Feminist Theory: THEORY: CHALLENGES TO LEGAL & POLITICAL THOUGHT (POL2024) (LAW334H1F)

This course takes up two basic questions: what should we want and how should we get there? There are three focal points for these questions: 1. violence against women; 2. the distribution of care work (e.g, child care, household care, elder care, and the work of sustaining relationships), and 3. the representation of women (in media, social norms, self-understanding). In each case, there is an apparently clear answer to what we want: end violence against women, a fair distribution of care work without disadvantage to those who do it, forms of representation that foster mutual respect and self-respect. But beneath that apparent simplicity lie many disputed aspirations (even before we get to the also disputed questions of how to implement those aspirations). For example, both violence and representation involve contested questions of sexuality, it’s relations to dominance, and the optimal scope of freedom in forming and expressing sexual desire. Even the distribution of care work involves deep understandings of gender identity and thus also of sexuality. And the issues go beyond the complex questions of the kind of gender equality we should be seeking. For example, the last set of readings in the violence section addresses the links between social norms that tolerate violence against women and issue of violence and aggression in the context of war. Throughout we will be looking at the ways gender equality is necessary for wider values of justice, non-domination, and security. The course is organized around readings that will foster discussion about the core aspirations that should shape both public policy and informal personal, organizational and community based efforts at transformation of norms. As this last sentence suggests, one of the “implementation” questions we will be addressing is what role is there for law in effecting the desired transformations, and in what instances must there be additional or alternative forms of social transformation. Some of the readings contain suggestions for modes of transformation (legal and other), but all the discussions will invite students to imagine the kinds of approaches (legal and other) that could advance our (inevitably contested) goals for gender equality.