From Consent to Responsibility, from Pity to Respect: Subtexts in Cases of Sexual Violence Involving Girls and Women with Developmental Disabilities |
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| Authors: | Sherene Razack |
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| Institution: | Associate professor in the Department of Adult Education at the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education. The author thanks the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for a grant enabling her to do the research and Kathleen Gallivan for her research assistance and for her careful, critical reading of the draft. The author writes: "My collaborative work with Mary Louise Fellows on the difference impasse fed this work directly, as I indicate in my elaboration of the concept. I thank her for her insight into die limitations of accepting consent as a defense of violence, and for her unfailing encouragement and support. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for urging me to clarify my argument and the editors for reminding me that I still had one." |
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| Abstract: | How might feminist law reform serve all women? The author explores this question within the context of sexual violence involving girls and women with developmental disabilities. She presents the difference impasse as a theoretical tool for understanding how women are positioned in law differently and unequally in relation to each other. She explores how, within the consent framework of a rape trail, competing social narratives or subtexts about race, class, gender, and disability circulate in the courtroom. She also explores the issue of pity in rape traiIs and argues that focusing on interlocking systems of domination and on our complicity in maintaining categories of women in law and law reform is a useful approach for feminist law reformers. |
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