Law Commons^™

Differentiating Sex From Sex: The Male Irresistible Impulse, Jane H. Aiken

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The courts have not wholeheartedly embraced the idea of equality of the sexes, and therefore do not attack sex discrimination with the same vigor as they attack racism. Rather, the courts are equivocal about sexual equality and weigh equality less carefully for sex than for race. Color is thought an arbitrary distinction; gender, however, is assumed to be something of substance.

When courts sustain sex discrimination, they generally do not characterize it as such. Rather, differences between the sexes, both real and imagined, are used to justify the gender distinction. It is easy to be hypnotized by the purported differences …