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Feminism, Law, and Social Change: An Overview
... Many third wave feminists feel that storming the legislature is not always the best way to have your demands heard by state actors, particularly in the current neo-liberal climate. Regardless, fights persist within and between feminist organizations about a number of issues "traditional" roles, could account for a reason why some argue the first wave of feminism moved "underground" after securing the right to vote (Walby, 1997, as cited in Chunn, Boyd, & Lessard, 2007). 49 This resembles struggle between feminists and REAL Women who think that mainstream second wave feminists ignore the role of women in the private sphere when in fact they also pushed for recognition of women"s work in the home (more on REAL Women below). ...
... Efforts by feminist anti-violence advocates to work with MPPs to establish gender-sensitive domestic violence legislation in Ontario and attempts by men"s rights advocates to resist such legislation, builds upon more than a century of feminist activism, resistance and political negotiations. It is important to address the context in which feminist discourses became embedded in policy, particularly during the 1980s and 1990s at a time when neo-liberal techniques of governance and neo-conservative law-and-order policies were rapidly gaining prominence, the welfare state was disappearing just as quickly, and feminist backlash movements were positioning themselves within these relations of ruling (see Cossman & Fudge, 2002;Chunn, 2006;Chunn, Boyd & Lessard, 2007;Snider, 2006). The following chapter outlines the relationship of "mainstream" 54 feminist movements with the state and demonstrating the paradigm shift from welfare to more neoliberal forms of governance. ...
... For instance, the PC"s attempt at strengthening protective orders through Bill 117 never acknowledged the victims these orders would miss: Aboriginal women in isolated northern reserves, for example, lesbian or gay couples, women who feared the possibility of dual arrest, those economically dependent on their partner and those lacking the language or cultural permission to access legal services (Chunn, 2006;Chunn, Boyd & Lessard, 2007;Comack, 1999;Crocker, 2005;Johnson & Dawson, 2011;McDermott & Garofalo, 2004;McMahon & Pence, 2003;Monture-Angus, 1999;Mosher, 2006;Sokoloff & Dupont, 2005). In fact, the only mention of "othered" victims in Bill 117 itself was in the inclusion of same-sex couples in the definition of those who could access these orders. ...
... 164-165). Following this line of thought, Chunn et al. (2007) argue for the contextualization of backlash, with the need to focus on changes in "content, form, and degree of resistance at specific moments and in particular arenas" (p. 11). ...
Since #MeToo took the Internet by storm in 2017, it has had transnational social and legal ramifications. However, there has been little research on the repercussions of this movement for the ways in which masculinity has been politicized as questions around its meaning and place in gender relations were brought to the forefront of public discussions. Thirteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants from two Western Anglophone men’s groups, one embracing and one opposing feminist ideas. Our findings demonstrate a qualitative shift in contemporary expressions of “backlash” and “masculinity politics” in the #MeToo era compared to their initial formulations in the wake of the women’s and men’s movements of the 1960s to 1980s, shaped by novel tropes and tactics.
... By the end of the 20th century, a number of them had joined the media in asking, as Time did in 1998, 'Is feminism dead?' (Pozner 2003, 32). In Britain, Lynne Segal (1999, 1) wondered whether feminism 'has become little more than a blip in the March of economic neo-liberalism', a point also made for the United States (Epstein 2001) and Canada (Chunn et al. 2007), whereas in Australia, Anne Summers (2003, 6-7) bemoaned the end of 'the national conversation about women's entitlements and women's rights'. Conservative governments dismantled gender equality machinery that promoted legislation and policies in favour of women; required women's services, such as rape crisis centres and domestic violence refuges, to renounce their feminist orientation if they wished to receive continued funding; joined media commentators in condemning feminist organisations as out of date and unnecessary in a 'postfeminist' gender equality age (e.g. ...
Over the last three decades, ‘blaming feminism’ has been a strong thread in two popular debates concerning the women’s movement. The first is the generation debate, between second-wave baby-boomer feminists and the third wave or generation × feminists. Third-wave feminists blame second-wave feminists for sabotaging women’s potential by taking on the mantle of ‘victim’ feminism; second-wave feminists retort that third wavers embrace an individualistic and consumerist approach. In the second debate, the mother wars (mommy wars in the United States), second-wave feminists are blamed for denigrating full-time mothers and telling young women they can ‘have it all’: they can readily combine career and motherhood. This article reviews the debates, with attention to the media’s role and the larger social context in Australia, Great Britain and the United States.
The conclusion considers implications of the findings for understanding the cumulative politics of backlash, postfeminist and feminist men’s movements. The analysis suggests the partial contestation of dominant gender discourses in contemporary narratives of masculinity articulated within and beyond men’s movements. Overall, however, men’s groups, and crisis rhetoric more broadly, tend to buy into restrictive binary notions of gender. Even more promising engagements with masculinity and feminism replicate aspects of hegemonic masculinity, thereby shoring up gender inequalities. The cumulative impact of invoking notions of crisis of masculinity and of employing the masculinity politics model is to reify gender. Gender is more ‘done’ than ‘undone’ by men’s movements. The implications for understanding contemporary masculinity politics are also discussed, including questions around hegemonic and changing masculinities.
As awareness of and frustration with sexism in academia grows, so too do strategies of resistance. This chapter explores the concept of ‘resistance’ in relation to gender-based violence (GBV) in universities. In this context, ‘resistance’ includes work, much of it inspired by a feminist analysis, to prevent GBV, to hold institutions to account and to change university cultures so that they no longer invisibilise or condone GBV. Resistance to such efforts also comes from those who would support the status quo and those critical of the framing of anti-GBV campaigns. This chapter will explore how the ‘backlash’ against feminism and post-feminist equalisation discourses comprises types of resistance to radical attempts to eradicate this form of sexism in the academy.
This article offers a narrative analysis of the two CBC Fifth Estate investigative documentaries about Ashley Smith (“Behind the Wall,” 2010; “Out of Control,” 2010) and juxtaposes the documentary narratives against claims made by feminist criminologists with respect to women’s corrections. Examining the coherent ‘through narrative’ that is constructed in each documentary, we claim that The Fifth Estate uses dominant medicalized conceptualizations of mental illness and mental health treatment to frame the Smith case, leaving questions about the gendered nature of her criminalization, imprisonment and mistreatment unasked. Considering the socio-political context of neoliberal and post-feminist individualism, we argue that The Fifth Estate presents the case in a way that maintains the status quo and may resonate with their national audience, but which also reinforces the pathologization of women prisoners and upholds gendered stereotypes.
This paper explores the role that men’s rights activism (MRA) is playing in a contemporary backlash to feminist anti-rape activism. We engage in a discourse analysis of popular MRA websites to reveal a set of interrelated claims, including: that sexual violence, like domestic violence, is a gender-neutral problem; that feminists are responsible for erasing men’s experiences of victimization; that false allegations are widespread; and that rape culture is a feminist-produced moral panic. We argue that sexual violence is emerging as a new focus of the men’s rights movement, competing with a longstanding emphasis on fathers’ rights. The subject of MRA activism has shifted and is becoming less familial and more sexual. MRAs appear to be using the issue of rape to mobilize young men and to exploit their anxieties about shifting consent standards and changing gender norms.
Feminist struggles against sexual violence have been identified as responsible for the development of a ‘law and order’ state form that constructs women as victims, while further criminalising and disem-powering the marginalised. In this chapter, I consider the complex outcomes of sexual assault law reform in light of recent critiques of what critics have labelled ‘carceral feminism’ (Bernstein, 2007, 2010, 2012; Bumiller, 2008; Gottschalk, 2008; Halley, 2006; Reece, 2011). While a broad objective of this book is to think beyond rape law reform, this task is best accomplished by thinking through law reform as a feminist strategy. Against those who see feminist movements as complicit in the regressive politics of the law and order state, I offer a qualified defence of feminist strategies of law reform.
Conceptualizing "backlash" and "postfeminism" is important to understanding the gender politics of men's movements and men's rights groups. Drawing on the work of relevant (feminist) scholars, I argue for a particular understanding of both backlash and postfeminism and map out a typology intended to help situate different men's movements. The typology distinguishes between backlash, postfeminism, and feminism in terms of the different empirical claims and value judgments relevant to each perspective. Backlash is based on the claim that society disadvantages men rather than women. Gender is seen as political and as requiring a collective, anti-feminist politics. Postfeminism is a fundamentally ambivalent perspective that assumes that gender equality has already been (mostly) achieved. Some feminist ideas are taken for granted, while feminism itself is cast as anachronistic. Gender is depoliticized and feminism becomes an individual lifestyle choice. Finally, feminism, like backlash, assumes that significant gender inequalities exist in contemporary society but sees women as the disadvantaged group. Here, gender is politicized, and gendered inequalities necessitate a collective feminist politics. To illustrate the different perspectives articulated by men's rights groups, I discuss UK fathers' rights group (Real) Fathers 4 Justice, arguing that they alternate between postfeminist and backlash narratives.
The work of feminist empiricists has been critical for producing statistical evidence of women's experiences in language that
speaks to those in positions of power. By creatively reforming traditional tools of social science quantitative researchers
have been able to successfully challenge damaging androcentric depictions of women's lives and realities and bring to public
attention gendered inequalities that were previously obscured and unnamed. This article traces the evolution of feminist influences
on government research tools for measuring women's experiences of male violence and the gradual return to traditional methods
and interpretations that reinforce an individualized and de-contextualized masculinist worldview. Once regarded as an important
breakthrough for public policy, feminist-inspired social science research tools are being dismantled and the results used
once again to support a discourse that de-genders gendered violence.
International laws such as The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) promise a universal system of rights to varied people in varied places. In many Pacific states this has been translated to mean that women should have the same privileges as men to control, possess and use land. This could not be further from the truth as evidenced by women’s experiences in Vanuatu, which bring home the visible and invisible spaces of international law. The insights of legal geographers into the spatialised dimensions of social, political and economic activities, together with those of feminist legal scholars into the gendered nature of law, are invaluable in understanding how some spaces are prioritized while others are devalued. We rely on these insights to uncover the prioritized legal spaces of Vanuatu and to locate them against the lived-in spaces of Vanuatu’s women. Becoming aware of the multispatiality of law is the first step in contemplating a landscape where justice can play a part.
North American scholarship has charted resonances between 1990s legislative and feminist discourse concerning violence against women. Feminist critique of official discourse surrounding the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 suggests that 1990s resonances did not reach the UK: however, an examination of the Hansard debates suggests this under-estimates the influence of feminist discourse. Halley’s discussion of “bad faith” helps to explain both the tendency of feminists to under-estimate their influence and why this matters. A commitment to an understanding of themselves as powerless may encourage feminists to underplay similarities between feminist and official discourse, leading feminists to find only what they expect. Such an understanding gives feminism the capacity to change social life without acknowledging, let alone agonising over, the full range of its distributive effects. This is most troubling in relation to “carceral” feminism, since under-assessment of feminist impact encourages amplification and intensification of the carceral message.
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