Full manuscript draft

Gender Violence, the Law, and Society

This is not an easy book. It's not an easy book to read, andfor both similar and diverging reasonsnot an easy book to write an introduction to. The reason why it is not easy to read is the oftentimes heart-wrenching stories that are at the heart of these authors' well-researched, theoretical arguments. From the personal abuse experienced by women on the Post-Partition Indian Subcontinent, through to the continuing failings of the national legal systems in dealing with cases of rape; from the way the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the already precarious positions experienced by sex workers in Japan, to the microaggressions suffered by gay man of Indian descent in South Africathe topic of gender-based violence is rich in narratives of life-destroying (mental) health-affecting and heartbreaking everyday realities. Though it is essential we talk about and seek solutions to these realities, something the authors in this volume do to an admirable degree, the levels of pain captured in this volume do not make for light reading. As you'll no doubt understand, the writing of an introduction to such a volume comes with its own specific set of challenges. The first of these challenges is geographical in nature. When we first conceived of this volume, it was the combination of narratives from countries that aren't usually represented in volumes produced by British and American publishing houses that got us excited. What I did not sufficiently reflect on at that point was the fact that I, a white, European woman, would be writing this introduction, which puts me in a rather awkward position. I'm very much aware of the privilege my place of birth has afforded me. To have my name on this book, then, and to present these chapters to you, the reader, opens me up to a wide range of potential critiquesfrom orientalism (in my holding up stories from these countries as quaint, different conceptions of familiar experiences) to playing the role of white saviour (in my presenting this volume as seeking solutions to the heartbreaking realities analysed in the chapters). I have no defence against these critiques, other than to say: I am aware of the dangers and pitfalls and have aimed to remain vigilant against

This chapter seeks to interrogate normative notions of at-risk girlhood and violence, offering a roadmap for a broader terminology and reconceptualization of gender in girlhood studies. I argue that studying the knowledge produced by girl-driven activist organizations enables activist-scholars to rethink what constitutes girlhood from a perspective critical of how criminalized, homeless and street-involved, and incarcerated girls and gender non-conforming youth have been disciplined, managed, corrected, and punished as prisoners, patients, mothers, and victims of multiple, interconnected forms of violence through imprisonment, medicalization, and secure care. By showcasing case studies of anti-violence and abolitionist activism that contest sexual violence, colonial state control, and carceral state violence undertaken by girls whose identities stretch far beyond normative gender and racial binaries, I aim to frame a transnational discussion of girls' community activism within and against exclusionary notions of what constitutes girlhood and girls' social justice activism.

Stellenbosch Law Review, 2012

This article reflects on the current trajectory of feminist legal theory from the perspective of popular culture and social discourse. With the use of film theory, literature and entertainment media, the author illustrates how depictions of gender codes and representations of gender relations in popular culture link up with larger questions on sex and gender politics, equality and power. Analysing these issues in terms of the extent to which popular culture reinforces patriarchal prescriptions of women’s identity and contributes to strengthening the culture of male dominance in society, two distinct theories are formulated as possible responses namely, an “ethics of refusal” and a “politics of sisterhood”. The notion of “refusal” as introduced by Karin van Marle is an approach to issues of gender (in)justice and (in)equality that explores the capacity of women to resist male dominance and in turn, problematise the values and norms laid down by the reigning patriarchal order. To connect the refusal of patriarchal conceptions of women’s issues to the refusal of gender power, a “politics of sisterhood” offers a counterweight to the underlying phallocentric conditions and structures that subordinate, exclude and control women. The main purpose of this article is to emphasize the importance of thinking about women’s lives and concrete realities, as experienced under (the) law, in dynamic ways that break from traditional approaches to feminism and gender equality. Refusal and sisterhood are two perspectives that disclose such possibilities for reflecting on women’s struggles for equality, dignity and recognition and on eradicating the vestiges of patriarchy and sexism in our society. In the final analysis, the author argues for more than just legal reform and instead calls for reconciliation between the sexes and genders and a radical transformation of sex and gender relations.

‘The law is a disinterested arbiter. It is informed by the steady development of years of procedural rules and precedent through which it distils and pronounces the truth with neither fear nor favour.’ This statement posits the traditional view of the law as an ideal with an impartial and detached body arriving at objective conclusions through the application of neutral rules without bias. The bone of contention that arises from this statement is twofold. Firstly is the law neutral, and secondly whether or not this neutrality and disinterest produces justice or ‘pronounces the truth’ as the statement suggests. Utilising the work of feminist legal theorists this essay will demonstrate how the law as a discourse is not a neutral entity, but is a power that prohibits other, supposedly inferior knowledge’s. It will outline the difficulties in adjudication that hinder neutrality and the ‘promotion of truth’ by focusing on gender implications of legal rules and practices (in particular how legal rules and practices affect women and how law reflects and constructs gender identities). It will expose and critique the patriarchal nature of substance and methods of law. Whilst suggesting that the concept of laws essential neutrality is a strategy for concealing the role of values in law as submitted by MacKinnon, this essay will also question the desirability of legal impartiality as presently conceived. To better illustrate the matter, this essay will examine how the legal definition of rape takes precedence over women’s definitions and how law manages to retain the ability to arrogate to itself the right to define the true of things despite the mounting challenge of other discourses like feminism. “Law constitutes a plurality of principles, knowledge’s and events, yet it claims a unity through the common usage of the term ‘law. It will reveal how the law fails to ‘pronounce the truth’ when it comes to accounts of rape that do not fit into its narrowly constructed definition.

Feminist Legal Studies, 1999

This paper sets out to read how gender is produced in changes to the law of rape introduced in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 and in critical academic discussions reflecting on these changes. It utilises the work of Judith Butler in order to form an understanding of how the gendered subject is produced in rape law and in academic discussions about rape law. Through Butler's idea of gender performativity, it contends that neither the statute nor the critique of the legal changes (as represented in academic writings) produce any radical 'transformation' in rape law. In neither instance does the law or its critique challenge the normative understanding of gender as the cultural formation of 'sex'. Rather, both discourses sustain and maintain what Butler calls "heterosexual hegemony". As the final section or the postscript of the paper suggests, there are moments in judgements when the identified subject exceeds the marking and exposes the limits of the hegemonic logic. This exposition can serve as an opening in which, as Butler argues, the politics of resistance can create the possibility of an embodied justice. KEY WORDS: Butler, criminal justice and public order, gender, gender performativity, rape laws 'TRANSFORMATION' Perhaps the time has arrived to encourage the kinds of conversations that resist the urge to stake territorial claims through the reduction or caricature of the positions from which they are differentiated. The 'grounds' of autonomy are precisely these sites of differentiation, which are not grounds in any conventional sense. These are rifted grounds, a series of constituting differentiations which at once contest the claim to autonomy and offer in place a more expansive, mobile mapping of power. There is more to learn from upsetting such grounds, reversing the exclusions by which they are instated, and resisting. .. institutional domestication. .. (Butler, 1994, p. 21). 1 In her book, Transformations, Drucilla Cornell states that the word transformation could be taken to mean a ".. . change radical enough to so dramatically restructure any system-political, legal, or social-that the 'identity' of the system is itself altered" (1993, p. 1). She argues, however, that such a radical change, reconfiguring the whole field of sustained 1 The title of this article is partially borrowed from a section of Butler's 1994 article entitled, "The trouble with gender".

Agenda, 2017

Literature on sexual violence shows that in many countries around the world the law is seen as the most significant means to provide sexual security to women. Feminist scholars, however, have recognized the limited utility of the law in deterring perpetrators and protecting women from sexual violence, when the law is interpreted through essentially patriarchal lenses. In this article, using a critical feminist discourse analysis of two legal judgments on rape in Sweden and South Africa, we extend the literature on feminist critique of sexual violence convictions, by focusing on the significant role that religious and cultural values, as well as “ultra-liberal rights” values play in the interpretation of the law and how these negatively impact on women. Our analysis reveals that even when there was space within the law to impose stricter sentences on the perpetrators of rape, the law was interpreted in a way that minimised the trauma that both females experienced, ultimately making the courts an insecure space for women who experience sexual trauma. This can be attributed to either a positivist view of the law, as was the case in Sweden, or the religious and cultural lenses which were used to interpret the law, as was the case in South Africa. In order to address the problem of insecure courts we propose a shift from a legal positivist hermeneutic to a critical feminist hermeneutic. We conclude that this shift must take into account that religion and culture cannot be privatized in societies that claim secularity and that courts need to be aware of the complex relations between religion, culture, and law. We will show that the complex, frequently taken-for-granted gendered assumptions and hegemonic power relations are discursively produced and affect legal judgments. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10130950.2017.1284302

British Journal of Criminology, 2007

The title of this paper is borrowed from a book written by Elizabeth Wilson and published in 1983. It is now almost 25 years since its publication and the purpose of this paper is to consider what has changed and what has remained the same in the intervening years with respect to responding to and dealing with violence against women. In examining the recourse to law as a strategy for responding to violence against women, the paper will consider not only the gains and losses that have been and are incurred by this strategy, but also the problems and possibilities that are inherent within it. In particular, it will consider the extent to which the shift towards cosmopolitan ideals, taking account of ' the other ' anticipated in the recourse to law, can offer an appropriate answer to the question posed by Elizabeth Wilson's book all those years ago: what is to be done about violence against women?

Violence Against Women, 2007

As arrests of girls for violent offenses rose in the 1990s, public concern about adolescent girls' aggression grew around the notion of "girl-on-girl violence." This research brief explores that idea and argues that young women are indeed experiencing violence, but not necessarily from each other, as much as from the effects of racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia, and poverty. Indeed, girls suffer more from "adult-on-girl violence," evidenced by legislators' refusal to fund infrastructure such as housing, jobs, and schools; voter apathy; and the ruthlessness of a highly-profitable prison system. These factors, more than any change in girls' behavior, have combined to usher in the era of the criminalization of social problems.

Since the first reports on gender-based crimes committed during the Yugoslav dissolution war of 1992-1995 and the Rwandan genocidal war between April and July 1994, feminist legal scholars have produced hundreds of scholarly and journalistic works on rape and other forms of sexual violence committed either in peacetime or in conflict situations. New to this body of scholarly literature addressing the legal treatment of rape in the statutory laws of international criminal tribunals, in international and regional human rights treaties, and in a wide range of different domestic penal laws, is this thought-provoking work, edited by Clare McGlynn, professor of law at Durham University, and Vanessa E. Munro, professor of socio-legal studies at the University of Nottingham. The work under review started life as a collection of papers submitted to an international conference marking the 10th anniversary of the landmark judgement of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in the case of Jean-Paul Akayesu, where he was convicted, inter alia, for rape as an act of genocide. This milestone judgement constituted a triumph for feminist legal scholars and activists. It was also a turning point for the international justice system, in general, and for the jurisprudence of the international criminal tribunals, in particular. The editors maintain in their introduction that the aim of this work is to provide the reader with a cross-cultural perspective and a critical evaluation of the latest developments in rape laws embodied in the statutory laws of international, regional, and domestic judicial bodies. Comprised of 22 concise chapters, the work is arranged thematically under four corresponding principal ideas: the theoretical complexities of responding to the wrongs of rape; the relationship between feminist activism and legal reform; the limits of law reform in bringing about social change; and finally, the secondary victimization of rape complainants during the criminal investigation and trial process. Moreover, the editors provide in their introduction a meticulous analysis of these themes and underline the need for a progressive reform of rape law, including reconceptualizing and criminalizing rape in international and domestic laws. Examining feminists’ debates and struggles at the national, regional, and international levels to protect victims and ensure their right to sexual and bodily integrity, they elucidate feminists’ responses to the wrongs of rape, their struggle for legal reform within international and national legal systems, and the challenges that prevent law reform from bringing about real changes. Overall, this book constitutes essential reading in view of its examination of the provisions of domestic and international criminal laws and for its exploration of the similarities and variances between rape in time of peace and in wartime settings. Moreover, by analysing and investigating different fundamental concepts in rape law, it brings together divergent perspectives of leading legal scholars from across the world on international criminal law, international human rights law, and domestic criminal justice systems, thereby moving the rape law reform agenda forward and ensuring appropriate justice for both victims and perpetrators. It is a remarkable, comprehensive work that should be read by legal scholars, jurists, actors in the criminal justice system, law students at all levels, and by those looking to deepen their understanding of the multiple tensions inherent in the shifting legal landscape of rape crime.

International journal of english, literature and social science, 2017

Violence is an act that causes pain, suffering, societal prejudice, humiliation, ostracism, marginalization or even death. Any action carried out intentionally or unintentionally but which affects an individual negatively in an injurious or destructive manner maybe perceived as violence. Violence may be political, social, emotional or religious depending on the situation surrounding a given society. Any form of violence is an abuse of human rights which restricts or denies an individual access to his or her rights in society. Such universal basic rights are rights to live, freedom of thought, speech or religion, freedom of movement, choice, acceptance and security. Unfortunately the girl-child has suffered most in our society, both within the family and other social institutions that are meant to train, educate and socialize her. The girl-child in many African societies, Nigeria not exempt, has been sexually abused, trafficked, denied education, humiliated, oppressed and suppressed. She has been subjected to various forms of gender-based violence such as domestic violence, cultural violence, rape, forced prostitution and forced early marriage. These impinge on the growth, rights and physical well being of the female gender especially the girl child, with huge and grave consequences. The thrust of this paper is to see the extent the girl-child has been exposed to violence, how far she suffers and is still suffering from one form of violence to another. The paper concludes that despite the violence prohibition Act of 2015 the girl-child is still very much subjected to violence and if definite steps are not put into action the girl-child will continue to be deprived of her rights.