‘Politics’ and Academic Feminist Theorising: Reflections on Women's Studies in Asia

When invited by the organisers of the Asia-Pacific Non-governmental Organisation (NGO) Beijing+10 Forum to make a brief presentation on the question of academic feminists and the de-politicisation of feminist theorising, I asked myself: What politics? What feminist theorising? Then I remembered how close the links were between the history of feminism in academe—particularly in the form of Women's Studies—and the women's movement.2 Vina Mazumdar, ‘Whose Past, Whose History, Whose Tradition? Indigenising Women's Studies in India’, paper prepared for the International Conference on Women's Studies in Asia, Seoul, 18–21 October 2000 published in Asian Journal of Women's Studies, vol. 7, no. 1, 2001, pp. 133–53; Carol Sobritchea, ‘Imaging the Future of Asian Women's Studies and Feminist Scholarship’, paper prepared for the International Conference on Women's Studies in Asia, Seoul, 18–21 October 2000; and Tita Marlita and E. Kristi Poerwandari, ‘Indonesian Women's Movement throughout History: 1928–1965’, paper prepared for the International Conference on Women's Studies in Asia, Seoul, 18–21 October 2000, are recent narratives of the development of Women's Studies and its ties to the women's movement in India, the Philippines, and Indonesia, respectively. View all notes Ah, that politics!     

Law’s Vulnerability,and Vulnerability in Law

Vulnerability acts as a touchstone in this issue as we find our contributors reflecting on its intersection with gender and sexuality in different ways. Saeidzadeh draws out the significance of misrecognition in her consideration of responses to transsexuality in Iran, while Doonan highlights the potential pitfalls of relying on situational vulnerability in her critique of anti-trafficking legal discourse in the US. Lindsey considers the legal potential of situational vulnerability as a tool to address the ‘persistent failure to take action against abuse’ in the UK. Durojaye and Oluduro contribute to the recent revitalisation in asking ‘the woman question’ by drawing on African law and literature to flesh out the development of a gender-sensitive, substantive equality approach from the jurisprudence of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights as it addresses vulnerability to violence. The reviewers continue this international conversation as they address recent contributions on sexuality, family formation and social security.     

Mental Health Services for ‘Difficult’ women: Reflections on Some Recent Developments

The provision of mental health services to women has come sharply into focus for providers of secure psychiatric services in the UK. Women's services are being developed in response to the known risks of mixed-sex provision, and a growing appreciation of the ways that women in secure services can be further disadvantaged by their minority status. Our intention here is to present evidence and reflections to help inform this development. The evidence is drawn from our recent work in this field, which includes carrying out a review of local mental health services for ‘difficult’ women, and developing and piloting a national training programme for staff working with women in secure services. The reflections we offer are informed by the conviction that taking social inequalities into account is central to making sense of women's mental health difficulties, and improving service responses to women's needs. While there are signs that many mental health workers in secure services are beginning to share these convictions, the challenge now is to provide the necessary authorization, training and support that will enable them to translate these understandings into empowerment practice with women.     

Battered Women’s Experiences of the Criminal Justice System: Decentring the Law

This article takes up Smart??s suggestion to examine the way the law works in practice. It explores the context of current criminal prosecutions of domestic violence offences in Queensland, Australia. This article argues that legal method is applied outside the higher courts or ??judge-oriented?? practice and that the obstacles inherent to legal method can be identified in the practices of police, lower court staff, magistrates and lawyers. This article suggests that it may be difficult to deconstruct legal method, even by focussing on law in practice, and as a result it may be difficult to successfully challenge law??s truth claims in this way. The analysis of criminal prosecutions of domestic violence offences reported here supports Smart??s earlier findings that women and children who seek redress through the criminal justice process find the process at best ambivalent and at worst, destructive. However, the article also shows how, in the Queensland context, women sometimes find their way to feminism and personal empowerment by going to law.     

Neighbourly Injuries: Proximity in Tort Law and Virginia Woolf’s Theory of Suffering

2012 marks the 80th anniversary of Donoghue v Stevenson, a case that is frequently cited as the starting-point for a genealogy of negligence. This genealogy starts with the figure of the neighbour, from which, as Jane Stapleton eloquently describes, a ??golden thread?? of vulnerability runs into the present (Stapleton 2004, 135). This essay examines the harms made visible and invisible through the neighbour figure, and compares the law??s framework to Virginia Woolf??s subtle re-imagining and theorisation of responsibility in her novel Mrs. Dalloway (1925). I argue that Woolf critiques and supplements the law??s representations of suffering. Woolf was interested in interpreting harms using a framework of neighbourly responsibility, but was also critical of the kinds of proximities recognised by society. Woolf made new harms visible within a framework of proximity: in this way, we might think of Woolf??s work as theorizing a feminist aesthetic of justice, and as providing an alternate genealogy of responsibility to Donoghue v Stevenson.     

Queering the ‘straight’ line: men’s talk on paying for sex

This paper presents a qualitative analysis of interviews conducted with eight men who identified as clients of women sex workers, but who also spoke about paying to secretly explore their sexual desires for trans women and men. I draw on queer theory to approach the question of how, and to what extent, men’s paid sexual encounters functioned as sites where they could resist the constraints of compulsory heterosexuality and navigate more fluid sexual identities. Highlighting the complex nature and meanings of paying for sex, I argue that the secrecy of the paid sexual encounter provided a space for ‘breaking out’ of the confines of heterosexuality whilst simultaneously being the very thing that allowed men to stay ‘in line’ with what was expected of them within the heteronormative realities of their everyday lives.     

Law’s Gendered Subtext: The Gender Order of Restaurant Work and Making Sexual Harassment Normal

Analysing sexual harassment law in British Columbia, this paper argues that in highly sexualised work environments, in which practices including sexual ‘jokes’ or innuendo may be common, law embodies and (re)creates the gendered subtext of the workplace. When a complaint of sexual harassment from a sexualised workplace is raised in a legal forum, a complainant has an obligation to clearly object to the sexual remarks, ‘jokes,’ banter, etc.—which may be the ‘norm’—to show the conduct in question was unwelcome. At the same time, however, a workplace may be structured, in part by law, in a way that restricts employee resistance to uncomfortable sexual experiences. This is the case, I argue, for women working in full-service restaurants when it comes to sexual interactions with customers. This paper explores how restaurant work, in the Canadian context with a focus on the province of British Columbia, is organised in a manner that makes women vulnerable to enduring sexually harassing practices as a routine part of their jobs.     

The ‘Ins’ and ‘Outs’ of Women’s/Gender Studies: a response to reports of its demise in 2008

In the spring of 2008, fuelled by the impending demise of the undergraduate Women’s/Gender Studies programme at London Metropolitan University, a series of public statements proclaimed the death of Women’s/Gender Studies. This article constitutes a response to these statements. Taking a broadly European view of the state of Women’s/Gender Studies, it argues that the discipline has established a research infrastructure, mainstreamed its undergraduate curricula and its pedagogical underpinnings, and continues to attract research funding and significant numbers of postgraduate students. It finally suggests that the ‘fate’ of disciplines is not teleological but iterative.     

Performance's mode of reproduction I: searching for Danh Võ’s mother

This essay returns to key debates in performance theory regarding the relationship between performance and reproduction, offering a Marxian inflected theory of performance’s mode of reproduction. It suggests that both performance theory and Marxist theory appropriate the mother function in describing performance’s mode of reproduction and the reproduction of capital, while displacing the mother in the process. Through a reading of the work of contemporary artist Danh Võ, the essay explores how performance’s mode of reproduction can affect the reproduction and sustenance of minoritarian life against historical, social, and economic forces of elision, erasure, and annihilation.     

‘An Unexpected Recruit to Feminism’: Jessie Boucherett’s ‘Feminist Life’ and the importance of being wealthy

In 1859 Jessie Boucherett, the daughter of a Lincolnshire landowner possessed of an independent income, was inspired by press discussions of the need to find alternative occupations for women to make contact with the women who were already spreading this message through the English Woman’s Journal. With their rather grudging support she founded a society, which still exists, to further this aim, the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women (now the Society for Promoting the Training of Women). Using the records of this Society, now housed at Girton College, Cambridge, this article looks at the way commitment to this cause allowed a woman from a wealthy, high Tory, landed background to turn herself in six years into the feminist who put up the initial money for the women’s suffrage campaign, and went on to be a leading figure in campaigns to reform the married women’s property laws and against legislation restricting women’s work. It examines in particular the use she made of her personal wealth to direct the strategies of the activist groups to which she belonged.     

Mothers on Trial: Discourses of Cot Death and Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy

This article explores some of the issues raised by Munchausens Syndrome by Proxy (MSbP) and the relationship between medicine and law, specifically the discourses which feature in the courtroom portraying motherhood and expectations of parenting. These discourses are often hidden yet play a determining role in prosecutions for alleged maltreatment of children involving medically unexplained infant death syndrome. We offer a critique of MSbP and seek to unveil the assumptions about mothers, the parent predominantly affected by the diagnosis, and mothering that underlie the association of women accused of deliberating harming their children. We suggest such insights are valuable because although the syndrome has never acquired a clear medical or legal definition, it has had repeated appearances in the literature and courtroom over the last 25 years and has more recently attracted attention from government, health care practitioners, academics and the media. We explore these issues through an examination of two recent Court of Appeal decisions in England: those of Sally Clark and Angela Cannings.