Gender, Sexualities and Law

339 Pages·2011·3.975 MB·English

by  Jackie Jones, Anna Grear, Rachel Anne Fenton, Kim Stevenson (eds.)

Gender, Sexualities and Law
Bringing together an international range of academics, Gender, Sexualities and Law
provides a comprehensive interrogation of the range of contemporary issues –
both topical and controversial – raised by the gendered character of law, legal
discourse and institutions. The gendering of law, persons and the legal profession,
along with the gender bias of legal outcomes, has been a fractious, but fertile,
focus of reflection. It has, moreover, been an important site of political struggle.
This collection of essays offers an unrivalled examination of its various con-
temporarydimensions,focusingon:issuesoftheoryandrepresentation;violence,
both national and international; reproduction and parenting; and partnership,
sexuality, marriage and the family.
Gender, Sexualities and Law will be invaluable for all those engaged in research
and the study of the law (and related fields) as a form of gendered power.
Jackie Jones, Anna Grear and Rachel Anne Fenton are based at the
University of the West of England.
Kim Stevenson teaches at the University of Plymouth.
Gender, Sexualities and Law
Edited by
Jackie Jones, Anna Grear,
Rachel Anne Fenton and Kim Stevenson
Firstpublished2011
byRoutledge
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Includesbibliographicalreferences.
ISBN978-0-415-57439-6(hbk)--ISBN978-0-203-83142-7(ebk)
1.Women--Legalstatus,laws,etc.2.Sexandlaw.3.Genderidentity--Law
andlegislation.I.Jones,JackieM.
K644.G4592011
346.01'34--dc22
2010050851
ISBN13:978-0-415-57439-6(hbk)
ISBN13:978-0-203-83142-7(ebk)
Contents
Notes on contributors viii
Acknowledgements xii
Introduction 1
PARTI
Theory, law and sex 13
1 Women and the cast of legal persons 15
NGAIRENAFFINE
2 (De-)sexing the woman lawyer 26
ROSEMARYHUNTER
3 ‘Sexing the matrix’: embodiment, disembodiment and the
law – towards the re-gendering of legal rationality 39
ANNAGREAR
4 Vulnerability, equality and the human condition 53
MARTHAA.FINEMAN
PARTII
Representations, law and sex 63
5 The ‘gendered company’ revisited 65
ALICEBELCHER
6 The public sex of the judiciary: the appearance of the irrelevant
and the invisible 79
LESLIEJ.MORAN
vi Contents
7 Sexuality, gender and social cognition: lesbian and gay identity
in judicial decision-making 92
TODDBROWER
8 The gendered dock: reflections on the impact of gender
stereotyping in the criminal-justice system 106
JUDITHROWBOTHAM
PARTIII
Violence, law and sex 119
9 ‘She never screamed out and complained’: recognising gender
in legal and media representations of rape 121
KIMSTEVENSON
10 Gendering rape: social attitudes towards male and
female rape 135
PHILIPN.S.RUMNEYANDNATALIAHANLEY
11 When hate is not enough: tackling homophobic
violence 148
IAINMCDONALD
12 The legal construction of domestic violence: ‘unmasking’
a private problem 161
MANDYBURTON
PARTIV
International violence, law and sex 173
13 Criminalisation or protection?: tensions in the construction
of prevention strategies concerning trafficking for the purposes
of sexual exploitation 175
ANNACARLINE
14 A woman’s honour and a nation’s shame: ‘honour killings’
in Pakistan 188
SHILANSHAH-DAVIS
15 Supranational criminal prosecution of sexual
violence 201
ANNE-MARIEDEBROUWER
Contents vii
PARTV
Reproduction, law and sex 213
16 The strange case of the invisible woman in abortion-law reform 215
KATEGLEESON
17 Third-wave feminism, motherhood and the future of feminist
legal theory 227
BRIDGETJ.CRAWFORD
18 ‘Shall I be mother?’: reproductive autonomy, feminism and
the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 241
RACHELANNEFENTON,D.JANEV.REESANDSUEHEENAN
19 Motherhood and autonomy in a shared parenting climate 255
SUSANB.BOYD
PARTVI
Relationships, law and sex 269
20 A very British compromise?: civil partnerships, liberalism
by stealth and the fallacies of neo-liberalism 271
JEFFREYWEEKS
21 Attitudes to same-sex marriage in South African Muslim
communities: an exploratory study 283
ELSJEBONTHUYSANDNATASHAERLANK
22 Taking ‘sex’ out of marriage in the European Union 297
JACKIEJONES
23 From Russia (and elsewhere) with love: mail-order brides 311
JENNIFERMARCHBANK
Index 325
Contributors
Alice Belcher: Professor of Law at Dundee Law School, Scotland. Alice has
written extensively about company law and corporate governance from a
feminist perspective. Her many publications have appeared in Legal Studies,
Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly and Feminist Legal Studies. She is a non-executive
director of NHS Education in Scotland.
Elsje Bonthuys: Professor of Law at the University of Witwatersrand, South
Africa.Elsje’smainresearchinterestsareinsexualorientation,familylawand
gender law. She has published widely on these areas, including co-editing
Gender, Law and Justice in 2007.
Susan B. Boyd: Professor of Law and the Chair in Feminist Legal Studies at
the University of British Columbia, Canada. Susan teaches and researches in
the fields of family law and feminist legal studies. She is also Director of the
Centre for Feminist Legal Studies, University of British Columbia, Canada.
Her current research involves the shifting conceptions of motherhood within
the law and the changing definitions of legal parenthood.
Todd Brower: Professor of Law, Western State University College of Law,
Fullerton, California, Judicial Education Consultant, The Williams Institute,
UCLA School of Law, California. Todd has published extensively on the
subjectofsexualorientationlaw.In2002–3,hewasanAcademicVisitoratthe
InstituteforAdvancedLegalStudies,UniversityofLondon.Heistheauthorof
two surveys and reports on sexual orientation fairness in the United Kingdom,
published by the Department for Constitutional Affairs (2003, 2005).
Mandy Burton: Professor ofLaw,University ofLeicester. Mandy’s researchlies
in the fields of criminal law, criminal justice and family law with particular
emphasis in police and prosecution decision-making, criminal courts, victims’
rights and domestic violence. She has produced numerous research reports
for UK government departments.
Anna Carline: Senior Lecturer in Law, Liverpool John Moores University.
Anna’smainresearchinterestsareincriminallaw,feministjurisprudenceand
Contributors ix
gender theory. She is currently involved in a research project that analyses
the law of rape and consent to sexual activity.
Bridget J. Crawford: Professor of Law at Pace University in White Plains,
New York, USA. Bridget teaches courses in the fields of taxation, trusts and
estates and feminist legal theory. Her publications include “Toward a Third-
WaveFeministLegalTheory:YoungWomen,PornographyandthePraxisof
Pleasure,” Michigan Journal of Gender and Law; “Taxation, Pregnancy and Priv-
acy,” William and Mary Journal of Women and the Law; and “Tax Avatars,” Utah
Law Review. She is the co-editor, with Anthony C. Infanti, of Critical Tax
Theory: An Introduction (2009).
Anne-Marie de Brouwer: Associate Professor, Tilburg University, the
Netherlands. Ann-Marie has developed an international reputation for
her research in the field of international criminal law and procedure and
human-rights abuses, in particular with regard to victims’ rights. Her
books include Supranational Criminal Prosecution of Sexual Violence and The Men
who Killed Me. She is the Chair of the Board of Mukomeze (Empower Her),
a charitable organisation established to improve the lives of girls and
women who survived sexual violence in the Rwandan genocide.
Natasha Erlank: Professor at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa.
Natasha heads up the Centre for Culture and Languages in Africa research
unit in the Faculty of Humanities. Her interests range from gender, feminist
theory, the history of colonialism and public history to current development
and political debates. Her research interests currently lie in issues of gender,
modernityandnationalisminmainstreamChristianity.Sheisalsoworkingona
majorprojectaroundmemory,experienceandcivicengagementinSophiatown.
RachelAnne Fenton: Senior Lecturer at Bristol Law School,University ofthe
West of England. Rachel teaches courses in medical law and gender and has
published a number of articles on Italian law, rape and sexual assault and
assisted reproduction.
MarthaA.Fineman:RobertW.WoodruffProfessor,EmoryUniversity,USA.
Martha is a leading authority on family law and feminist jurisprudence and is
an internationally recognised law and society scholar. Her most recent work
focuses on the theorisation of vulnerability in relation to political theory. She
is founder of the Vulnerability Project at Emory.
Kate Gleeson: Australian Research Council Fellow in Politics, Macquarie
University, Australia. Kate’s research focuses on modern constructions of sex
andgenderinpoliticalandlegalcontexts,andsheiscurrentlywritingahistory
of abortion politics in Australia.
Anna Grear: Senior Lecturer in Law, Bristol Law School, University of the
West of England. Anna works on theoretical aspects of human rights,
x Contributors
including her recent work problematising the notion of corporate human
rights. She is Founder and Co-Editor in Chief of the Journal of Human Rights
and theEnvironment and has recently publisheda monograph: Re-directing Human
Rights: Facing the Challenge of Corporate Legal Humanity (2010).
Natalia Hanley: Lecturer in Criminology in the School of Social and Political
Sciences at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Natalia has recently
completedan ESRCCASE-fundedPh.D. atthe University ofManchesteron
the impact of street gangs on the work of the Probation Service. She is now
conducting qualitative research exploring the pathways to imprisonment for
Vietnamese Women in Victoria, Australia.
Sue Heenan: Senior Lecturer at Bristol Law School, University of the West of
England. Sue specialises in family law, IVF treatments and some aspects of
criminal justice.
Rosemary Hunter: Professor of Law, University of Kent. Rosemary is a well-
known feminist lawyer who has worked on a range of subjects, including
domestic violence law reform and access to justice. One of her most recent
projects is ‘The Feminist Judgments Project’, involving a group of feminist
legal academics in a new form of applied socio-legal research.
Jackie Jones: Senior Lecturer in Law at Bristol Law School, University of the
West of England. Jackie teaches, researches and writes on equality, violence
against women and marriage, broadly defined. She is currently Secretary
GeneraloftheEuropeanWomenLawyers’Associationandtheirrepresentative
at the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights, Austria.
Iain McDonald: Senior Lecturer in Law at Bristol Law School, University of
the West of England. Iain teaches trusts and equity, contract, and has been
teaching gender and the law for a number of years.
Jennifer Marchbank: Associate Professor in the Department of Gender,
Sexuality andWomen’s Studies at Simon Fraser University, Canada. Jennifer
has written extensively on gender, including Introduction to Gender: Social Science
Perspectives with Gayle Letherby.
Leslie J. Moran, Professor of Law, Birkbeck College. Les is well known for his
research on matters relating to sexuality and the law, criminal justice, vio-
lence and safety, with particular reference to hate-crime and law and visual
culture. He has a keen interest in social and legal theory, and much of his
work is interdisciplinary.
Ngaire Naffine: Professor of Law, University of Adelaide, Australia. Ngaire
has published in the areas of criminology, criminal law, jurisprudence, fem-
inist legal theory and medical law. Her most recent research focuses on the
influence of philosophy, religion and evolutionary biology upon law and the
conceptualisation of the legal person.