Proposals for Same-sex Marriage in England and Wales: A Good Effort, But Must Try Harder

Neil Cobb

The coalition government has begun its consultation on equal marriage for gay people in England and Wales, after announcing it is already persuaded by the arguments in favour of same-sex civil marriage. This follows the Scottish Government’s own proposals last year in which it also gave its provisional support for equal rights to civil marriage in Scotland.

“I don’t support gay marriage despite being a Conservative,” David Cameron said in a recent speech. “I support gay marriage because I am a Conservative.”

Of course, Cameron’s soundbite will feed fears that the right to marry is a retrograde step for gay people that ignores the institution’s oppressive history and assimilationist power.

For many others, though, equal marriage will be welcomed for finally challenging the symbolic inequality in relationship recognition that has persisted in the UK since the Civil Partnership Act in 2004.

That the coalition and Scottish government are both broadly in favour of equal marriage marks a significant shift in UK gay politics. In particular, the consultation positions the coalition in direct opposition to extreme religious forces, especially a virulently homophobic Catholic church.

PECANS workshop 2012 REGISTRATION OPEN Bodies of Law/Law and the Body

Bodies of Law / Law and the Body

An interdisciplinary conference for postgraduate and early-career academics in the area of law, gender and sexuality

Friday 30 March 2012

School of Law, University of Westminster, London, UK

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Law mediates various power structures and is interwoven with numerous other knowledges that participate in the construction, normalization and regulation of bodies, such as medicine, social media, religion and the nation-state. Numerous feminist legal scholars have commented on law’s intimate relationship to, for example, medical discourses, arguing that the shape of legal power has changed to more regulatory and disciplinary forms. Inevitably law’s relationship to bodies/states of embodiment alters as it takes on these increasingly pervasive roles. One might conclude that the notion of a space where the law will not intervene is a liberal fantasy, out of step with the reality of law’s operations. How, then, should law be evaluated and/or harnessed?

Our interdisciplinary one-day workshop aims to cover these and other issues pertaining to law and the body.

Venue - Room CLG.09, New Cavendish Site, 115 New Cavendish St, University of Westminster http://www.westminster.ac.uk/about-us/visit-us/directions/cavendish

Conference fees - £15; includes lunch and refreshments

Registration- registration closes 20/03/12.  Places are limited. Please click link and follow on screen payment instructions https://epayments.westminster.ac.uk/webpublicecs/newpay.asp

Further information - please see our website at http://clgs-pecans.org.uk/ or contact Nikki Godden at n.m.godden@durham.ac.uk

Download the programme here: PECANS 2012 Provisional programme

International Women’s Day Celebration in Newcastle

The Newcastle Women’s Collective (with the Newcastle Feminist Society) would like to invite you to celebrate International Women’s Day at the Cluny 2, Ouseburn, Newcastle, Wednesday 7 March from 7.30pm (*women only*). Tickets on the door at £3 minimum donation.

Join us to celebrate women and women’s achievements through live music, art, the spoken word and more! The line-up includes:

Live Music

Iceni https://www.facebook.com/pages/Iceni/117104391717999?sk=app_178091127385

Miss Danby http://www.myspace.com/cheersmedusa

Comedy and Poetry

Pippa Little http://www.biscuitpublishing.com/comp/pippa.htm

Kate Fox http://www.katefox.co.uk/

An all women Suggestibles line up – the mayhem will be managed by the amazing Bev Fox: http://www.thesuggestibles.co.uk/

Art

Roweena Russell

Kate Sweeney

For updates and further information see http://www.newcastlewomenscollective.co.uk/

Twelve Year Jail Sentence for Rape Victim

Laura Taylor

Laura is an MJur student at Durham Law School, Durham University.

Even today our legal system continues to fail to protect women from all forms of violence. Commonly cited examples are those of rape and sexual offences more generally, where attrition rates are high, and adequate support of the victim is lacking at all stages of the legal process. Instead of providing support for all victims of sexual violence in the criminal justice system, ‘rape myths’ act to reinforce the notion of a chaste, virgin, victim, who is attacked by a stranger in a dark alley at night. By comparison the overwhelming majority of victims who do not conform to this expectation, perhaps because of their familiar relationship with the defendant, their dress, or flirtatious behaviour, are often considered to be ‘asking for it’. Consequently the victim is condemned as the guilty party.

This places our legal system in a shameful position, yet despite these failings it has never regressed to a stage where we formally criminalise the rape victim (although notably a rape victim was recently imprisoned for withdrawing her case from the criminal justice system, following pressure from an abusive husband and his family). Sad to say, that is precisely what has happened in Afghanistan, by way of a crime known as “adultery by force”.  Furthermore, there are fears that as the foreign military presence in the country lessen that the problem will become worse.

Recommended Reading: Women and the Law Stories

Nikki Godden

Nikki is a doctoral student at Durham Law School, Durham University. She is co-creator and editor of Inherently Human.

Elizabeth M Schneider & Stephanie M Wildman (2011) Women and the Law Stories (Foundation Press)

Women and the Law Stories is a wonderful collection which tells the litigants’ tales that are a part of, but are typically excluded from, the legal history of landmark US cases which focus on women’s rights.  Chapters explore and evaluate feminist critiques of the relevant case, area of law and legal concepts in light of and in relation to these stories. The editors introduce the collection explaining that the telling and hearing of women’s stories (and, more generally, those of the powerless, disadvantaged or oppressed groups in society) has been a cornerstone of feminist method, practice and theory.[1] Or as put by Ann C Dailey, ‘the use of storytelling reflects a belief that personal and situated narrative is central to a proper understanding of justice’.[2] However, storytelling is not just a means to an end; it has an important normative dimension which reflects the idea that all voices, all storytellers, are equal and yet diverse and unique in many ways.[3] Embracing and following this storytelling tradition, the book reveals the ‘less well known’ personal narratives which ‘deserve wider recognition’.[4] In so doing, it challenges the dominant stories of these cases, and the ‘conventions of legal scholarship and institutional histories’.[5] To this end, the last chapter is a ‘hidden’ story, an ‘everyday’ case, which highlights ‘women’s experiences of anonymity and invisibility in the legal system’ and legal literature and mainstream scholarship.[6] While the stories are therefore valuable in themselves, the chapters also reflect on and interrogate feminist debates, approaches and concepts –  such as ‘gender stereotyping’ (Chamallas), equality  (Bartlett) equal versus special treatment (Wildman), access to healthcare and abortion (Copelon and Law) – exploring the implications for today and potential ways in which to move forwards in feminist legal theory and law reform.

Women’s Reproductive Autonomy in the Chinese Family Planning Context

Wei Wei Cao

Wei Wei is a PhD candidate in biomedical law and ethics at Keele University. You can contact her at: rainbowvivi@msn.com.

Background Information

The idea of ‘family planning’ was officially introduced into the Chinese political and the legal systems at the start of the post-Maoist era. The introduction of and explanation of this idea were significantly affected by Malthusian demographic theory in China. (Lee and Wang 1999) To justify implementing a strict birth control plan, the first post-Maoist government advocated a Malthusian argument: economic production cannot keep pace with population growth without family planning. Thus, reducing the national birth rate was treated as essential to the development of the state’s economy. Deng, the first president in the post-Maoist era, claimed that the state must fulfil the birth control task, which was of major importance for the national economy. In order to achieve this population goal, the government stated that all married citizens must take up family planning and downsize their families.

Women’s Citizen Duties in the Chinese Family Planning Context

In the Chinese family planning context, post-Maoist governments impose the duty to take up family planning mainly on wives, and most of the compulsory birth control methods are also targeted at them.

R v Clinton: loss of control and sexual infidelity

Neil Cobb

The Court of Appeal, in a significant, controversial, but not unexpected judgment, has allowed an appeal against a murder conviction where the partial defence of loss of control was withdrawn by the trial judge after she disregarded evidence that the appellant was motivated by the victim’s sexual infidelity. Since October 2010 the loss of control defence has replaced the ancient common law defence of provocation. The structure of the new defence is based on the wide-ranging and lengthy review of the partial defences by the Law Commission, although as the Court notes the Commission’s proposals were altered substantially by the Labour government when it enacted the new partial defence in the Coroners and Justice Act 2009.

One of the key objectives of both the Commission and the government was to ensure that the defence was not misused in the context of domestic violence and, in particular, by violent men who claimed they lost control when they killed their female partners. To this end, among other measures, the new defence can only reduce murder to manslaughter where killings are based in anger if the loss of self-control was attributable to “things said or done (or both) which constituted circumstances of an extremely grave character and caused D to have a justifiable sense of being seriously wronged.” Moreover, in a provision added by the government, “the fact that a thing done or said constituted sexual infidelity is to be disregarded.”

The facts

In R v Clinton the appellant was the husband of the victim. The couple had lived together for 16 years and had children of school age. Two weeks before the victim was killed the victim had left him. The appellant had a history of depression. According to the appellant’s testimony on the night of the killing the victim had returned to the family home.