Pub Date : 2021-11-08DOI: 10.52214/cjgl.v41i1.8817
Anita Bernstein
Joining a conversation about menstruation and the law, this Essay interprets “law” to mean regulation––a source of burden, constraint, and interference justified by reason. The object of my regulatory agenda is a substance perceived by Western thinkers at least since Aristotle as the superior counterpart to menstrual fluid.1 Traditions that celebrate semen as vital or affirmative, while recoiling from and controlling the other gendered emission that hurts no one, get reality backward. Law as burden, constraint, and interference ought to regulate semen and leave menstrual fluid alone. Contrast the two substances. One of them started out with the potentially useful function of building a uterine lining. That possibility concluded, menstrual fluid is benign. The other effluvium started out with the potentially useful function of launching a pregnancy. Pregnancy is a good thing when it is desired by the person who has to live with the bulk of pregnancy’s detriments. Along with its capacity to do an important job, semen causes quite the array of harms. A statute on point for this purpose, the Federal Hazardous Substances Act, regulates material that “may cause substantial personal injury or substantial illness during or as a proximate result of any customary or reasonably foreseeable handling or use.”2 Because semen “has the capacity to produce personal injury or illness to man through ingestion, inhalation, or absorption through any body surface,” it also aligns with the definition of “toxic” in the statute.3 Judges, policymakers, litigants, and ordinary people can all learn from well-established legal labels to understand semen as a stark example of an externality. Nothing in this statute impedes the characterization I propose: The FHSA lists substances that lie outside its purview,4 and semen is not among them. Labeling, containment, and emergency protocols—splash protection, if you like—are the hazardous-substance safety impositions I would apply to semen.
{"title":"Are You There, Law? It's Me, Semen","authors":"Anita Bernstein","doi":"10.52214/cjgl.v41i1.8817","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.52214/cjgl.v41i1.8817","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 \u0000 \u0000Joining a conversation about menstruation and the law, this Essay interprets “law” to mean regulation––a source of burden, constraint, and interference justified by reason. The object of my regulatory agenda is a substance perceived by Western thinkers at least since Aristotle as the superior counterpart to menstrual fluid.1 Traditions that celebrate semen as vital or affirmative, while recoiling from and controlling the other gendered emission that hurts no one, get reality backward. Law as burden, constraint, and interference ought to regulate semen and leave menstrual fluid alone. \u0000Contrast the two substances. One of them started out with the potentially useful function of building a uterine lining. That possibility concluded, menstrual fluid is benign. The other effluvium started out with the potentially useful function of launching a pregnancy. Pregnancy is a good thing when it is desired by the person who has to live with the bulk of pregnancy’s detriments. Along with its capacity to do an important job, semen causes quite the array of harms. \u0000A statute on point for this purpose, the Federal Hazardous Substances Act, regulates material that “may cause substantial personal injury or substantial illness during or as a proximate result of any customary or reasonably foreseeable handling or use.”2 Because semen “has the capacity to produce personal injury or illness to man through ingestion, inhalation, or absorption through any body surface,” it also aligns with the definition of “toxic” in the statute.3 Judges, policymakers, litigants, and ordinary people can all learn from well-established legal labels to understand semen as a stark example of an externality. \u0000 \u0000 \u0000 \u0000Nothing in this statute impedes the characterization I propose: The FHSA lists substances that lie outside its purview,4 and semen is not among them. Labeling, containment, and emergency protocols—splash protection, if you like—are the hazardous-substance safety impositions I would apply to semen. \u0000 \u0000 \u0000 \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":"43079807","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.v41i1.8818
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.
{"title":"Justice for the Menopause: A Research Agenda","authors":"Naomi Cahn","doi":"10.52214/cjgl.v41i1.8818","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.52214/cjgl.v41i1.8818","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 \u0000 \u0000Menopause 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. \u0000It 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. \u0000 \u0000 \u0000 \u0000The 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. \u0000This 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. \u0000 \u0000 \u0000 \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":"42016654","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.
{"title":"Periods for Profit and the Rise of Menstrual Surveillance","authors":"M. Gilman","doi":"10.52214/cjgl.v41i1.8824","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.52214/cjgl.v41i1.8824","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 \u0000 \u0000Menstruation 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. \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":"47904384","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.v41i1.8842
Inga T. Winkler
With the current momentum around menstruation, it is increasingly framed as a human rights issue. We see such language in UN documents and many organizations adopt the framing of human rights. Scholars have argued that “framing the issue as being about the right to safe, healthy and dignified menstruation moves it from being a negative problem to be solved” to “an affirmative principle through which the facts of women and girls’ lives are acknowledged and validated.” This paper seeks to briefly unpack what it means to approach menstruation through the lens of human rights. First, I will discuss the predominant way in which human rights framing is presently used and how it is at risk of instrumentalization, tokenism, and reductionism. However, I will also provide a more optimistic view and discuss what the human rights framework has to offer, building on grassroots perspectives as well as normative arguments.
{"title":"Menstruation and Human Rights: Can We Move Beyond Instrumentalization, Tokenism, and Reductionism?","authors":"Inga T. Winkler","doi":"10.52214/cjgl.v41i1.8842","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.52214/cjgl.v41i1.8842","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 \u0000 \u0000 \u0000 \u0000 \u0000With the current momentum around menstruation, it is increasingly framed as a human rights issue. We see such language in UN documents and many organizations adopt the framing of human rights. Scholars have argued that “framing the issue as being about the right to safe, healthy and dignified menstruation moves it from being a negative problem to be solved” to “an affirmative principle through which the facts of women and girls’ lives are acknowledged and validated.” \u0000 \u0000 \u0000 \u0000This paper seeks to briefly unpack what it means to approach menstruation through the lens of human rights. First, I will discuss the predominant way in which human rights framing is presently used and how it is at risk of instrumentalization, tokenism, and reductionism. However, I will also provide a more optimistic view and discuss what the human rights framework has to offer, building on grassroots perspectives as well as normative arguments. \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":"42223288","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.v41i1.8830
M. Johnson
Menstruation is a situs of discrimination, oppression, harassment, and microaggression. Employers fire workers for bleeding and experiencing period pain. Schools control menstruating students’ access to bathrooms, products, and menstrual education. Prisons control their residents’ free access to menstrual products. There are both “obvious and non-obvious relationships” between menstrual discrimination and discrimination on the basis of race, gender, class, gender identity, and disability. This Essay suggests we ask the “menstruation question” as part of our examination of all forms of intersectional oppressions and to achieve menstrual justice. For example, if we see something racist, we should ask “where is the menstrual oppression in this?” So too, if we see menstrual oppression, we should ask, “where is the racism in this?” Through this process, we discover the multidimensionality of menstrual injustices and how they operate as structural intersectionality. We learn that “dismantling any one form of subordination is impossible without dismantling every other.” Therefore, asking the menstruation question is critical to achieve menstrual justice.
{"title":"Asking the Menstruation Question to Achieve Menstrual Justice","authors":"M. Johnson","doi":"10.52214/cjgl.v41i1.8830","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.52214/cjgl.v41i1.8830","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 \u0000 \u0000Menstruation is a situs of discrimination, oppression, harassment, and microaggression. Employers fire workers for bleeding and experiencing period pain. Schools control menstruating students’ access to bathrooms, products, and menstrual education. Prisons control their residents’ free access to menstrual products. There are both “obvious and non-obvious relationships” between menstrual discrimination and discrimination on the basis of race, gender, class, gender identity, and disability. This Essay suggests we ask the “menstruation question” as part of our examination of all forms of intersectional oppressions and to achieve menstrual justice. For example, if we see something racist, we should ask “where is the menstrual oppression in this?” So too, if we see menstrual oppression, we should ask, “where is the racism in this?” Through this process, we discover the multidimensionality of menstrual injustices and how they operate as structural intersectionality. We learn that “dismantling any one form of subordination is impossible without dismantling every other.” Therefore, asking the menstruation question is critical to achieve menstrual justice. \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":"41897120","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.v41i1.8837
D. Srinivasan, Bharti Kannan
Socio-cultural norms, stigmas, and taboos associated with menstruation in India take a number of different forms, often resulting in severe restrictions on menstruators, which are described in Part II, below. In fact, a 2016 study found that only one in eight adolescent girls in India faced no restrictions at all during menstruation. The constitutionality of menstrual exclusion practices has most famously been challenged in the Sabarimala case, where the Indian Supreme Court in a 4:1 majority found that the law restricting entry of women of menstruating age into the Sabarimala temple violated women’s constitutional rights to religion and equality. In Part III, analyzing the judgment in Sabarimala, this Article will explore the potential of applying the verdict in Sabarimala to raise constitutional challenges to other forms of menstrual exclusion practices in the country.
{"title":"Establishing the Unconstitutionality of Menstrual Exclusion Practices in India","authors":"D. Srinivasan, Bharti Kannan","doi":"10.52214/cjgl.v41i1.8837","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.52214/cjgl.v41i1.8837","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 \u0000 \u0000Socio-cultural norms, stigmas, and taboos associated with menstruation in India take a number of different forms, often resulting in severe restrictions on menstruators, which are described in Part II, below. In fact, a 2016 study found that only one in eight adolescent girls in India faced no restrictions at all during menstruation. The constitutionality of menstrual exclusion practices has most famously been challenged in the Sabarimala case, where the Indian Supreme Court in a 4:1 majority found that the law restricting entry of women of menstruating age into the Sabarimala temple violated women’s constitutional rights to religion and equality. In Part III, analyzing the judgment in Sabarimala, this Article will explore the potential of applying the verdict in Sabarimala to raise constitutional challenges to other forms of menstrual exclusion practices in the country. \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":"45795435","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.v41i1.8829
Kit Johnson
When Fauziya Kassindja landed at New York’s JFK airport in 1994, she was seventeen, seeking asylum, and fleeing the brutal practice of female genital mutilation. She was also menstruating. Hours after her arrival, Fauziya was strip searched, forced to stand before a female officer “completely naked, soiled pad exposed, shamed beyond words.” She was then transferred to an off-site detention facility where she was strip- searched again. When Fauziya asked where she should place her soiled pad, the female guard responded: “I don’t know. Why don’t you eat it?” When Fauziya asked for a new pad, she was told she could ask for one the next morning. She was given absolutely nothing to stay her flow—not even toilet paper or paper towels. This was the beginning of Fauziya’s experience with immigration detention. She would remain there for sixteen months.
{"title":"Tales of a Flow Stayed By Nothing: Menstruation in Immigration Detention","authors":"Kit Johnson","doi":"10.52214/cjgl.v41i1.8829","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.52214/cjgl.v41i1.8829","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 \u0000 \u0000When Fauziya Kassindja landed at New York’s JFK airport in 1994, she was seventeen, seeking asylum, and fleeing the brutal practice of female genital mutilation. She was also menstruating. Hours after her arrival, Fauziya was strip searched, forced to stand before a female officer “completely naked, soiled pad exposed, shamed beyond words.” She was then transferred to an off-site detention facility where she was strip- searched again. When Fauziya asked where she should place her soiled pad, the female guard responded: “I don’t know. Why don’t you eat it?” When Fauziya asked for a new pad, she was told she could ask for one the next morning. She was given absolutely nothing to stay her flow—not even toilet paper or paper towels. This was the beginning of Fauziya’s experience with immigration detention. She would remain there for sixteen months. \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":"44550465","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.v41i1.8840
Jennifer Weiss-Wolf
I was in fifth grade, the year 1978, and the weathered purple- and orange-covered paperback copy of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. was finally mine to check out of the school library for an entire week. I read it cover to cover that first night, and surely a dozen times over in the years that followed. I have since reflected upon the extraordinary gifts Judy Blume bestowed in Margaret: enabling children to be seen, respected, and met right when and where it mattered. She validated the most mundane, yet oddly prolific, questions about periods that were clearly on the minds of many. Four decades later, it is fair to say that the most meaningful moments of my legal career have been spent considering the very same topic—menstruation—in a quest to ensure its political centrality to issues of social justice, democratic participation, and gender equality. For my own part, commitment to menstrual equity has entailed examining our current laws and systems to see where discrimination and bias exist and persist—from public benefits to tax codes to education—and then forging the arguments to reverse that. And then, importantly, reimagining, crafting, and advancing new and more equitable policies in their place.
{"title":"Menopause and the Menstrual Equity Agenda","authors":"Jennifer Weiss-Wolf","doi":"10.52214/cjgl.v41i1.8840","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.52214/cjgl.v41i1.8840","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 \u0000 \u0000I was in fifth grade, the year 1978, and the weathered purple- and orange-covered paperback copy of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. was finally mine to check out of the school library for an entire week. I read it cover to cover that first night, and surely a dozen times over in the years that followed. I have since reflected upon the extraordinary gifts Judy Blume bestowed in Margaret: enabling children to be seen, respected, and met right when and where it mattered. She validated the most mundane, yet oddly prolific, questions about periods that were clearly on the minds of many. \u0000Four decades later, it is fair to say that the most meaningful moments of my legal career have been spent considering the very same topic—menstruation—in a quest to ensure its political centrality to issues of social justice, democratic participation, and gender equality. For my own part, commitment to menstrual equity has entailed examining our current laws and systems to see where discrimination and bias exist and persist—from public benefits to tax codes to education—and then forging the arguments to reverse that. And then, importantly, reimagining, crafting, and advancing new and more equitable policies in their place. \u0000 \u0000 \u0000","PeriodicalId":84468,"journal":{"name":"Columbia journal of gender and law","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41487819","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.v41i1.8816
Ann Bartow
When I became aware of the emergent body of legal scholarship on menstruation related topics on which this Symposium builds, I thought that the authors of these articles were very brave.1 I’m an imperfect but life-long feminist and accepted the emotional challenge that writing this Essay posed for me out of gratitude to those authors. Because my principal scholarly focus is intellectual property law, I approached the topic through the lens of trademark law. Part One of this article positions this Essay firmly within the contours of the author’s life and personal experiences with menstruation. Part Two maps common trademark and branding practices related to tampons and sanitary napkins. Part Three explains that the Lanham Act does not offer legal mechanisms by which to challenge the federal registration of sexist trademarks. As with racist trademarks, amplified criticism and persistent public pressure are the main mechanisms available to foment positive change in the marketplace for feminine hygiene products.
{"title":"\"Are You There, Trademark Law? It's Me, Misogyny.\"","authors":"Ann Bartow","doi":"10.52214/cjgl.v41i1.8816","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.52214/cjgl.v41i1.8816","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 \u0000 \u0000When I became aware of the emergent body of legal scholarship on menstruation related topics on which this Symposium builds, I thought that the authors of these articles were very brave.1 I’m an imperfect but life-long feminist and accepted the emotional challenge that writing this Essay posed for me out of gratitude to those authors. Because my principal scholarly focus is intellectual property law, I approached the topic through the lens of trademark law. Part One of this article positions this Essay firmly within the contours of the author’s life and personal experiences with menstruation. Part Two maps common trademark and branding practices related to tampons and sanitary napkins. Part Three explains that the Lanham Act does not offer legal mechanisms by which to challenge the federal registration of sexist trademarks. As with racist trademarks, amplified criticism and persistent public pressure are the main mechanisms available to foment positive change in the marketplace for feminine hygiene products. \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":"47306777","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.v41i1.8835
Dara E. Purvis
Long before I taught law students the intricacies of statutes, I taught junior high school students sex education. It was a part-time job while I was in college in Los Angeles, through a program with Planned Parenthood that provided a two-week curriculum in public junior high schools. Today I joke that it gave me my unflappable nature in the classroom—if you can tell preteens about syphilis, nothing that happens in a law school classroom will break your concentration—but it also gave me an indelible memory of how far sex ed in America has to go. During our training, one of my fellow teachers referred in passing to how annoying it was to change her tampon every time she had to urinate. She was a bright college student and engaged with reproductive work enough that she successfully applied to work at Planned Parenthood. Yet, she didn’t know that the vagina and urethra were different anatomical structures.
{"title":"How Sex Ed Fails People With Periods","authors":"Dara E. Purvis","doi":"10.52214/cjgl.v41i1.8835","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.52214/cjgl.v41i1.8835","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 \u0000 \u0000Long before I taught law students the intricacies of statutes, I taught junior high school students sex education. It was a part-time job while I was in college in Los Angeles, through a program with Planned Parenthood that provided a two-week curriculum in public junior high schools. Today I joke that it gave me my unflappable nature in the classroom—if you can tell preteens about syphilis, nothing that happens in a law school classroom will break your concentration—but it also gave me an indelible memory of how far sex ed in America has to go. During our training, one of my fellow teachers referred in passing to how annoying it was to change her tampon every time she had to urinate. She was a bright college student and engaged with reproductive work enough that she successfully applied to work at Planned Parenthood. Yet, she didn’t know that the vagina and urethra were different anatomical structures. \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":"45844397","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}
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