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Full-Text Articles in Law
In Search Of The Reasonable Woman: Anti-Discrimination Rhetoric In The United States, Francis J. Mootz Iii
In Search Of The Reasonable Woman: Anti-Discrimination Rhetoric In The United States, Francis J. Mootz Iii
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This article emerged from my participation in a Symposium addressing global perspectives on the topic, "Anti-Discrimination Discourse and Practices," sponsored by The Jean Monnet Chair of European Law at Cagliari University, Sardinia. The article examines the rhetorical development of the "reasonable woman" standard of hostile work environment sexual harassment under Title VII. I argue that the rhetorical framing of the standard has unnecessarily limited its impact, perhaps to the point of undermining its potential to radically revise our understanding of gender discrimination. I suggest how the rhetorical power of the standard might be recovered.
Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, And Michelle Obama: Performing Gender, Race, And Class On The Campaign Trail, Ann C. Mcginley
Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, And Michelle Obama: Performing Gender, Race, And Class On The Campaign Trail, Ann C. Mcginley
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The 2008 Presidential campaign highlighted three strong, interesting, and very different women -- Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and Michelle Obama -- who negotiated identity performances in the political limelight. Because of their diverse backgrounds, experience, and ages, an examination of how these three women performed their identities and the public response to them offers a rich understanding of the changing nature of gender, gender roles, age, sexuality and race in our culture. This essay suggests that optimism that Obama's race and gender performances may have removed the stigma from "the feminine" may be misplaced, at least when it comes to …
Masculinities At Work, Ann C. Mcginley
Masculinities At Work, Ann C. Mcginley
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This article focuses on the study of masculinities, a body of theoretical and empirical work by sociologists, feminist theorists and organization management theorists. This work, much of which employment law scholars have ignored, studies the role of masculinities, which are often invisible, in creating structural barriers to the advancement of many women and some men at work. Masculinities comprise both a structure that reinforces the superiority of men over women and a series of practices, associated with masculine behavior, performed by men or women, that aid men to maintain their superior position over women. In their less visible form, masculinities …
Women Defenders On Television: Representing Suspects And The Racial Politics Of Retribution, Joan W. Howarth
Women Defenders On Television: Representing Suspects And The Racial Politics Of Retribution, Joan W. Howarth
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This Essay is about Ellenor Frutt, Annie Dornell, Joyce Davenport, and other women criminal defense attorneys of prime time television. It examines how high-stakes network television presents sympathetic stories about women working as criminal defense attorneys while simultaneously supporting the popular thirst for the harshest criminal penalties. Real women who choose to represent criminal defendants are fundamentally out of step with angry and unforgiving attitudes toward crime and criminals. Indeed, women defenders have chosen work that puts them in direct opposition to the widespread public willingness to incarcerate record numbers of Americans, often young African-American and Latino men, for longer …
The Joke In Critical Race Theory: De Gustibus Disputandum Est?, Dan Subotnik
The Joke In Critical Race Theory: De Gustibus Disputandum Est?, Dan Subotnik
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No abstract provided.
Idealism And The Individual Woman: Reading Bessie Head's A Question Of Power, Paul J. Heald
Idealism And The Individual Woman: Reading Bessie Head's A Question Of Power, Paul J. Heald
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In A Question of Power, South African exile Bessie Head graphically illustrates the relevance of gender difference to religion, political philosophy, and human rights. At first glance, the novel is a startling interior view of the psychosis that can result from constant alienation. The madness so painfully described, however, is portrayed as specific to women. And the road from madness -- the rejection of idealism, the rejection of universalism, and the rejection of power -- carries an important message to those seeking to understand the various feminist perspectives on human rights and spirituality. In Head's view, the recognition of …
First And Last Chance: Looking For Lesbians In California's Fifties Bar Cases, Joan W. Howarth
First And Last Chance: Looking For Lesbians In California's Fifties Bar Cases, Joan W. Howarth
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Do all of us who choose members of our own sex as objects of desire and as sexual partners share some meaningful common identity, such as “homosexual,” “gay” or perhaps “queer”? The classifications “homosexual” and “gay” claim for themselves just that kind of inclusiveness; that is, that the gay world includes people of all races, all classes and any possible gender identity. You, me, James Baldwin, Gertrude Stein, J. Edgar Hoover: we are all gay together. In this way “homosexual” or “gay” is a generic term, like, for example, “human being.” But we know that the alleged inclusiveness masks just …
Deciding To Kill: Revealing The Gender In The Task Handed To Capital Jurors, Joan W. Howarth
Deciding To Kill: Revealing The Gender In The Task Handed To Capital Jurors, Joan W. Howarth
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Day after day, across this country, ordinary people are summoned to court for a selection process that ultimately leaves them in a room deciding, with other jurors, whether a criminal defendant should be killed. The task handed to these jurors is an awesome, personal, moral decision, encased within the complex legal standards and procedures that constitute modern capital jurisprudence. The doctrine that created and sustains this moment of conscience reflects an ongoing struggle of rule against uncertainty, reason against emotion, justice against mercy, and thus, at one level, male against female. Capital jurisprudence -- the law for deciding whether to …