NCJ Number
125495
Journal
Journal of Law and Society Volume: 17 Issue: 2 Dated: (Summer 1990) Pages: 194-210
Date Published
1990
Length
17 pages
Annotation
This article explores a key problem facing feminist legal scholarship: the nature and validity of knowledge, particularly in relation to law.
Abstract
First, the article discusses the concept that law is a particularly powerful discourse because of its claim to truth, which in turn enables it to silence women who encounter law and feminists who challenge it. The article then examines how women are "sexed" by law; i.e., how specific, sexualized meanings are attributed to the corporeality of women. The example of rape is used to show both the silencing of women and the projection of a patriarchal vision of female sexuality onto the body of the woman. The feminist response to this has been to claim that law cannot do "justice" to women's real experience, but this concept requires further thought if women are beginning to doubt the assumed categories of "women" and of "experience." The article then considers whether feminists can still challenge the power of law in this field without slipping back into "liberalism" (the battle over consent, intent, and volition), and/or biologism (men by virtue of their biological composition make the laws). The article concludes it is time for women to move away from the standard strategy of opposing law's "truth" with women's experience and start thinking outside of the confining concept of the natural/sexed woman in efforts to deconstruct law's truth. 50 notes.