A dignitarian feminist jurisprudence with applications to rape, sexual harassment and honor codes

Feminist insights, ideas, initiatives and agendas are not – and should not be – confined to a single, specific value system. Because they are amenable to various theories and ideologies, they may benefit from multiple worldviews and terminologies. Since its modern beginnings in the nineteenth century, feminism has mastered diverse value-languages, each relevant to a particular context. Within the framework of classical liberalism and the assertion of equal rationality and thus autonomy and civil liberties, liberal feminism claimed that all women were equally rational, autonomous and deserving of civil liberties.1 As sensitivity to dominance and the oppression of subjugated classes by hegemonic groups grew, radical feminism set out to eradicate suppressive hegemonic patriarchalism and liberate dominated women as a class.2 With the proud proclamation of minority distinctiveness, relational feminists began demanding that women be acknowledged and celebrated for their nurturing and caring constitution.3 The development of identity politics led to the emergence of black, lesbian, religious and numerous other feminisms, intersectionality, postmodernism, post-colonialism and neoconservatism, all inspiring lively feminist vocabularies and patterns of thought.4 This flexibility, versatility and adaptability has allowed feminism to become relevant to a wide range of audiences across diverse times and places, attesting to the movement’s vitality. And yet, academic feminists have largely neglected the study of human dignity as a central organizing value. This is anomalous. Across the globe, human dignity, the inherent value of humanity per se, is increasingly regarded as the basis of human rights. The United Nations declared, on 10 December 1948, that human dignity is the foundation of universal, fundamental human rights.5 Nourishing contemporary humanism and underlying and framing international human rights discourse, human dignity has, over the decades since, formed the basis of multiple constitutions and treaties.