Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Law Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

Sick And Tired Of Hearing About The Damn Bathrooms, Colin Pochie Mar 2018

Sick And Tired Of Hearing About The Damn Bathrooms, Colin Pochie

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Gavin Grimm’s struggle to access restrooms which align with his gender identity brought the plight of transgender students to the fore of national consciousness. With it came scrutiny of the judiciary’s historical failure to understand transgender individuals’ place in the law. The trend in cases like G.G. ex rel. Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board and Whitaker ex rel. Whitaker v. Kenosha Unified School District No. 1 Board of Education is reliance on equality theory and the law of sex stereotyping. And yet sex-stereotyping law does not mesh soundly with equality theory. Equality theory eradicates gendered difference—but the law of …


Fucking With Dignity: Public Sex, Queer Intimate Kinship, And How The Aids Epidemic Bathhouse Closures Constituted A Dignity Taking, Stephen M. Engel, Timothy S. Lyle Mar 2018

Fucking With Dignity: Public Sex, Queer Intimate Kinship, And How The Aids Epidemic Bathhouse Closures Constituted A Dignity Taking, Stephen M. Engel, Timothy S. Lyle

Chicago-Kent Law Review

In the name of public health, authorities in San Francisco and New York City pursued the closure of gay bathhouses in 1984 and 1985, respectively. We challenge the dominant historical narrative that justified these closings, and through that challenge, we argue that these closures constituted a dignity taking against gay and queer-identified men. Bathhouses were not simply dens of impersonal anonymous sex. They were critical sites of community development and queer kinship. Many governing authorities neither considered the value of these institutions nor grappled with queer understandings of space, contact, intimacy, and belonging. The debates and the closures that followed …