Here. Below is a short excerpt:
Do you use the term ‘bitch’ in your blog Angry Black Bitch to turn a negative on its head?
I use the term bitch to reclaim and reframe. There is so much drama and history associated with black women being called angry black bitches and I seek to reclaim the word bitch while also challenging people’s notions of what black female anger is, what a bitch is and what an angry black bitch is angry about.
image source: Boca Raton Women's Tefillah Group, Inc.
Ilan Fuchs (Schusterman Visiting Israeli Professor, Tulane; Bar Ilan University) has posted to SSRN his paper, “‘Sephardic’ Halakhah? The Attitude of Sephardic Decisors to Women’s Torah Study: A Test Case”. Here is the abstract:
This paper examines Sephardic rabbinic attitudes to women’s religious studies, and more specifically, advanced Talmud study. I draw on Halakhic texts written in the second half of the 20th century by leading Sephardic rabbis that immigrated to Israel. I first examine the terms Mizraxi and Sephardic and explain on what grounds I find reason to compare the rabbis discussed. I argue that there is no monolithic Sephardic halakhic tradition and that the rabbis discussed hail from diverse communities that experienced and reacted to western and secular influences in unique ways. I then describe how these rabbis reacted to changes in women’s religious and secular education, changes they were forced to confront as their communities were exposed to changing values and social realities. Examining how Sephardic rabbis have responded to the challenge of women’s Torah study allows us to test the claim that the Sephardic halakhic tradition is more flexible and tolerant of change than the Ashkenazi orthodox halakhic tradition.
-Bridget Crawford
The Columbia Law School/Center for Reproductive Rights Fellowship application deadline has been extended to February 9th.
The CRR-Columbia Fellowship is a full-time, residential fellowship for up to two full years starting in July 2010. The Fellow will be a member of the community of graduate fellows at the Law School and will be integrated into the legal and policy work of the Center and will have work space at both locations. The Fellow will also have access to law school facilities, including the library and on-line research resources, and faculty events. It is expected that the Fellow will work closely with an assigned Law School faculty mentor.
Learn more here (http://www.law.columbia.edu/center_program/gendersexuality/fellowships)
– Katherine Franke
The Tax Court has finally issued a long-awaited opinion in O’Donnabhain v. Commissioner (here). The majority concluded that O’Donnabhain’s hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery constituted deductible medical expenses, but denied a deduction for the her breast augmentation surgery due to a failure to show that it was performed as a result of applying the treatment protocol for gender identity disorder.
The opinion is quite long, but does have its entertaining moments. One concurring judge chided the majority for dragging the court into the culture wars by going further than it absolutely needed to in order to decide the case. Another concurring judge accused the dissenters of lacking basic knowledge of grammar and the English language (and he’s got the better of the argument and is right to take them to task). This is not the kind of stuff you see everyday in judicial opinions, especially tax opinions!
Dealing with the deduction for medical expenses, this case ineluctably contributes to the medicalization and pathologization of gender identity. I would be very interested in getting a trans take on this case and its broader implications. Please post comments and let us know what you think.
-Tony Infanti
Trivia: Voices of Feminism is the reincarnation of the iconic TRIVIA: A Journal of Ideas published in print from 1982-1995.
The newest volume, edited by Lise Weil and Betsy Warland, includes responses to the lesbian extinction question. As the editors explain:
In an essay written in 1983, Nicole Brossard wrote: “Une lesbienne qui ne reinvente pas le monde est une lesbienne en voie de disparition.” (A lesbian who does not reinvent the world is a lesbian going extinct.) At that time, the phrase made very good sense. As writers, thinkers, activists, and in our day-to-day lives, we felt (many of us) compelled to reinvent a world in which we were for the most part invisible if not unthinkable, a world whose values we largely rejected. Today, over 20 years later, we are accepted, even embraced, by mainstream culture:as co-workers, wives, mothers, as TV talk show hosts and anchorwomen!:in ways we could not have imagined then. But how have we gained this inclusion? Have we gone quiet as lesbians (not denying our lesbianism but seldom foregrounding it)? Are we still reinventing the world? As writers, are we inventing new forms? Is there still a radical edge to the word “lesbian”? Or are we now, by Brossard’s definition, a disappearing species?
The issue opens with an experimental essay by Feminist Law Professors’ own Ruthann Robson, which takes Brossard’s quote as a springboard for reinventing Sappho’s lost poems, Helen of Troy and Paris as lesbian lovers, and the works of H.D., Virginia Woolf, and Christa Wolf.
The Beatrice Bain Research Group at the University of California, Berkeley, has issued this Call For Applications.
The BEATRICE BAIN RESEARCH GROUP (BBRG) is the University of California, Berkeley’s critical feminist research center, established in 1986 to support and coordinate feminist scholarship across disciplines. The BBRG is particularly interested in enabling research on gender in its intersections with sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, nation, religion, postcoloniality, globalization and transnational feminisms.
THE BBRG SCHOLARS IN RESIDENCE PROGRAM
Among its programs and activities, the BBRG has a Scholars In Residence Program. Under the auspices of this Program, each year the BBRG hosts a new group of approximately fifteen competitively selected scholars from the U.S. and abroad for a period of one academic year. (For periods of a few weeks to one semester, please see the BBRG’s Affiliated Scholars Program http://bbrg.berkeley.edu/affiliated.html ).
The BBRG Scholars In Residence Program is open to senior and junior faculty (tenured and untenured), visiting scholars, postdoctoral scholars
and independent scholars, from any country, whose work is centrally on gender and women. Applicants must have received their Ph.D. at least one year prior to the projected beginning of their residency at BBRG.
The BBRG provides its Scholars In Residence with the following: visiting scholar status at University of California, Berkeley; access to University of California, Berkeley libraries and library privileges; a library orientation session customized for the purposes of the Scholar In Residence’s research; the possibility of University of California, Berkeley student research assistants; shared office space; shared computer and internet access; a BBRG Scholars Writing/Reading Group which meets bi-monthly; and a forum for BBRG Scholars In Residence to present their scholarly or creative work to the Berkeley campus community and the public.
Scholars are expected to be in residence from September 1, 2010 to May 15, 2011, but are also welcome to remain in residence throughout the summer of 2011 if they wish. From September 1, 2010 to May 15, 2011, scholars are expected to attend the bi-monthly BBRG Scholars Writing/Reading Group meetings and other BBRG events.
The BBRG is non-stipendiary, and thus Scholars in Residence provide their own financial support during the residency. There is a $200 affiliation fee which scholars accepted to the BBRG Scholars In Residence Program must pay to the Visiting Scholar Office at University of California, Berkeley. In addition, non-U.S. scholars must pay for all J-1 visa application fees both at University of California, Berkeley and in their home countries. These fees can exceed $600 and are non-refundable. It will take 2-3 months to process your visa documents. Please plan accordingly. Also note that all visiting scholars must show proof of funding of at least $1600 for each month of their stay.
BBRG SCHOLARS IN RESIDENCE
PROGRAM APPLICATION GUIDELINES
Three copies of the materials listed below are due on March 15, 2010. Please submit all materials in English (with the possible exception of supporting materials and reference letters for international scholars, see below). Unfortunately, late or incomplete applications can not be considered. Please send all materials to the following address:
Professor Paola Bacchetta, BBRG Director
Applications/ BBRG Scholars In Residence Program
Beatrice Bain Research Group
616 Barrows Hall
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720-2050
For more information see here.
Christine Corcos
Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy has issued an intriguing call for papers, which follows below:
4. Animal Others Special Issue
Volume 27 Number 3, Summer 2012
Guest Editors: Lori Gruen and Kari Weil
We are soliciting papers for a special issue of Hypatia on Animal Others. Scholarship in”Animal Studies”has grown considerably over the last few years, yet the feminist insights that much of this work borrows from and builds on remains relatively unrecognized. This special issue of Hypatia will remedy this by showcasing the best new feminist work on nonhuman animals that will help to rethink and redefine (or undefine) categories such as animal-woman-nature-body. The issue will provide the opportunity to re-examine concerns that are central to both feminist theory and animal studies and promote avenues of thought that can move us beyond pernicious forms of othering that undergird much human and non-human suffering.
We are interested in submissions from a wide range of feminist perspectives. Possible topics might include, but are not limited to:
• non-human animals and intimacy/affection/love/domestication
• gendered ethics and the politics of animal rights discourse and activism
• racial, gendered, and cultural conflicts about eating animal bodies/using animals
• animals and”nature”/ animals in”culture”
• the significance of gender differences in the study and/or care of non-human animals
• violence against women and violence against animals
• material feminism and companion species
• pet love and the boundaries of kin, kind, and sex
• technologies of seeing or the gaze of/on sex and species
• otherness, empathy, and animal care ethics
• the woman and the animal – pitfalls and strategies of essentialism.
Deadline for submissions: March 15, 2011
Submission guidelines: Papers should be no more than 8000 words, inclusive of notes and bibliography, prepared for anonymous review, and accompanied by an abstract of no more than 200 words. For details please see:http://depts.washington.edu/hypatia/submission_guidelines.shtml. Please submit your paper to: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/hypa. When you submit, make sure to select”Animal Others”as your manuscript type, and also send an email to the guest editor(s) notifying them of the title of the paper you’ve submitted: Lori Gruen:lgruen@wesleyan.edu; Kari Weil: kweil@wesleyan.edu
-David Cassuto
(cross-post from Animal Blawg)
The University of Baltimore School of Law’s Center on Applied Feminism will host its Third Annual Feminist Legal Theory Conference on March 4-5, 2010. The theme of this year’s conference is Applied Feminism and Marginalized Communities. A full conference schedule can be found here. Thursday’s pre-conference workshop will give participants the opportunity to grapple with what a “neofeminist” agenda might look like. Friday’s keynote speaker is the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Sheryl WuDunn, co-author of Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. Register here. We hope to see many of you in Baltimore on March 4!
Leigh Goodmark
You are a military judge. According to a female Marine, one day she was working in an ammunition magazine with a United States Marine Corps Corporal when she began to “freak out” upon discovering that she had a bug on her shirt, and the Corporal told her to come over to him and he would help her get it off. The female Marine alleged,
I turned around, walked very quickly back to [the] Corporal….He was sitting on a few cans of ammunition logging in the docs still, and he said, bend down, I’ll get it. So I bent at the waist towards [the] Corporal…, he then grabbed my shirt and my skivvy blouse-or my skivvy shirt and my cammie blouse, pulled it down and said mmmm-mmmm-mmmm.
The Corporal has been court-martialed for indecent language under Article 134, Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), which states that an individual is guilty of “indecent language,” provided that
(1) That the accused orally or in writing communicated to another person certain language;
(2) That such language was indecent; and
(3) That under the circumstances, the conduct of the accused was to the prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces or was of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces.
The Corporal claims “that the evidence is legally insufficient to support the charge of indecent language” because “the sound ‘mmmm-mmmm-mmmm’ is just that-a sound or an utterance, and does not constitute language as contemplated under the offense of indecent language.” He correctly claims that all your court’s prior opinions “discussing the offense of indecent language have only involved ‘words.'” How do you rule? In United States v. Green, 68 M.J. 266 (U.S. Armed Forces 2010), the judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces ruled that the evidence was legally sufficient, and I agree.
Professor Diane M. Quinn
The Windsor (Ontario) Star reports here on a psychological study by Professor Diane Quinn (Psychology, UConn) and others of the impact on women’s behavior of visual assessments (aka, getting “checked out”):
Though it’s impossible to know the weight of a stare, scientists now have a good idea of its crushing force : in particular, on women who think they’re being sexually objectified.
In experiments with more than 200 people, researchers discovered that when a female believes her body is being sized up by a male, she’ll diminish her presence by speaking less. When a male believes a female is eyeing his physique, however, no such effect occurs.
The study, published this month in the journal Psychological Science, explains that our culture has so taught women that they’re judged on appearance that they’ve come to evaluate themselves that way, ultimately self-objectifying.
“Women actually become object-like in that they stop talking and expressing themselves,” says study co-author Diane Quinn, associate professor of psychology at the University of Connecticut.
Study participants were given two minutes to introduce themselves via closed-circuit camera to an unseen partner, with researchers explaining that they’d be filmed in one of three conditions: audio only, from the neck up, or from the neck down, and all under the pretext of a communication exercise that examined social interaction through the lens of facial expressions, body gestures and vocal cues.
In the body-focused condition, women talked, on average, for just 84.9 seconds when they thought their partner was male, but for the near-full 111.9 seconds when told their partner was female. Researchers note that this shows “it was a male’s gaze, and not simply any gaze, that affected women’s presence.”
By contrast, men subjected to having their bodies filmed reduced their talk-time, on average, by just one second : from 117.8 to 116.8 : when they thought their partner was of the opposite sex.
The results of the full study are described in the paper by Tamar Saguy, Diane M. Quinn, John F. Dovidio and Felicia Pratto, “Interacting Like a Body: Objectification Can Lead Women to Narrow Their Presence in Social Interactions.” The paper is available here in PDF.
H/T Kaimi Wenger.
-Bridget Crawford
In today’s New York Lawyer (here; subscription site — sorry), the Rodent strikes again with a very funny description of the annual ritual of the law firm “retreat”:
Once a year, BigLaw packs its bags and goes off to the Firm Retreat….The Firm Retreat serves many purposes, all of which are of great importance to firm management (but no one else): renewing old friendships and making new ones, relieving the stress of the legal life, passing on firm culture and, of course, further swelling the already bloated egos of the leading partners. * * *
[T]here is always plenty of humiliation of the unintentional variety. This entertainment is usually fueled by alcohol. * * * No Firm Retreat is successful or even complete without some whiff of sexual peccadillo. These can range from surreptitious (and pathetic) snuggling by a middle-aged partner in the back seat of a car crowded with”young ones”to overt (and ridiculous, if odious) propositions by the truly inebriated.
Sexual harassment is never ok. And even putting harassment aside, many a lawyer has suffered (at least reputationally) from the off-site (or even in-office) hook-up. With that out of the way, let’s also acknowledge that we all know a lawyer (or two or three or more) who regained a bit of pep in the step from the same.
I see a business opportunity in the legal academy. What if there was a “profs date” database (a la J-Date, Match, eHarmony, etc.) that was conference-specific? Attendees of the AALS Annual Meeting, for example, could register with the service to indicate to their target audience an interest and availability for a few dates, flirtation, whatever.
There would have to be some sort of certification process — no registering unless you are legally single or divorced, morally available, etc. The system would facilitate initial communication between the professors and after that, it would be up to them.
Now THAT is a conference add-on that might increase attendance.
-Bridget Crawford
Inside Higher Ed is reporting that Syracuse University has plans to be the first academic employer (and one of only a handful of employers more generally) to gross up its lesbian and gay employees’ pay to cover a portion of the taxes that they owe on their domestic partner health insurance coverage. (Hat tip to Paul Caron at TaxProf.) The story reports that this decision has generated some controversy on campus.
An associate professor of law and public policy and president of the Syracuse chapter of the American Association of University Professors opposes these benefits. Here is what Prof. Cihon had to say, as reported in the article:
What troubles him, he said, is that the planned $1,000 payments are effectively only available to one class of people — gay employees with partners on benefits — and could never be available to employees married to or in domestic partnerships with people of the opposite sex.
“I appreciate and understand the rationale and intent, but now the employer is treating different people differently, and they are giving additional compensation to some groups because of sexual orientation,” said Cihon. He added that he believes the provision may violate New York State’s human rights statute, which bars sexual orientation discrimination in employment. “This would clearly be discrimination,” he said.
Cihon said that while he and others would have philosophical issues with the proposal regardless of its overall context, it was relevant that it is part of a plan that, in total, will result in many people seeing a reduction in benefits. “They are taking money out of my retirement,” he said.
Let’s provide some context for these comments. As I explain (beginning on p. 8) in a paper that I recently published in theJournal of Legal Education, the problem that Syracuse is trying to address stems from a conflict between a well-meaning employer and a federal government that is overtly hostile to same-sex couples. The university has tried to equalize the pay packages of its employees by providing the same fringe benefits to its lesbian and gay employees that it provides to its heterosexual employees. Through the tax laws, however, the federal government steps in to restore the privileged position of the university’s married heterosexual employees by levying a tax on the university’s contribution to domestic partner health insurance coverage. This tax cost insures that, despite receiving the same nominal pay package as their heterosexual peers, the university’s lesbian and gay employees will take home significantly less pay.
This tax cost is prohibitive and probably contributes to the low participation rate for domestic parter health insurance coverage. For example, I explain in the paper mentioned above that, to add my partner to my health insurance coverage, it would cost me about two and one-half times what it would cost one of my married heterosexual colleagues in the same tax bracket to add a spouse to university health coverage. As a result, even though my health insurance plan is better than my partner’s, we have foregone adding him to my insurance because the extra cost (about $1,800 per year in federal income tax alone) outweighs the benefit of getting him on a better health insurance plan. In the end, these benefits tend to be helpful only where the alternative is purchasing health insurance out in the market on one’s own, where the cost of health insurance can be even more prohibitive. By providing a $1,000 payment to its lesbian and gay employees to cover a portion of the taxes, Syracuse University is attempting to make sure that extending health insurance coverage to domestic partners is more than a mere gesture to its lesbian and gay employees.
With this background, let me explain why I find Prof. Cihon’s comments so profoundly troubling. First, he argues that these payments–which are designed to ensure that the university’s attempt at rectifying discrimination against certain of its employees is both more meaningful and complete–are discriminatory because they won’t be made to the individuals who directly benefited from the past discrimination the university is attempting to rectify. (By way of aside, let’s not forget that, while Prof. Cihon bemoans the availability of fewer dollars for his retirement, the lesbian and gay employees of Syracuse University spent decades getting fewer dollars for performing the same work as their married heterosexual peers, making more dollars available to subsidize the larger fringe benefits packages of heterosexual employees.) But, given the effective pay differential between the university’s lesbian and gay employees and its heterosexual employees, providing the same payment to all employees simply replicates extant discrimination. For example, if there is an $1,800 differential in take home pay between two employees–one gay, one straight–in the 28% tax bracket (as posited above), a $1,000 payment to the gay employee would reduce that differential to $1,080 ($1,800 – $720, which is the $1,000 after payment of tax at 28%). If that same $1,000 payment were made to the straight employee, the pay differential would jump right back up to $1,800 (because the straight employee would see an offsetting $720 jump in his take-home pay). So, the only way to rectify discrimination is by further entrenching it?!?
To be fair, Prof. Cihon does state that he thinks the university should instead lobby for the repeal of the federal income tax on domestic partner health insurance coverage. In fact, there is a provision in the House of Representatives’ health reform bill that would do just that. But the likelihood of us seeing comprehensive health reform, let alone reform that includes such an LGBT friendly provision, grows increasingly dim by the day. Faced with this reality, telling your employees that you are “working for repeal” is of little comfort to those who would take advantage of the benefit, if only the playing field were leveled somewhat.
To my mind, even worse is the fact that Prof. Cihon’s argument also seems to accept the status quo of discrimination as a base line from which we cannot depart. This is probably best illustrated by taking a different, non-sexual-orientation-based example: Women still don’t receive equal pay for equal work. What if Syracuse University were to make a conscious effort to ensure that its female employees were paid the same as its male employees by increasing their pay to eliminate any vestige of gender discrimination? That, too, would leave fewer dollars available for Prof. Cihon’s retirement while attempting to rectify past discrimination. Is that payment discriminatory because it’s not available to the men who benefited from past wage discrimination against women? Put differently, under his argument, is it ever possible to redress wage discrimination because it will always result in some shift in available dollars from the group that benefited from discrimination to the group that was the subject of the discrimination? The implications of Prof. Cihon’s argument are simply untenable.
-Tony Infanti
Looking at the professional articles (not student notes) published by the Illinois Law Review in years 2007, 2008 and 2009, I count:
In other words, 13.88% of all articles published by the Illinois Law Review during this period were written solely by women. 17.77% of all authors published by the Illinois Law Review during this period were female.
Happenstance? Maybe. But by asking the questions and examining the article selection process, one can arrive at a more informed answer.
In Of Authorship and Audacity: An Empirical Study of Gender Disparity and Privilege in the ‘Top Ten’ Law Reviews, Minna Kotkin studies authorship by gender in 15 “top” law reviews over a 3-year period. She finds that the percentage of female authors in this group is 20.4%, suggesting “there is at least the possibility of gender bias.” Kotkin compares this to the percentage of tenure-track teachers who are female (44%).
Comparing my results to Professor Kotkin’s, Illinois publishes even fewer women than the average journal in her study, and that average journal didn’t publish female authors at a rate even close to their percentage of tenure-track faculty.
This “Where are the Women” series is very discouraging. Is any journal listening?
-Bridget Crawford
Six members of the Sigma Gamma Rho sorority at Rutgers-New Brunswick have been arrested and charged with aggravated hazing. According to one local news source (here), the hazing consisted of paddling and restricting pledges’ food intake. According to the New York Post (here), one of the seven alleged victims was hospitalized after being hit 201 times and denied food over an 8-day period.
The sorority’s national organization has issued a statement (here), saying that hazing is “stricly prohibited” and “inconsistent with the principles of the sorority.” The national organization has pledged to cooperation with Rutgers.
Sigma Gamma Rho was established in 1922. Its self-described mission is “to enhance the qualifty of life within the community. Public service, leadership development and education of youth are the hallmark of the organization’s programs and activities.”
The difference strand of feminist legal theory highlights the ways in which men and women are different in their approaches to moral reasoning, among other things. This incident reminds me of how similar men and women are. Women can be violent and cruel, just as men can. Violence and cruelty are inconsistent with the principles of humanity — not just sorority.
-Bridget Crawford
From here:
All Tech contributor Omar Gallaga wrote a great post about rejected names for Apple’s new tablet computer, but I know he didn’t see the iPad coming! Good thing Mad Tv did way back in 2006.
I’m assuming there were no women on the naming team at Apple. Because, hey, when women hear or read the word pad, we think Kotex and cramps. I wouldn’t mind the name so much if I could buy one at my local CVS.
–Ann Bartow
Stop Porn Culture: An International Feminist Anti-Pornography Conference June 12-13, 2010 Wheelock College, Boston MA
In March 2007, over 500 people gathered at a conference in Boston to help re-ignite a progressive and feminist movement against pornography. The second national conference will once again bring together activists, academics, researchers, survivors, parents, and other concerned community members to continue developing our anti-pornography analysis and building our resistance movement. Come and join for two days of keynotes, workshops, and discussion. Speakers include Wendy Maltz, Gail Dines, Chyng Sun, Rebecca Whisnant, Jane Caputi, Sharon Cooper, Robert Jensen, and Carolyn West.
Presentations and workshops include:
• The pornification of our culture
• Racism in pop culture and pornography
• Local, national, and international organizing
• Porn and capitalism
• Legal strategies against porn
• The sexualization of children
• Compulsive pornography use
• Hooking up: the porn culture on campus
For more information and to register please go to: http://stoppornculture.org/conference/
-Posted by Bridget Crawford
When a lesbian or gay man ended a straight relationship in Pennsylvania, the case law regarding the award of custody of any children of the relationship had for decades been overtly hostile to the lesbian or gay man. In Constant A. v. Paul C.A., 496 A.2d 1 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1985), a panel of the Pennsylvania Superior Court held that, though homosexuality was not a per se basis for denying visitation or partial custody, it was always a relevant consideration in making custody and visitation decisions. Where each of the parents was in a relationship, the heterosexual parent’s”traditional”(whether marital or nonmarital) family environment benefited from a”presumption of regularity.”In contrast, the lesbian or gay parent had to prove that there was no adverse effect on the child from his/her same-sex relationship, creating a presumption against custody or visitation for the lesbian or gay parent. This standard was later applied in Pascarella v. Pascarella, 512 A.2d 715 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1986), to uphold an order granting a gay father partial custody of his children, but restricting him from visiting with his children in the presence of his same-sex partner. But, in Blew v. Verta, 617 A.2d 31 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1992), the court held that other people’s reactions to a mother’s lesbian relationship could not, alone, serve as a basis for restricting her custody.
All of that has now changed for the better. In an en banc decision, the Pennsylvania Superior Court has now overruled these earlier decisions. In M.A.T. v. G.S.T., 2010 Pa. Super. LEXIS 13 (Jan. 21, 2010), the court stated in no uncertain terms:
[W]e overrule both the holding and the reasoning in Constant and its progeny (including Pascarella and Barron), and conclude that a homosexual parent bears no special evidentiary presumption in a child custody case. . . .
[I]n establishing an evidentiary presumption against a parent involved in a homosexual relationship, the three-judge panel in Constant violated the basic precept that the sole focus of a child custody proceeding should be on the best interests of the child — without either parent bearing the burden of proof. Moreover, Constant‘s evidentiary presumption is based upon unsupported preconceptions and prejudices — including that the sexual orientation of a parent will have an adverse effect on the child, and that the traditional heterosexual household is superior to that of the household of a parent involved in a same sex relationship. Such preconceptions and prejudices have no proper place in child custody cases, where the decision should be based exclusively upon a determination of the best interests of the child given the evidence presented to the trial court. (Footnotes omitted.)
For some time now, the Pennsylvania courts have been relatively good at handling legal issues involving lesbian and gay families. For example, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has interpreted state adoption law to permit second-parent adoptions, and it has applied the in loco parentis doctrine to allow a former same-sex partner with no legal connection (e.g., through birth or adoption) to a child of the relationship to nonetheless obtain custody or visitation. This has resulted in a significant dissonance between the advancing state of the law concerning the breakup of lesbian and gay families and the stagnant (notice that Constant and Pascarella both date back to the 1980s) state of the law concerning the breakup of a relationship between a man and a woman, one of whom happens to be lesbian or gay. Though long overdue, the decision in M.A.T. begins to bring these two areas of family law into line by overruling antiquated cases that had placed the focus in child custody cases not on what is best for the child involved, but on expressing hostility toward lesbians and gay men.
-Tony Infanti
by Tom Wayman
From: The Astonishing Weight of the Dead. Vancouver: Polestar, 1994.
Question frequently asked by
students after missing a class
Nothing. When we realized you weren’t here
we sat with our hands folded on our desks
in silence, for the full two hours
Everything. I gave an exam worth
40 per cent of the grade for this term
and assigned some reading due today
on which I’m about to hand out a quiz
worth 50 per cent
Nothing. None of the content of this course
has value or meaning
Take as many days off as you like:
any activities we undertake as a class
I assure you will not matter either to you or me
and are without purpose
Everything. A few minutes after we began last time
a shaft of light descended and an angel
or other heavenly being appeared
and revealed to us what each woman or man must do
to attain divine wisdom in this life and
the hereafter
This is the last time the class will meet
before we disperse to bring this good news to all people
on earth
Nothing. When you are not present
how could something significant occur?
Everything. Contained in this classroom
is a microcosm of human existence
assembled for you to query and examine and ponder
This is not the only place such an opportunity has been
gathered
but it was one place
And you weren’t here
___________________________
See also: “Did I Miss Anything?” FAQs, where you learn stuff like this:
Because of the anger and hate in the poem’s sarcasm, the poem–to my surprise–has become a favorite with teachers at all levels, and is the most widely reproduced of everything I’ve written and published during the past 35 years. The poem has been in countless teachers’ newsletters, and on innumerable course outlines, and posted on office doors, office walls, and teachers’ staffrooms. One college teacher friend of mine who used it on a course outline had a student come up to the front after the class in which the outline was handed out. The student complained that the poem couldn’t have been written by anybody called “Tom Wayman”, because his math teacher in high school had handed out the poem, and the teacher said the poem was written by Anonymous. One bootleg version of the poem circulates on the Internet formatted as centered (like a wedding invitation) and another version has the poem written out as a block of prose (no line breaks or stanza breaks).
(Thanks to the awesome Susan Franck for the pointer.)
–Ann Bartow
By Sam Berg, excerpted from here:
Published in Rain and Thunder: A Radical Feminist Journal of Discussion and Activism
Winter 2010, Issue #45
“Hi: I’m a writer at The Oregonian in Portland, working on a story about the sex culture in Portland and Oregon. I’m trying to find someone who can talk a bit about the anti-porn movement in the region.”Three hours later we began a tense conversation. In between his email and the agreed-upon time for me to call I jotted down a few bullet points, then promptly forgot to reference them once our conversation found a lively cadence.
He began appropriately enough by probing my credentials. A true radical, I hold no pornstitution-specific degree and work an unrelated day job. His dissatisfaction oozed through the phone. As usual, I referenced loved ones whose lives were ruined (some lives ended) while intimating a reluctance to go into grisly detail and reiterated my years doing on the ground activism.
His first question took the well-worn,”See, she likes it”approach in which a local stripper celeb of the alternormal weekly scene was mentioned and I was asked to catfight respond to Viva Las Vegas’s porn approval. Fortunately, I don’t need bulleted notes to keep men’s demand for pornstitutes front and center, so I flew over Vegas with a prelude about not caring if every employee of Fox News loves their job when the social content of their media is harmful.”Viva Las Vegas”, I said,”is a rational actor making the best decisions for herself. Men who take her picture and choose to caption it,”Dumb cumslut whore”are irrational.”
That’s unprintable in a daily newspaper. The portion of my answer I presumed might make it to print was,”It’s easy to talk about sex, everyone wants to write and talk about sex and the results are all around us. People don’t like to talk about rape for very understandable reasons.”
Moving on from me countering one woman’s opinion, he tells of the time he covered a BDSM conference and spoke to lots of women attendees. He wanted to know what I thought of that. What I thought was he had stopped talking about pornography and was asking me to judge women’s private behavior. From his first question to his second, the logic was a woman-centered loop where so long as some of three billion women can be found to disagree with some other of the three billion women then postmodernist subjectivity wins over the historical miasma of misogyny.
But what people do in their bedrooms is very different from the content and effects of public masturbation media. Once pornographers film, package, market, and put those images into my world I have a responsibility to engage the messages they send.
As if he didn’t hear me, he went on describing how women lined up around the corner for one of the BDSM workshops and when he talked to them they unanimously claimed to love it. Politesse went out the window as I tried to pop him out of his man-invisibilizing rut,”Did you ask any men attending the conference why they liked BDSM?”A slight pause, then a quiet”no”whispered into my ear.
I continued,”Did you ask any man, ‘Why, when you call a woman a bitch, does it give you an erection?'”He guffawed with thick aspiration at the preposterous question, and I kept clinically serious as I drove though his nervous laughter to remind him that BDSM relies heavily on gender-based insults as abuse.
Here he interjected that he has read some Dworkin, and I gave kudos for going where few men are bold enough to go. Dworkin was his segue into devil’s advocating that maybe sex is supposed to be about letting go of conscious thought and giving in to politically incorrect instincts. I made a joke about unexamined lives and the purported quality of living them before sliding into a somewhat froufrou answer about whole person integration and ethical responsibility not ending at the bedroom door. My aim was to give an answer affectedly pretentious enough to squeak into the final article.
By this point nothing unpredictable had occurred. Nothing unpredictable would continue. …
Northeast Regional Law and Society Meeting October 1 and 2, 2010
Amherst College
Invitation and Call for Participation
You are cordially invited to participate in the third Northeast Regional Law and Society Conference which will be held at Amherst College on October 1 and 2, 2010. This meeting is intended for law and society scholars from New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
We have designed this conference to bring together faculty and graduate students from the region’s diverse community of law and society scholars for two days of intellectual exchange and community building. We hope to provide a collegial, informal, and small setting in which to explore law and society as a field, to introduce scholars to the field, to discuss areas in which our research agendas need to be developed, to engage debates about the various theories which animate our work, and to establish an intellectual forum for sustained and engaged conversation. The meeting will provide the occasion for a lively mix of small group discussions, presentations, debates, and social gatherings, all designed to encourage spirited dialog and collegial conversation. We envision that the meeting will draw about 70 people.
More details and registration form after the jump.
Five articles. Zero written by women.
Three student notes. Two written by women.
Gender balance can be a conscious choice.
-Bridget Crawford
While both lawyers and psychologists have been aware of the role of stereotypes in discrimination, there is little literature addressing the legal status of stereotypes as gender discrimination. Gender Stereotyping makes a substantial contribution to the field by bringing the insights of psychology to bear on the legal approaches in a sophisticated way.”:Susan Williams, Walter W. Foskett Professor of Law, Indiana University
Drawing on domestic and international law, as well as on judgments given by courts and human rights treaty bodies, Gender Stereotyping offers perspectives on ways gender stereotypes might be eliminated through the transnational legal process in order to ensure women’s equality and the full exercise of their human rights.
A leading international framework for debates on the subject of stereotypes, the Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, was adopted in 1979 by the UN General Assembly and defines what constitutes discrimination against women. It also establishes an agenda to eliminate discrimination in all its forms in order to ensure substantive equality for women. Applying the Convention as the primary framework for analysis, this book provides essential strategies for eradicating gender stereotyping. Its proposed methodology requires naming operative gender stereotypes, identifying how they violate the human rights of women, and articulating states’ obligations to eliminate and remedy these violations.
According to Rebecca J. Cook and Simone Cusack, in order to abolish all forms of discrimination against women, priority needs to be given to the elimination of gender stereotypes. While stereotypes affect both men and women, they can have particularly egregious effects on women, often devaluing them and assigning them to subservient roles in society. As the legal perspectives offered in Gender Stereotyping demonstrate, treating women according to restrictive generalizations instead of their individual needs, abilities, and circumstances denies women their human rights and fundamental freedoms.
–Ann Bartow
Over at Alternet Vanessa Richmond asks: “Why Do People Want to Have Sex with the 9-Foot Tall Natives in ‘Avatar’?” But by “people” she clearly means men. Here is an excerpt:
James Cameron’s comments in interviews suggest the reaction is actually pretty vanilla, and by design.
Early designs for the Na’vi”were much more alien,” according to Cameron, the creator and director of the movie. In the early drawings of Neytiri, the young female love interest,”she had fins on her back and gills and all kinds of weird protuberances and so on in odd places.”
The beta testing went something like this:”We just kept asking ourselves:basically, the crude version is: ‘Well, would you wanna do it?’ And our all-male crew of artists would basically say, ‘Nope, take the gills out.’ It was pretty simple.”
In other words, Neytiri was created to be a sex fantasy. As one of my male friends said, it’s as if they took Gisele Bundchen and made her even taller with longer legs, and elongated her already slim waist, which is a super signal to the male, of fertility.
Any similar effort to make any of the characters appeal to women? Did Richmond even care enough to ask? She does quote a couple of women in the piece, as follows:
“The only thing i can think of after seeing Avatar is ‘when are they gonna make avatar porn?’ wrote one person on Texts From Last Night.”Is it weird that I found myself thinking of that blue chick from Avatar while [my girlfriend] gave me head after the movie?”wrote another.”lol. im a girl and i agree. i would les out for Neytiri, but i want Jake :)” responded another.
The gender of “one person”? Not clear, though statistically one might assume male, as I suspect the reader is supposed to do. Is “im a girl” really female? Who knows.
Richmond also informs us that the big eyes are sexy because remind folks of babies:
Even the blue part isn’t so strange. As a female friend of mine said, blue is everyone’s favorite color. It’s like water. It would be different if they were diarrhea-colored or yellow or something. That smart friend also said the eyes are key:the Na’vi have big eyes like a baby’s, a creature we’re programmed to find irresistible.
Why does she point out the gender of the source of the observation, her “female friend”? Is it because if she just said “a friend” we would assume she meant a man?
–Ann Bartow
ETA: On a related note, if the “aliens” are not mammals, why do the females have breasts? Rhetorical query, obviously. It is addressed in this essay as follows:
But then, on the absolute other side of the coin is Playboy’s interview with Cameron, which delves into the hotness of the movie’s female stars. And breasts. When asked whether he designed Neytiri specifically to appeal to guys, Cameron replies,”And they won’t be able to control themselves.”(I guess that means yes.) A lot of that appeal, according to Cameron, started with the decision to give the character breasts : even though the Na’vi aren’t mammals.
It’s a tiny passage in a very long interview, but it struck me, I’m sure in part because I’ve read”The Cancer Journals”by American poet Audre Lorde. In it, Lorde writes about undergoing a modified radical mastectomy and how doctors, therapists and random people changed their attitudes toward her when she refused to undergo reconstructive surgery or wear a prosthesis. Cameron’s decision to put breasts on non-mammals makes me wonder : in modern film, does a character have to have breasts to be a woman? Does a woman have to have breasts to be beautiful?
ETA Part II, from here:
So, I am sorry to keep going back to the sex thing, but the second that our hero, Jake, finally gets around to doing it with Space Zoe Saldana, she utters the words – with no small amount of seriousness, might I add –”we are mated for life now.”The VERY MOMENT HE GETS IT IN, she says this. Ladies: do you date dudes? Do any of these dudes like Avatar? Do you think that, at any point, you might have sex with a dude who likes Avatar? Because, if so, you need to say this shit during sex. I know I’m going to. I’ll adopt the deep, tranquil, stalkerly tones of mystical communion, give him the zonked-out blue-person googly-eye, all of it. Just to see how quickly he flies screaming out of the apartment, and whether he bothers to put on pants.
Today in SCOTUS Death Penalty jurisprudence: The Supreme Court concluded that a chocolate penis given by the jurors to the judge “raised serious questions concerning the conduct of the trial.” Ya think? See the Supreme Court ruling granting cert. See particularly footnote 3 of the Alito dissent (which Roberts joined):
The main reason for the interviews was to inquire about the gifts, and the proffer shows that the jurors who were interviewed discussed this matter. See, e.g., App. C to Pet. for Cert. 35 (a juror”stated that‘we,’ the jurors gave a pair of chocolate breasts to the bailiff and the chocolate penis just followed”); ibid. (a juror”stated that some of the jurors decided to send a pair of edible chocolate breasts to one of the female bailiffs and an edible chocolate penis to the trial judge”); id., at 37 (a juror”remembered discussion about giving a chocolate penis to the judge”). Nevertheless, petitioner’s proffer includes no information as to why the gifts were given:not even a statement to the effect that the jurors interviewed were asked this question and said that they did not know. Cf. id., at 35 (noting that a particular juror”did not know whose idea it was to send the chocolate penis to the judge,”but not including any representation as to her understanding of why the gifts may have been given (emphasis added)).
–Ann Bartow
photo credit: Paul Martinka
Earlier this month, I blogged (here) about the “No Pants Subway Ride” organized by Improv Everywhere. On my way home from the AALS, I encountered several pants-less riders at the Jay Street Station in Brooklyn. I asked two of them if I could take their pictures for the blog, and then gave them my business card with an offer to send a copy of the picture and a link to the blog post. Later I traded e-mails with one of those pants-less riders, Miriam Rambo (name used with permission). She accepted my invitation to blog about her experiences that day. Here is what the ride was like from her perspective:
About a month ago my parents were in New York visiting me and my younger sister from our northwest home, and showed us these hilarious videos on YouTube by a group called Improv Everywhere. I am no performer so most of their”missions”are way out of my league, but when we saw the”pantsless subway ride”, I thought it was the most hilarious thing I’d ever seen. Genius. In a place like New York, something as light-hearted, carefree and humorous as this, I thought, was brilliant. My sister and I moved to New York very recently, and when we found out that we were just in time for the pantsless subway ride, we knew we had to participate. This would be a story to tell for the rest of our lives.
As a woman, it was an interesting experience, to be sure. I was surprised with how uncreepy people were. I think most either understood that what were doing was meant to make them laugh and lighten moods, or, they thought we were totally whacked and steered clear completely. Of course, there are always one or two people who are going to say something inappropriate, but they were the vast minority.
I think the cops were my favorite – they weren’t really sure what to do – they knew that we weren’t there to harm anyone or cause any trouble, and we weren’t breaking any laws – most couldn’t help but laugh with us, especially when we all convened in the Union Square station- there were HUNDREDS of us. Many of us got great pictures posing with some of the cops – pretty classic.
From what I saw, men took more risks with their choices of undies- which makes sense, since they can basically wear shorts and call it underwear. But for me, that’s kind of what was funny and jarring about doing it – for women, this was such a big thing to”forget”(which is the excuse that many of us gave), so many of us got much more strange looks. For the most part though, women kept their underwear pretty normal (there are always exceptions, of course), so as to illustrate the point that this was to be funny, not offensive or sexually deviant in any way.
Overall, this was an amazing experience. I would do it again in a heartbeat. It was freeing and wonderful to be a part of a group of strangers who are so connected by this light-hearted and fun experiment. I had so much fun. Thank you, Improv Everywhere !
Ms. Rambo’s reflections convey the same sense of joy that the NY Post’s photos (here) do. One of those photos (shown above left) captures Ms. Rambo and three friends enjoying the atmosphere in the Times Square subway station.
-Bridget Crawford
Left: the NY Times image; Right: the original image
From Gothamist:
By yesterday evening the Paper of Record published not one, but two takedowns of women : somewhat unsurprisingly, both centered around weight and penned by the fairer sex. The stage for the scrutiny was the Golden Globes red carpet, which many an actress strolled down on Sunday night.
The first piece, written by Andy Port (yes, a woman), declares that Jennifer Aniston, Courtney Cox and workout queen Kate Hudson have all “put on a little weight.” Though she says they are “sporting sexier curves” she then goes on to say it’s concentrated in their upper arms.
Then, Cathy Horyn decides to take down the gorgeous Christina Hendricks : the Mad Men actress known for her sexy curves… which are decidedly not concentrated in her upper arms. In her piece she writes, “Not pretty Christina Hendricks in Christian Siriano’s exploding ruffle dress. (As one stylist said, ‘You don’t put a big girl in a big dress.’)” Whether you agree or disagree (you disagree, right?), it should be noted that the photo running with Horyn’s piece was most definitely distorted, possibly to (falsely) illustrate her “point.” …
–Ann Bartow
That is the second sentence in this short essay in The Atlantic. Here is an excerpt:
In Haiti … human trafficking is a problem at the best of times. Even without the pandemonium unleashed by a 7.0 earthquake, an estimated quarter-million Haitian children are trafficked within the country each year. These slaves, known as restavecs, are typically sold or given away to new families by their own impoverished parents. Physical and sexual abuse is common for restavecs. Many owners use the girls as in-house prostitutes, sending them to live on the street if they become pregnant.
Not all of these trafficked children end up as domestic slaves within Haiti:plenty of others are promised work in the Dominican Republic but are instead sold to work in agricultural fields or brothels across the border. Poor children who escape a life in bondage most often end up in street gangs; if they are fortunate, they may be accepted into overcrowded orphanages.
–Ann Bartow
Regina Austin (Penn) has posted to SSRN her book chapter, “Women’s Unequal Citizenship at the Border: Lessons from Three Nonfiction Films about the Women of Juárez,” forthcoming in Gender Equality: Dimensions of Women’s Equal Citizenship, edited by Linda McClain and Joanna Grossman. Austin is the William A. Schnader Professor of Law and the head of the Program on Documentaries and the Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Here is the abstract of Professor Austin’s chapter:
There is no better illustration of the impact of borders on women’s equal citizenship than the three documentaries reviewed in this essay. All three deal with the femicides that befell the young women of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico between 1993 and 2005. Juarez is just across the border from El Paso, Texas. Performing the Border (1999) stimulates the viewer’s imagination regarding the ephemeral nature of borders and their impact on the citizenship of women who live at the intersection of local, regional, national and international legal regimes. Señorita Extraviada (2001) is an intimate portrait of the victims which illustrates why the private grief of their survivors should have been a cause for public national mourning. Finally, Battle of the Crosses (2005), the work of social scientists, offers a panoramic description of the complicated social terrain on which the Juárez femicides occurred and their meaning was fought over. Together, the films suggest how borders are constructed and”performed”through law and law enforcement in ways that jeopardize women’s rights as citizens. The films also show how women in turn challenge law and law enforcement to transcend the limitations of social, political, and economic borders and assert their right to equal citizenship.
Confronted with state intransigence in the face of the murders of dozens of young females, the women of Juárez used their traditional female roles as a springboard to political engagement. Overcoming the debilitating effect of class and ethnic marginality, patriarchal mass violence, and governmental corruption and lack of accountability, the women turned back the state’s effort to belittle the murders as private matters and the victims as deserving of their fate. The documentaries together provide a vivid case study that proves the importance of understanding the synthetic quality of borders and their relationship to women’s equal citizenship in a globalizing world where borders can pop up anywhere and at anytime.
The full chapter is available here.
For more on the Juárez murders, see prior posts here, here and here. For the important decision by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, see here.
-Bridget Crawford
Check out this article in the Atlantic Monthly. Here is an excerpt:
… Starting in 2002, Teach for America began using student test-score progress data to put teachers into one of three categories: those who move their students one and a half or more years ahead in one year; those who achieve one to one and a half years of growth; and those who yield less than one year of gains. In the beginning, reliable data was hard to come by, and many teachers could not be put into any category. Moreover, the data could never capture the entire story of a teacher’s impact, Farr acknowledges. But in desperately failing schools, where most kids lack basic skills, the only way to bushwhack a path out of the darkness is with a good, solid measuring stick.
As Teach for America began to identify exceptional teachers using this data, Farr began to watch them. He observed their classes, read their lesson plans, and talked to them about their teaching methods and beliefs. He and his colleagues surveyed Teach for America teachers at least four times a year to find out what they were doing and what kinds of training had helped them the most.
Right away, certain patterns emerged. First, great teachers tended to set big goals for their students. They were also perpetually looking for ways to improve their effectiveness. For example, when Farr called up teachers who were making remarkable gains and asked to visit their classrooms, he noticed he’d get a similar response from all of them:”They’d say, ‘You’re welcome to come, but I have to warn you:I am in the middle of just blowing up my classroom structure and changing my reading workshop because I think it’s not working as well as it could.’ When you hear that over and over, and you don’t hear that from other teachers, you start to form a hypothesis.”Great teachers, he concluded, constantly reevaluate what they are doing.
Superstar teachers had four other tendencies in common: they avidly recruited students and their families into the process; they maintained focus, ensuring that everything they did contributed to student learning; they planned exhaustively and purposefully:for the next day or the year ahead:by working backward from the desired outcome; and they worked relentlessly, refusing to surrender to the combined menaces of poverty, bureaucracy, and budgetary shortfalls. …
–Ann Bartow
Given the ongoing Prop. 8 trial and the debate over same-sex marriage, I thought it would be timely to draw your attention to a paper that I posted on SSRN last fall. The paper is titled “Decentralizing Family: An Inclusive Proposal for Individual Tax Filing in the United States.” Nontax folks, please don’t be deterred by the title! Take a look at the abstract before deciding whether it is worth a read!
Here is the abstract:
The debate in the United States over individual versus joint federal income tax filing is at something of a crossroads. For decades, progressive : and, particularly, feminist : scholars have urged us to abolish the joint return in favor of individual filing. On the rare occasion when scholars have described what such an individual filing system might look like, the focus has been on the ways in which the traditional family must be accommodated in an individual filing system. These descriptions generally do not take into account : let alone remedy : the tax system’s ongoing failure to address the tax treatment of nontraditional families. More recently, scholars concerned with the sexual-orientation-based discrimination that pervades our tax laws have proposed extending joint filing to same-sex and, in some cases, unmarried different-sex couples. But these proposals are equally problematic because they merely widen the privileged circle by extending the tax advantages provided to traditional families to other relationships patterned after the traditional family (and only to such relationships).
Especially in view of the growing complexity of family arrangements in the United States, I find neither of these proposed paths to be desirable. As an alternative, I lay out a third path in this article that has a different, more inclusive destination. Relying on the Canadian experience with individual filing and proposals there to move”beyond conjugality,”I sketch the outlines of an individual filing system that, where appropriate, recognizes all economically interdependent relationships for tax purposes : and not only those that are patterned after the traditional family headed by a married different-sex couple.
The paper can be downloaded here.
-Tony Infanti
The National Women’s Studies Association Journal has a “new name, a new look, and a new Web site,” here.
-Bridget Crawford
From this publication:
… The college, which attracts mainly Asian students, made headlines last October when the police arrested its managing director, the 63 year old American, Glinder T., and two accomplices on suspicion of human trafficking and fraud. The three allegedly lured students to the Netherlands under false pretences where they received scant education. Because of their resulting financial problems they had to take on low-paying side jobs, which the suspects”provided”them. …
**In past FLT workshops we have considered the concept of”Vulnerability,”arguing that it is universal and constant, inherent in the human condition. Further, while vulnerability can never be totally eliminated, society and its institutions confer certain”assets,”such as wealth, health, education, family relationships, or marketable skills that give individuals”resilience”in the face of their vulnerability. Ensuring meaningful equality of opportunity requires that a responsive state monitor access to these institutions, paying attention to and addressing any unequal distribution of privilege, going beyond concern with discrimination based on identity categories. Our shared vulnerability is the basis for claims upon the state.
**In this workshop we will focus on understanding how the relationship between”resilience”and”the state”can be theorized. Thus far resilience as a theoretical concept has been addressed primarily in the disciplines of developmental psychology, terrorism preparedness, and ecology and climate change. These broad fields approach the concept in slightly different ways, but they share an emphasis on hardiness and the ability of individuals to survive despite hardship. Suniya S. Luthar defines resilience as”the manifestation of positive adaptation despite significant life adversity.”Tuppet Yates, Egeland Byron, and Alan Sroufe define resilience as an “ongoing process of garnering resources” that enables successful adaptation when one is confronted with significant transitions, misfortunes, opportunities, or trials in life. When used primarily to describe individuals, resilience is a highly relational concept, emphasizing the importance of understanding individuals within family and community contexts. In its individual emphasis it encompasses more than a catalogue of protective factors. There is recognition that the same individual can display resilience in one circumstance but not another, or at one point in time, but not another. What has not been fully developed, however, is the scope and nature of the state’s responsibility to facilitate the processes of building individual resilience – what is an appropriately responsive state?
** How can feminist law, culture, and society scholars use the concept of resilience to think about existing norms and structures? What is the relationship between those processes and equality? In particular, how should we shape a more responsive state and what would be the implications of doing so for existing institutions such as the family, public education, the workplace, and the financial system?
WORKSHOP CONTACT:
Feminism and Legal Theory Project: Martha L. A. Fineman, Emory University School of Law
SUBMISSIONS PROCEDURE:
Please email a paper proposal of several paragraphs length by February 1st to: mfineman@law.emory.edu and cdomozi@emory.edu
Working paper drafts to be duplicated and distributed prior to the Workshop will be due March 1st.
Courtney Joslin (UC Davis) has posted to SSRN her short article, “The Evolution of the American Family,” published in the Summer 2009 issue of the ABA Human Rights magazine. Here is a portion of the abstract:
This short piece examines the changing meaning of marriage and the family in the U.S. Among other developments, the piece chronicles: the changing role and legal status of women in marriage; race restrictions in marriage; the legal recognition of same-sex relationships; and the increasing numbers of nonmarital families.
The full article is available here.
-Bridget Crawford
Historiann has a review here.
Interview with Jennifer Baszile (including readings from the book) here:
–Ann Bartow
There is so much wrong with this, just the thought of trying to unpack it makes me tired and depressed. Read at your own risk.
–Ann Bartow
From my mailbox, this notice from the NYSBA:
For further information, please contact Colleen A. Roche 646-229-8471
New York State Bar Association Responds to Concerns Regarding
Annual Meeting Panel Presentation by the Committee of Women in the Law
The New York State Bar Association has received concerns regarding a panel discussion organized by the Committee on Women in the Law to be featured during our 2010 Annual Meeting (Their Point of View: Tips from the Other Side, Tuesday, January 26, 2010 at 11:00 a.m.)
Unfortunately, the important objectives of this panel have been overshadowed by issues raised as to the topic description and the composition of the panel.
We have therefore responded by modifying the presentation as follows:
Sharing Their Points of View: Tips from Both Sides
A distinguished panel of attorneys, comprising women and men, will engage in a dialogue about the challenges faced by women in the workplace in the areas of communication, negotiation, mediation, arbitration, organization and management of work, as well as the role of mentoring.
The panel will give specific skill building advice for women to consider in order to strengthen their practice in the above-mentioned areas.
I find the passivity of the NYSBA statement (“important objectives…have been overshadowed by issues raised”) a bit odd. Nevertheless, the panel description, as revised, is a whole lot better than a “distinguished panel of gentlemen from the legal field will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of women in the areas of communication, negotiation, mediation, arbitration, organization and women’s overall management of their legal work.” I therefore rescind my call for a proposed boycott.
-Bridget Crawford
You are a juror in the prosecution of a step-grandfather for lewd conduct with a minor, the minor being his eight or nine year old step-granddaughter, with whom he allegedly had genital-to-genital contact. The step-granddaughter has just testified to sexual molestation by her step-grandfather, including sexual intercourse, occurring on many occasions. Do you infer that the step-granddaughter could not possess the sexual knowledge that she possesses unless her step-granddaughter molested her?
According to the vast majority of courts, you do, and the widespread belief in this largely untested “sexual inference innocence theory” has led to the evisceration of the rape shield rule in many child molestation prosecutions. In his special concurrence in the recent opinion of the Court of Appeals of Idaho in State v. Molen, 2010 WL 90580 (Idaho.App. 2010), however, Judge David Gratton called into question this belief, and this post puts a spotlight on his opinion.
For an interesting observation and an even more interesting back story on the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision not to allow the Prop. 8 trial to be broadcast, see Linda Greenhouse’s post on the Opinionator blog over at the New York Times.
-Tony Infanti
I believe that men can mentor women and vice versa. Mentoring and dialogue across gender should be encouraged in the legal profession. My objections (blogged here) to the upcoming New York State Bar Association Panel are based on the marketing of the panel, not on some belief that women have nothing to learn from men (or vice versa). To the contrary!
Here’s my attempt at a revised description for a panel discussion by men — using the same title and speakers for the scheduled NYSBA panel — that I’d be interested in attending:
Point of View: Tips From the Other Side
Historically, the legal profession has been less than receptive to “outsiders” such as women of all colors and men of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. The ripple effects of many years of exclusion continue to be felt to the present day. Some women critique the contemporary legal profession as perpetuating male models for success. This panel aims to foster constructive dialogue between men and women about their professional roles generally and how women and men can “cross-mentor” each other, in particular. Emphasizing the importance of diverse perspectives, this panel discussion will begin with reflections from seasoned male practitioners who will speak about what the lessons that they believe women and men can learn from each other about communication, negotiation, mediation, arbitration, organization and management of legal work. The panelists will talk about their own experiences mentoring and being mentored by women and men, and provide suggestions for how to better improve communication between men and women in the law office, the local bar and the legal profession.
Zachary Carter, Partner, New York Trial Department Head, former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York
Carey R. Dunne, Partner, Litigation Department, Davis, Polk & Wardwell, LLP
James B. Carlson, Partner, Mayer Brown, LLP
Moderator: Earamichia Brown, Esq., Director of Intake and Intelligence, MTA Office of the Inspector General
-Bridget Crawford
Here are some organizations whose relief efforts are being directed toward women and children in Haiti:
CARE. In a press release (here), CARE’s director in Haiti said, ”Children were still in school when the earthquake hit, so there are many children trapped. It’s horrifying. ‘The slums on the hills have also completely collapsed. We’ve heard of landslides, with entire communities being wiped out.”
The Global Fund for Women issued a solidarity statement here and is accepting donations to its crisis fund for “women’s peace-building efforts and the re-builidng of their organizations and communities.”
MADRE is providing emergency medical supplies through its local partner Zanmi Lasante. More details here.
H/T National Council for Research on Women.
-Bridget Crawford
My family has gotten a lot smaller lately. My mother died in 2004, my father in 2007, and my uncle in 2008. * * *
Atrazine is one of the most commonly detected herbicides in water. A government map of atrazine in the groundwater of agricultural states shows an alarming blotch of bright red throughout western Iowa, where I grew up, and eastern Nebraska, where I currently live. The red depicts the highest levels of atrazine detection in shallow groundwater (over 75%). An EPA monitoring program found that 94 of 136 public water systems tested between 2003 and 2005 had atrazine concentrations above the federal drinking water standard of three parts per billion.
Not to worry, says Syngenta, a major producer of atrazine. * * *
In the end, it might not be atrazine that caused the death of my parents and my uncle. And it might not be atrazine causing breast cancers in midwestern women. Maybe it was DDT. At least one study has found that women with breast cancer are five times as likely to have DDT residues in their blood. Otherstudies have linked pesticides and pancreatic cancer.
No wonder farming is considered one of the most dangerous occupations in the United States. Who knew that farmers’ families, their neighbors, and their neighbors’ neighbors were at risk, too. If we miss this opportunity to delve deeply into the potential link between a widely used chemical and the health of our food producers and their communities, anger:not acceptance:is the appropriate response.
To read Professor Zellmer’s full post, Atrazine, Syngenta’s Confidential Data, EPA’s Review, and the Five Stages of Grief, see here.
-Bridget Crawford
In a cross-posting yesterday, Katherine Franke raised the question of whether same-sex marriage will really help to dismantle stereotypes and transform marriage. For years now, I have counted myself in the camp that answers this question yes. My answer to the question has only become more emphatic now that I have become not only a married same-sex spouse but also a parent. It has been interesting to navigate the typical gender stereotypes surrounding parenting during the time before my daughter’s birth and now that she is finally here with us.
Being a man, it seems that some people don’t really get that I’ve been on leave since my child’s birth to take care of her. Some of the expectations about my general availability for work-related or outside activities that I would normally engage in have not been consonant either with that status (i.e., being on leave) or that caregiving role; for example, should it be any wonder that I didn’t plan to show up to what had been scheduled as a five-hour appointments meeting when my daughter was 2-1/2 weeks old? Each time I politely refuse to do something because I am at home taking care of my daughter (who is sleeping as I write this post), I would like to think that it breaks down stereotypes about gender roles within families. This type of change is never going to come from testimony in a court case or even from a legal decision itself—this type of change only comes from personal interaction. I believe that there is hope that same-sex marriage can be transformational in nature—you just have to look in the right place for the change.
-Tony Infanti
[Update here, as of 1/17/2010]
The New York State Bar Association holds its Annual Meeting January 25-30, 2010 in New York City. The Committee on Women in the Law is sponsoring a program called “Weathering Tough Times: Strategic Planning for Your Practice.” The agenda appears after the jump. It includes an 11:00 a.m. panel entitled, “Their Point of View: Tips From the Other Side,” in which “[a] distinguished panel of gentlemen from the legal field will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of women in the areas of communication, negotiation, mediation, arbitration, organization, and women’s overall management of their legal work.”
I call for all members of the NYSBA to boycott this panel discussion. Yes, the speakers have a right to speak, but we don’t have to go and listen. Men have been telling us FOR YEARS how we don’t measure up. To have a panel of men, endorsed by the New York State Bar Association, discussing our “strengths and weaknesses,” is a regression and an insult to all women in the legal profession.
-Bridget Crawford
image source: allposters.com
There are some nice teaching resources for African-American history at AfroAmericanHeritage.com. Many of the materials are geared more for primary and secondary school students, but there are some especially nice posters that would make for good law school classroom visuals. The “Black Women of Achievement” poster series caught my eye. It includes posters of Shirley Chisholm and Barbara Jordan (thumbnail at left).
Other resources that might be helpful for faculty and students are the African American Biographical Database and the International Index to Black Periodicals.
-Bridget Crawford
