Pub Date : 2022-02-28DOI: 10.52214/cjgl.v42i1.8713
Nausica Palazzo
Same-sex marriage is now a reality across Western countries. While this was a positive achievement for the LGBTQ community, some crucial questions remain unanswered. One of these questions concerns the future of nonmarital statuses, such as domestic partnerships or civil unions. After the legalization of same-sex marriage, U.S. states are simply phasing them out. I wish to argue against this trend. Based on an original analysis of empirical data and case law, I argue that nonmarital statuses retain value for non-traditional families. In fact, states must introduce nonmarital statuses open to couples regardless of gender, including adult friends and relatives. To support this argument, I present two analyses. First, I survey empirical research showing that (1) opposite-sex couples are signing up for nonmarital statuses at increasingly high rates, where available; (2) interest in such laws is growing even among same-sex couples in countries where same-sex marriage has existed for a long time. Second, I outline the legal and theoretical justifications for extending same-sex nonmarital partnerships to all couples. To this end, I analyze recent strategic litigation in Europe initiated by heterosexual couples who sought access to nonmarital statuses reserved for same-sex couples. The analysis allows me to identify three approaches: a status recognition approach, a utilitarian approach, and a legal-pluralistic approach. Ultimately, I offer guidance to policymakers in crafting a status that would be suitable for modern couples. Families that do not tick the boxes of the traditional marital family model continue to slip under the radar of law. Resurrecting these laws can fix the problem of their legal invisibility.
{"title":"Marriage Apostates: Why Heterosexuals Seek Same-Sex Registered Partnerships","authors":"Nausica Palazzo","doi":"10.52214/cjgl.v42i1.8713","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.52214/cjgl.v42i1.8713","url":null,"abstract":"Same-sex marriage is now a reality across Western countries. While this was a positive achievement for the LGBTQ community, some crucial questions remain unanswered. One of these questions concerns the future of nonmarital statuses, such as domestic partnerships or civil unions. After the legalization of same-sex marriage, U.S. states are simply phasing them out. \u0000I wish to argue against this trend. Based on an original analysis of empirical data and case law, I argue that nonmarital statuses retain value for non-traditional families. In fact, states must introduce nonmarital statuses open to couples regardless of gender, including adult friends and relatives. To support this argument, I present two analyses. \u0000First, I survey empirical research showing that (1) opposite-sex couples are signing up for nonmarital statuses at increasingly high rates, where available; (2) interest in such laws is growing even among same-sex couples in countries where same-sex marriage has existed for a long time. \u0000Second, I outline the legal and theoretical justifications for extending same-sex nonmarital partnerships to all couples. To this end, I analyze recent strategic litigation in Europe initiated by heterosexual couples who sought access to nonmarital statuses reserved for same-sex couples. The analysis allows me to identify three approaches: a status recognition approach, a utilitarian approach, and a legal-pluralistic approach. \u0000Ultimately, I offer guidance to policymakers in crafting a status that would be suitable for modern couples. Families that do not tick the boxes of the traditional marital family model continue to slip under the radar of law. Resurrecting these laws can fix the problem of their legal invisibility.","PeriodicalId":84468,"journal":{"name":"Columbia journal of gender and law","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47120627","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-28DOI: 10.52214/cjgl.v42i1.9373
Nina Jaffe-Geffner
“Parental Alienation Syndrome” (PAS), developed by Dr. Richard Gardner in 1985, posits that a frequent dynamic in child custody disputes involves vengeful mothers falsely convincing their children that they have been sexually abused by their fathers. Although PAS is widely discredited and courts have ruled it inadmissible, new formulations of the theory, such as Parental Alienation (PA), continue to play a dominant role in custody proceedings. Proponents of PA assign the label to a broad range of custody cases in which children favor one parent and reject the other. However, despite the seemingly more gender-neutral framing of PA, empirical research shows that courts use PA to discredit mothers’ allegations of domestic violence and abuse and justify custody switches away from the mother. This Note analyzes the gender bias in family courts’ handling of custody cases involving cross-allegations of domestic violence and PA, and then proposes four legislative provisions aimed at reducing the effects of such bias in custody proceedings.
{"title":"Gender Bias in Cross-Allegation Domestic Violence-Parental Alienation Custody Cases: Can States Legislate the Fix?","authors":"Nina Jaffe-Geffner","doi":"10.52214/cjgl.v42i1.9373","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.52214/cjgl.v42i1.9373","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 \u0000 \u0000“Parental Alienation Syndrome” (PAS), developed by Dr. Richard Gardner in 1985, posits that a frequent dynamic in child custody disputes involves vengeful mothers falsely convincing their children that they have been sexually abused by their fathers. Although PAS is widely discredited and courts have ruled it inadmissible, new formulations of the theory, such as Parental Alienation (PA), continue to play a dominant role in custody proceedings. Proponents of PA assign the label to a broad range of custody cases in which children favor one parent and reject the other. However, despite the seemingly more gender-neutral framing of PA, empirical research shows that courts use PA to discredit mothers’ allegations of domestic violence and abuse and justify custody switches away from the mother. This Note analyzes the gender bias in family courts’ handling of custody cases involving cross-allegations of domestic violence and PA, and then proposes four legislative provisions aimed at reducing the effects of such bias in custody proceedings. \u0000 \u0000 \u0000","PeriodicalId":84468,"journal":{"name":"Columbia journal of gender and law","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43413025","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-28DOI: 10.52214/cjgl.v42i1.8714
Jessica Knouse
The lived experience of reproduction is infused with indeterminacy. Judicial rhetoric, in contrast, operates in absolutes. Litigants are perceived in binary terms as fertile or not, trying to procreate or not, pregnant or not, and parents or not – when the reality of their situations is far more complicated. Rights are similarly perceived in binary terms, such that a litigant seeking procreative autonomy may assert either the “right to procreate” or the “right to avoid procreation” – even if neither accurately describes what she wants. Disputes over frozen embryos provide unique insight into this problem, because they involve parties who have experienced months if not years of reproductive indeterminacy and who, at the point of litigation, make opposing rights claims. When a couple disagrees about the disposition of jointly-created frozen embryos and the disagreement is not resolved by contract, most courts apply a balancing test: The interests of the party asserting the “right to procreate” are weighed against the interests of the party asserting the “right to avoid procreation.” Ordinarily, the latter prevails, unless the party wishing to procreate lacks a “reasonable” path to parenthood without the embryos. Whether a “reasonable” path exists often turns on whether the party wishing to use the embryos is perceived as fertile, in which case her claim will likely be denied, or sterile, in which case it may succeed. This framework misses the complexity, contingency, and uncertainty intrinsic in all reproductive endeavors. The decision to procreate or avoid procreation is rarely singular or stable. People undergoing IVF are rarely either fertile (able to establish a pregnancy) or sterile (permanently unable to establish a pregnancy). They are, instead, infertile, and their infertility has led them to make many decisions over the course of many months and often years about how, when, and whether to proceed with treatment. And if they achieve pregnancy – not to mention parenthood – they will make many more. To describe these individuals, in the context of a frozen embryo dispute, as choosing “to procreate” or “to avoid procreation” trivializes the complexity of their circumstances. Similarly, to assume that a party experiencing infertility has a “reasonable” path to parenthood without the embryos is to ignore the reality that, even if she has the resources (physical, emotional, and financial) to undergo further treatment, there is no guarantee that it will produce gametes, that the gametes will create embryos, that the embryos will lead to pregnancy, or that the pregnancy will result in childbirth. Existing judicial rhetoric, by erasing inherent indeterminacy, offers a disappointingly limited vision of reproductive potential and reproductive rights. This article draws on multiple lines of work, from postmodern feminism to reproductive justice, to argue for a new doctrine in which reproductive rights exist not within a binary system but rather along
{"title":"Reproductive Indeterminacy and Rights Discourse in Frozen Embryo Disputes","authors":"Jessica Knouse","doi":"10.52214/cjgl.v42i1.8714","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.52214/cjgl.v42i1.8714","url":null,"abstract":"The lived experience of reproduction is infused with indeterminacy. Judicial rhetoric, in contrast, operates in absolutes. Litigants are perceived in binary terms as fertile or not, trying to procreate or not, pregnant or not, and parents or not – when the reality of their situations is far more complicated. Rights are similarly perceived in binary terms, such that a litigant seeking procreative autonomy may assert either the “right to procreate” or the “right to avoid procreation” – even if neither accurately describes what she wants. Disputes over frozen embryos provide unique insight into this problem, because they involve parties who have experienced months if not years of reproductive indeterminacy and who, at the point of litigation, make opposing rights claims. When a couple disagrees about the disposition of jointly-created frozen embryos and the disagreement is not resolved by contract, most courts apply a balancing test: The interests of the party asserting the “right to procreate” are weighed against the interests of the party asserting the “right to avoid procreation.” Ordinarily, the latter prevails, unless the party wishing to procreate lacks a “reasonable” path to parenthood without the embryos. Whether a “reasonable” path exists often turns on whether the party wishing to use the embryos is perceived as fertile, in which case her claim will likely be denied, or sterile, in which case it may succeed. \u0000This framework misses the complexity, contingency, and uncertainty intrinsic in all reproductive endeavors. The decision to procreate or avoid procreation is rarely singular or stable. People undergoing IVF are rarely either fertile (able to establish a pregnancy) or sterile (permanently unable to establish a pregnancy). They are, instead, infertile, and their infertility has led them to make many decisions over the course of many months and often years about how, when, and whether to proceed with treatment. And if they achieve pregnancy – not to mention parenthood – they will make many more. To describe these individuals, in the context of a frozen embryo dispute, as choosing “to procreate” or “to avoid procreation” trivializes the complexity of their circumstances. Similarly, to assume that a party experiencing infertility has a “reasonable” path to parenthood without the embryos is to ignore the reality that, even if she has the resources (physical, emotional, and financial) to undergo further treatment, there is no guarantee that it will produce gametes, that the gametes will create embryos, that the embryos will lead to pregnancy, or that the pregnancy will result in childbirth. Existing judicial rhetoric, by erasing inherent indeterminacy, offers a disappointingly limited vision of reproductive potential and reproductive rights. This article draws on multiple lines of work, from postmodern feminism to reproductive justice, to argue for a new doctrine in which reproductive rights exist not within a binary system but rather along ","PeriodicalId":84468,"journal":{"name":"Columbia journal of gender and law","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42474214","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-28DOI: 10.52214/cjgl.v42i1.9371
Rachel Anderson-Seller
Birthing people in the United States pay more than citizens of other high-income countries and receive lower quality care, most of which is provided by physicians in hospital settings. Legal restrictions on midwives—the result of two centuries of pervasive sexist, racist, and anti-immigrant campaigns—prevent birthing people from making meaningful choices about their preferred birthing location and attendant, even though hospital births carry risks of their own. Policymakers may be hesitant to amend legislation and regulations due to a misperception that community birth is unsafe and that those who choose it are irresponsible. However, the COVID-19 pandemic presents an opportunity for change. In an effort to avoid hospitals, which are overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients and have enacted strict limits on support personnel during labor, birthing women are increasingly turning to community birth. Midwives and their clients can capitalize on this increased demand by advocating for an updated maternal care system.
{"title":"The Coronavirus as a Changemaker: Opportunities to Advance American Maternal Care in the Wake of the Pandemic","authors":"Rachel Anderson-Seller","doi":"10.52214/cjgl.v42i1.9371","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.52214/cjgl.v42i1.9371","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 \u0000 \u0000Birthing people in the United States pay more than citizens of other high-income countries and receive lower quality care, most of which is provided by physicians in hospital settings. Legal restrictions on midwives—the result of two centuries of pervasive sexist, racist, and anti-immigrant campaigns—prevent birthing people from making meaningful choices about their preferred birthing location and attendant, even though hospital births carry risks of their own. Policymakers may be hesitant to amend legislation and regulations due to a misperception that community birth is unsafe and that those who choose it are irresponsible. However, the COVID-19 pandemic presents an opportunity for change. In an effort to avoid hospitals, which are overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients and have enacted strict limits on support personnel during labor, birthing women are increasingly turning to community birth. Midwives and their clients can capitalize on this increased demand by advocating for an updated maternal care system. \u0000 \u0000 \u0000","PeriodicalId":84468,"journal":{"name":"Columbia journal of gender and law","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45936847","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-08DOI: 10.52214/cjgl.v41i1.8831
Pamela Laufer-Ukeles
Menstruation has many faces. This Essay will discuss competing narratives relating to menstruation as portrayed in Jewish law and culture, and assess the implications of such narratives for modern legal systems. These narratives depict menstruation in all its contradictions — as taboo and power, as health and imperfection, and as reflecting biological difference but not inequality. Each narrative will be discussed from a textual, legal, communal and, occasionally, personal perspective, conveying different meanings that have different cultural impacts, modern applications and reflect different aspects of the quest for equality. Together, these narratives provide a holistic vision of womanhood that resists simplification. Acknowledging that not only women menstruate, in this Essay I refer to women as those who menstruate because this is the category associated with menstruation used in Jewish law and it is the complexity of womanhood revealed by Jewish law and culture that I address. These four faces of menstruation are not characterized as positive or negative in and of themselves; rather, I analyze them each on their own terms, discussing how they may impact women in both negative and positive ways. The variability of these narratives demonstrates the need for women to shape their own narratives around their bodies in order to empower themselves within their communities. Moreover, the multiplicity of faces that menstruation involves, and the different ways that femininity can therefore impact womanhood, counsels promoting menstrual justice in a variety of ways, and from a variety of perspectives, creatively empowering women by recognizing their individual complexity. In Jewish law, menstruation engenders impurity, authority, fertility, and biological difference, and each of these faces of womanhood will be discussed in turn.
{"title":"The Power of Blood: The Many Faces of Women's Monthly Menses in Jewish Law and Beyond","authors":"Pamela Laufer-Ukeles","doi":"10.52214/cjgl.v41i1.8831","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.52214/cjgl.v41i1.8831","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 \u0000 \u0000Menstruation has many faces. This Essay will discuss competing narratives relating to menstruation as portrayed in Jewish law and culture, and assess the implications of such narratives for modern legal systems. These narratives depict menstruation in all its contradictions — as taboo and power, as health and imperfection, and as reflecting biological difference but not inequality. Each narrative will be discussed from a textual, legal, communal and, occasionally, personal perspective, conveying different meanings that have different cultural impacts, modern applications and reflect different aspects of the quest for equality. \u0000Together, these narratives provide a holistic vision of womanhood that resists simplification. Acknowledging that not only women menstruate, in this Essay I refer to women as those who menstruate because this is the category associated with menstruation used in Jewish law and it is the complexity of womanhood revealed by Jewish law and culture that I address. These four faces of menstruation are not characterized as positive or negative in and of themselves; rather, I analyze them each on their own terms, discussing how they may impact women in both negative and positive ways. The variability of these narratives demonstrates the need for women to shape their own narratives around their bodies in order to empower themselves within their communities. Moreover, the multiplicity of faces that menstruation involves, and the different ways that femininity can therefore impact womanhood, counsels promoting menstrual justice in a variety of ways, and from a variety of perspectives, creatively empowering women by recognizing their individual complexity. In Jewish law, menstruation engenders impurity, authority, fertility, and biological difference, and each of these faces of womanhood will be discussed in turn. \u0000 \u0000 \u0000","PeriodicalId":84468,"journal":{"name":"Columbia journal of gender and law","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48565056","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-08DOI: 10.52214/cjgl.v41i1.8821
C. Cotropia
The current menstrual movement calls for overcoming the cultural stigma associated with menstruation, achieving “menstrual equity,” and ending “period poverty.” The stigma the movement seeks to address is that menstruation is seen as taboo, unclean, and impure. The movement’s aims are twofold: First, it wants to increase awareness of menstruation and remove discrimination against those who menstruate, thus achieving menstrual equity. Second, it intends to provide greater access to menstrual hygiene products (“MHPs”), particularly for homeless and lower income people, thus eliminating period poverty. To achieve these goals, the movement is advocating to legislatively eliminate the “tampon tax” and increase access to MHPs in prisons, homeless shelters, and schools. It also supports lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the tampon tax. Advocates view these legal changes as instrumental in furthering the goals of equity and access to MHPs that underlie the movement. This Essay discusses whether the two major legislative changes the movement advocates—repeal of the tampon tax and providing MHPs in schools for free—will actually achieve the movement’s goals. The Essay begins by explaining how these legal changes, in theory, are meant to address menstrual equity and period poverty. It then explores the operational limits to, and expressive benefits of, these legal proposals. The Essay concludes that the expressive function of demanding these legal changes, and sometimes achieving them, plays a more significant role than the laws’ actual operation in reaching the movement’s goals.
{"title":"Law's Ability to Further the \"Menstrual Movement\"","authors":"C. Cotropia","doi":"10.52214/cjgl.v41i1.8821","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.52214/cjgl.v41i1.8821","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 \u0000 \u0000The current menstrual movement calls for overcoming the cultural stigma associated with menstruation, achieving “menstrual equity,” and ending “period poverty.” The stigma the movement seeks to address is that menstruation is seen as taboo, unclean, and impure. The movement’s aims are twofold: First, it wants to increase awareness of menstruation and remove discrimination against those who menstruate, thus achieving menstrual equity. Second, it intends to provide greater access to menstrual hygiene products (“MHPs”), particularly for homeless and lower income people, thus eliminating period poverty. To achieve these goals, the movement is advocating to legislatively eliminate the “tampon tax” and increase access to MHPs in prisons, homeless shelters, and schools. It also supports lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the tampon tax. Advocates view these legal changes as instrumental in furthering the goals of equity and access to MHPs that underlie the movement. This Essay discusses whether the two major legislative changes the movement advocates—repeal of the tampon tax and providing MHPs in schools for free—will actually achieve the movement’s goals. The Essay begins by explaining how these legal changes, in theory, are meant to address menstrual equity and period poverty. It then explores the operational limits to, and expressive benefits of, these legal proposals. The Essay concludes that the expressive function of demanding these legal changes, and sometimes achieving them, plays a more significant role than the laws’ actual operation in reaching the movement’s goals. \u0000 \u0000 \u0000","PeriodicalId":84468,"journal":{"name":"Columbia journal of gender and law","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44813624","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-08DOI: 10.52214/cjgl.v41i1.8833
Prianka Nair
This essay outlines how the focus on able-bodied menstruators in the development of social narratives about menstruation erases the experiences and the discrimination experienced by menstruators with disabilities. Many menstruators with disabilities experience shame around menstruation, embarrassed about the “burden” of their menstrual experiences on their caregivers and concerned about breaching menstrual etiquette around hygiene. Narratives about menstruation are incomplete without considering these experiences. Introducing a disability perspective also permits us to interrogate why popular depictions of the menstruating body are inadequate, how they continue to reinforce and romanticize values like independence and productivity, and validate structures that grant power and privilege to those values. Finally, the essay introduces ideas like supported decision-making and dismodernism that center the experiences of individuals with disabilities. This shift in focus has the potential to transform menstrual activism by introducing into the conversation more nuanced values of reciprocity, interdependence, and empathy.
{"title":"Menstruation: An Ableist Narrative","authors":"Prianka Nair","doi":"10.52214/cjgl.v41i1.8833","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.52214/cjgl.v41i1.8833","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 \u0000 \u0000This essay outlines how the focus on able-bodied menstruators in the development of social narratives about menstruation erases the experiences and the discrimination experienced by menstruators with disabilities. Many menstruators with disabilities experience shame around menstruation, embarrassed about the “burden” of their menstrual experiences on their caregivers and concerned about breaching menstrual etiquette around hygiene. Narratives about menstruation are incomplete without considering these experiences. Introducing a disability perspective also permits us to interrogate why popular depictions of the menstruating body are inadequate, how they continue to reinforce and romanticize values like independence and productivity, and validate structures that grant power and privilege to those values. Finally, the essay introduces ideas like supported decision-making and dismodernism that center the experiences of individuals with disabilities. This shift in focus has the potential to transform menstrual activism by introducing into the conversation more nuanced values of reciprocity, interdependence, and empathy. \u0000 \u0000 \u0000","PeriodicalId":84468,"journal":{"name":"Columbia journal of gender and law","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49592132","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-08DOI: 10.52214/cjgl.v41i1.8827
Victoria J. Haneman
This Essay considers the profit to be made in virtue signaling solely for the purpose of attracting customers and driving sales: Pro-female, woke menstruation messaging that may merely be an exploitative and empty co-optation. Feminists should expect more of menstrual capitalists, including a commitment that firms operating within this space address the diapositive issue of period poverty and meaningfully assist those unable to meet basic hygiene needs who may never be direct consumers. This Essay serves as a thought piece that first presents, in Section I, the B Corporation as a relatively new direction in corporate law that redefines the corporation as a potential agent of social change. Section II considers the way in which B Corporation certification may serve as an implicit sorting device to distinguish companies performing hollow virtue signaling from those menstrual capitalists committed to socially responsible pro-female business practices.
{"title":"Menstrual Capitalism, Period Poverty, and the Role of the B Corporation","authors":"Victoria J. Haneman","doi":"10.52214/cjgl.v41i1.8827","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.52214/cjgl.v41i1.8827","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 \u0000 \u0000This Essay considers the profit to be made in virtue signaling solely for the purpose of attracting customers and driving sales: Pro-female, woke menstruation messaging that may merely be an exploitative and empty co-optation. Feminists should expect more of menstrual capitalists, including a commitment that firms operating within this space address the diapositive issue of period poverty and meaningfully assist those unable to meet basic hygiene needs who may never be direct consumers. This Essay serves as a thought piece that first presents, in Section I, the B Corporation as a relatively new direction in corporate law that redefines the corporation as a potential agent of social change. Section II considers the way in which B Corporation certification may serve as an implicit sorting device to distinguish companies performing hollow virtue signaling from those menstrual capitalists committed to socially responsible pro-female business practices. \u0000 \u0000 \u0000","PeriodicalId":84468,"journal":{"name":"Columbia journal of gender and law","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45805318","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-08DOI: 10.52214/cjgl.v41i1.8824
M. Gilman
Menstruation is being monetized and surveilled, with the voluntary participation of millions of women. Thousands of downloadable apps promise to help women monitor their periods and manage their fertility. These apps are part of the broader, multi-billion dollar, Femtech industry, which sells technology to help women understand and improve their health. Femtech is marketed with the language of female autonomy and feminist empowerment. Despite this rhetoric, Femtech is part of a broader business strategy of data extraction, in which companies are extracting people’s personal data for profit, typically without their knowledge or meaningful consent. Femtech can oppress menstruators in several ways. Menstruators lose control over their personal data and how it is used. Some of these uses can potentially disadvantage women in the workplace, insurance markets, and credit scoring. In addition, these apps can force users into a gendered binary that does not always comport with their identity. Further, period trackers are sometimes inaccurate, leading to unwanted pregnancies. Additionally, the data is nearly impossible to erase, leading some women to be tracked relentlessly across the web with assumptions about their childbearing and fertility. Despite these harms, there are few legal restraints on menstrual surveillance. American data privacy law largely hinges on the concept of notice and consent, which puts the onus on people to protect their own privacy rather than placing responsibility on the entities that gather and use data. Yet notice and consent is a myth because consumers do not read, cannot comprehend, and have no opportunities to negotiate the terms of privacy policies. Notice and consent is an individualistic approach to data privacy that envisions an atomized person pursing their own self-interest in a competitive marketplace. Menstruators’ needs do not fit this model. Accordingly, this Essay seeks to reconceptualize Femtech within an expanded menstrual justice framework that recognizes the tenets of data feminism. In this vision, Femtech would be an empowering and accurate health tool rather than a data extraction device.
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Pub Date : 2021-11-08DOI: 10.52214/cjgl.v41i1.8818
Naomi Cahn
Menopause is defined by its relationship to menstruation––it is the cessation of menstruation. Medical texts identify menopause as part of the cycle of “decay” associated with female reproductive functions; early menopause is often a dreaded result of various medical treatments and a sign of disfunction. It turns out that only three types of animals experience menopause: killer whales, short-finned pilot whales, and humans, while other animals can reproduce until death. Although the precise relationship between evolutionary theory and the physical development of human menopause is still uncertain, scientists and anthropologists suggest that the “grandmother hypothesis” provides a partial explanation: older women, who can no longer produce their own children, ensure their genetic legacy by playing a critical role in helping to feed, raise, and nurture their grandchildren. The average woman will spend almost as many years “post-menopause” as they will menstruating, and they may spend four years (or more) experiencing perimenopausal symptoms, the transition time between “normal” menstruation and menopause. But legal issues relating to perimenopause, menopause, and post-menopause are just beginning to surface, prompted by the movement towards menstrual justice, feminist jurisprudence, and developments in the law of aging. This Essay is an initial effort to catalogue various legal approaches to menopause and to set out areas for further analysis. It briefly explores cultural images of menopause and post-menopausal women, including the ubiquitous hot flashes; analyzes potential legal claims for menopausal justice; and suggests the interrelationship between such approaches and social attitudes towards menopause. It suggests that “normalizing” menopause––acknowledging its realities––is one means for removing the associated stigma and “disabilities” and might result in reinterpreting existing laws and guiding future legal reforms.
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