospital and university general counsel, and attorneys general) to develop and disseminate new scholarly framing of the legal issues at stake with religious exemptions.

Position Qualifications:

Bachelor’s degree required; J.D. and bar admission strongly preferred; a minimum of 5-7 years related experience strongly preferred. Excellent writing, research, analytic, leadership and communication skills; Two to five years of litigation and/or advocacy experience; A demonstrated ability to bridge academic and advocacy communities; Familiarity with civil rights issues highly desirable; knowledge of LGBT, reproductive rights, religious liberty, and/or of health care issues a plus; Leadership, self-motivation and an ability to work collaboratively.

To apply: https://jobs.columbia.edu/applicants/Central?quickFind=138637

The Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School invites applications for a sabbatical visitor for the 2014-2015 academic year to undertake research, writing and collaboration with Center faculty and students in ways that span traditional academic disciplines. The CGSL welcomes applications from faculty from any field who are interested in spending a semester or the academic year in residence at Columbia Law School working on scholarly projects relating to Gender and/or Sexuality Law.

Sabbatical Visitors will receive an office with phone and computer, secretarial support and full access to university libraries, computer systems and recreational facilities. In addition, Sabbatical Visitors will be expected to participate in CGSL activities and present a paper at the Center’s Colloquium Series.  Application deadline is April 15, 2013.

For more information: https://web.law.columbia.edu/gender-sexuality/visiting-scholars-research-fellows/sabbatical-visitor-program

Katherine Franke, Columbia Law School

[This is the longer version of a post originally titled “Swedish Exposure.” It was originally edited down and posted at another site but ran into sociotechnical difficulties: too many words were deemed “pornographic.”  I think it was the u-word and the m-word, each of which was used once in the edited down version; of course, it might also have been the s-word, or even my first name, which has real L-word frissonne. To protect both spam filters and sensibilities, I have redacted certain portions of the text below. I trust that readers will use context and/or their imaginations to fill in blanks.]

Some of my colleagues and I have been discussing the recently decided Swedish case in which a 65-year-old man was acquitted of charges of s______  assault after taking off his shorts at a beach near Stockholm and m______into the ocean. You can read about it here. There has been so far a pretty even split between my colleagues who think public m_______  should be punished (though not as a s______ assault, as was the charge in the referenced case) and those who think that public m_______ is acceptable, or at least, should be treated no differently than public u______.  Public u_______, even though deplored and subject to penalty, often goes widely unpunished. Here are some of my thoughts on all of this from a gender, spatial and visual regulatory perspective.

The gendered aspects of this situation intrigue me, starting with the comparison between public u________ and public m________. This is a real Scylla and Charybdis dilemma for me: I don’t want to see either public m_______ or public u______. I will concede that both public m_______ and u_______ often involve exposure of s____ organs, either of which I could conceivably turn away from.   Were I forced to choose which one to view, I am tempted to prefer u_______. I see u_______ as a more compelling sociobiological function whose public performance I am more willing to forgive, though only slightly more willing. I must note that with public u_______, however, I am struck by the gender differences typically involved: men u_____ in public because they can. It is rare for Western women to u_______ openly in public. This is mainly because of a combination of physiological impracticability (it’s easier to stand as men typically do for u_______, than to squat as women do) and social norms that frown deeply on women publicly exposing themselves. At least there is no physiological barrier to women’s public m________ (though there would still be immense social barriers with which to contend), so there is theoretically greater gender parity in regard to the practice of public m__________.

But, since I assume, (and the assumption is not always true, I’ll grant) that the public m________ often uses other members of the public as the impetus for his (and it is usually a he) actions (such as staring at persons he finds s________ desirable), public m______ to me reeks of gross s_______ objectification of others and of breaching the boundaries between public and private. Although the public/private dichotomy has long inhered to the disadvantage of women, keeping n________ g________ and s_________ acts in the private sphere is an example of where the public/private divide serves women. Because of the way in which male public m_______ and g______ exposure have historically been and continue to be used to s_______ harass women, it is not possible to accord male public m_______ and/or other male g______ exposure a neutral valence (“it’s just another bodily function/bodily part”) that ignores this history. Keeping m_______ private is a legitimate, well-founded constraint that protects the public (mostly women) from a potential form of harassment and accords a measure of dignity to m_______ as an intimate sexual act. Allowing public m________, in contrast, promotes what is chiefly a masculinist prerogative all while cheapening it as a s_________expression.

A larger concern that I have has no bearing on whether the public m_________ uses another member of the public to fuel his m______ or merely uses his own imagination. I am concerned with the way in which the public m______, the public u________ and the public g______ exposer, all of whom typically display their s______organs, wield what some social theorists have called synoptic power: the power of an actor to compel others to look at the actor or at a place the actor directs.  Via display of his s_______organs in a context where such displays are not only non-normative but socially and morally offensive to many, the public m_______ and his ilk shape public behavior patterns, commanding attention or repulsion, and thereby exercise social control. This is true even where, as in the Swedish case, the actor did not “target” a specific person with his m________ (or so the court says). This even stands true where the public m________ does not particularly seek an audience but performs where an audience is in fact present. Public m________ features what is often an intensely coercive, oppressive, and obscene power of “made you look” and of “made you look away.”

So, while I understand the impulse to treat public m_______ as an aspect of broader social and personal freedom, it is a freedom whose exercise threatens to constrain the liberty of many others to enjoy public space.

-Lolita Buckner Inniss

cross-post from Ain’t I a Feminist Legal Scholar, Too?

CALL FOR PAPERS: “APPLIED FEMINISM AND HEALTH”

The University of Baltimore School of Law’s Center on Applied Feminism seeks submissions for its Seventh Annual Feminist Legal Theory Conference. This year’s theme is “Applied Feminism and Health.” The conference will be held on March 6 and 7, 2014. For more information about the conference, please visit law.ubalt.edu/caf.

With the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare) and renewed attacks on reproductive health in the United States, the time is right to consider the relationship between feminism and health across multiple dimensions. This conference seeks to explore the intersections between feminist legal theory and physical, mental, public, and community health in the United States and abroad. Papers might explore the following questions: What impact has feminist legal theory had on women’s health policy and practice? How might feminist legal theory respond to the health challenges facing communities and individuals, as well as increase access to health care? What sort of support should society and law provide to ensure good health? How do law and feminist legal theory conceptualize the role of the state in relation to health rights and reproductive justice? What are the links between health, feminist legal theory, and sports? Are there rights to good health and what are their foundations? How do health needs and conceptions of rights vary across cultural, economic, religious, and other identities? What are the areas where health justice is needed and how might feminist legal theory help?
This conference will attempt to address these and other questions from the perspectives of activists, practitioners, and academics. The conference will provide an opportunity for participants and audience members to exchange ideas about the current state of feminist legal theories. We hope to deepen our understandings of how feminist legal theory relates to health and to move new insights into practice. In addition, the conference is designed to provide presenters with the opportunity to gain feedback on their papers.
The conference will begin the afternoon of Thursday, March 6, 2014, with a workshop for conference participants. This workshop will continue the annual tradition of involving all attendees as participants in an interactive discussion and reflection. On Friday, March 7, 2014, the conference will continue with a day of presentations by legal academics, practitioners and activists regarding current scholarship and/or legal work that explores the application of feminist legal theory to issues involving health. The conference will be open to the public and will feature a keynote speaker. Past keynote speakers have included Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, Dr. Maya Angelou, Gloria Steinem, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Sheryl WuDunn, and Senators Barbara Mikulski and Amy Klobuchar.
To submit a paper proposal, please submit an abstract by Friday, 5 p.m. on November 1, 2013, to ubfeministconference@gmail.com. It is essential that your abstract contain your full contact information, including an email, phone number, and mailing address where you can be reached. In the “Re” line, please state: CAF Conference 2014. Abstracts should be no longer than one page. We will notify presenters of selected papers in mid-November. We anticipate being able to have twelve paper presenters during the conference on Friday, March 7, 2014. About half the presenter slots will be reserved for authors who commit to publishing in the symposium volume of the University of Baltimore Law Review. Thus, please indicate at the bottom of your abstract whether you are submitting (1) solely to present or (2) to present and publish in the symposium volume. Authors who are interested in publishing in the Law Review will be strongly considered for publication. Regardless of whether or not you are publishing in the symposium volume, all working drafts of papers will be due no later than February, 14, 2014. Abstracts will be posted on the Center on Applied Feminism’s conference website to be shared with other participants and attendees.
We look forward to your submissions. If you have further questions, please contact Prof. Michele Gilman at mgilman@ubalt.edu.

What’s the first thing that pops into your head when you read the phrase Mail Order Bride? A misogynistic man purchasing a docile foreign woman whom he can dominate? A marriage that likely will end in domestic violence? The Nicole Kidman movie, Birthday Girl? The word ANTI-FEMINIST painted in red letters covered in hissing, poisonous snakes?

My colleague, Marcia Yablon-Zug, has been conducting in depth research on these issues for a forthcoming book entitled, Buying a Bride: From Mail Order Brides To Cyber Matches (forthcoming 2014, NYU Press). In the meantime, she has posted the article, Mai Order Feminism, on SSRN. In the article, she challenges the conventional wisdom and discusses what I will label the “paradoxical feminism” of mail order marriages:

Male mail order marriage participants typically say they are seeking women who are not feminists, and the women commonly deny feminist intentions. However, both parties use mail order marriage for the very feminist goal of increasing choice and combating disempowerment. In countries where women have little power to affect change at either a personal or national level, interviews with potential mail order brides reveal that the women view such marriages as a means of reasserting power over their lives. Similarly, interviews with the potential husbands demonstrate that they also turn to mail order marriage as a way of combating their own sense of disempowerment, most frequently in relation to American women.100 Thus, as researcher Lisa Simons, who conducted numerous interviews with mail order marriage participants noted, both groups use mail order marriages to combat the “sense of disempowerment and rejection from the state of gender relations in their own country and community” and she suggests that “their coming together across unequally stratified national boundaries [is] one possible way of bridging those differences” and reasserting control.

I would definitely recommend the article to anyone interested in the subject. The abstract is below the fold.

Continue reading →