This chapter contains sections titled: Does Feminism Discriminate against Men? Are Men Worse off than Women? Taking the Second Sexism Seriously Conclusion.

Does feminism give a much-needed voice to women in a patriarchal world? Or is the world not really patriarchal? Has feminism begun to level the playing field in a world in which women are more often paid less at work and abused at home? Or are women paid equally for the same work and not abused more at home? Does feminism support equality in education and in the military, or does it discriminate against men by ignoring (...) such issues as male-only draft registration and boys lagging behind in school? The only book of its kind, this volume offers a sharp, lively, and provocative debate on the impact of feminism on men. Warren Farrell--an international best-selling author and leader in both the early women's and current men's movements--praises feminism for opening options for women but criticizes it for demonizing men, distorting data, and undervaluing the family. In response, James P. Sterba--an acclaimed philosopher and ardent advocate of feminism--maintains that the feminist movement gives a long-neglected voice to women in a male-dominated world and that men are not an oppressed gender in today's America. Their wide-ranging debate covers personal issues, from love, sex, dating, and rape to domestic violence, divorce, and child custody. Farrell and Sterba also look through their contrasting lenses at systemic issues, from the school system to the criminal justice system; from the media to the military; and from health care to the workplace. A perfect book to get students thinking and debating, Does Feminism Discriminate Against Men? A Debate is ideal for courses in gender studies, sociology, psychology, economics, feminist philosophy, and contemporary moral issues. It is also compelling reading for anyone interested in the future of men and women. (shrink)

_Does sexism against men exist? What it looks like and why we need to take it seriously_ This book draws attention to the "second sexism," where it exists, how it works and what it looks like, and responds to those who would deny that it exists. Challenging conventional ways of thinking, it examines controversial issues such as sex-based affirmative action, gender roles, and charges of anti-feminism. The book offers an academically rigorous argument in an accessible style, including the (...) careful use of empirical data, and includes examples and engages in a discussion of how sex discrimination against men and boys also undermines the cause for female equality. (shrink)

Care-supporting policies incentivise women’s withdrawal from the labour market, thereby reinforcing statistical discrimination and further undermining equality of opportunities between women and men for positions of advantage. This, I argue, is not sufficient reason against such policies. Supporting care also improves the overall condition of disadvantaged women who are care-givers; justice gives priority to the latter. Moreover, some of the most advantageous existing jobs entail excessive benefits; we should discount the value of allocating such jobs meritocratically. Further, women who (...) have a real chance to occupy positions of advantage have most likely already enjoyed more than their fair share of opportunities; they lack a claim to more. Women can have a complaint grounded in the expressive disvalue of sexist discrimination. This gives them special claims against men occupying the vast majority of top positions and against their higher share of opportunities for positions of advantage. But their claim does not speak against care-supporting policies. (shrink)

Following a Consultation exercise conducted by the Lord Chancellor's Department, the U.K. Government has announced its intention to amend the Children Act 1989 so that the unmarried father who jointly registers the birth with the mother will acquire parental responsibility automatically. In this paper, I draw on the responses made to the L.C.D. Consultation, in order critically to evaluate the arguments for and against reform. A poverty of relevant empirical research makes it impossible to reach a properly informed view (...) on the positive or negative impacts of implementing the proposal. However, the principled arguments: that unmarried fathers and their children are subject to discrimination, or that it is unfair for men to pay child support, yet have no automatic rights with regard to their children, are ultimately unconvincing. I also attempt a more explicitly sociological exploration of the Consultation and reform process, focusing on what it can tell us about evolving social attitudes towards the statuses of `father' and `family' and how they should be valued and protected. (shrink)

Against the background of a deeply uneven package of work–family reconciliation measures and an increasing focus on engaging men in unpaid care work, in this article I discuss the extension of the Irish discrimination law framework to provide protection against family status discrimination to workers who are engaged in certain care relationships. While this development of the law to recognize a relational understanding of inequality is welcome, its confined definition of family status fails to capture the range of (...) workers’ caring relationships and networks. Adopting a contextualized assessment of 12 years of litigation generated under the ‘family status’ ground, with reference to complainants’ gender and work status, the study considers the types of experiences being litigated as ‘family status’ discrimination. The study show how much of the nature and forms of inequality presented before the tribunals are beyond the conceptual boundaries of the principle of equal treatment that depends upon a sameness of treatment model with the ‘care-less’ comparator. Despite its potential to question the neutrality of workplace structures predicated upon the division between paid work and unpaid care, the principle of indirect family status discrimination has been under utilised as a litigation strategy. The most successful dimension of family status discrimination protection has been in respect of its ability to capture the negative stereotyping of worker–carers who continue to perform as ideal workers. I suggest that this extension of a limited negative rights framework, when considered alongside the state’s extremely poor support for workcare reconciliation more broadly, places negligible obligations on employers, and that the gender neutrality implicit in its provisions have yet to impact on gender equality as regards work–care reconciliation. (shrink)

Changes in immigration policy and legislation have the power to shape and alter the gendering of migration in significant ways, and can have a dramatic effect on the lives and relationships of the men, women and families involved. In this paper, we examine the provisions of the new Immigration Act introduced in South Africa in 2002. The Act, which replaces the outdated Aliens Control Act of 1991, gives considerable cause for concern on gender grounds. Foremost, the Act entrenches a system (...) of male-dominated regional labour migration that has its origins in the 19th-century discovery of gold and diamonds. The male bias in the work permit and other employment-based categories along with the limits to family reunification for those entering for work are likely in effect to discriminate against women to a greater extent than men. While similar gender concerns are common to most immigration policy regimes around the world, the particular circumstances of the South African case, where both skilled and unskilled migration streams are heavily male-dominated, makes them especially acute here. This paper contextualizes migration regimes in South Africa and examines in detail the likely implications of the new Immigration Act. (shrink)

Building upon an ethnographic exploration of the pedagogy and alternative dispute resolution activities of an Islamic feminist movement in India called the Indian Muslim Women’s Movement, this article speaks to the tension between Saba Mahmood’s influential account of religion and gendered agency, and a liberal feminist conception of gender equality. Anthropological explorations of Muslim women’s pious commitments as well as liberal feminist engagements with religion and culture are premised upon a presumed dichotomy between ethical engagements with religion, and a commitment (...) to gender equality. Yet there is little analysis in existing scholarship of how gender equality is constituted by social movements premised on a religious identity, such as Islamic feminist movements. This article moves beyond thinking about gender equality merely as an abstract liberal normative good to explore how the discourse of gender equality is constituted in a movement that brings together everyday ethical commitments inspired by notions of piety and concerted everyday struggles against social and legal inequality. The ethnographic vignettes show how gender equality connotes social and legal equality between men and women premised on their equal spiritual status as God’s creations, their equal pious obligations irrespective of gender and the equal imperative of ethical conduct on both men and women based on Quranic values of compassion and justice. The pursuit of gender equality also entails reinterpretation of social norms in the light of ethical conduct, and an ethical commitment to collective struggle against gender discrimination in state and non-state forums. (shrink)

_In the mainstream culture to identify oneself as a "feminist" has been a fashion. Feminism covers all issues degrading and depriving women of their due in society vis-à-vis male members and it has started a crusade against atrocities on women across the globe. It is therefore regarded as synonymous with a movement and revolution to defend and promote issues involving women. However, the concerns that feminism raises do seem alien to tribal inhabitants in the Koraput district of (...) Orissa, because, unknowingly, they are its champions. Its principles are ingrained in their very culture. They practice and follow feminism as a matter of habit that has come to them down the ages. They do not follow it out of fear, compassion, enlightenment, education or compulsion; it is a necessity that comes quite naturally to them. It has been spontaneous and indigenous._. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Conscription and Combat Violence Corporal Punishment Sexual Assault Circumcision Education Family and Other Relationships Bodily Privacy Life Expectancy Imprisonment and Capital Punishment Conclusion.

Feminism is sometimes equated with demands for equal rights for women. Mary Wollstonecraft in the eighteenth century argued, against Rousseau, that women should be accorded the same rights and freedoms based on rational principles that were being demanded for men. In the nineteenth century, John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill, rejecting prevailing views of the time, called for an end to the subjection of women through an extension to women of equal rights and equal opportunities. Women, they (...) argued, should have the same rights as men to own property, to vote, to receive education, and to enter any profession. In the twentieth century, women's movements often focused their attention on winning for women the right to vote, achieved in the United States in 1920, in England in 1918 and 1928, in France in 1946, and in Switzerland only in 1971. The second wave of the women's movement in the United States, starting in the late 1960s, placed strong emphasis on achieving an Equal Rights Amendment to the US Constitution (the amendment failed to be ratified by the required number of states), and on ending discrimination against women in all its forms. Arguments for welfare rights, valid independently of feminism, were seen as particularly important to women: how could a person enjoy rights to freedom or equal protection of the laws without assurance of the means to stay alive and to feed her children? Either employment and child care must be available, or persons must have access by right to the basic necessities of life. Negative freedoms from discriminatory interferences are insufficient; positive enablements to be free and equal agents must also be assured by rights. (shrink)

Cost effectiveness analysis is a tool for evaluating the aggregate benefits of medical treatments, health care services, and public health programs. Its opponents often claim that its use leads to unfair discrimination against people with disabilities. My aim in this paper is to clarify the conditions under which this might be so. I present some ways in which the use of cost effectiveness analysis can lead to discrimination and suggest why these forms of discrimination may be unfair. I also (...) discuss some proposals for avoiding discrimination without rejecting cost effectiveness analysis altogether. I argue that none of these proposals is ultimately convincing. I describe a different approach to the problem and conclude by answering the question in the title. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: What Is the Second Sexism? The First Sexism Two Kinds of Denialist Forestalling Some Fallacies Structure and Method of the Book.

Feminist critiques of the social sciences are based on the assumption that because the social sciences were developed for the most part by white, middle-class, Western men, the perspectives of women were ignored. This book offers an approach for integrating gender-related content into the social work curriculum. The distinguished contributors discuss the shortcoming of dominant knowledge, address the pressing need for a gender-integrated curriculum, consider the pedagogies consistent with the implementation of an integrate curriculum, address specific areas in social work (...) education, assessing content, and assumptions, and discuss strategic issues for the implementation of curricular knowledge. (shrink)

What does it mean for men to join with women in preventing sexual assault and domestic violence? This book, based on life history interviews with men and women anti-violence activists, illuminates both the promise of men's violence prevention work, as well as the strains and tensions that inhere, both for men as feminist allies, and for the women they work with.

They do not need to be rescued from masculinity."--BOOK JACKET.

The paper proposes a new method of researching public opinion for the purposes of valuing the outcomes of healthcare interventions. The issue I address is that, under the quality-adjusted life-year system, disabled patients face a higher cost-effectiveness hurdle than able-bodied patients. This seems inequitable. The author considers the alternative approaches to valuing healthcare interventions that have been proposed, and shows that all of them face the same problem. It is proposed that to value an outcome, instead of researching the general (...) public, the population that is to be targeted with the intervention should be researched. (shrink)

Polygamy, forced marriage, female genital mutilation, punishing women for being raped, differential access for men and women to health care and education, unequal rights of ownership, assembly, and political participation, unequal vulnerability to violence. These practices and conditions are standard in some parts of the world. Do demands for multiculturalism — and certain minority group rights in particular — make them more likely to continue and to spread to liberal democracies? Are there fundamental conflicts between our commitment to gender equity (...) and our increasing desire to respect the customs of minority cultures or religions? In this book, the eminent feminist Susan Moller Okin and fifteen of the world’s leading thinkers about feminism and multiculturalism explore these unsettling questions in a provocative, passionate, and illuminating debate. Okin opens by arguing that some group rights can, in fact, endanger women. She points, for example, to the French government’s giving thousands of male immigrants special permission to bring multiple wives into the country, despite French laws against polygamy and the wives’ own bitter opposition to the practice. Okin argues that if we agree that women should not be disadvantaged because of their sex, we should not accept group rights that permit oppressive practices on the grounds that they are fundamental to minority cultures whose existence may otherwise be threatened. In reply, some respondents reject Okin’s position outright, contending that her views are rooted in a moral universalism that is blind to cultural difference. Others quarrel with Okin’s focus on gender, or argue that we should be careful about which group rights we permit, but not reject the category of group rights altogether. Okin concludes with a rebuttal, clarifying, adjusting, and extending her original position. These incisive and accessible essays — expanded from their original publication in Boston Review and including four new contributions — are indispensable reading for anyone interested in one of the most contentious social and political issues today. The diverse contributors, in addition to Okin, are Azizah al-Hibri, Abdullahi An-Na’im, Homi Bhabha, Sander Gilman, Janet Halley, Bonnie Honig, Will Kymlicka, Martha Nussbaum, Bhikhu Parekh, Katha Pollitt, Robert Post, Joseph Raz, Saskia Sassen, Cass Sunstein, and Yael Tamir. (shrink)

What sort of ethics do we need? Rosalyn Diprose argues that the usual approaches to ethics both perpetuate and remain blind to the mechanisms of the subordination of women. In _Bodies of Women: Ethics, Embodiment and Sexual Differences_, she claims that injustice against women is found in the social discourses and practices which both evaluate and constitute their modes of embodiment as improper in relation to men. Diprose critically analyses the attempts in both feminist and non-feminist ethics to recognise (...) the role of sexual difference and the biomedical discourses whose descriptions mask a constitution and regulation of the 'body'. Her critiques draw on insights from Anglophone feminist theory and continental philosophy, and are supported by critical readings of Irigaray, Cornell and Fraser, Hegel, Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida and Foucault. What emerges is a new ethics of sexual difference which not only better locates the mechanisms of discrimination but also provides the means to subvert them. (shrink)

An Acquaintance of mine decided, in the late 1950s, to become an officer in the U.S. Navy, until he discovered a Navy regulation stating that ugly men would not be accepted as officer candidates. Surely there is something suspicious about such a policy. Yet, in a time when people are so conscious of the many forms of discrimination — race, colour, sex, age, religion — it is somewhat surprising that little serious attention is given to the practice of what I (...) shall call ‘aesthetic discrimination against persons’, discrimination on the basis of appearance or looks. It is true that, in recent years, some social scientists have conducted research leading them to the conclusion that human beings prefer and esteem good looking people over plain or ugly ones. A few of these researchers have even been willing to venture moral opinions on the subject. (shrink)

Up Against Foucault offers both a feminist critique of Foucauldian theories as well as an attempt to reconcile these seemingly irreconcilable perspectives. Feminists are often "up against Foucault" because he questions key conclusions in feminism regarding the nature of gender relations, and men's possession of power. This book, however, fills the gap in literature about Foucault by showing how his theories of sexuality and power relations are often applicable to the everyday realities of women's lives. Drawing upon (...) their diverse backgrounds in social theory and philosophy, the contributors discuss the ways in which Foucault provokes feminists into questioning their grasp of power relations, and examines the implications of his decision to overlook categories of gender in his discussion of sexuality and power relations. They also show that in spite of his lack of interest in gender, Foucault's ways of understanding the control of women and female sexuality ultimately have much to offer feminism. (shrink)

In this paper I will deal with two questions. One is the relatively specific issue of whether mandatory retirement is unjust discrimination against the aged. The position taken is that it is not. But in the development of this argument a principle is advanced which appears to have the consequence that nothing, or at least very few of the practices that we are intuitively inclined to regard as unfair discrimination, are discriminatory with respect to age.

In this paper, I argue that it is morally permissible and should be legally permissible for state and private professional schools to discriminate against women. By professional schools, I mean law, medical, and business schools. More specifically, I argue that such schools may discount womens applications to the degree that they are likely to produce less than male counterparts. The argument differs with regard to state and private institutions because of the greater moral elbowroom that private institutions have. The (...) argument for state professional schools depends on the purpose of state professional programs. If the purpose of these programs is to provide professional services to citizens, and I argue that it is, then the state professional schools are permitted to do such discounting. My argument also supports the stronger claim that state schools have an obligation to do so, but I will focus on the weaker claim. Given their wider choice of goals, private schools are also permitted to discount womens applications, but they are not obligated to do so. In this paper, then, I provide an argument for the moral permissibility of such discounting. (shrink)

This paper addresses the gender pay gap among Italian university graduates on entry to the labor market, and stresses the potential for gender stereotypes to impact subjective assessment of individual productivity. We build upon previous research about gender and wage inequality, introducing tournament theory as a framework for the gender pay gap analysis. We hypothesize that the effects of gender make occupational tournaments less fair in some arenas compared with others. As a consequence, men workers have higher probabilities of winning (...) the wage competition, but this process is uneven. Our data show that in contexts where stereotypes are most likely to occur, tournaments appear to be less fair and the unexplained component of the gender pay gap is higher. (shrink)

Linda LeMoncheck introduces a new way of thinking and talking about women's sexual pleasures, preferences, and desires. Using the tools of contemporary analytic philosophy, she discusses methods for mediating the tensions among apparently irreconcilable feminist perspectives on women's sexuality and shows how a feminist epistemology and ethic can advance the dialogue in women's sexuality across a broad political spectrum. She argues that in order to capture the diversity and complexity of women's sexual experience, women's sexuality must be examined from two (...) equally compelling perspectives: that of women's sexual oppression under conditions of individual and institutional male dominance; and that of women's sexual liberation, both in terms of each woman's pursuit of sexual agency and self-definition, and in terms of women's sexual liberation as a class. Loose Women, Lecherous Men sheds crucial new light on such much-debated topics as promiscuity, adultery, sexual deviance, prostitution, pornography, sexual harassment, and sexual violence against women. Her book supports a dialogue that encourages both women and men to take up a feminist perspective in exploring the meaning and value of sexuality in their lives. (shrink)

continent. 1.4 (2011): 242—252. Introduction The following two works were produced by visual artist Jonas Staal and writer Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei during a visit as artists in residence at The Bag Factory, Johannesburg, South Africa during the summer of 2010. Both works were produced in situ and comprised in both cases a public intervention conceived by Staal and a textual work conceived by Van Gerven Oei. It was their aim, in both cases, to produce complementary works that could (...) be read “through each other,” in which the movement of artistic construction would be imitated by textual deconstruction and vice versa. Both works deal with the way in which capital, apartheid, and monumentality are interwoven in South-African society. The Missing Link addresses a monument for democracy, erected on the premises of a private corporation running both an amusement park and the Apartheid Museum franchise. The textual intervention accompanying this public intervention investigates the limits of the inclusiveness of the anti-discrimination section in the South-African constitution, itself a monumental work of democracy. The Monument for the Distribution of Wealth deals with the history and eventual dissolution of a monumental square, commemorating the Soweto Uprising, in one of the poorest townships of Johannesburg. The history accompanying this public dismemberment of memory is equally fragmented, which is expressed by the many voices recounting uncertain and perhaps even irrelevant “facts” about the genius loci, the way in which the memorial space has actually entered into the memory of the inhabitants surrounding it. Next to their individual practices, Staal and Van Gerven Oei have worked together on a number of projects ever since 2007, including several art residencies. Their work involves an investigation of the different interfaces between art, politics, and public space in media ranging from theater and public interventions, to video installations and (co-authored) textual works. The Missing Link Missing Link (1) Missing Link (2) Missing Link (3) Intervention on the monument entitled The Seven Pillars of the Constitution , part of the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, South Africa. The Seven Pillars represent the constitutional values propagated in South Africa since the abolition of the apartheid regime. The monument and museum were built by the Gold Reef Resorts corporation, which is also responsible for the theme park and casino next to it. By placing the word “capitalism” on the wall surrounding the museum, the capitalist system and the constant social divisions that it implies are interpreted as sophistic continuations of apartheid politics. Through the capitalist system, apartheid is still operational within South African society. Whereas during the apartheid regime, the separation clearly ran along race divisions, in the current, “democratic” system, the same actual separation is sustained without it being an explicit element of the foundations of the country, i.e. the constitution. This intervention foregrounds the constant role of capitalism is both periods. At the same time the intervention acknowledges that contemporary Western artisthood is a mirror of the privileges that are offered by the capitalist system, and the type of artist that it produces. The intervention initiates a critical discourse concerning the capitalist system situated within the disaster of capitalism itself, in other words: through the desire to break with the presumption that art would be able to operate outside the capitalist system and to confirm that art—and the artist himself—is in fact modeled on this system. The public intervention by Staal was supplemented by a textual intervention by Van Gerven Oei: a proposition to alter the seventeenth amendment of the South African constitution. Even though the anti-discrimination legislation in South-Africa is one of the most stringent and inclusive in the world, one factor—wealth—remains outside its scope, thus continuing the schisms along racial lines produced during the apartheid regime: §9.3. The state may not unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language, birth, and wealth. Monument for the Distribution of Wealth Intervention concerning the June 16 Memorial Acre in Central Western Jabavu, one of the poorest townships of Johannesburg. The monument comprises a park on which different are placed recalling an important protest the black population against the former apartheid regime. In 1976, from a school adjacent to the park, they started a massive protest against the introduction of Afrikaans in the school curriculum. The police reacted violently, and shot several hundreds of students. The construction of the June 16 Memorial Acre was started in 2005, and from the start was the paragon of corruption. Coordinated by local politicians, some family members of the protest leader from 1976 gained control of the realization of the monument, outside the regulation through external institutions. The available budget of 41 million rand (at that time well over 5 million euro) was largely embezzled. In the meantime, the monument has become fully dilapidated and defaced. The park has become overgrown with weeds and covered in a layer of dirt, and the local population is slowly plundering the square to use the material for the construction and decoration of their own houses. The Monument for the Distribution of Wealth develops the dynamics already existent around the June 16 Memorial Acre. Without obtaining official permission in advance, several local inhabitants were hired to break down the monument, sort the materials, and offer it to the neighborhood. Thus, the redistribution of wealth after the fall of the apartheid regime is finally taking place, albeit from the mere remains of the capital that was once invested in the community. The words “monument” and “for free” are spray-painted on the stacks of material, both in English and Zulu, as these are locally the most common languages. Van Gerven Oei supplemented Staal’s public intervention with an account of the history of the monument based on a series of interviews. The account clarifies how the different interests within the protest 1976 are reflected in the exceeding decay of the park, and how in the end those interests were represented by the June 16 Memorial Acre. Monument for the Distribution of Wealth 1: Removing stones Monument for the Distribution of Wealth 3: Pulling down statues Monument for the Distribution of Wealth 4: Offering the material Monument for the Distribution of Wealth 5: Offering the material Monument for the Distribution of Wealth 6 The next day A Fragmentary History of the Monument for the Distribution of Wealth, Formerly Known as the June 16 Memorial Acre in Central Western Jabavu, Soweto Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei The following text, based on interviews and online research aims to provide parts of a history of the park in front of Morris Isaacson High School in Central Western Jabavu, Soweto. The idea for the transformation of the park into a memorial site has its source in the events of June 16, 1976: the start of the the student uprising in Soweto. The development of the park was started in the early 1980s, and the actual transformation into a memorial site, the June 16 Memorial Acre, was initiated in 2005. Over the last few years, several monumental additions have been made to the park: A marble monument with three pillars was revealed on June 16, 2006. A sculpture of a book and several billboards on June 16, 2008. A sculpture of student leader Tsietsi Mashinini on June 16, 2010. The park was transformed into the Monument for the Distribution of Wealth on August 3, 2010. According to the entry “Youth Struggle” on the website South African History Online, the Bantu Education Act was introduced in 1953 . In 1954 , Dr Verwoerd, Minister of Native Affairs, stated: “What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice? That is quite absurd.” According to the entry “Soweto uprising” on Wikipedia, the Afrikaans Medium Decree was issued in 1974 , forcing all black schools to use Afrikaans and English in a 50-50 mix as languages of instruction. The Regional Director of Bantu Education (Northern Transvaal Region), J.G. Erasmus, told Circuit Inspectors and Principals of Schools that from January 1, 1975 , Afrikaans had to be used for mathematics, arithmetic, and social studies from standard five (7th grade). English would be the medium for general science and practical subjects. Indigenous languages would be used for religion instruction, music, and physical culture. According the entry “Soweto uprising” on Wikipedia, on April 30, 1976 , students from the Orlando West Junior School in Soweto went on strike, refusing to go to school. Their example was followed by other schools in Soweto. A student from Morris Isaacson High School, Toboho “Tsietsi” Mashinini, proposed a meeting on June 13, 1976 to discuss further action. According to Weizmann Hamilton’s article “The Soweto Uprising 1976,” which appeared in the September 1986 edition of Inqaba Ya Basebenzi (Fortress of the Revolution), on June 13, 1976 , the South African Students’ Movement called a meeting at the Donaldson Community Center in Orlando. 300-400 Students representing 55 schools decided to hold a mass demonstration on June 16. According to Brian Mokhele, member of the Joint Community Safety Forum, Dr Edelstein was the first victim of the Soweto uprising and killed the day before the march on June 15, 1976 . Edelstein was an administrator at the pass office in Jabavu and gave golf courses to the local community. Edelstein was put in a garbage bin and pierced by pickaxes. The garbage bin was left at the very spot of the murder for many years. A few years ago, a child was beheaded at the same spot, and the basketball court next to it has been abandoned since. According to Marcus Neustetter, founder of the Trinity Session, this story is untrue. According the entry “Soweto uprising” on Wikipedia, on June 16 , Tsietsi Mashinini led students from Morris Isaacson High School to join up with others who walked from Naledi High School. A crowd of between 3,000 and 10,000 eventually ended up near Orlando High School. According to Raymond Marlowe, a local photographer, Tsietsi Mashinini was heading the march. According to the entry “Hector Pieterson” on Wikipedia, Dr Edelstein died on June 16, 1976 , stoned to death by mob and left with a sign around his neck proclaiming “Beware Afrikaaners.” The first child to die that day was called Hastings Ndlovu. According to Pat Motsiri, Orlando West is claiming struggle heritage through the Hector Pieterson Museum, while Hector Pieterson was from Jabavu. According to Pat Motsiri, his generation effectively struggled between 1980 and 1991, forcing the release of Nelson Mandela and negotiations with the apartheid regime while the 1976-generation was safely in exile. Nevertheless, this has not been recognized in any monument. After the abolition of apartheid, the generation from 1976 returned from exile, occupied important government and ANC positions, creating an abundance of 1976 memorials and refusing to acknowledge that this was only possible because of the younger generation’s struggle. He calls this a generational conflict. According to Archibald Dlamini, the park officer responsible for the Memorial Acre, he started working for the municipality in 1978. In 1981/82 , Isaac Makhele from Pimville, who used to work in the cemetery business, was the first developer of the park. It used to be just a normal park until City Parks decided to develop the Memorial Acre in 2006. In 2007 the work was stopped by the community. According to Brian Mokhele, he left the country in 1989 after he participated in the riots of 1986. But when he returned in 1999 he found that nothing had changed. He says that they were promised to be protected by the Constitution, but that reality is different. The police uses fear to suppress them so that they don’t come out to talk openly. He has been arrested twice, both times harassed and tortured by the police, but in the end always released without indictment. He says that this is their way to threaten communities to back off from politics. According to Moses, who is sitting outside rolling a joint, Brian knows everything. He tells Brian to tell me everything he knows. According to Brian Mokhele, Tsietsi Mashinini was possibly murdered in 1990 during his exile in New York. Two weeks before he was supposed to return to South Africa, his papers in order, he was found dead under mysterious circumstances. His coffin was sealed when he was buried. According to Pat Motsiri, he came up with the idea for the Memorial Acre in 2003 . He submitted the documents for the proposal to the council, which sidelined him as soon as the budget came out in 2005 . According to Brian Mokhele, there was on estimation R 41,000,000 spent to redesign the park and turn it into the Memorial Acre. The millions were divided by Amos Masondo, the mayor of Soweto, the local councilor Bongani D. Zondi, and the director of the city of Johannesburg, Pat Lephunya. They were dividing the money between several contractors: Tsietsi Mashinini’s brothers were involved in the development of the park, they got the tender to do the green areas, the landscaping. Construction was done by other companies, some did the paving, the toilets, etc. EMBA, a private company appointed by the municipality was in control of the money flow, but the money was quickly gone. According to Raymond Marlowe, the contractor bought a BMW with the money. According to Archibald Dlamini, the Mashinini brothers got the tender, so the space would look more like the other places around in Soweto. It was agreed that after they were done, they would return the property to the municipality. They did whatever they could do. According to Mafaisa, a member of the Jabavu business community, he was one of the contractors for the landscaping and the pavement under Mpho Mashinini, one of the brothers. He says that I should contact Mavi for information on Mpho. According to Poi Stuurman, a local youth worker, Mafaisa is one of the guys who ran away with the money. According to Mavi, Mpho Mashinini was never a contractor. The contracts were organized by Sbu Butelezi, the former head of the Gauteng Department for Public Works. The June 16 Foundation and the Mashinini brothers will be the beneficiaries of the park when it is finished. According to Brian Mokhele, City Parks did not accept the Memorial Acre because it was not finished. The rest of the year, the unfinished park is not maintained, as should have happened. This was done deliberately so that in the end they can just clean the whole thing up and have a reason to redo the whole park. According to Brian Mokhele, the Mashinini brothers now work for the government. People that manipulate for money purposes always come from the government’s side. Because the park was left unfinished, the people from the neighborhood are taking away the stones to decorate their own homes with. According to Archibald Dlamini, because City Parks doesn’t accept responsibility of the park, he officially has nothing the guard, except for his cottage, which is municipal property. The thieves come at night and destroy the park, but he cannot do anything because he is sleeping. According to the website of the Thanda Foundation on June 16, 2006 a bronze statue of Hector Pieterson, the first child to die in the 1976 protests, made by Kobus Hattingh and Jacob Maponyane was unveiled in the Maponya Mall in Soweto. The statue is sculpted after the famous image shot by Sam Nzima of Mbuyisa Makhubo carrying the dead body of the boy. The sculpture was sponsored by the Thanda Foundation, founded by the Swedish entrepreneur Dan Olofsson and South-African entrepreneur Matthews Phosa. According to the official website of the City of Johannesburg, the Memorial Acre and Artwork were unveiled in 2006. According to a blog post on sowetouprisings.com, the Memorial Acre was still under development on July 24, 2006. According to Archibald Dlamini, City Parks only cleans up the park once a year just before the June 16 celebrations. Everybody is waiting for the Mashinini brothers to finish their job. The last time he talked with them was in 2007 . According to a sign on the school grounds of the Morris Isaacson High School, the June 16 Trail will be finished in 2008 . According to a blog post on sowetouprisings.com, the Memorial Acre contains another monument erected in Tsietsi’s honor. The monument was created as part of the Sunday Times Heritage Public Art program. Its physical form resembles a giant book which symbolizes the crisis in education experienced in 1976. On the face of the book is the map of the route taken by the students from Morris Isaacson High School in Central Western Jabavu to Phefeni Junior Secondary in Orlando West (currently the site of the Hector Pieterson Museum), while the back cover of the ‘book’ is inscribed with a tribute to Tsietsi Mashinini. The monument was revealed on June 16, 2008 . According to Marcus Neustetter, the billboards on the Memorial Acre were part of a school project realized in 2008. Following several workshops, the students from different high schools along the June 16 Trail were invited to work with artists on the billboards, while the neighborhood community was invited to watch the process during the festivities on June 15 and 16, 2008 . The billboards were supposed to be removed because of construction works on the Memorial Acre, which never ended up happening. According to Brian Mokhele, the former toilet facilities were converted into a house for the park officer. This park officer has been working for city parks for more than 12-15 years, but does nothing here, because the park, including the new toilet buildings, is not finished. The government is now moving around looking for people to take this job because they stopped it. They confronted everybody who was going in and chased them away. According to John, in 2009 , some girls, around 16 or 17 years old, were raped by four men who had been drinking in a local shebeen. When the bar quit they said that they would go home by car, but instead raped the girls on the Memorial Acre nearby. This happened in the unfinished toilets, because the doors couldn’t be closed. According to Brian Mokhele, there used to be some fences around the park because of the construction work that was eventually stopped, but these were also stolen. According to Archibald Dlamini, people from the neighborhood started about two and a half years ago, and the last piece was stolen near the end of 2009 . Sometimes he would catch someone with a roll of fence, and then use it for his own cottage. According to the official website of the City of Johannesburg, a statue of Tsietsi Mashinini by Johannes Pokhela was revealed on June 16, 2010 , “Youth Day.” According to Shirley Makutoane, deputy principal of Isaac Morrison High School, the statue of Tsietsi Mashinini, funded by the June 16 Foundation, has temporarily been placed within the school perimeter. The statue will be moved to the Memorial Acre when it will be finished, in 2011 . According to Brian Mokhele, beside the June 16 Foundation, there is also a June 16 Memorial Acre Foundation. Both foundations are quarreling about the money involved in the Memorial Acre project. Nobody knows who’s involved in them. According to Marcus Neustetter, the June 16 Foundation consists of people that were part of 1976 protest movement, local government officials, representatives of the Hector Pieterson Museum, and the council. According to students from the Isaac Morrison High School, the statue of Tsietsi Mashinini is on the school ground because on the Memorial Acre it would be vandalized by youths from White City, an adjacent neighborhood. Accorcing to Brian Mokhele, the statue of Tsietsi should eventually be mounted on the Memorial Acre. It is wrong that the statue is in the school at the moment, because it is not a public school. He wants the statues to depict the massiveness of the force that was coming into Soweto after the protests. According to Brian Mokhele, City Parks, City of Jo’burg, City Lights, and SAPS are making some sort of plan to take the plan back. They want to remove the trees from the Memorial Acre, and redesign the Memorial Acre into a relaxing park, without political content. They want to depoliticize the square. In doing so,they will have their own employment and not use local workforces. According to Brian Mokhele, the community wants to remove the monuments, amphitheater, and sculptures from the Memorial Acre because they do not resemble anything. The sculptures should be depicting the truth of what happened, because the Memorial Acre is a political heritage site. He wants to involve the people that actually participated in the struggle to make the monument so that everyone can enjoy it and get a better understanding of the struggle heritage. Therefore, he proposes collective ideology in which everyone has a say. This would prevent future vandalization of the monument. According to Pat Motsiri, the sculptures must depict the event around June 16, 1976. Like the story of Dr Edelstein, who was pierced by pickaxes, forced into a garbage bin and burned alive. According to Jonas Staal, the Memorial Acre should be destroyed, its elements stacked on pallets, thus forming the Monument for the Distribution of Wealth . According to Mafaisa, his men can do the work quickly. He has about twenty men working under him. (shrink)

In 1992, the United States Supreme Court, in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, upheld the ruling in Roe v. Wade, namely that women have a right “to choose to have an abortion before viability and to obtain it without undue interference from the State.”1 However, since this ruling, some states have imposed regulations that greatly limit this right by restricting access. Texas is a recent example of this. Two proposed restrictions in House Bill 2, which will be discussed (...) in detail below, will force all but eight clinics that are located in metropolitan areas to shut down. The U.S. Supreme Court put the proposed restrictions on hold in October 2014, allowing several clinics to remain open while the restrictions are being appealed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. If the restrictions are passed, however, those clinics will be forced to shut down and, as a result, many women in Texas will be required to travel more than 100 miles in order to access a safe and legal abortion. Much of the focus of these restrictions has been on women and rightly so. However, I want to turn the attention to physicians. The requirements exacerbate unfair treatment of abortion providers compared with other physicians. Abortion providers face threats from the public—some of which turn into violent attacks—and they are often ostracized by their fellow medical practitioners. There are so few abortion providers to begin with and the proposed requirements limit these physicians’ opportunities to practice the branch of medicine of their choosing. Although the HB 2 requirements may not result in an unconstitutional undue burden on physicians, the challenges created by the bill limit physicians’ abilities to provide abortions. As a result of these limits, HB 2 creates an unconstitutional undue burden for women seeking abortions by creating barriers directed at abortion providers and clinic staff who are willing and able to provide abortions. The first of the two controversial HB 2 requirements is the admitting privileges requirement: “A physician performing or inducing an abortion must, on the date the abortion is performed or induced, have active admitting privileges at a hospital that is located not further than 30 miles from the location at which the abortion is performed or induced.”2 The second requirement is the ambulatory surgical center requirement: “The minimum standards for an abortion facility must be equivalent to the minimum standards adopted under [Texas Health & Safety Code] [...] for ambulatory surgical centres.”3 In order to meet these state-mandated obligations, some abortion clinics would have to spend more than $1 million in upgrades if they wish to remain open. The District Court decided that the ambulatory surgical center requirement places an unconstitutional undue burden on women, and that the two requirements together place an undue burden on women in Texas and especially in the Rio Grande Valley where the nearest clinic is a couple hundred miles away.4 Later, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed the District Court’s decision and argued, “the admitting privileges requirement is constitutional on its face.”5 While the regulations are being appealed, the Supreme Court granted a stay of injunction, allowing about twelve abortion clinics to reopen until a final decision regarding the regulations is made. The District Court ruled that the purpose of the two regulations was to create a substantial obstacle for women seeking abortions in Texas. While the defendants argued that the regulations were designed to make abortions safer and reduce risk, the Court decided that this was not the case. An abortion, especially a first-term abortion, is a very safe procedure and is safer than many other routine surgical procedures. As stated in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, “Unnecessary health regulations that have the purpose or effect of presenting a substantial obstacle to a woman seeking an abortion impose an undue burden on the right.”6 The undue burden in this case is imposed, not through restricting women’s access directly, but by restricting physicians’ freedom to perform abortions. The admitting privileges requirement has reduced the number of physicians who can perform abortions and the ambulatory surgical center requirement has reduced the number of clinics where abortions can be performed. The American Medical Association states, “[t]he Principles of Medical Ethics of the AMA do not prohibit a physician from performing an abortion in accordance with good medical practice and under circumstances that do not violate the law.”7 This means that physicians are not required to perform abortions, except in emergency situations, but can as long as the procedure is done safely and does not violate the law. The new Texas regulations, however, are so restrictive that few abortion providers, limited to only four urban areas, can legally perform abortions. Physicians do not have an absolute right to perform abortions as opposed to women who have an absolute right to have access to an abortion. Physicians do face many challenges that other professionals face in terms of obtaining qualifications and finding work. Abortion providers, however, face challenges that most other physicians do not. The restrictions imposed by these regulations exacerbate unfair treatment toward abortion providers and place further obstacles in their path in terms of providing the service they want and are qualified to provide. Both abortion clinics and abortion providers are being treated differently from other medical clinics and physicians. For instance, “grandfathering of existing facilities and the granting of waivers from specific requirements is prohibited for abortion providers, although other types of ambulatory surgical facilities are frequently granted waivers or are grandfathered.”8 Many abortion clinics cannot afford the necessary upgrades. Furthermore, it is extremely expensive to open a brand new clinic that complies with the ambulatory surgical center requirements. Being grandfathered in would be the only option available to abortion clinics that cannot afford the upgrade. However, unfair treatment of abortion clinics and providers is preventing those clinics from being grandfathered into the new system. As a result, many abortion clinics may be forced to close. Admitting privileges are proving difficult or impossible for physicians both to obtain and, for those who have already been granted privileges, to keep. Dr. Sherwood Lynn, an obstetrician-gynecologist who has performed abortions for decades, describes the process of obtaining admitting privileges and the difficulties abortion providers face. After sending in an application a physician must wait for the hospital to send them the required materials, “but if the address of the practice on the application is of an abortion provider or clinic, [the hospital] won’t send [them] the package of materials required. [They] simply can’t apply.”9 Dr. Lynn and several other physicians have surmised that hospitals are only withholding privileges from qualified physicians who perform abortions and that other physicians do not face this discriminatory treatment. Hospitals have also revoked privileges granted to physicians after learning that the physicians perform abortions. For instance, in Texas two doctors, “received notices [...] informing them that their admitting privileges to the University General Hospital of Dallas have been revoked, with the hospital’s CEO claiming the hospital was unaware they were providing abortion care and that the hospital believed such care would damage its reputation.”10 What is curious about this revocation is that, “federal and state laws [...] forbid hospitals from discriminating against doctors who perform abortions,” and yet hospitals are clearly doing just that.11 Dr. Pamela Richter, another abortion provider in Texas, had her temporary admitting privileges revoked with no explanation and because of this, the clinic where she performed abortions, Reproductive Services, can no longer provide abortions at all.12 As the hospital gave no reason for the revocation, it not clear Dr. Richter’s privileges were revoked because she performs abortions. Dr. Richter, however, has performed over 17,000 abortions and her privileges were revoked soon after HB 2 was introduced.13 According to the Texas Hospital Association, giving admitting privileges to doctors who do not work for the hospital is expensive and time-consuming but this does not account for the fact that hospitals are revoking previously granted privileges from physicians whom they learn are providing abortion services.14 As mentioned previously, the District Court found that the admitting privileges requirement and the ambulatory surgical center requirement do not further ensure the health and safety of women undergoing an abortion. Several physicians have testified to this fact. Dr. Lynn stated in an interview: The admitting privileges requirements are [...] absolutely unnecessary. If you have a number of patients waiting for procedures, and something happens and a patient needs to be transferred to a hospital, you’re not going to leave everyone else and go to the hospital. That makes no sense. You’re going to refer that person to a gynecologist at the hospital. There is no safety issue involved here. If a patient shows up with an emergency, every hospital is required to admit that patient. They have to by law.15 It is rare that complications will arise from an abortion performed in a clinic. Dr. Richter, for example, has performed more than 17,000 abortions and not once had to send a patient to a hospital because of complications resulting from the procedure. According to Dr. Lynn even if abortion providers were granted privileges to hospitals, it is unlikely that they will exercise them. In essence, having admitting privileges at a hospital does nothing to further ensure the safety of an already safe procedure. The only result of the admitting privileges requirement is to limit certain physicians’ ability to perform legal abortions. Not only do the HB 2 requirements fail to further ensure the health and safety of women, the HB 2 requirements may actually create more health risks to women who cannot access the eight remaining clinics. The first risk is that the remaining clinics would have an influx of patients that they may not be able to handle, forcing women to wait longer for an appointment. As stated by the District Court, “[e]ven assuming every woman in Texas who wants an abortion [...] could travel to one of the four metropolitan areas where abortions will still be available, the cumulative results of HB 2 are that, at most, eight providers would have to handle the abortion demand of the entire state.”16 Furthermore, “[t]hat the State suggests that these seven or eight providers could meet the demand of the entire state stretches credulity.”17 Abortion is a time sensitive procedure. It is safest when performed early in a pregnancy. The increase in patients to these remaining clinics, assuming all women in Texas can access them, will increase wait times and may force women to have abortions later in pregnancy. In the worst-case scenario, a woman would not see an abortion provider at all before viability. Such instances may be rare, but they are possible. In such cases, women’s access to legal abortions becomes impossible and thereby violate the ruling in Roe. Clinics may be able to avoid the aforementioned problems if they hire more physicians. However, there are two barriers to hiring more physicians. First, as mentioned previously, admitting privileges to Texas hospitals are difficult, if not impossible, for abortion providers to obtain. Second, given the negative treatment of abortion providers by anti-abortion groups, many physicians are not willing to perform abortions. The harassment abortion providers face is unique to those physicians and many physicians will not perform abortions for that reason. In an article published in the Austin Chronicle, anti- abortion activist Abby Johnson, “discusses how her group investigated appraisal district records to find the new location of where an Austin abortion physician plans to work.”18 Johnson states, “These abortionists are feeling the pressure from the pro-life movement in Texas. I think they feel like they’re on the run. And that’s how we want to keep it.”19 If the HB 2 requirements are passed and there remain at most eight abortion providers in Texas, these activists will concentrate on those clinics and, “the dangerous impact of their intimidation tactics will be exacerbated.”20 Even if the number of physicians needed to meet the demand in Texas can obtain admitting privileges and work at one of the remaining clinics, they may choose not to do such work because they are putting themselves at risk. The harm abortion providers face from such anti-abortion groups is not unique to Texas. There are stories from all over the country and from other countries where abortion is legal of physicians receiving death threats. Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider in Kansas, was killed outside his church and had received numerous death threats prior to this. The HB 2 requirements are making it so that abortion providers either cannot provide their services any longer or will face increased threats and increased danger to themselves. Physicians are allowed to conscientiously object to providing medical interventions in certain circumstances for moral and religious reasons. However, there are limits on this right. According to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, “[w]hen conscientious refusals conflict with moral obligations that are central to the ethical practice of medicine, ethical care requires that the physician provide care despite reservations or that there be resources in place to allow the patient to gain access to care in the presence of conscientious refusal.”21 I would argue fear for one’s safety in the face of immediate threats is perhaps a stronger ground on which to refuse to provide care than a personal belief that abortion is immoral or against one’s religion. ACOG also states, “[p]roviders with moral or religious objections should either practice in proximity to individuals who do not share their views or ensure that referral processes are in place so that patients have access to the service that the physician does not wish to provide.”22 This responsibility has been largely disputed by the medical community but in cases of rape, incest, and health risks to women, referrals must be made without exception. However, under the requirements of HB 2, working in proximity to an abortion provider may not be possible because they are so geographically limited. Referrals are supposed to be made within reason. Some areas of Texas, such as the Rio Grande Valley, are up to 200 miles away from the nearest clinic that would remain open if HB 2 is passed. Referrals may simply not be feasible given the geographical distances and the decreasing number of available physicians. As mentioned above, there are two risks to the health and safety of women as a result of HB 2. The second of these is that if a woman cannot access one of the remaining clinics, she may seek out a more convenient but illegal and unsafe abortion, which is far more likely to result in a dangerous complication. Dr. Lynn states, “[b]ecause of the restrictions lawmakers impose, women will seek abortions illegally, and we’re going to see a rise in septic abortions.”23 Some areas of Texas might effectively revert back to a pre-Roe era where abortions were performed in unsanitary conditions by unqualified people resulting in dangerous medical complications far more often than legal abortion procedures do now. Physicians like Dr. Lynn who want to prevent this from happening generally cannot do so without facing legal sanction. Physicians have a duty to provide safe medical care and if they cannot obtain admitting privileges, they cannot exercise this duty. ACOG released a statement expressing their objections to the new requirements. They state that HB 2 is, “plainly intended to restrict the reproductive rights of women in Texas through a series of requirements that improperly regulate medical practice and interfere with the patient-physician relationship.”24 Executive Vice-President of ACOG, Hal C. Lawrence III stated: The Texas bills set a dangerous precedent of a legislature telling doctors how to practice medicine and how to care for individual patients. ACOG opposes legislative interference, and strongly believes that decisions about medical care must be based on scientific evidence and made by licensed medical professionals, not the state or federal government.25 Abortion is one of only a few areas of medicine where the legislature imposes so many regulations restricting particular physicians’ ability to practice medicine. Not only are abortions providers being regulated by the state, they are also facing clear discrimination from others within the medical community. The state is closing down clinics that do not meet the ambulatory surgical center requirements and hospitals are denying physicians admitting privileges because they perform abortions. In summary, abortion providers are being discriminated against both by the legislature and other members of the medical community. Other physicians who do not perform abortions are not denied admitting privileges on discriminatory grounds. Clinics that cannot afford upgrades to become an ambulatory surgical center are being grandfathered in, while abortion clinics are being forced to close down. Ob-Gyns who conscientiously object to performing abortions and who are not located in close proximity to at least one abortion provider cannot effectively fulfill their duty to refer patients. Lastly, given the barriers these regulations will create, there will likely be a rise in complications resulting from abortions provided under grossly unsafe conditions. Physicians, whose duty it is to provide safe and effective medical care, are being denied the right to exercise this duty. While this denial may not be unconstitutional, it is certainly unjust and discriminatory and creates obstacles that other physicians do not face. Most importantly, these obstacles are creating an undue burden for women. The HB 2 requirements do not increase the health and safety of abortions; all they do is create substantial obstacles for women. In light of these observations, the requirements seem to me to be in clear violation of Casey, in which it was decided that, “[u]nnecessary health regulations that have the purpose or effect of presenting a substantial obstacle to a woman seeking an abortion impose an undue burden on that right.”26 These regulations do just what Casey was meant to prohibit and this is accomplished through limiting physicians’ ability to practice safe abortions across the state of Texas. Therefore, the HB 2 requirements may not impose an undue burden on doctors but they do impose an undue burden on women. PDF available: Rachel Hill, "Texas HB 2," Voices in Bioethics. References: 1 Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, pg. 2. 2 Whole Women’s Health v. Lakey, pg. 2. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid., 4. 5 Ibid., 2. 6 Planned Parenthood v. Casey, pg. 16 7 AMA Code of Medical Ethics, “Opinion 2.01 – Abortion,” American Medical Association. 8 Whole Women’s Health v. Lakey, pg. 10. 9 Dr. Sherwood Lynn, “A Texas Ob-Gyn Details the Horrific Consequences of Abortion Restrictions,” Cosmopolitan. 10 Feminist Newswire, “Texas Hospitals Revoke Admitting Privileges to Abortion Providers,” Feminist Majority Foundation Blog. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Glenn Hegar, “Texas Hospital Association’s Statement of Opposition to Section 2 of the Committee Substitute for Senate Bill 5,” Texas Hospital Association. 15 Dr. Lynn, “A Texas Ob-Gyn.” 16 Whole Women’s Health v. Lakey, pg. 10. 17 Ibid. 18 Mary Tuma, “Undercover Audio Reveals Anti-Abortion Tactics: Anti-abortion activists monitor and track providers, patients,” Austin Chronicle. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid. 21 Committee on Ethics, “The Limits of Conscientious Refusal in Reproductive Medicine,” The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. 22 Ibid. 23 Dr. Lynn, “A Texas Ob-Gyn.” 24 “Ob-Gyns Denounce Texas Abortion Legislation: Senate Bill 1 and House Bill 2 Set Dangerous Precedent,” The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. 25 Ibid. 26 Planned Parenthood v. Casey, pg. 16. (shrink)

This article responds to David Steinberg's proposal in favor of an organ donation system that gives allocation preference to people who agree to donate after they die. This article challenges the notion that organ taking is morally impermissible and questions Steinberg’s program on the grounds that it would unfairly discriminate against these people by deprioritizing their claims to the kidney supply. Relatedly, the article suggests that Steinberg’s proposal effectively coerces people to opt in, thus calling into question the (...) legitimacy of the consent on which their decisions were predicated. (shrink)

The cultural imagery of women is deeply ingrained in our consciousness. So deeply, in fact, that feminists see this as a fundamental threat to female autonomy because it enshrines procreative heterosexuality as well as the relations of domination and subordination between men and women. Diana Meyers' book is about this cultural imagery - and how, once it is internalized, it shapes perception, reflection, judgement, and desire. These intergral images have a deep impact not only on the individual psyche, but also (...) on the social, political, and cultural syntax of society as a whole. Meyer's argues for the necessity of crafting a dissident, empowering, and 'emancipatory counter-imagery' for women. Rigorous, well written, and accessible, the reach of Gender in the mirror is arguably catholic, and addresses the interests or readers across an impressive range of intellectual disciplines. (shrink)

I propose, defend and illustrate a principle of gender justice meant to capture the nature of a variety of injustices based on gender:A society is gender just only if the costs of a gender-neutral lifestyle are, all other things being equal, lower than, or at most equal to, the costs of gendered lifestyles.The principle is meant to account for the entire range of gender injustice: violence against women, economic and legal discrimination, domestic exploitation, the gendered division of labor and (...) gendered socialization. The sense of “costs” employed is similarly wide. Costs can be material, psychological and social.I defend the principle by appeal to the values at the core of liberal egalitarian justice: equality of access and the good of individual choice. I illustrate my case through a discussion of the injustice of a gendered division of labor. Some feminists doubt that liberal egalitarianism has the theoretical resources to recognize the unjust nature of the gendered division of labor. I argue that it does.If the principle advanced here is correct, then gender injustice is pervasive. At the same, it does not affect only women but also men. Liberal egalitarianism is capable of acknowledging this fact without denying that, overall, gender norms oppress women more than they oppress men: Arguably, women who wish to lead a gender-neutral lifestyle have to pay higher costs that men who wish to do the same. (shrink)

The present comment concerns a recent AI & Ethics article which purports to report evidence of speciesist bias in various popular computer vision (CV) and natural language processing (NLP) machine learning models described in the literature. I examine the authors' analysis and show it, ironically, to be prejudicial, often being founded on poorly conceived assumptions and suffering from fallacious and insufficiently rigorous reasoning, its superficial appeal in large part relying on the sequacity of the article's target readership.

The evidence is clear and consistent that African Americans and Hispanics are treated differently depending on their skin color within their racial or ethnic group, and yet the surveys that show these results also show very few political or political-psychological patterns as a result of skin color. To investigate why this is so, this paper uses the fact that discriminatory treatment by skin color does not necessarily result in political action or perceptions around that discrimination to raise the larger question (...) of when racial or ethnic groups see and protest unfairness, and when they do not. My hypotheses about why this occurs differ for blacks and Latinos. In the former case, the ideology of group consciousness is strong enough, and embarrassment about internal skin-color hierarchy is powerful enough, that blacks don't want to recognize differences by skin color. Light-skinned blacks, in fact, may be more racially identified than dark-skinned blacks — so their economic and social advantages are offset by their commitments to their race as a whole, and they behave politically like dark-skinned blacks do. The case of Hispanics may be better explained in terms of a weak sense of group consciousness rather than a strong one. That is, Latinos may not think of themselves as a group, such that they see skin color differentiation as a consequence of being members of different races rather than as a form of discrimination against some members of "their" group. (shrink)

Linda LeMoncheck introduces a new way of thinking and talking about women's sexual pleasures, preferences, and desires. Using the tools of contemporary analytic philosophy, she discusses methods for mediating the tensions among apparently irreconcilable feminist perspectives on women's sexuality and shows how a feminist epistemology and ethic can advance the dialogue in women's sexuality across a broad political spectrum. She argues that in order to capture the diversity and complexity of women's sexual experience, women's sexuality must be examined from two (...) equally compelling perspectives: that of women's sexual oppression under conditions of individual and institutional male dominance; and that of women's sexual liberation, both in terms of each woman's pursuit of sexual agency and self-definition, and in terms of women's sexual liberation as a class. Loose Women, Lecherous Men sheds crucial new light on such much-debated topics as promiscuity, adultery, sexual deviance, prostitution, pornography, sexual harassment, and sexual violence against women. Her book supports a dialogue that encourages both women and men to take up a feminist perspective in exploring the meaning and value of sexuality in their lives. (shrink)

For years, mainstream feminist ethics focused criticism on male supremacy. Feminist philosophers in this volume adopt a less male-focused stance to look closely at oppression's impact on women's agency and on women's relations with women. Examining legal, social, and physical relationships, these philosophers confront moral ambiguity, moral compromise, and complicity in perpetuating oppression. Combining personal experience with philosophical inquiry, they vividly portray their daily engagement with oppression as both victims and perpetrators. They explore such issues as how pornography silences women (...) and radical feminist politics' complicity in racism. Among these insightful essays, Sandra Bartky argues that women share guilt for racism when they benefit from it without protest; Susan Brison reflects on uses of narrative in trauma recovery from such experiences as being targeted for rape or murder; Joan Callahan examines fallout of derogatory speech directed at lesbians; Virginia Held proposes carrying care into marketplaces and governments; and, in her introduction, Claudia Card draws on Primo Levi's conception of "gray zones" in exploring dangers of character damage to victims of misogyny. A fitting companion to Card's highly regarded Feminist Ethics, this volume interweaves observations on character, political ethics, violence, and love into an accessible sourcebook for students. It tackles some of feminism's most pressing issues and helps readers to identify and then overcome the real damage caused by oppression. (shrink)

In this chapter it is argued that Mary Wollstonecraft’s political is best characterized as ‘feminist republicanism’. Wollstonecraft’s feminism challenges republicanism from within. The republican movement used the language of rights and liberty in arguments for popular sovereignty and against despotic and aristocratic privilege. Wollstonecraft articulated her feminism within and against this movement, which argued for the rights of all while taking for granted that ‘all’ is properly represented by white men with property. Her feminism requires (...) the dismantling of all hierarchies, for the sake of freedom and virtue. Many have read Wollstonecraft as a liberal. If by liberal one simply means a philosophy based on natural rights and a principle of individual liberty, then Wollstonecraft was a liberal, but we do not gain any understanding of the particulars of her thinking in that way. The republican conception of personal freedom – independence or freedom from arbitrary rule – is an organising principle in Wollstonecraft’s thought. This conception of freedom feeds her feminist critique of republicanism: the sexism of republicanism is found in the definitional association of liberty and virtue with maleness. Of equal importance is her critical take on the civic humanist discourse of virtue as a way of living freely in society. Virtue is not a set of rules; it is the learnt habit of a resolute and independent personal character. This in turn requires that a person receives rational education and is treated with equal respect. Women are deliberately kept out of this sphere of moral progress. When Wollstonecraft ironically notes that ‘truth, fortitude and humanity’ are seen to be ‘manly morals’ she attacks, from within, the republican language that makes virtue into a male domain. (shrink)

‘Feminist masculinity’ might seem like a contradiction in terms. One might have assumed that we can embrace feminism or embrace masculinity, but not both. If traditional masculinity is contrary to feminist values, a pressing query for feminist men is whether repudiation of traditional masculinity should move one to reject normative masculinity entirely, or to reframe and reclaim it instead. bell hooks and Michael Kimmel each counsel against discarding manhood and masculinity. hooks envisions feminist masculinity as an alternative to (...) patriarchal dominance, with masculinity to be reconstituted in terms of love, integrity, and mutuality; Kimmel advocates moving from immature and traditional masculinities toward justice and democratic manhood, with a new model of masculinity that identifies real men with adulthood and doing the right thing. Neither proposal provides a viable stance for feminist men without collapsing into androgyny or risking erasure of some men’s and women’s identities and experiences. Building on Alcoff’s work on anti-racist whiteness, I suggest that feminist allyship practices ground a normative model of masculinity compatible with, and informed by, feminist values. We may understand allyship masculinities as open-ended feminist approaches to manhood: masculinities predicated on recognizing and responding to, rather than ignoring or accepting, the privileges and expectations distinctive of men under patriarchy. (shrink)

Gender discrimination and sexual harassment of female police officers by their male counterparts remain areas of liability where police departments appeared to have failed to effectively confront the nagging issues. However, the appreciable level of research conducted on these issues in the global North has not been matched by the South, where issues bordering on sexual violence have cultural underpinnings. Drawing from the case of the Nigeria Police Force, feminist analysis was used to explore the lived reality of 43 female (...) officers in a qualitative study. Participants expressed distress in abiding by structural discriminatory regulations against female officers which include non-admittance of married women into the force, forbidding unmarried officers from getting pregnant, and a stipulated minimum of three-year work period before a female officer can marry. Findings also indicated that participants suffer a variety of sexual harassment, intimidation, and, violence from their male colleagues, while they feel constrained in reporting their victimization. Important policy and practical implications requiring the Nigerian police to address hegemonic masculinity and promote gender equality were provided. (shrink)

This paper aims to investigate the philosophical thought and moral practice of a Korean neo-Confucian female scholar named Kang Chŏngildang 姜靜一堂, who not only believed in moral equality between men and women and the possibility of female sagehood but actually empowered herself to become a moral paragon. Furthermore, Chŏngildang’s strong faith in moral equality between men and women enabled her to engage in social criticism of the existing educational system and social norms which discriminated against women, not by overcoming (...) neo-Confucianism, commonly understood as essentially androcentric and patriarchal, but by wholeheartedly embracing and further re-appropriating it in the service of women’s moral self-empowerment and moral perfectibility. After explicating why Chŏngildang nonetheless subscribed to gendered roles and female virtue with reference to her neo-Confucian worldview, I suggest that she can be called a harbinger of Confucian feminism. (shrink)

Some feminist discourses blame some men for gender inequality, gender domination, and gender-based violence. Some women use such discourse as a perfect scenario to criticize some men’s behavior. Indeed, they usually do so with Oppressed Traditional Masculinities but not with Dominant Traditional Masculinities, who are the men who were violent with those women and with whom some of those women chose to have relationships. However, there have always been men who have been on the side of women and have never (...) committed violence against them. Therefore, New Alternative Masculinities reject being indicated as guilty of the violence committed against women by DTM. Through a communicative approach, applying six semi-structured interviews with a communicative orientation and a communicative data analysis of all information, this article explores both women’s communicative acts that blame OTM for what DTM have done to women and NAM’s reactions to these accusations to stop such blaming to make it possible to overcome hegemonic discourses. (shrink)

Whose values should count – those of patients or the general public – when adopting the quality-adjusted life year framework for healthcare decision making is a long-standing debate. Specific disciplines, such as economics, are not wedded to a particular side of the debate, and arguments for and against the use of patient values have been discussed at length in the literature. In 2012, Sinclair proposed an approach, grounded within patient preference theory, which sought to avoid a perceived unfair discrimination (...) against people with disabilities when using values from the general public. Key assumptions about general public values that beget this line of thinking were that ‘disabled states always tally with lower quality of life’, and the use of standardised instruments means that ‘you are forced into a fixed view of disability as a lower value state’. Drawing on recent contributions to the health economics literature, we contend that such assumptions are not inherent to the incorporation of general public values for the estimation of QALYs. In practice, whether health states of people with disabilities are of ‘lower value’ is, to some extent, a reflection of the health state descriptions that members of the public are asked to value. (shrink)

Since 1991 government has harnessed mass media resources to tackle the problem of physical and sexual abuse, aiming its media messages specifically at men as potential perpetrators. This article examines the ways this new state responsibility has taken shape. The central theme here is the role played by women's studies as intermediary between feminist action and government policy. It looks at how physical and sexual abuse became part of the parliamentary political agenda and how a political and policy basis was (...) created. A guiding role was played by representative research commissioned by government on sexual abuse of girls and violence in heterosexual relationships. Data on the extent of the problem generated surprise and concern among the general public and downright disbelief in the press. Yet, government continued to pursue policy development, supported by the clearly demonstrated extensive physical and sexual abuse. One decisive result of the representative research – the relationships or family dynamics interwoven with violence – remained less easy to tackle through government policy. The more precise questions subsequently posed by women's studies on specific relationships and situations in which women can be affected by violence are re ected in government policy aimed at groups of women at risk. Those elements which apply to potential victims also apply to potential perpetrators. Here again, sociopsychological research among perpetrators has been initiated whereby sexual violence as an element of everyday reality becomes more transparent. These studies emphasize the significance of a dominant heterosexual pattern and the relationship dynamic this implies, and as such re ects the first representative studies. This concept has ultimately been incorporated into the mass media information programmes initiated by government. (shrink)

Providing balanced coverage of abortion, sexual harassment, censorship and pornography, and other timely and controversial subjects, this pathbreaking anthology is the first to offer a comprehensive introduction to feminist legal philosophy. An important resource for courses in women's studies, philosophy, law, sociology, and political science, it provides many stimulating insights into essential topics in jurisprudence, such as the nature and justification of law, judicial reasoning and the process of adjudication, the connection between law and equality, and freedom and justice.

Globally, nationally and locally men's violence against women is an endemic social problem and an enduring human rights issue within all societies and cultures. Challenging attitudes that condone violence both at the individual and community level is a key priority in its prevention. This paper brings together findings from two separate studies based on children's and young people's understandings of men's violence against women. Both studies were located in Glasgow, Scotland, and used qualitative methods to explore children's and (...) young people's views of men's violence against women. The two studies, conducted nearly ten years apart, involved children aged 11 and 12 and young people aged 15 to 18. Despite the differences in age and the interval between them, there are remarkable similarities identified within both studies centring around children and young people's normalisation of men's violence against women. This paper presents a discussion of three of the key themes identified from these studies: the construction of men's violence; gender roles and the naturalisation of difference; and the normalisation of men's violence. In both studies the techniques of normalisation were employed by the participants to minimise both the seriousness of the violence and the significance of it to the victims. The findings clearly illustrate the widespread justification of gendered violence by both boys and girls. Thus, while the development and implementation of domestic violence/abuse education programmes need to take into account gender differences, targeting only boys’ attitudes fails to acknowledge an important component in reducing domestic violence/abuse: the internalisation of patriarchal norms by girls and women. (shrink)

The use of "theory" in feminist analysis has been said to threaten feminism as a political force. This collection of work by leading feminist scholars engages with the question of the political status of poststructuralism theory within feminism. Against the view that the use of post-structuralism necessarily weakens feminism, 'Feminists Theorize the Political' affirms the contemporary debate over theory as politically rich and consequential. In laying the theoretical groundwork for the volume, Butler and Scott posed a (...) number of questions to prominent legal scholars, literary critics, philosophers, political theorists, historians, and cultural theorists. The essays do not settle the questions but generate new and productive directions for them. The volume as a whole valorizes the unsettling power and politics of theory. The essays in 'Feminists Theorize the Political' speak to the questions that emerge from the convergence of feminism and poststructuralism: What happens to feminist critique when traditional foundations--experience, history, universal norms--are called into question? Can feminist theory problematize the notion of the subject without losing its political effectivity? Which version of the subject is to questioned, and how does that questioning open up possibilities for reformulating agency, power, and sites of political resistance? What are the consequences of a specifically feminist reformulation of difference? What are the uses and limits of a poststructuralist critique of binary logic for the theorization of racial and class differences, the position of the subaltern? This anthology represents a diverse array of theoretical work within feminist theory with strong political stakes. Although not all of the authors subscribe to poststructuralism, (and few would concede post-structuralism is a monolithic enterprise), each offers an innovative feminist analysis that is in some way motivated in and by the poststructuralist challenge. 'Feminists Theorize The Political' addresses a range of feminist concerns, including productive freedom, anti-discrimination law, rape, and formulating power in terms of exclusion, difference and hierarchy. (shrink)