Feminist Law Professors

Rachel Lloyd on Policing Fashion and Derogating Subjugated Women

Posted on August 16, 2011 by Ann Bartow

Her essay is available here. An excerpt:

Fashion Police has a recurring segment called “Starlet or Streetwalker,” which is exactly what it sounds like. The panel, made up of George Kotsiopoulos, Kelly Osbourne and Giuliana Rancic, are shown pictures of women with their faces covered. Based on the outfit, the panel then has to vote if the woman in the photo is a starlet or a streetwalker. If the woman turns out to be a celebrity, her face is shown, if its a woman in the sex industry, her face remains blacked out. The panel, the studio audience and I’m sure the viewers watching at home laugh at these women and their ‘tacky, trashy clothing.’ The first time I saw the segment, it took me a minute to realize that the women whose faces were covered up were actually real women in the sex industry. I then watched with growing discomfort as I realized that these women, poor women, desperate women, drug-addicted women, women under the control of a pimp, women who are victims of violence and exploitation, were being used to highlight wealthy celebrities’ poor fashion choices. Haha.

As their faces are covered, it’s unlikely that E! asked these women for consent to use their pictures. It’s also highly unlikely that anyone from E! did a background check to find out if all the pictures they’re using for comedy fodder are even of age. It’s unlikely, aside from any legal issues, that they care.

Years ago, one of the girls from GEMS was unwittingly filmed for a cable documentary about the sex industry. Although she was just in the background her face, and her naked breasts, were clearly visible. When the show aired, strange men began walking up to her in the street telling her they recognized her, asking her to show them her breasts, asking her for sex. She was 15 at the time of shooting, had been a trafficking victim since the age of 12 and was under the control of a violent pimp who would later try to pay someone to have her murdered and leave her body in the dumpster. While her story may seem shocking, its all too commonplace in the world of ‘streetwalkers.’

I’m not comfortable with everything Lloyd says in her essay, but I respect her tremendously for speaking out on this issue, especially given a pervasive social climate in which a site like this is touted as feminist.

–Ann Bartow

Posted in Coerced Sex, Feminism and Culture, Human Trafficking, The Overrepresentation of Women | Comments Off

More Census Snapshots

Posted on August 13, 2011 by Tony Infanti

Following up on my earlier posts (here, here, here, here, here, here, and here), the Williams Institute has released snapshot reports from the 2010 census this week for Arkansas, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, New Jersey, and Texas.

According to the census, there are 7,004 same-sex couples in Arkansas (or 6.11 per 1,000 households). Sixty-five percent are female and 35% are male, and 27% of these same-sex couples are raising children.

In Iowa, there are 6,540 same-sex couples (or 5.35 per 1,000 households). Seventy-one percent are female and 29% are male, and 21% are raising children.

In Louisiana, there are 12,153 same-sex couples (or 7.03 per 1,000 households). Sixty-four percent are female and 36% are male, and 26% are raising children.

In Maryland, there are 16,987 same-sex couples (or 7.88 per 1,000 households). Sixty-five percent are female and 35% are male, and 24% are raising children.

In New Jersey, there are 24,112 same-sex couples (or 7.5 per 1,000 households). Sixty-one percent are female and 39% are male, and 24% are raising children.

In Texas, there are 67,413 same-sex couples (or 7.56 per 1,000 households). Sixty-one percent are female and 39% are male, and only 19% are raising children.

Again, information regarding the top counties and cities is also available.

In the snapshots released to date, Vermont is the state, San Francisco is the county, and Palm Springs is still the city with the highest number of same-sex couples per 1,000 households.

-Tony Infanti

Posted in LGBT Rights | Comments Off

Nancy Polikoff receives LGBT Bar highest award

Posted on August 12, 2011 by Nancy Polikoff

Nancy Polikoff, Professor of Law at American University Washington College of Law and AY 2011-12 Visiting McDonald/Wright Chair of Law at UCLA, will receive the Dan Bradley award from the National LGBT Bar Association at its annual conference in September. The award recognizes Nancy for 35 years of work in support of LGBT families. Here is more information about Nancy and about Dan Bradley.

Posted in Academia, LGBT Rights | Tagged Dan Bradley award, Nancy Polikoff, National LGBT Bar | 1 Comment

Invitation and Call for Papers: Feminist Legal Theory Collaborative Research Network, January 2012

Posted on August 11, 2011 by Jennifer Hendricks

The Feminist Legal Theory Collaborative Research Network is a newly-constituted group that seeks to bring together scholars across a range of fields who are interested in feminist legal theory. At our inaugural get-together at the Law and Society Association meeting this past June, we decided to hold two get-togethers in the coming year: the first in Washington, D.C., in conjunction with the AALS annual meeting in January 2012; the next in Hawaii, in conjunction with the Law and Society Association annual meeting in June 2012. The first of these gatherings will take place on Wednesday, January 4, 2012, the day before the AALS annual meeting begins, at George Washington University Law School. As with our earlier get-together, the conference will provide an opportunity for us to share scholarship, talk about our field more abstractly, and also get to know one another. If you are interested in attending, we invite you to register, as well as to respond to our call for papers at the end of this invitation.

The FLT-CRN Conference will begin at 9 a.m. on January 4, 2012, and will conclude that day with dinner at a local restaurant. G.W. has generously offered us space for the meeting at no charge, and is even providing us lunch. Because of this, there will be no registration fee for the conference. Paying for dinner, as well as hotel and transportation, will be the individual responsibility of attendees.

Conference sessions

The conference will consist of the following sessions:

Welcome plenary. The committee will give a brief overview of the conference, followed by an opportunity for participants to introduce themselves and briefly summarize their current scholarly projects, teaching challenges, etc. This should give everyone an opportunity to identify areas of mutual interest that can be discussed further over the course of the day.

Panel sessions. These sessions will be similar to the panels at the LSA conference this past June. At each of these sessions, there will likely be three panelists speaking on papers that center on a common theme, and each paper will have an individual commentator.

Works-in-progress sessions. These will be small breakout sessions designed to foster intensive discussion of each work-in-progress. The size of each workshop will depend on the number of works-in-progress submitted. Each paper will have a commentator, who will assume that all attendees will have read the paper in advance and will proceed immediately to discussion. All conference participants will be assigned to attend specific workshops, so as to balance attendance among the various workshops. If more papers are submitted than time allows to be discussed, the planning committee will select the papers that will be presented based on subject matter, methodology, etc.

Closing plenary. This plenary will provide everyone with an opportunity to comment on their conference experience and offer suggestions for future FLT-CRN meetings.

Registering for the Conference

You can register for the conference by clicking the “Registration” tab of the “2012 Washington, D.C. Meeting” page on the Feminist Legal Theory TWEN page (directions to sign up for the TWEN page are below). The registration deadline is Wednesday, November 23, 2011. When you register, you will also have the opportunity to volunteer to comment on a paper; please consider doing so. Especially if you are willing to comment, early registration will help us plan and is appreciated!

Call for Papers

There is no pre-set theme to which paper submissions must conform, other than that they relate to legal feminism in some shape or form. Instead, our goal is to stimulate focused discussion on papers on which scholars are currently working. A committee of the CRN will assign individual papers to panel sessions based on subject, or to work-in-progress sessions, and will assign commentators to comment on each individual paper.

If you’re interested in presenting an unpublished paper or a work-in-progress, please post your name, paper title, and an abstract of 400-500 words under the “Paper Proposals” tab of the “2012 Washington, D.C. Meeting” page on the Feminist Legal Theory TWEN page (directions to sign up for the TWEN page are below). Please include a description of how far along you expect the paper to be in January. Paper proposals should be posted by Friday September 23, 2011, in order to give us time to sort paper proposals into panels. We will try to accommodate as many proposals as possible and will notify everyone who submits a paper of the schedule by mid-October. Papers that are accepted either for panels or for work-in-progress sessions will be due on December 12, 2011.

Signing up on the TWEN page

If you haven’t yet registered for the TWEN page, signing up is easy. Just sign onto Westlaw, hit the tab on the top for “TWEN,” then click “Add Course,” and choose the “Feminist Legal Theory” CRN from the drop-down list of National TWEN Courses. Or, if you have a Westlaw OnePass as a faculty member, you can enter the Easy Course Access link below:

Easy Course Access Link: http://lawschool.westlaw.com/shared/courselink.asp?course=113601&lID=4%3D2

If you aren’t enrolled on the TWEN page and you don’t have a Westlaw password, please email Max Eichner at meichner-at-unc-dot-edu and she’ll enroll you directly.

Hotel

A limited number of rooms at the two conference hotels for the AALS meeting, the Marriott Wardman Park and the Washington Hilton, are available earlier in the week at the AALS group rate. Therefore FLT-CRN participants who plan to stay at these hotels should reserve rooms early. Lodging information on the AALS Annual 2012 Meeting is available here. You must register for the AALS meeting to obtain the AALS rate.

Questions

If you have questions about any of the local arrangements in Washington, D.C., please contact Eleanor Brown (embrown-at-law-dot-gwu-dot-edu) or Naomi Cahn (ncahn-at-law-dot-gwu-dot-edu). If you have questions regarding the works-in-progress or panel sessions, please contact Jennifer Hendricks (jsh-at-tennessee-dot-edu). If you have any other general questions, please feel free to contact any of us on the planning committee.

We are very excited about this conference. We look forward to hearing from you and hope to see you in D.C. in January. In addition, we know that there are still a number of people who should be on our list of interested folks, but who haven’t made it on. So please forward this email to others you think may be interested.

— The FLT-CRN January 2012 Planning Committee: Eleanor Brown, Naomi Cahn, Maxine Eichner, Jennifer Hendricks, Clare Huntington, Alicia Kelly, Suzanne Kim, Daniela Kraiem

Posted in Academia, Call for Papers or Participation, Feminism and Law | 7 Comments

Hollywood, Historical Accuracy and the Civil Rights Era

Posted on August 10, 2011 by Bridget Crawford

Writer Martha Southgate reviews the novel-now-movie The Help for EW.com. Here is an excerpt:

Implicit in The Help and a number of other popular works that deal with the civil rights era is the notion that a white character is somehow crucial or even necessary to tell this particular tale of black liberation. What’s more, to imply that what the maids Aibileen and Minny are working against is simply a refusal on everyone’s part to believe that ”we’re all the same underneath” is to simplify the horrors of Jim Crow to a truly damaging degree.

This isn’t the first time the civil rights movement has been framed this way fictionally, especially on film. Most Hollywood civil rights movies feature white characters in central, sometimes nearly solo, roles. My favorite (not!) is Alan Parker’s Mississippi Burning, which gives us two white FBI agents as heroes of the movement. FBI agents! Given that J. Edgar Hoover did everything short of shoot Martin Luther King Jr. himself in order to damage or discredit the movement, that goes from troubling to appalling.

The full review is here.

Over at Color Lines, Akiba Solomon explains “Why I’m Just Saying No to ‘The Help’ and its Historical Whitewash”:

As a racial justice and gender writer, a pop culture observer, and an African American woman who rides for Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Cicely Tyson and Aunjanue Ellis, I feel obligated to see this film.

But, damn it, I’m jaded, and it has absolutely nothing to do with watching black women portray domestic workers onscreen. There’s no shame in domestic work, unless you’re talking about their employers’ abuse and wage exploitation.

I just can’t bring myself to pay $12.50 after taxes and fees to sit in an aggressively air conditioned, possibly bed bug-infested New York City movie theater to watch these sisters lend gravitas to Stockett’s white heroine mythology. I’m sorry, but the trailer alone features way too many group hugs to be trusted.

Her full essay is here.

-Bridget Crawford

Posted in Feminism and Culture, Feminist Legal History, Race and Racism | Comments Off

Financial and Other Support Requested for Documentary Film Advocating Justice for Sex Trafficking Victims and Survivors

Posted on August 8, 2011 by Bridget Crawford

Professor Kate Nace Day (Suffolk) was one of the organizers of the “Human Rights and Sex Trafficking” Film Forum, held last December in Cambridge, Massachusetts (previously blogged here and here).

A collaborative team — including Professor Day, practicing lawyers, law students, documentary filmmakers and non-profit activists — is continuing the Film Forum’s academy-meets-activism work. Team members are donating their time to make a short documentary film called A CIVIL REMEDY about justice for sex trafficking victims and survivors. Here is a description of the film:

Each year, an estimated 14,500 to 17,500 foreign nationals are trafficked into the United States and tens of thousands of Americans are trafficked within the country. Most are children and women who are trafficked for sex. They are victims of entrenched inequalities, systematic and systemic violence, and a global industry of shocking profitability – and, they are often treated as criminals.

In recent decades, passage of national and state trafficking laws has made it possible to prosecute some traffickers. Advocates continue to press for stronger laws that recognize the links between sex trafficking and prostitution, view victims as people needing help and services, and ensure that all the perpetrators – traffickers, pimps and “johns” – are held accountable.

Yet, in the shadow of law, traffickers and pimps are still committing brutal crimes on victims who have little or no recourse to justice.

A CIVIL REMEDY is a short documentary film about a vision of justice for sex trafficking victims. In early 2011, as Massachusetts moved towards passage of its first anti-trafficking legislation, a collaboration of women working in film and law – a law professor, practicing lawyers, law students, documentary filmmakers and non-profit activists – joined to create this film as an educational and advocacy tool to change the way sex trafficking victims are seen in society and treated in law.

Via fiscal partner Documentary Educational Resources, the filmmakers seek tax-deductible contributions to help complete production and change the way sex trafficking victims are seen in society and treated in law. Donations are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law and can be made via secure website here.

Separate and apart from the appeal for donations, please help spread the word about this amazing film and the good work of Professor Day and the team at Film and Law Productions.

For more info, see the collaborative’s Film and Law website here. The image above is from Stephen Alvarez, used by the filmmakers with permission.

-Bridget Crawford

Posted in Feminism and Law, Feminism and the Arts, Sex Trafficking | Comments Off

Masturbation and Female Empowerment in Photos (and the Law?)

Posted on August 7, 2011 by Bridget Crawford

In The New Republic Ruth Franklin asks, Is Female Masturbation Really the Last Sexual Taboo? That’s the title of her review of a book of photographs by Will Santillo called La Petite Morte: Female Masturbation, Fantasies and Orgasm (Taschen 2011).

Open any women’s magazine—not only Cosmopolitan—and you’re likely to find a reference to masturbation as part of a normal sex life. If Joycelyn Elders were surgeon general today, her notorious comment about promoting masturbation as a form of safe sex would be unlikely to get her fired.

And so there’s something sleazy about Taschen’s fanfare over La Petite Mort—not the photographs themselves, heavily shadowed and with the models’ limbs artfully arranged, but the rhetoric of liberation that accompanies them. Santillo claims that, in the women’s post-shoot comments, “the single most common word was ‘empowering.’” In interviews with Hanson, a few of the subjects—whose brief commentaries are interspersed with the photos—used similar language. “I hope that all the women depicted, and that in particular the women among the viewers, feel emboldened, feel that women can break the stereotypes of our culture about beauty, and that this collection can help to remove any sense of shame or isolation about expressing their sexuality to themselves and to the world,” Santillo’s wife, who was among his models, comments. But paradoxically, all this revolutionary language only reinforces the old ideas. “If orgasm is the little death, is masturbation the little suicide?” Hanson asks in her introduction. That doesn’t sound so empowering to me. * * *

People who feel genuinely liberated, after all, don’t make a point of pronouncing how liberated they feel. This is something that men writing about sex seem always to have known, but that women are just discovering. * * * [T]his seems to me to be the definition of sexual freedom—the fact that women have come to regard sex more in the way that men do, as an elemental part of life, no less essential than eating or breathing, and thus no more in need of cheerleading. Masturbation, for men of Woody Allen’s generation, isn’t an act of empowerment; it’s just “sex with someone you love.” Likewise, sex for women today—in all its forms—is just something that we do, not something for which we need special permission or forgiveness afterward.

The full review is here.

I’m not sure, but I take Franklin’s point to be that the book’s “masturbation = empowerment” message seems hollow, and that if women were really empowered by their masturbation, there wouldn’t be a book about it (?), or perhaps not this book.

I don’t know if review copies are available from Taschen, but anyone searching for an idea for the Michigan Law Review’s next Annual Survey of Books is welcome to this one.

-Bridget Crawford

Posted in Feminism and Culture, Feminism and the Arts | Comments Off

Spindelman on “Sexual Freedom’s Shadows”

Posted on August 5, 2011 by Bridget Crawford

Marc Spindelman (Ohio State) has published his essay Sexual Freedom’s Shadows, 23 Yale J.L. & Feminism 179 (2011). It is both review of a book by Tim Dean called Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking (UChicago Press, 2009), as well as a substantial think-piece. Here is the abstract of Professor Spindelman’s essay:

Tim Dean’s book-length reflections on barebacking subculture, an event in themselves, also supply an occasion for examining same-sex sexuality as it is lived by a number of men who have sex with men. This review essay begins with some of Dean’s foundational claims, in particular, the argument that an “elaborate subculture” organized “around men who fuck without protection precisely in order to become infected” exists and is flourishing on the sexual and social scene. In addition to assessing the claim on its own terms, the essay situates it alongside the ideology of sexual freedom, an outlook on sexual life that, in important ways, has long shaped and animated gay male sexuality as thought and practice. After introducing the ideology of sexual freedom, barebacking subculture’s norms, described by Dean, are catalogued in its light, and revealed as continuous with it. Far from being a wholly novel chapter in the history of same-sex sexuality, barebacking subculture is exposed as a variation on a much older, and darker, sexual theme, retooled and keyed to possibilities specially available in the age of HIV/AIDS. Having noted that Dean’s account of barebacking subculture effectively documents a lived experiment of and in the ideology of sexual freedom, the essay then turns to Dean’s own normative stance on barebacking subculture. His “ethics of cruising,” in which promiscuity—including sexual promiscuity—is heralded, is closely examined. Despite Dean’s recommendations, this ethical stance is ultimately challenged for the ways that it, like some dimensions of barebacking subculture, themselves in line with the ideology of sexual freedom, affirmatively promotes the social, hence legal, erasure and invisibility of injuries that are sexually produced, including through same-sex sex. The essay ends with a question about how to respond.

The full piece is available here. Over here at Jotwell, Robin West calls Professor Spindelman’s essay Sexuality’s Law, 20 Colum. J. Gender & L (forthcoming 2011) “one of the most extraordinary pieces of legal writing on the interrelations of law, culture and sexuality to appear in a law journal in well over a decade, perhaps much longer.” Sexual Freedom’s Shadows takes up many of the same issues covered in Sexuality’s Law. Robin West says of the two pieces together:

[T]he accomplishments of these two pieces taken together are collectively breathtaking. The reading of the law and the culture of the time period is deeply intellectual and a stunning example of the best of cultural legal studies; Spindelman takes on hundreds of cultural sources and a library of legal scholarship in mounting his argument.

Wow.

-Bridget Crawford

Posted in Feminism and Culture, Feminism and Law, Feminism and Medicine, Feminism and Politics, LGBT Rights | Comments Off

More Census Snapshots

Posted on August 4, 2011 by Tony Infanti

Following up on my earlier posts (here, here, here, here, here, and here), the Williams Institute has released snapshot reports from the 2010 census this week for Illinois, Indiana, Nevada, Oregon, South Dakota, and Washington.

According to the census, there are 32,469 same-sex couples in Illinois (or 6.7 per 1,000 households). Fifty-eight percent are female and 42% are male, and 21% of these same-sex couples are raising children.

In Indiana, there are 16,428 same-sex couples (or 6.6 per 1,000 households). Sixty-seven percent are female and 33% are male, and 23% are raising children.

In Nevada, there are 9,321 same-sex couples (or 9.3 per 1,000 households). Fifty-four percent are female and 46% are male, and 22% are raising children.

In Oregon, there are 14,979 same-sex couples (or 9.9 per 1,000 households). Sixty-five percent are female and 35% are male, and 29% are raising children.

In South Dakota, there are 1,390 same-sex couples (or 4.3 per 1,000 households). Seventy-two percent are female and 28% are male, and 26% are raising children.

In Washington, there are 24,278 same-sex couples (or 9.3 per 1,000 households). Sixty percent are female and 40% are male, and only 18% are raising children.

Again, information regarding the top counties and cities is also available.

In the snapshots released to date, Vermont is the state, San Francisco is the county, and Palm Springs is still the city with the highest number of same-sex couples per 1,000 households.

-Tony Infanti

Posted in LGBT Rights | Comments Off

“What is Feminist About Open Access?”

Posted on August 4, 2011 by Bridget Crawford

That’s the title of this article by Carys Craig (Osgoode), Joseph Turcotte and Rosemary Coombe (York U.). Here is the abstract:

In a context of great technological and social change, existing intellectual property regimes such as copyright must contend with parallel forms of ownership and distribution. Proponents of open access question and undermine the paradigm of exclusivity central to traditional copyright law, thereby fundamentally challenging its ownership structures and the publishing practices these support. In this essay, we attempt to show what it is about the open access endeavour that resonates with a feminist theory of law and society – in other words, we consider what is “feminist” about open access. First, we provide an overview of a relational feminist critique of traditional copyright law and the assumptions of possessive individualism that pervade it. We then offer a brief description of the open access movement and the way in which it reflects or responds to this criticism. In doing so, we discover vital synergies between this branch of feminist legal theory and the open access movement. Ultimately, we hope to underscore the importance of an open access policy for legal journals such as this one, whose mission is to support, advance and disseminate a feminist perspective that challenges the prevailing hegemony within traditional legal scholarship. We conclude by offering ways in which this journal can help draw out the synergies between feminist criticism and the open access movement.

The full article, What is Feminist About Open Access? A Relational Approach to Copyright in the Academy, is available here.

-Bridget Crawford

Posted in Academia, Feminism and Technology, Feminist Legal Scholarship | 1 Comment

Two Perspectives on Feminism and the Legal Academy

Posted on August 3, 2011 by Bridget Crawford

Two recently published pieces caught my eye, and might be interesting to read in tandem. The first is An Inconstant Affair: Feminism and the Legal Academy, by Margaret Thornton (Australian National University). Here is the abstract:

Drawing on the Australian experience, this chapter shows how the fortunes of feminist legal theory (FLT) are closely imbricated with those of the state. The trajectory of the discomfiting liaison between feminism and the legal academy is traced over three decades to highlight the contingent nature of FLT, particularly the sensitivity to the prevailing political climate in which the pendulum swing from social liberalism to neoliberalism induces uncertainty and instability. It will be shown that under social liberalism, FLT received a modicum of acceptance within the legal academy but began to contract and then wither with the onset of neoliberalism. This has not only been disastrous for FLT, but it has also subtly brought about a remasculinisation of the academy.

The full paper is available here.

The second is Spaces and Challenges: Feminism in Legal Academia, by Susan Boyd (UBC). Here is the abstract:

Women now make up at least 50 percent of students in the entry classes in most Canadian law schools. In some law schools women constitute about 50 percent of the tenured or tenure stream professoriate – a marked change from the early 1990s. This feminization of legal education is not the result of affirmative action but rather the increased acceptability of a legal education for women, the removal of formal and informal barriers to women’s admission to law school, and women’s strong academic records.

Despite the fact that legal academia is now populated by virtually equal numbers of women and men, and despite the greater visibility of women (including feminist women) in positions of power, there remains a critical need for feminist presence, analysis, and critique in the 21st century.

Feminism is also important because women continue to encounter barriers in gaining access to justice for reasons related to gender, in addition to other factors such as poverty.

This essay draws partly on the author’s own experience as a law student and law professor over the past 35 years, as well as the experience of students with whom she has engaged over that period. Her argument is that although many important changes have taken place in legal academia, and spaces made for individuals who were previously excluded, serious challenges remain, making it essential that a feminist presence and voice and a commitment to social justice be central. The author ends by briefly considering whether and how that feminist voice is changing in the 21st century.

The full paper is available here.

For anyone interested in women in legal education, I think it could make a cool review essay, or even a student paper, to read the two articles together.

-Bridget Crawford

Posted in Feminist Legal History, Feminists in Academia, Law Schools | Comments Off

Mészáros on “Young People Raping and Taping”

Posted on August 3, 2011 by Bridget Crawford

József Mészáros has posted to SSRN a working draft of his paper The New Pornographers: Neuroscience Justifies a Robust Regulatory Response to Young People Raping and Taping. Here is the abstract:

An increase in the occurrence of young men participating in and recording violent gang rapes has been documented not only in the United States, but in at least eight other developed nations. Members of the communities affected, politicians, and researchers all express bemusement at the heinous nature of these acts. In what some have described as a mimetic act, the perpetrators imitate the sexual violence they witness in increasingly debasing pornographies. Yet, little has been done in the past two decades to curtail the uncanny expansion of hardcore pornography’s influence on the nation’s youth. Aside from the occasional obscenity prosecution or the toothless disclaimers that stand between adolescence and the visual world of sexual violence, the United States has been remarkably passive in its treatment of hardcore pornography. Laws governing pornography have primarily addressed the impact, on adults, of pornographic portrayals of children. How pornographic portrayals of adults affect children, on the other hand, has been largely overlooked.

This article argues for the necessity, and plausibility, of internet pornography regulation sensitive to the realities of modern life, feminism, and developments in neuroscience. That Congress has untapped police power in this space is plainly clear. At the same time, as such a dynamic and ubiquitous form of media, internet pornography poses numerous challenges for legislators tailoring regulation respectful of Constitutional norms. That young people are imitating sexual violence—filmed and consumed for adult pleasure – is a claim that can be supported using psychology, sociology and most convincingly, neurobiology. To support the claim that such imitation is traceable to the viewing of hardcore pornography, this article provides a synthesis of emerging work on mirror neurons, described by the prominent neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran as the single most important “unreported” story of the decade. If the externalities of a pervasive and well-funded hardcore pornography industry are to be redirected onto the producer, a sensible regulatory framework is needed that understands exactly how pornography operates on its consumers, including children. Obscenity statutes, feckless for their reliance on reluctant and often overburdened prosecutors, have never shown themselves to be adequate. Rather than adopting an obstinate prohibitionist stance, this article suggests incorporating lessons from various regulatory frameworks that have both shaped and have been shaped by social behavior.

The author welcomes comments and input. Mr. Mészáros is a PhD candidate in Neurobiology and Behavior at the Columbia University School of Medicine. He received his JD from the University of Pennsylvania in 2010.

-Bridget Crawford

Posted in Acts of Violence, Feminism and Law, Feminism and Medicine, Feminism and Science, Feminist Legal Scholarship | 1 Comment

Database of Laws Affecting Women

Posted on August 3, 2011 by Bridget Crawford

The World Bank’s Gender Law Library (here) looks as if it might be useful to researchers. Here’s the description:

The Gender Law Library is a collection of national legal provisions impacting women’s economic status in 183 economies. The database facilitates comparative analysis of legislation, serves as a resource for research, and contributes to reforms that can enhance women’s full economic participation. We update the collection regularly but do not guarantee that laws are the most recent version, nor is the library exhaustive. Translations are not official unless indicated.

The database is hosted by the World Bank, and supported by the World Bank’s Gender Action Plan (subtitle: “Gender Equality as Smart Economics”) and the Norwegian Trust Fund.

H/T Marie Newman.

-Bridget Crawford

Posted in Feminist Legal Scholarship, Sisters In Other Nations | Comments Off

SlutWalk, Women, Talk! Taking Back Public Spaces

Posted on August 3, 2011 by Lolita Buckner Inniss

Some people are prone to draw a sharp line between sexually-tinged remarks and actual sexual assault. And yes, there is a huge difference. But such remarks are along the spectrum of harmful behaviors, and because they are too often deemed “minor” or even “charming” and “flirtatious”, they go undiscussed and unaddressed. I am encouraged by events such as slutwalk even despite the difficulties of translating it across cultures. Slutwalk helps to air a problem that has proven intractable despite years of take back the night marches—women’s ability to be free from sexual assault or harassment in public spaces. The only way we will make any headway is for women to talk openly and honestly about the problem.

Continue reading the full post here.

-Lolita Buckner Inniss

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

Posted in Acts of Violence, Sexual Harassment | 1 Comment

CFP: Third Biennial Literature and Law Conference – Deadline Jan. 13, 2012

Posted on August 3, 2011 by Bridget Crawford

From the FLP mailbox, this CFP and Save the Date announcement:

Save the Date/Call For Papers
Third Biennial Literature and Law Conference

Conference Date: TENTATIVE DATE March 30, 2012 (Friday). Please check conference website for confirmation of final conference date—this date will be posted in mid-September.

Conference Location: John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY) (59th Street and 10th Avenue). The conference will take place on the newly expanded John Jay campus, near Lincoln Center in Manhattan. The facilities include a brand new, state of the art conference center.

Theme: The Idea of Justice

Overview: This conference aims to bring scholars of literature and law into an interdisciplinary setting to share the fruits of their research and scholarship. Generally this full day conference consists of between 8 and 10 paper panels and roundtables, two talks by prominent speakers, and a post-conference reception. The conference fee will be $75, which will be payable by credit card through a link on the conference website.

Conference Speakers include Amartya Sen and George Anastaplo

Call For Papers and Panels: We invite proposals for papers and panels that address topics that relate the humanities & arts (especially literary texts (broadly conceived)), to this year’s conference theme, the “idea of justice.” Of particular interest are papers and panels that in addition engage aspects of Professor Sen’s book, The Idea of Justice, or that attempt to integrate the theory with the practice of justice, and/or that engage and compare differing notions and perspectives of justice.

CFP Deadline: Please submit abstracts (250 words or less) to Andrew Majeske, ajmajeske@gmail.com, by Friday, January 13, 2012.

Conference Website: More information here.

-Bridget Crawford

Posted in Call for Papers or Participation | Comments Off

Pay It Forward Via the Teaching Materials Network

Posted on August 3, 2011 by Bridget Crawford

From Suzan Rozelle (Stetson), this announcement and reminder about the Teaching Materials Network:

It’s that time of year again!

Tell your colleagues (directly and by forwarding this to other listservs, blogs, etc., if you can) about the Teaching Materials Network, that database of kind souls offering to share syllabi, teaching notes, PowerPoints, handouts, and other precious gems with fellow law professors who are putting together a new prep.

You can find us here.

Create an account, and then search the database by course, casebook, and credit hours to find the contact information of a fellow lawprof who has offered to help.

When you have materials of your own to share, log back in and click on the “Add or Update a Course Listing” link to add yourself to the list of folks who want to pay it forward. Please help us make this resource as user-friendly as possible by listing courses and books in their most recognizable form (e.g., “Forensic Evidence” rather than “CSI Law,” and “Author’s Last Name” rather than “Cases and Materials on X”).

And when someone contacts you to ask for your teaching notes, please confirm that that person is, in fact, a fellow law professor, and not one of your more enterprising students.

Comments or questions? Contact Susan Rozelle at srozelle at law.stetson.edu.

I’ve contributed materials to the Network and have always enjoyed “meeting” fellow law profs this way. If you’ve taught a class even once or twice before, your materials still can be a big help to someone else. Pay it forward!

-Bridget Crawford

image source here

Posted in Law Teaching | Comments Off

Gender Differences in Taking Class Notes

Posted on August 3, 2011 by Bridget Crawford

Over at the Legal Skills Prof Blog, James B. Levy (Nova) blogged (here) earlier this summer about this dissertation by Lindsay Reddington (Columbia, PhD.): Gender Difference Variables Predicting Expertise in Lecture Note-Taking. Here is the abstract:

Lecture note-taking is an important study strategy used by a majority of college students to record important information presented in class. Research suggests that there may be gender differences in note-taking and test taking. However, previous research on lecture note-taking has only examined gender differences, or used gender as an anecdotal variable, in post-hoc analyses. This is the first dissertation to investigate gender differences in lecture note-taking directly. More specifically, the primary purpose of this dissertation was to determine if gender differences in lecture note-taking exist, and if they do, to examine the cognitive and motivational variables that might explain them. A second purpose was to determine if there might be gender related differences in test performance. This research is an extension of research on lecture note-taking expertise (Peverly, Ramaswamy, Brown, Sumowski, Alidoost, & Garner, 2007), in which a reanalysis of their data found that females wrote faster than males, had higher quality notes, higher semantic retrieval scores, and performed better on written recall of the lecture (Reddington et al., 2006). A sample of 139 undergraduate students took notes from a prerecorded lecture, and were later allowed to review their notes before taking a test of written recall. The independent variables included transcription fluency, working memory, verbal ability, conscientiousness, and goal orientation. The dependent variables were note quality and written recall. All procedures were group administered. Results indicated that females recorded more information in notes and recall than males. Females also performed significantly better on measures of transcription fluency, working memory, verbal ability, and conscientiousness. Note quality was significantly predicted by verbal ability, gender, and the gender x verbal ability interaction, while written recall was significantly predicted by transcription fluency, mastery goal orientation, and the gender x conscientiousness interaction. Future research should continue to focus on examining potential gender differences associated with note-taking and test performance.

H/T Jill Gross.

-Bridget Crawford

image source: lifehack.org

Posted in Academia | Comments Off

The stimulus program created jobs for women

Posted on August 2, 2011 by Kaimipono D. Wenger

Apparently, this was a bad thing?

oh noes

Yeah, I don’t get the argument either.

I’m happy to agree that unemployment is too high among both women and men, and that political leaders should take steps both to reinforce safety net programs and to hopefully bring about economic recovery. No arguments there.

But criticizing existing programs because they don’t create enough jobs for men — well, given the deeply problematic history of employment in this country, that just seems wrong. Government programs which help working women should be celebrated.

-Kaimi Wenger

Posted in Academia | Comments Off

CFP – Sexual Cultures: Theory, Practice, Research

Posted on August 2, 2011 by Bridget Crawford

From the FLP mailbox, this CFP:

SEXUAL CULTURES: THEORY, PRACTICE, RESEARCH

This conference, co-hosted by the Onscenity Research Network and the Schools of Arts and Social Sciences at Brunel University, will take place on April 20-22 2012 at Brunel University, London, UK. (More info here.)

Our keynote speakers are:

Martin Barker, Professor of Film and Television Studies, Aberystwyth University, UK
Violet Blue, blogger, columnist, sex educator, and author, US
Judith Halberstam, Professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity and Gender Studies, University of Southern California, US
Katrien Jacobs, Associate Professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong
Fiona Patten, Australian Sex Party

The key themes of the conference are:

Sex and technology

Technologies of all kinds have been central to the ways in which sex is understood and experienced in contemporary societies. We are interested in papers that explore evolving technologies in the presentation of sex through print, photography, film and video to todays online and mobile media; the ways that technologies are increasingly integrated into everyday sex lives; the expansion of sex technologies in toy, doll, machine and robot manufacture, the marketing of drugs such as Viagra and cosmetic technologies such as body modification and genital surgery for enhancing sex; the expansion of sex work and recreation online; sex 2.0 practices, regimes and environments such as porn tubes, sex chat rooms and worlds like Second Life; and the shifting relations between bodies and machines in the present and in predictions of futuresex.

The regulation of sex

Papers in this strand of the conference will examine how sexuality and the ways in which it is represented are the focus of government policy and subject to various forms of regulation. In democratic societies, sexuality is generally thought to be the domain of the private and personal, outside the ambit of the law whose function in this sphere is simply to maintain public decency. Yet vast amounts of institutional effort and resources are invested in what has come to be called moral regulation, in which self-governance and moral discourse are generally preferred to coercive forms of regulation. At the same time, governments continue to make certain forms of sexual practice and representation illegal. What are the limits of the legally possible today, both in terms of sexual behaviour and representation, and what are the various means employed to encourage us to behave properly in the sexual domain?

Working sex

In recent years sex work has become a potent site for the discussion of labour, commerce and sexual ethics, attracting increased academic attention and public concern. Papers in this strand of the conference will seek to develop our understanding of commercial sex, focus on conceptualizing emerging types of sexual labour, and explore the place of sex work of all kinds in contemporary society. They will ask how an investigation of contemporary forms of sex work and sex as work may shed new light on the study of cultural production, industry, commerce, and notions of commodification and labour. We are also seeking papers which are interested in exploring the connections between work and leisure, work and pleasure, sex work as forms of body and affective labour, and the ethics and politics of sexual labour.

Researching everyday sex

Research into sexuality can often be caught in a politics of anxiety where it is constructed as something that needs to be managed, protected and even guarded against. Sexuality is also understood as absolutely intrinsic to our sense of identity, an important indicator of mental and emotional health and a form of intimate communication and individual fulfillment, as well as an important site of pleasure and play. Papers in this strand of the conference will take as their focus the diverse sexual identities, practices, representations, values and experiences that make up the mundane and spectacular elements of everyday sexual life. We seek papers that examine the politics and/or ethics of researching everyday sexualities, as well as the lived realities of sex in the quotidian.

We invite proposals for the following:

Panels and roundtable discussions of up to four speakers
Papers (20 minutes)
Short Ignite papers (5 minutes/20 slides)
Posters

Deadline for the submission of proposals is October 31 2011.

For all individual papers please submit a 150 word abstract and 150 word biographical note. Please indicate which key theme of the conference your paper belongs to. For panels and roundtable sessions please submit a 600-800 overview and set of abstracts with 150 word biographical notes. Please indicate which key theme of the conference your paper belongs to. Please submit your proposals to conference@onscenity.org<mailto:conference@onscenity.org>

Onscenity is funded by the UK Arts & Humanities Research Council and draws together international experts in order to respond to the new visibility or onscenity of sex in commerce, culture and everyday life. The network is committed to working towards developing new approaches to the relationships between sex, commerce, media and technology. Drawing on the work of leading scholars from around the world, it aims to map a transformed landscape of sexual practices and co-ordinate a new wave of research.

-Bridget Crawford

Posted in Call for Papers or Participation | Comments Off

Facebook Posting as Indication of Legislative Intent? Robson on Injunction in Planned Parenthood v. Brownback

Posted on August 1, 2011 by Bridget Crawford

Ruthann Robson blogs over (here) at Constitutional Law Profs about the decision in Planned Parenthood of Kansas v. Brownback. Here is an excerpt from Professor Robson’s post:

In a Memorandum and Order today, Judge J. Thomas Marten of the United States District of Kansas, enjoined the enforcement of the Kansas defunding of Planned Parenthood statute, Section 107(l) of H.B. 2014, 84th Leg. (Kan. 2011). The judge enjoined the Kansas state defendants from any further enforcement or reliance on athe state statute and directed them to allocate all Title X funding for State Fiscal Year 2012 without reference to Section 107(l), and to provide continuation grant funding to the Planned Parenthood. * * *

Discussed in both of the Planned Parenthood claims was the legislative intent of the statute. Was the intent of the statute directed at Planned Parenthood? The judge soundly rejected the state defendants “suggestion that the statute was simply designed to prioritize funding to entities who have a higher percentage of poor clients” as a post-hoc, “litigation-spawned” attempt to find some alternative, benign rationale for the statute. The judge also considered the statement of the amendment’s sponsor, Lance Kinzer, including on the floor of the House and on his facebook page.

Facebook postings as an indication of legislative intent! Read the rest of Professor Robson’s post here.

-Bridget Crawford

Posted in Reproductive Rights | Comments Off

Forgiving Oneself Before Forgiving the Abuser: Healing and Domestic Violence

Posted on July 30, 2011 by Bridget Crawford

Justice without forgiveness? Forgiveness without justice? Considering these questions in the context of domestic violence, to my mind, at least, both questions focus on the ability of the so called “bad actor” to receive or achieve forgiveness. But victims need to forgive themselves, too, without reifying victimhood. Here’s how Rebecca Burns describes it (here):

Forgiveness is difficult to achieve. As much as you don’t want to hear the F word, it is the first thing you must do to move on, Forgive the worst one of all … YOU!. I don’t mean to say you are the worst one but I felt that I was to blame for all of it. After all I stayed when he passed out drunk. I stayed after the first time he hit me. I stayed when he tried to kill me. But my life changed when I finally began to forgive myself. It doesn’t happen in a day, all better, I have forgiven myself. It has taken years but since the first glimmer of my own forgiveness I have begun to heal. Honestly, I forgave my abuser in my mind, not to his face, long before I even forgave myself. * * *

It has been over 10 years now and looking back being alone for so long was the best thing that ever could have happened to me. It gave me the first chance in my life to get to clear out my head and get strong day by day. Living with domestic violence day and day you become so used to the cruelty. It was difficult but the time alone allowed me to get rid of all the crap my husband had filled my head with over the years, you are fat, ugly, no man will ever want you. Just insert the crap you were fed. Again, being able to clear my head was the best gift of all.

Forgiving the self may be the most difficult forgiveness to achieve. Strength to all of the survivors, and you know who you are!

-Bridget Crawford

Posted in Acts of Violence, Justice? | Comments Off

“Dangerously Straight”

Posted on July 30, 2011 by Bridget Crawford

The preferred shampoo of the religious right?

-Bridget Crawford

Posted in Feminism and Culture | Comments Off

State College Settles DP Benefits Law Suit

Posted on July 29, 2011 by Tony Infanti

Following up on my earlier post about how the school district in State College, PA (home of Penn State) provided benefits to the domestic partners of its heterosexual, but not its lesbian and gay employees, the school board there has now not only extended domestic partner benefits to its lesbian and gay employees but has also added sexual orientation and gender identity to its nondiscrimination policies.

-Tony Infanti

Posted in LGBT Rights | Comments Off

More Census Snapshots

Posted on July 29, 2011 by Tony Infanti

Following up on my earlier posts (here, here, here, here, and here), the Williams Institute has released snapshot reports from the 2010 census this week for Idaho, Missouri, Ohio, Utah, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

According to the census, there are 3,245 same-sex couples in Idaho (or 5.6 per 1,000 households). Seventy-two percent are female and 28% are male, and 24% of these same-sex couples are raising children.

In Missouri, there are 15,242 same-sex couples (or 6.4 per 1,000 households). Sixty-three percent are female and 37% are male, and 21% are raising children.

In Ohio, there are 28,602 same-sex couples (or 6.2 per 1,000 households). Sixty-four percent are female and 36% are male, and 22% are raising children.

In Utah, there are 5,814 same-sex couples (or 6.6 per 1,000 households). Sixty-six percent are female and 34% are male, and 24% are raising children.

In West Virginia, there are 5,240 same-sex couples (or 6.9 per 1,000 households). Sixty-four percent are female and 36% are male, and 24% are raising children.

In Wisconsin, there are 13,630 same-sex couples (or 6 per 1,000 households). Sixty-six percent are female and 34% are male, and only 18% are raising children.

Again, information regarding the top counties and cities is also available.

In the snapshots released to date, Vermont is the state, San Francisco is the county, and Palm Springs is still the city with the highest number of same-sex couples per 1,000 households.

-Tony Infanti

Posted in LGBT Rights | Comments Off

To Wax or Not to Wax?

Posted on July 28, 2011 by Bridget Crawford

Call it willful blindness, but I hadn’t seen this 2007 article from the Clinical Infectious Diseases journal (Oxford University). Here is an excerpt from Severe Complications of a ‘Brazilian’ Bikini Wax:

Waxing . . . is the most common method for extensive depilation, and complications include burns, mechanical folliculitis, infectious folliculitis, other infections of skin and soft tissues, and contact dermatitis and/or vulvitis. Removal of hair causes skin microtrauma, with inoculation of pathogens and subsequent mechanical spread of infection. A recent systematic review of surgical site infections found that shaving resulted in more infections than clipping, presumably because the skin was not breached with clippers. Infecting organisms can be from autoinoculation of skin or vaginal flora and group A streptococci are known to colonize the vagina. Infecting bacteria can include S. aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and other potential pathogens include human papilloma virus, molluscum contagiosum, dermatophytes (such as Trichophyton ton- surans) resulting in Majocchi granuloma, and more unusual fungi, such as Sporothrix schenckii, which has been reported following electrolysis.

Citations omitted. Read the full article here.

-Bridget Crawford

image source: BroAndDonna via Flickr

Posted in Women's Health | 1 Comment

Assisted Reproduction: A Man’s Perspective on that Small Room and Big Cup

Posted on July 28, 2011 by Bridget Crawford

Paul Ford writes in The Age of Mechanical Reproduction (here) of his experiences with assisted reproductive technology and the quest to have a child via IVF:

When I tell people what we are doing, they want to hear about the room where you produce. I tell them that there is a lot of paperwork. That they take your picture and look at your license. Then they walk you back to the room. You are handed a list of instructions and some stickers and a plastic cup. The cup has a forest-green lid.

In the room is a VCR. I like to write down the names of the videos so I can share them with my wife and friends . . . .

No one sets a clock, but there is a sense of time passing. You get to work and try not to think about things.

The things not to think about are: the money you are spending. How they can’t find the problem—my sperm is better now, once I quit hot baths and Diet Coke, and my wife’s plumbing looks normal on the hysterosalpingogram. Don’t think about the other dudes jacking it five feet away. Just try to keep the chair from squeaking. Try to hit the cup.

When it is complete you screw on the forest-green lid, write your name and your wife’s name on the label, put it all in a biohazard bag, and ring the buzzer. Along comes a woman, another nurse. She takes the bag and holds it up to the light. If you read the paperwork there is a request that you don’t make any jokes during this moment.

The worst thing that can happen in that room is “failure to produce.” They warn you about it. Men go in and hours later have not come out. They’re sobbing and their arms are sore. Their wives or partners are out in the waiting room, surly from hormone treatments. No one has sympathy for a man who can’t produce. They should have sympathy but they don’t. You do not want to be that guy. And so far I have not failed. Just in case, I have special videos on my phone.

The full piece is here, in The Morning News. Mr. Ford’s story will resonate with anyone who has ever visited (or worried about visiting) a fertility clinic. The intense stress of infertility crackles in every paragraph.

-Bridget Crawford

image source here

Posted in Feminism and Medicine, Feminism and Technology, The Overrepresentation of Women | Comments Off

Everything But The Girl: Northern District Of Indiana Opinion Sharpens Split Over Nature Of Affirmative Defense In Single-Instance Harassment Cases

Posted on July 27, 2011 by Colin Miller

An employer is subject to vicarious liability to a victimized employee for an actionable hostile environment created by a supervisor with immediate (or successively higher) authority over the employee. When no tangible employment action is taken, a defending employer may raise an affirmative defense to liability or damages, subject to proof by a preponderance of the evidence….The defense comprises two necessary elements: (a) that the employer exercised reasonable care to prevent and correct promptly any sexually harassing behavior, and (b) that the plaintiff employee unreasonably failed to take advantage of any preventive or corrective opportunities provided by the employer or to avoid harm otherwise. Burlington Industries, Inc. v. Ellerth, 524 U.S. 742, 765 (1998).

But should this two-pronged framework apply in single-instance harassment cases, or should employers be able to raise the so-called Ellerth/Faragher affirmative defense even if they can only satisfy the first prong? It is a question to has divided the few courts that have addressed the issue, and the recent opinion of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Indiana in Alalade v. AWS Assistance Corp., 2011 WL 2473617 (N.D. Ind. 2011), has only sharpened that split.

Continue reading →

Posted in Acts of Violence, Coerced Sex, Courts and the Judiciary, Employment Discrimination, Feminism and the Workplace | Comments Off

Are 1/3 of Pornography Consumers Women?

Posted on July 26, 2011 by Bridget Crawford

As a counterpoint to the recent Newsweek story on “buying sex,” consider this (2009) Nielsen study, as reported by CNN:

In the first three months of 2007, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, approximately one in three visitors to adult entertainment Web sites was female; during the same period, nearly 13 million American women were checking out porn online at least once each month. * * *

Meanwhile, science is finally buying into the idea that women are at least as stimulated by porn as men.

In a 2006 study at McGill University, researchers monitored genital temperature changes to measure sexual arousal and found that, when shown porn clips, men and women alike began displaying arousal within 30 seconds; men reached maximum arousal in about 11 minutes, women in about 12 (a statistically negligible difference, according to the study).

Read the full story here.

It is true that James Deen has more than 24,000 Twitter followers!

H/T The Good Men Project.

-Bridget Crawford

Posted in Pornography's Harms | 2 Comments

Wealth Disparities by Race

Posted on July 26, 2011 by Bridget Crawford

Today the Pew Research Center released its report, “Wealth Gaps Rise to Record Highs Between Whites, Blacks and Hispanics.” Here’s the summary:

The median wealth of white households is 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of newly available government data from 2009.

These lopsided wealth ratios are the largest since the government began publishing such data a quarter century ago and roughly twice the size of the ratios that had prevailed between these three groups for the two decades prior to the Great Recession that ended in 2009.

The Washington Post has coverage here. Image from the Pew Research Center here.

-Bridget Crawford

Posted in Women and Economics | Comments Off

Letting Military Recruiters Back on Campus

Posted on July 26, 2011 by Tony Infanti

Now that the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has been certified, Vermont Law School has dropped its ban on military recruiters. William Mitchell is also set to drop its own ban on military recruiters.

Hat tip: The Advocate.

-Tony Infanti

Posted in LGBT Rights | Comments Off

Nebraska Seeks 3 Tenure-Track Faculty Members

Posted on July 25, 2011 by Bridget Crawford

From our friends at Nebraska, this Appointments notice:

The University of Nebraska College of Law invites applications for three tenure-track faculty positions focusing on teaching in several areas, including telecommunications and cyber law, business associations as well as other transactional law courses such as corporate finance and governance, transactional skills courses, securitization, venture capital, entrepreneurship, trusts and estates, and federal estate and gift tax. The College also invites applications for a tenure-track faculty position to direct its Entrepreneurship Clinic. The Director will be involved in the design of this new clinic and will be the supervisor of third-year law students.

Courses in telecommunications and cyber law are offered to J.D. students as well as LL.M. students in the College of Law’s Space, Cyber, and Telecommunications Law program. Review of applications will begin on August 10, 2011, and continue until the positions are filled. General information about the Law College is available here. Information on the Space, Cyber, and Telecommunications Law program can be found here. The University of Nebraska has an active National Science Foundation ADVANCE gender equity program, and is committed to a pluralistic campus community through affirmative action, equal opportunity, work-life balance, and dual careers. Contact Professor Richard Moberly, Chair, Faculty Appointments Committee, University of Nebraska College of Law, Lincoln, NE 68583-0902, or send an email to lawappointments@unl.edu.

Three potential hires, and some pretty cool potential colleagues, IMHO (and I don’t even work at Nebraska!).

-Bridget Crawford

Posted in Chutes and Ladders, Law Teaching | Comments Off

More Census Snapshots

Posted on July 25, 2011 by Tony Infanti

Following up on my earlier posts (here, here, here, and here), the Williams Institute has released snapshot reports from the 2010 census this week for Georgia, Maine, New Hampshire, Puerto Rico, Kentucky, and Virginia.

According to the census, there are 29,844 same-sex couples in Georgia (or 8.3 per 1,000 households). Fifty-seven percent are female and 43% are male, and 25% of these same-sex couples are raising children.

In Maine, there are 5,405 same-sex couples (or 9.7 per 1,000 households). Sixty-six percent are female and 34% are male, and only 17% are raising children.

In New Hampshire, there are 4,635 same-sex couples (or 8.9 per 1,000 households). Sixty-eight percent are female and 32% are male, and 19% are raising children.

In Puerto Rico, there are 6,614 same-sex couples (or 4.8 per 1,000 households). Seventy percent are female and 30% are male, and 28% are raising children.

In Kentucky, there are 11,572 same-sex couples (or 6.7 per 1,000 households). Sixty-four percent are female and 36% are male, and 24% are raising children.

In Virginia, there are 20,540 same-sex couples (or 6.7 per 1,000 households). Sixty-one percent are female and 39% are male, and 20% are raising children.

Again, information regarding the top counties and cities is also available.

In the snapshots released to date, Vermont is the state, San Francisco is the county, and Palm Springs is still the city with the highest number of same-sex couples per 1,000 households.

-Tony Infanti

Posted in LGBT Rights | Comments Off

Safe, Reversible, Non-Surgical Male Contraception Coming to a Guy Near You

Posted on July 24, 2011 by Bridget Crawford

The New York Times reports today on “Scientific Advances on Contraceptive for Men.” Here is an excerpt:

The most studied approach in the United States uses testosterone and progestin hormones, which send the body signals to stop producing sperm. While effective and safe for most men, they have not worked for everyone, and questions about side effects remain.

So scientists are also testing other ways of interrupting sperm production, maturation or mobility. * * *

[One man who participated in a research trial] did, however, like the progestin implant, which caused no side effects. Although it “kind of was a disappointment” that the accompanying testosterone shots did not help him win amateur bicycle races, he said, the implant made him “the talk of the party.”

Men’s reactions, he said, ranged from “ ‘I would do something like that’ to ‘Dude, you’re crazy. How do you know if your sperm count will return? Is there shrinkage in any area, or malfunctioning?’ ”

But “women were just totally excited,” he said. “If I were single, I probably would have been able to use that as a dating thing.”

One of the many important factors in the success of any male contraceptive will be women’s willingness “to trust that their partners are using birth control, as men do now,” the story notes (here). That makes sense to me. I’m not sure, but I wonder if eventually one might see demographic or other differences in women’s self-reported levels of trust in their male partner’s use of birth control. Would a woman demand to see a prospective partner’s “certificates of compliance” with a particular birth control protocol? From the 1990’s, I remember those wallet-sized cards that one could get, showing the dates of one’s last HIV test, the results and the testing facility. I suppose something similar could work for male contraceptives. Hmmm…but then again, from the 1980’s, I remember fake I.D.’s, too.

-Bridget Crawford

Posted in Reproductive Rights, Women's Health | Comments Off

Request for Signatories to Amicus Brief in Hosana-Tabor Case (First Amendment, Employment Discrimination and Gender Issues)

Posted on July 24, 2011 by admin

We have drafted an amicus brief for law professors in the Hosanna-Tabor case, which involves a ministerial exception to employment laws and has important implications for gender discrimination.

Cheryl Perich was a kindergarten and fourth grade teacher at Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School, a K-8 school in Redford, Michigan. After she became suddenly ill at a school event, Hosanna-Tabor granted her a disability leave of absence and assured her that she would still have a job when she returned. After her narcolepsy was treated and her doctor cleared her to return to work, however, school officials questioned whether she was better and urged Perich to resign voluntarily from her position. After Perich told the principal that she would sue for disability discrimination, she was fired. Correspondence from the school indicates that she lost her job because of her insubordination and her threats to take legal action.

Perich sued for discriminatory retaliation under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The success of Perich’s retaliation claim turns on whether the Supreme Court finds that she is a minister. If she is not a minister, she would probably win. After all, the school stated in writing that a main reason for Perich’s termination was her threatened lawsuit. If, on the other hand, she is a minister, she loses. She loses because under the ministerial exception doctrine, ministers may not sue their employers for discrimination.
The ministerial exception grants religious organizations immunity from employment discrimination suits brought by “ministerial” employees, even if the discrimination is not religiously required. Thus, even if the tenets of the Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church forbid discrimination on the basis of disability (and in fact their Governing Manual for Lutheran Schools states that the school will not discriminate on these grounds), ministers cannot sue the school for disability discrimination. The lower courts, who created and uniformly apply the ministerial exception, claim that the religion clauses require it

The ministerial exception has breathtaking consequences for the civil rights of thousands of women who work for religious organizations. Any employee (including elementary and secondary school teachers, school principals, university professors, music teachers, choir directors, organists, administrators, secretaries, communications managers and nurses) at any religious employer (school, mosque, synagogue, church, hospital, nursing home, social service organization, faith-based organization, non-profit religious organization) is at risk of losing the protection of the employment laws (including the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, Title VII, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, the Equal Pay Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Family & Medical Leave Act, Workers Compensation laws and state tort and contract law) as long as the employer decides that the employee performs “important functions” in the religion.

We wish to ensure that the range of scholarly views on the ministerial exception – including those that understand the widespread problem of discrimination and the need for legal protection from discrimination – are before the Court. Our brief explains why the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses do not require the ministerial exception. The Free Exercise Clause does not create a zone of church autonomy to which the laws do not apply. Indeed, Employment Division v. Smith held that neutral laws of general applicability do not violate the Free Exercise Clause, and no one disputes that the American with Disabilities Act is a neutral law of general applicability. The Court’s church property cases do not hold otherwise.

As for the Establishment Clause, applying the ministerial exception in this case actually causes more Establishment Clause problems than simply resolving the retaliation claim. Deciding whether Perich’s termination was caused by protected activity, when the school wrote her a letter stating that it intended to fire her because she threatened legal action, does not entangle the court in any theological disputes. In contrast, deciding whether Perich’s service as a Christian role model for her students is important to the religious mission of the school requires the court to delve into the religious beliefs of the Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church. Resolving a theological dispute about the religious role of schoolteachers is precisely the kind of doctrinal issue the courts are incompetent to make, yet the ministerial exception requires such theological analysis in this case.

If you are interested in learning more about the case, reading a copy of the brief and signing on to it, please contact us at the following e-mail addresses:

-Leslie C. Griffin & Caroline Mala Corbin
lgriffin@uh.edu; ccorbin@law.miami.edu

Posted in Courts and the Judiciary, Employment Discrimination, Feminism and Religion | Comments Off

“Arab and Arab American Feminisms: Gender, Violence, and Belonging”

Posted on July 22, 2011 by Ann Bartow

Overview here, below is an except:

Arab and Arab American Feminisms, edited by Rabab Abdulhadi, Evelyn Alsultany, and Nadine Naber, is a book I wish every feminist/womanist would pick up. Though it is mostly academic in nature, the book is also interspersed with personal anecdotes and poetry that revolve around the book’s focus on Arab and Arab American feminists’ experiences. The book addresses a plethora of issues regarding to Orientalism, sexism, U.S. imperialism, homophobia, and transphobia. Each of the authors illustrate the need for addressing all of these things overlapping, rather than separate, issues. More importantly, though the book embraces the important work done by radical feminists of color, it also turns the feminist “sisterhood is global” motto on its head, positing that “there is no universal woman’s experience.”

–Ann Bartow

Posted in Feminism and Culture, Race and Racism, Sisters In Other Nations | 1 Comment

“Sister Law Professor”

Posted on July 22, 2011 by Ann Bartow

Check out “Sister Law Professor” here at Sister Scholar. Below is an excerpt:

During our first class we explored how we had been taught law. We learned about Langdell’s “case-dialogue” method and the school of thought that coincides with it: Formalism. We then examined the Legal Realists who posed the first critique of Formalism, followed by the Critical Legal Studies Scholars. We covered this background so that they could understand how, when, and why Critical Race Theory entered the Academy.

On the second day of class we viewed the documentary, Race – The Power of An Illusion: Episode Three: The House We Live In. After that we discussed the concept of “Whiteness.”

And here’s where the law profession idealization a la Atticus Finch always hit the proverbial brick wall—I’m continually astounded that this notion is so contentious. Why don’t people understand that this is a legal category from the Articles of Confederation that defined citizenship? Don’t look at me, it wasn’t my idea.

–Ann Bartow

Posted in Academia, Feminists in Academia, Race and Racism | Comments Off

Posted on July 21, 2011 by lgoodmark

CALL FOR PAPERS

The University of Baltimore School of Law’s Center on Applied Feminism seeks submissions for its Fifth Annual Feminist Legal Theory Conference. This year’s theme is “Applied Feminism and Democracy.” For more information about the conference, please visit law.ubalt.edu/caf.

Over the past year, we have seen the impact of democracy on women’s lives globally, nationally, and on the state and local level. From participation in the overthrow of governments in the Middle East to battles over funding for Planned Parenthood in the United States, women and democracy has been a recurring theme of recent events. In this election year, we invite you to think about gender, feminism and democracy. Who does democracy best serve? How do democracies shape the lives of women? Does democracy increase women’s participation in governmental process? Have democratic governments been successful in advancing feminist goals? Are there better ways than democracy to address the issues that affect women’s lives? Is securing voting rights a feminist issue? What does democratic participation mean for women? How can women use democratic processes to improve their lives? How can feminist legal theory inform the creation and evolution of democracies? How might feminist principles inform our understanding of what democracy is and what it requires? Are there are distinctively feminist approaches to the meaning of democracy? The conference will explore gender issues within emerging and well-established democracies, allowing us to reflect on past movements and propose future reforms.

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 and how those theories relate to women’s experiences of democracy. By expanding the boundaries of our exploration, we hope to deepen our understandings of feminist legal theory and to move new insights into practice. In addition, the conference is designed to provide presenters with the opportunity to gain extensive feedback on their papers.

The conference will begin the evening of Thursday, March 1, 2012, with a workshop for conference participants. This workshop will continue the annual tradition of involving all attendees to be participants in an interactive discussion and reflection. The workshop will be approximately two hours in length.

On Friday, March 2, 2012, 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 democracy. 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, and Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Sheryl WuDunn.
To submit a paper proposal, please submit an abstract by 5 p.m. on October 14, 2011 to Professor Leigh Goodmark at lgoodmark@ubalt.edu. In the subject or “re” line of your submission, you must type: CAF conference submission. It is essential that your submission contain your full contact information, including an email, phone number, and mailing address where you can be reached. Abstracts should be no longer than one page. Practitioners’ and activists’ papers need not follow a strictly academic format, but all paper proposals should address the conference theme. 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 2, 2012. All working drafts of papers will be due no later than February 10, 2012. All abstracts and drafts will be posted on the Center on Applied Feminism’s conference website to be shared with other participants and attendees.
In addition, the University of Baltimore Law Review has agreed to offer publication to between two and four of the papers presented at the conference. If you are interested in submitting your abstract for consideration by the UB Law Review, please indicate as such on your abstract submission. To be eligible for publication in the UB Law Review, submissions must not be published elsewhere. Typically, the UB Law Review publishes pieces ranging from 25 to 45 pages in length. One volume of the Law Review is dedicated to papers from this annual symposium.
We look forward to your submissions. If you have further questions, please contact Leigh Goodmark at lgoodmark@ubalt.edu.

Posted in Academia | Comments Off

CFP – Critical Feminist Pedagogies: Towards an Education of Activism

Posted on July 21, 2011 by Bridget Crawford

From the FLP mailbox, this call for papers:

Southern Connecticut State University Women’s Studies Program presents the 9th Annual Graduate Conference

Critical Feminist Pedagogies: Towards an Education of Activism

Saturday, October 29, 2011

What is “feminist” education? How do you as a social justice activist, teacher, artist, musician, poet, or environmentalist educate others about issues you feel passionate about? The institutionalization of feminism through Women’s Studies undoubtedly affects feminist activism in the non-academic world (and vice versa: grassroots feminism is the foundation of Women’s Studies). We aim to maintain the bridge between academia and grassroots activism by inviting everyone!

What issues do you as a feminist feel a passion teaching others about? What methods do you use to communicate to an audience? What are the teacher’s and students’ roles in feminist or progressive spaces? How ought an activist or teacher work with the power they have over an audience of learners to allow for an effective space for critical thinking about justice? Does “raising awareness” and publishing books or articles actually change structural problems? Can feminist education even be considered “action” if it ends at “raising awareness” without actually dismantling oppressive systems? What might be some suggestions of feminist action for best practices?

This conference attempts to detangle the tricky and creative work that is “feminist” education and to bring activists and critical thinkers/educators together to share our visions of feminist pedagogy. We are interested in how you as community activists, students, artists, educators, and future-educators encourage critical thinking and enthusiasm in learners. We want to share our passions, talents, and skills through syllabi, curriculum, and workshops.

We invite individuals, activists, groups, artists, scholars, and educators to submit proposals for panel presentations, roundtable discussions, or artistic performances that address the following questions:

– Critiques of empowerment as a mode of feminist education

– What is the relationship between feminist pedagogy and indoctrination? Can consciousness-raising be a form of indoctrination? How would feminist education function beyond consciousness-raising?

– What makes for strategic feminist practice within a group (beyond sitting in circles and hearing everyone’s voice—what is explicitly/implicitly feminist about this)?

– To what extent can experience-sharing be productively used in Women’s Studies settings?

– Access to education as a feminist issue; inclusion/exclusion of certain groups

– How might intersectionality (race, ethnicity, nationality, class, gender, sexuality, ability, environmental issues) be used as a tool for activism or education?

– How can we continue to challenge the academic industrial complex?

– What are the tensions between students, students and teachers, academics and grassroots activists and how might these tensions be used pedagogically/productively?

– Others (You are highly encouraged to come up with your own topic!

Additional information is here.

-Bridget Crawford

Posted in Call for Papers or Participation | 1 Comment

Emens on Marriage and Naming Conventions: “A Simple Hyphen Will Do”

Posted on July 20, 2011 by Bridget Crawford

Earlier this month, Elizabeth Emens (Columbia) published an op-ed “A Simple Hyphen Will Do” in the New York Times (here).

Here is an excerpt:

Will same-sex marriage help make straight marriage more equal? Here’s one concrete way it could. * * *

New York has a law on the books that could help make marriage more equal. But no one seems to know about this law. * * *

In the interest of gender equality, and in compliance with the law, the new forms should include prominent statements of the marital naming options.

Why? Because names matter. And right now, women who marry men have limited options when it comes to names. Sure, women can choose their names, which is better than having to take their husbands’ names, as used to be required in some states. But kids almost always have their father’s name. So a woman can either share a name with her past life and family, or share a name with her children. In other words, men get to have continuity with both past and future; women have to choose. (And of course this practice of patrilineal descent of names doesn’t provide any guidance for same-sex couples.)

What’s the solution?

Read the rest of the op-ed here.

-Bridget Crawford

Posted in Feminism and Families, The Overrepresentation of Men | Comments Off

Conference Announcement, “Gender, Sexuality and Poverty,” March 31, 2012, Gettysburg College

Posted on July 19, 2011 by Bridget Crawford

From Temma Berg (English, Gettysburg College), this “Save the Date” notice:

Saturday, March 31, 2012

2012 Annual Women’s Studies Conference sponsored by the Central Pennsylvania Consortium and the Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Programs of Dickinson College, Gettysburg College, and Franklin & Marshall College

“Gender, Sexuality, and Poverty”
2012 Conference to be held at Gettysburg College
8:30 am to 4:00 pm

Keynote speaker: Dean Spade, Seattle University School of Law, Author and Founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project
2:00 p.m

We welcome faculty and student presentations, panels, poster sessions, and exhibits.
Call for proposals: early September
Deadline for proposals: December 1

No other additional information provided at this time, so look for a CFP in September.

-Bridget Crawford

Posted in From the FLP mailbox, LGBT Rights, The Overrepresentation of Women, Upcoming Conferences, Women and Economics | 3 Comments

Announcing “The Pluralist’s Guide to Philosophy”

Posted on July 19, 2011 by Bridget Crawford

From the FLP mailbox:

We’d like to announce a new source of information about philosophy departments in the United States, Canada and England: The Pluralist’s Guide to Philosophy, to be found here.

This Guide is based on a survey of expert opinion on the best places to study select sub-fields of philosophy. Our aim is to provide students and their mentors with some informed, crowd-sourced ideas concerning where any student might productively cultivate an interest in American Philosophy, Continental Philosophy, Critical Philosophy of Race and Ethnicity, Feminist Philosophy, and GLBT Studies. This site is totally independent of any philosophical organizations. Its methods and advisory board members are detailed on the site itself, along with the reports. It will be updated yearly.

The creators of the site are: Linda Martín Alcoff, Hunter College, CUNY Graduate Center; Paul Taylor, Pennsylvania State University; William Wilkerson, University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Update 4:15 p.m. ‘Tis more complicated than I realized. Brian Leiter comments (here) about what the guide is and does. Of particular interest to readers of this blog might be these observations from Brian Leiter:

[T]here is one bit of the new SPEP Guide that I do think is pretty outrageous, namely, the section that purports to be about the “Climate for Women in Philosophy,” which is essentially an anonymous slur, without any evidence adduced, on four departments. Even more ridiculous, the only departments deemed to have a suitable “climate” for women are SPEP departments, with one striking exception of a top ten PGR department that had a faculty member involved with this ‘assessment.’ (At one time, the SPEP Guide listed the evaluators, but now that list appears to be gone.) This is both absurd and shameful, and I hope they will remove this nonsense.

Read his full comments here. Reader of SPEP Guide, proceed with appropriate mindfulness.

-Bridget Crawford

Posted in Feminist Legal Scholarship, From the FLP mailbox | Comments Off

Are Up to 80% of All Men “Buyers of Sex”? Please Let the Answer Be No

Posted on July 18, 2011 by Bridget Crawford

From Newsweek, this article, “The John Next Door“:

Men of all ages, races, religions, and backgrounds do it. Rich men do it, and poor men do it, in forms so varied and ubiquitous that they can be summoned at a moment’s notice.

And yet surprisingly little is known about the age-old practice of buying sex, long assumed to be inevitable. No one even knows what proportion of the male population does it; estimates range from 16 percent to 80 percent. “Ninety-nine percent of the research in this field has been done on prostitutes, and 1 percent has been done on johns,” says Melissa Farley, director of Prostitution Research and Education, a nonprofit organization that is a project of San Francisco Women’s Centers.

A clinical psychologist, Farley studies prostitution, trafficking, and sexual violence, but even she wasn’t sure how representative her results were. “The question has always remained: are all our findings true of just sex buyers, or are they true of men in general?” she says.

In a new study released exclusively to Newsweek, “Comparing Sex Buyers With Men Who Don’t Buy Sex,” Farley provides some startling answers. * * *

And yet buying sex is so pervasive that Farley’s team had a shockingly difficult time locating men who really don’t do it. The use of pornography, phone sex, lap dances, and other services has become so widespread that the researchers were forced to loosen their definition in order to assemble a 100-person control group.

“We had big, big trouble finding nonusers,” Farley says. “We finally had to settle on a definition of non-sex-buyers as men who have not been to a strip club more than two times in the past year, have not purchased a lap dance, have not used pornography more than one time in the last month, and have not purchased phone sex or the services of a sex worker, escort, erotic masseuse, or prostitute.”

The full article is available here.

Contemplating the probable — or even possible — size of the population of “sex buyers,” to use Dr. Farley’s term, makes me feel nauseous and despondent.

-Bridget Crawford

Posted in Acts of Violence, Coerced Sex, Human Trafficking, Pornography's Harms, Sex Trafficking | Comments Off

A Right to be a Parent? IVF in Israel

Posted on July 18, 2011 by Bridget Crawford

Today’s New York Times has this interesting story on reproductive medicine in Israel. In “Where Families Are Prized, Help Is Free,” Dina Kraft reports:

Jewish and Arab, straight and gay, secular and religious, the patients who come to Assuta Hospital in Tel Aviv every day are united by a single hope: that medical science will bring them a baby.

Israel is the world capital of in vitro fertilization and the hospital, which performs about 7,000 of the procedures each year, is one of the busiest fertilization clinics in the world. * * *

Israelis already have a high fertility rate: an average of 2.9 children per family. Beyond the biblical imperative to be fruitful, some Israeli Jews remain concerned with replenishing their numbers in the wake of the Holocaust.

Demographics here are also political. Israel has historically focused on promoting Jewish birthrates to retain a Jewish majority and more recently as a counterweight to higher fertility rates of Palestinians in the occupied territories. Arab citizens of Israel, however, have the same rights to state-paid fertility treatments as their Jewish counterparts.

A survey published by the journal Human Reproduction Update in 2002 showed that 1,657 in vitro fertilization procedures per million people per year were performed in Israel, compared with 899 in Iceland, the country with the second highest rate, and 126 in the United States, which trailed far behind European countries.

Experts say Israel’s rate still far outstrips the rest of the world. Four percent of Israeli children today are the products of in vitro fertilization, compared with about 1 percent estimated in the United States.

The full article is here.

I knew that Israel financed IVF treatments, but I didn’t realize just how common IVF is there. 1,657 IVF procedures per million people in Israel versus 126 per million in the United States! I’m also interested in the way that access to reproductive medicine is framed by one of the patients interviewed for the story: “There is something deeply humane about this policy, this idea that people have the right to be parents,” [a 32-year old woman] said. “It’s something that characterizes life here: the value placed on life.”

As an initial matter, I can’t even get my U.S.-trained brain around the idea of a right to be a parent. I can grasp notions like “privacy” and “liberty” and how those rights extend to reproductive practices and adult consensual sexual relationships. A rich line of cases suggests a right not to be a parent, in the context of divorce-related disputes over frozen pre-embryos. See Tracey S. Pachman, “Disputes Over Frozen Preembryos and the ‘Right Not to Be a Parent,’” 12 Colum. J. Gender & L. 128 (2003). But a right to be a parent seems entirely different. What would a “right” to be a parent mean for those adults who are not parents? Those who do not want to be parents? Would a “right” to be a parent limit choices for women (and men)? Might it mean that those who are not parents are somehow lesser participants in the exercise of democratic citizenship?

-Bridget Crawford

Posted in Feminism and Families, Feminism and Medicine, Reproductive Rights, Sisters In Other Nations | Comments Off

Drawing Attention to Date Rape Drug Cases

Posted on July 15, 2011 by Tony Infanti

In a column in today’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

-Tony Infanti

Posted in Acts of Violence, Feminism and Law | Comments Off

More Census Snapshots

Posted on July 15, 2011 by Tony Infanti

Following up on my earlier posts (here, here, and here), the Williams Institute has released snapshot reports from the 2010 census this week for New York, Arizona, Minnesota, Montana, Oklahoma, and Vermont.

According to the census, there are 65,303 same-sex couples in New York (or 8.9 per 1,000 households). Fifty-two percent are female and 48% are male, and 20% of these same-sex couples are raising children.

In Arizona, there are 20,948 same-sex couples (or 8.8 per 1,000 households). Fifty-nine percent are female and 41% are male, and 22% are raising children.

In Minnesota, there are 13,718 same-sex couples (or 6.6 per 1,000 households). Sixty-four percent are female and 36% are male, and only 17% are raising children.

In Montana, there are 2,295 same-sex couples (or 5.6 per 1,000 households). Seventy-two percent are female and 28% are male, and 26% are raising children.

In Oklahoma, there are 9,802 same-sex couples (or 6.7 per 1,000 households). Sixty-five percent are female and 35% are male, and 26% are raising children.

In Vermont, there are 2,798 same-sex couples (or 10.9 per 1,000 households). Sixty-nine percent are female and 31% are male, and 20% are raising children.

Again, information regarding the top counties and cities is also available.

In the snapshots released to date, Vermont is the state, San Francisco is the county, and Palm Springs is the city with the highest number of same-sex couples per 1,000 households.

-Tony Infanti

Posted in LGBT Rights | Comments Off

Not That Into You If …

Posted on July 14, 2011 by Bridget Crawford

Woe unto she who is reading “Ten Ways to Tell He’s Just Not That Into You” (long story — don’t ask). Here’s one tidbit of advice:

90% Of The Time, You Call Him

All relationships are built upon mutuality. It’s important to take these little signs into consideration, and remember that you deserve better. Dr. [Bethany] Marshall advises, “If you do all the calling, he’s not that invested. Step back, and put yourself on phone restriction. If he’s interested, he’ll call. If he’s not, he won’t.” Yes, it will be painful when you realize that he hasn’t called in a few weeks. But it will allow you to realize that you do, indeed, deserve better, and eventually, you’ll be able to move on.

I think that applies to email, too. Ouch.

Does this advice translate well to professional relationships? If you email or call Professor X for advice on a paper or to read a draft, but Professor X never asks you for advice or a read, is that bad? I’m going to say no, based on some great mentoring relationships I’ve had, where I’ve been the beneficiary of advice and reads, and have given little in return other than profuse thanks, psychic IOU’s and promises to pay it forward.

-Bridget Crawford

Posted in Academia | Comments Off

Isn’t There a Better Way to Generate Interest in Women’s Soccer?

Posted on July 13, 2011 by Bridget Crawford

If you’re following the Women’s World Cup, you may know that three members (L-R Elodie Thomas, Gaetane Thiney, and Corine Franco) of the French team posed for some for the German tabloid Bild under the heading, “Is this how we should show up before you come to our games?”

I wish that women’s athletic performances, not images of nude bodies, drew viewers. At the same time, I appreciate the headline. It has a tongue-in-cheek quality that makes me think that the copy editor or creative director understood the complexity (ok, maybe just the irony?) of the photo. Note, though, how the photo airbrushes all three players. Elodie Thomis’s skin has been lightened. Is her natural color not “sexy” enough?

The same three players are shown in soccer action below. These are the images that I hope inspire my soccer-loving daughter.

-Bridget Crawford

Posted in Feminism and Sports | 3 Comments

Why Mothers (and Fathers) Need Childcare Options at Professional Meetings

Posted on July 13, 2011 by Bridget Crawford

I previously blogged here about the AALS decision to reinstate (temporarily) child care at the Annual Meeting. That decision is in response to multiple requests, most recently (and notably) from the Work-Life Committee of the AALS Section on Women in Legal Education. Laura Kessler (Utah) and the members of that subcommittee explained to the AALS in a 10-page letter why reinstatement of childcare is important for the advancement of women in legal education. Here is an excerpt:

[I]nformation suggests that enrollments were actually on the rise in the two years prior to the AALS decision to discontinue child care; 41 children enrolled in the AALS sponsored child care in 2009 and 59 children in 2008, compared with numbers around 20 to 30 in the years prior to that. Compared to enrollments in similar annual meeting child care programs, such as that offered by the Law and Society Association, these enrollment figures are actually quite robust. Moreover, as discussed above, we are hopeful that with better publicity, enrollments will continue on an upward trend. In sum, the AALS’s justification of low enrollment is less persuasive when participation figures are assessed in relation to prior years and the experience of similar organizations.

* * *

The AALS’s decision to discontinue its child care program at the Annual Meeting is likely to disparately affect female members of the Association, because women remain primarily responsible for child care. The negative impact is multiplied considering that the affected women are less likely to have tenure and therefore are most in need of the opportunities and benefits the Annual Meeting affords. The AALS has made notable efforts over the years to advance the cause of women in the profession at all stages of their careers…. If the organization truly values the role of women faculty, however, the child care issue must be addressed.

A full copy of Professor Kessler’s letter, on behalf of the Section, is available after the fold.

-Bridget Crawford

Pages: 1 2

Posted in Academia, Feminism and Families, Feminism and the Workplace, Upcoming Conferences | Comments Off

Rise in Anti-LGBTQ Violence in 2010

Posted on July 13, 2011 by Tony Infanti

The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs has released its 2010 National Report on Anti-LGBTQ Hate Violence. In 2010, NCAVP documented 27 anti-LGBTQ murders, which is the second highest yearly total ever recorded by the organization. For the highlights of the report, check out NCAVP’s media release. You can also check out the highlights of the report on JURIST, which provides further context by discussing anti-LGBTQ violence at the international level.

-Tony Infanti

Posted in LGBT Rights | Comments Off

CFP- “America’s Energy Plan: From Dinosaurs to the Next Generation-Evolution or Extinction”

Posted on July 13, 2011 by Bridget Crawford

From the FLP mailbox, this notice and CFP from Thurgood Marshall Law Review:

Thurgood Marshall Law Review

Call For Papers and Proposals

The Thurgood Marshall Law Review invites participation from scholars, researchers, and practitioners in its Symposium: America’s Energy Plan: From Dinosaurs to the Next Generation-Evolution or Extinction. Accepted papers will be published in our 2012 Spring Edition.

The Thurgood Marshall Law Review hopes to provide a forum for thought-provoking dialogue by leading experts from within and outside the United States on what has become a major concern. Potential issues include, but are not limited to:

· What is the top priority for future discussion of energy policy?
· What is the role of law, including courts, regulators, and legislators, in facilitating or hindering
inclusive dialogues on energy production, transmission, regulation, and consumption?
· Who and what are necessary to foster a complete and productive discussion on energy?
· What is the future of oil and gas? What resources and innovation are needed to take exploration
to the next level?
· What is the projected cost of future exploration for oil and gas?
(e.g. costs-financial, social, environmental)
· What are alternative methods to fueling American and foreign economies?
· How do we address the national security, foreign policy and international legal issues
surrounding energy supply and demand?
· What are the environmental and human impacts of conventional energy sources?
· What are the legal issues or other hurdles with renewable energy?

Other topics that are relevant to this conversation are welcome. Proposals should be in abstracts of 1,500 words or less and submitted no later than September 1, 2011 by 5:00 pm.

Please send your abstract accompanied by a cover letter and curriculum vitae to tmsllawreview@mail.com or mail to:

Thurgood Marshall School of Law
3100 Cleburne Street
Houston, TX 77004

Selected authors are required to submit their first drafts by November 15, 2011. Please contact Candace Carpenter, Lead Articles Editor, with questions at tmsllawreview@mail.com.

We are also requesting that individuals who submit an article for publication participate in our Spring Symposium as a speaker. However, this is not mandatory. Further, anyone who is not interested in submitting an article but would like to make a presentation at the Symposium, should please contact Whitney White, Symposium Editor, for further details at tmsllawreview@mail.com.

-Posted by Bridget Crawford

Posted in Call for Papers or Participation, Feminism and the Environment, Upcoming Conferences | 3 Comments

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

image source here

Share this:

image source: lifehack.org

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

image source: BroAndDonna via Flickr

Share this:

image source here

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Albany Law School

Ambedkar University Delhi

American University Washington College of Law

Arizona State University College of Law

Australian National University College of Law

Barry University School of Law

Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law

Birmingham City University School of Law

Birmingham Law School

Boston College Law School

Boston University School of Law

Brigham Young University School of Law

Bristol Law School

Brooklyn Law School

California Western School of Law

Case Western Reserve University

City University of New York

Cleveland State University College of Law

Columbia Law School

Cornell University Law School

Creighton University School of Law

Dalhousie University

DePaul University College of Law

Drake University Law School

Drexel University College of Law

Duke University School of Law