Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-cfpbc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T03:10:12.029Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Law, Feminism and Sexuality: From Essence to Ethics?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2014

Carol Smart
Carol Smart
Affiliation:
Department of Social Policy, University of Leeds, U.K.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper explores current thinking on the meanings of sex, gender and sexuality and on the relationship between each of these concepts. It suggests that whilst feminist theory has adopted a social constructionist view of gender and, to a lesser extent, sexuality, it has left sex to the conceptual domain of biology. It has also prioritised gender over sexuality conceptually. These issues are explored in the specific area of sexuality and law where it is argued that recent theoretical developments on sex and sexuality within poststructuralist thought have, as yet, failed to influence the dominant understanding of heterosexual relations. Arguably in the field of law and sexuality, feminism has remained wedded to a notion of binary sex and identity politics. The paper then works through two specific instances, namely rape and S/M sexual practice, to identify some of the problems associated with the latter approach. Ultimately it raises questions about whether a poststructuralist politics imbued with feminist ethics might provide us with less essentialist models of masculine/male and feminine/female sexuality without either abandoning feminist political action or falling into a new sexual conservatism.

Résumé

Cet article étudie les divers sens attribués aux concepts de sexe, de genre et de sexualité dans la pensée contemporaine ainsi que la relation qu'ils y entretiennent entre eux. L'auteure suggère que si la théorie féministe a adopté une vue constructionniste sociale du concept de genre et, dans une moindre mesure, de celui de la sexualité, elle a toutefois abandonné la notion de sexe au domaine conceptuel de la biologic Elle a également accordé priorité au concept de genre par rapport à celui de sexualité. Ces questions sont ici analysées dans le domaine spécifique de la sexualité et du droit. L'auteur prétend que les développements théoriques récents en matière de sexe et de sexualité au sein de la pensée poststructuraliste n'ont pas, à ce jour, réussi à jouer d'influence sur la perception qui prévaut quant aux relations hétérosexuelles. L'auteure soutient que dans le domaine du droit et de la sexualité, le féminisme est demeuré lié à une notion binaire du sexe et aux politiques d'identité. Elle étudie ensuite deux cas spécifiques, soit le viol et les pratiques sexuelles sado-masochistes, afin d'identifier certains des problèmes associés à cette dernière approche. Enfin, l'auteure se demande si une politique poststructuraliste imprégnée d'éthique féministe peut fournir des modèles moins essentialistes de la sexualité masculine/mâle et féminine/femelle sans pour autant abandonner l'action politique féministe et tomber dans un nouveau conservatisme sexuel.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Law and Society / La Revue Canadienne Droit et Société , Volume 9 , Issue 01: Law, Feminism and Sexuality/Droit, féminisme et sexualité , Spring/printemps 1994 , pp. 15 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Butler, J., Gender Trouble (London: Routledge, 1990)Google Scholar; Martin, B., “Sexual Practice and Changing Lesbian Identities” in Barrett, M. & Phillips, A., eds., Destabilizing Theory (Cambridge: Polity, 1992)Google Scholar; Pringle, R., “‘Absolute Sex? Unpacking the Sexuality/Gender Relationship” in Segal, L. & McIntosh, M., eds., Sex Exposed: Sexuality and the Pornography Debate (London: Virago, 1992)Google Scholar.

2. Oakley, A., Sex, Gender and Society (London: Temple Smith, 1972)Google Scholar.

3. Weeks, J., Against Nature (London: Rivers Oram Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Gibson, P. C. & Gibson, R., eds., Dirty Looks: Women, Pornography, Power (London: British Film Institute, 1993)Google Scholar; Connell, R. W. & Dowsett, C. W., eds., Rethinking Sex (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Stanton, D. C., ed., Discourses of Sexuality (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

4. Martin, supra note 1.

5. Ardill, S. & O'Sullivan, S., “Upsetting the Applecart” (1986) 23 Feminist Review 31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clark, W., “The Dyke, the Feminist and the Devil” (1982) 11 Feminist Review 30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6. Pringle, supra note 1.

7. Martin, supra note 1 at 109.

8. Butler, supra note 1 at 6.

9. See Foucault, M., Herculine Barbin (New York: Pantheon, 1980)Google Scholar.

10. Laqueur, T., “Orgasm, Generation, and the Politics of Reproductive Biology” in Gallagher, C. & Laqueur, T., eds., The Making of the Modern Body (London: University of California Press, 1987)Google Scholar; Laqueur, T., Making Sex (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

11. Martin, E., The Woman in the Body (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

12. Butler, supra note 1.

13. Ibid. at 7.

14. Bourdieu, P., Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge: Polity, 1991)Google Scholar.

15. Quoted in Martin, supra note 1 at 102.

16. We must of course be aware that little is secured permanently and that even splendid achievements are not necessarily totally good nor do they benefit everyone for whom they were originally designed.

17. See ? Hekman, , Gender and Knowledge (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

18. See Lees, S., “Judicial Rape” (1993) 16:1Women's Studies International Forum 11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19. These presumed consequences are, of course, as yet unknown whilst, ironically, the failings of traditional politics are well documented.

20. Weeks, supra note 3.

21. Ferguson, K., The Man Question (Oxford: University of California Press, 1993) at 154Google Scholar.

22. Smart, C., Feminism and the Power of Law (London: Routledge, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23. Smart, C., “Law's Power, the Sexed Body and Feminist Discourse” (1990) 17:2Journal of Law and Society 194CrossRefGoogle Scholar; C. Smart, “Unquestionably a Moral Issue: Rhetorical Devices and Regulatory Imperatives” in Segal & McIntosh, eds., supra note 1.

24. By “reasonable” I mean here an argument which fits with legal reasoning—which may not be reasonable at all by any other standards!

25. See M. McIntosh, “Liberalism and the Contradictions of Sexual Politics” in Segal & McIntosh, eds., supra note 1.

26. MacKinnon, C., Feminism Unmodified (London: Harvard University Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

27. Howe, A., “‘Social Injury’ Revisited: Towards a Feminist Theory of Social Justice” (1987) 15:4International Journal of Sociology of Law 423Google Scholar.

28. See Code, L., “Experience, Knowledge and Responsibility” in Griffiths, M. & Whitford, M., eds., Feminist Perspectives in Philosophy (London: MacMillanGoogle Scholar; Sevenhuijsen, S., “The Morality of Feminism” (1991) 6:2Hypatia 173CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tronto, J., “Women and Caring: What Can Feminists Learn About Morality From Caring?” in Jaggar, A. & Bordo, S., eds., Gender/Body/Knowledge (London: Rutgers University Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

29. Gilligan, C., In a Different Voice (London: Harvard University Press, 1982)Google Scholar.

30. Butler, supra note 1 at 32.

31. Ardill & O'Sullivan, supra note 5.

32. See Morgan, T., “Butch-Femme and the Politics of Identity” in Stein, A., ed., Sisters, Sexperts, Queers (Harmondsworth: Penguin [Plume], 1993)Google Scholar.

33. Nestle, J., “Butch-Fem Relationships: Sexual Courage in the 1950s” (1981) 12:3Heresies: The Sex Issue 21Google Scholar.

34. See Merck, M., Perversions (London: Virago, 1993)Google Scholar; also Adrill & O'Sullivan, supra note 31 for examples of this argument. But also, see Linden, R. R., Pagano, D. E. H. & Star, S. L., eds., Against Sadomasochism (Est Palo Alto: Frogs in the Well, ???)Google Scholar for the opposing view.

35. L. Segal, “Sweet Sorrows; Painful Pleasures” in Segal & McIntosh, eds., supra note 1.

36. Ibid. at 71.

37. A. McClintock, “Maid to Order: Commercial S/M and Gender Power” in Gibson & Gibson, eds., supra note 3.

38. L. Loach, “Bad Girls: Women Who Use Pornography” in Segal and McIntosh, eds., supra note 1.

39. R. v. Brown and others (1992), 94 Cr. App. R. 302 (C.A.); R. v. Brown and other appeals, [1993] 2 All E. R. 75 (H.L.). The original criminal trial was held in December 1990 at the Central Criminal Court and was unreported.

40. See S., & Roberts, N., “Stripping Illusions” New Statesman (17 January 1986) 27–28Google Scholar; Roberts, N., The Front Line (London: Grafton Books, 1986)Google Scholar; Silver, R., The Gift in Scarlet Heels (London: Century, 1993)Google Scholar.

41. Supra note 39.

42. Lord Templeman in R. v. Brown, [1993] 2 All E. R. 75 H.L. at 82.

43. The Guardian (16 August 1993).

44. Segal & Mclntosh, eds., supra note 1; Gibson & Gibson, eds., supra note 3.

45. Lees, supra note 18; Adler, Z., Rape on Trial (London: Routledge, 1987)Google Scholar.

46. Heterosexual S/M has rarely been a matter for the courts and even where it has been an obvious component of commercial sex in the form of torture instruments or descriptions of services offered, such elements have tended to produce mirth rather than specific criminal proceedings on assault.

47. Ferguson, supra note 21 at 163.

48. Ibid. at 166.