Feminist Thought
Feminist Critiques of Liberalism
Catherine MacKinnon’s Are
Women Human?
Liberalism in International Law
Recall the Feminist Critique of
Liberalism
Consider the following
questions as guides to our reading of MacKinnon:
How have the norms of Liberalism
become enshrined in the international
system?
Is Liberalism as expressed in
the international legal system different from
Liberalism as expressed in the US system?
In what ways is Liberalism as it
is currently being inscribed into the
international system improving the status of women?
In what ways might Liberalism be
preventing the enhancement of women’s status
or even reducing it?
MacKinnon, Catherine.
2006. Are Women Human? And
Other International Dialogues. Cambridge:
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Grows out of her work representing
women in international courts, e.g.
Bosnian and Croatian women raped in Serbian rape camps
Introduction:
Women’s Status, Men’s
States
Women Rights as Human Rights?
What has made this means of addressing
women’s subordination possible?
1.
Changes in international system
during second half of 20th Century, especially the creation
of
International Institutions
2.
Human Rights Revolution
3.
Rising Importance of
Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs)
Explication of these three
points:
1. Changes
in international system
during second half of 20th Century, especially the creation
of International
Institutions
United
Nations , 24 October 1945
Council of Europe- 5 May 1949 by Treaty of London
European Union- predecessor organization the ECSC dates to 1951 Treaty
of Paris
2. Human Rights Revolution
impossible
without #1?
3.
NGOS
a. the manifestation of
“grassroots civil society”
b. important actors in
international relations
c. as representatives of
women’s interests
Why are NGOs
particularly important or even NECESSARY in representing women’s
interests??
hint: recall her critque of
the state
“(S)ince
states too often do not represent women, whether by acts or
failures to act within the sphere of their power and authority, women
facing
unresponsive official mechanisms, doctrines, and authorities have
reached,
often through their own NGOs, to hold the law in their own hands,
seeking
perpetrator accountability directly to them through civil legal means”
(2)
the MASCULINIZED STATE is superior,
i.e., has power over,
FEMINIZED CIVIL SOCIETY (5)
The state as the institutionalization of
male view point:
“The state, an
apex form in which the power of
men is organized both among men and over women while purporting to
institutionalize peace and justice, has been revealed as an institution
of male
dominance (cite) its behavior and norms partial and gendered (3)
“Masculinity
observably marks what men want and have and touch and make and do in
social
space, political institutions included.
If the state is a male institution not only demographically but
socially
and politically—its structures and actions driven by an ideology
predicated on
an epistemic angle of vision with concomitant values, attitudes, and
behaviors
based on the status location of the male sex in society, members of
which (with
variations) occupy a superior position in the gender hierarchy,
resulting in a
sexual politics….(3-4)
Note the continuation
of this quote raises important question about the international system
…is the international
system a counterbalance? (4)
‘…or is it metamale?”
(4)
Other characteristics
of the male state (found in Toward a Feminist Theory of the State):
Distinguishes public from private
Naturalizes
dominance as difference
Hides
coercion behind consent
Obscures
sexual politics behind morality
She continues pg 3
quote:
Women and Human Rights
MacKinnon argues that women have essentially been left behind by
the human
rights revolution
Why?
Jurisdiction
What is it?
Related to concept of
sovereignty
i.e.,the sovereign government of a
territory has exclusive jurisdiction
over legal disputes
states
may cede this
element of their sovereignty to other jurisdiction,
e.g., the ICC
link to idea of
private sphere
sphere where men are like sovereign and state has no
reach
(e.g. marital rape, incest)
“Male
structural
privacy is the principle
that animates the geography of both
male power and
international justice.
It rules the world”
(6)
Who has jurisdiction over
human rights claims?
States vs. International/supranational
institutions
Criminal vs. civil legal system
Whose rights are
adjudicated under the human
rights frame?
Only those who
are fully human
MacKinnon argues that women are in the
process of becoming human
Has this
happened to other groups?
Give examples
Why
is the rights frame problematic for conceptualizing violations against
women?
Specifically,
who has traditionally been held to possess rights?
Can a group
have rights?
Can you think
of examples of groups that possess (or who have been denied)
rights on the basis of their group identity?
If
each person can be said to have individual rights, why are group rights
necessary?
MacKinnon on group rights and women:
To
be
adequate to these women’s violations, human rights law needed to come
to
terms with the fact that group
identifications make up much of the content of the human, making
group-based
injuries central to the denial of humanity, with sex and ethnically
based harms
at the core of, rather than peripheral to, human rights (2).
On civil proceedings
vs. criminal:
"To enhance the
accountability of international processes to such survivors, civil
proceedings
have been favored (note cite) as have civil remedies---not because
perpetrators
should not be incarcerated, but because social change and reparation
are more
effective relief and deterrence than is punishment alone” (2)
Comments
Why civil – because there is often no
real way to prosecute criminally
Lack of extradition, jurisdiction
Russia example in Johnson’s work “privatizing pain” because criminal,
i.e, PUBLIC, system is
broken
not capable of or interesting
punishing perpetrators
US
example
Nicole
Simpson’s family suit against OJ
More on gender in the international
system:
“Is gender a
transnational force---both from the top down, ensuring male dominance,
and with
women’s emergence as a global force, from the bottom up, challenging
that
dominance – that has long been largely overlooked? (4)
ON
THE PUBLIC/PRIVATE
DISTINTION AS THE DELINEATOR BETWEEN “GENERATIONS” OR TYPES OF RIGHTS
1st
generation rights– political and civil
covers the realm
of what is defined as
public
where men need
protection from other men
2nd
generation rights– economic and social rights
where women
usually deprived along with
many men
more private
(e.g. market)
social not
political (e.g. European social
rights)
public
intervention here more contested
3rd
generation rights– group or collective rights
definitivey social,
quintessentially private
therefore, the least
guaranteed
MacKinnon argues from a
woman’s standpoint the priority of these rights could be reversed
i.e.,
need to have
group rights guaranteed before they can secure their economic/social
rights
and their
economic/social rights in order to act on their political/civil rights
Women as a global
group
No woman will be free
until all women will are equal (13).
Really, she’s talking
about relations, relative power disparity between
“first world” woman and
“third world” women
As women become more
equal to men in the first world, men seek out
less equal women in other places
(sex tourism),
from other places (mail order brides)
i.e. women who are
more dehumanized, disenfranchised
this could also be
true in class terms within a society
Bourgeois women
granted some rights,
men seek out more disenfranchised women (working
class,
underclass)
***The Silver
Lining of Globalization?: The Decline of
the State
Feature
of
globalization
“Global consciousness
of women’s right to human status, beginning with intimate
inviolability, is
exploding across the potent artifice of states’ barriers, erupting
through the
fissures of state subordination, and rising from the ashes of states’
collapse”
(14)
Simply
put,
STATE
POWER decreases
WOMAN POWER increases
Is this true? Likely?
Do you agree?
What about her idea
of the international system as “metamale’?
Why should we put
more faith in a globalized legal system (or economic one for that
matter) than
in a national one?
International
standards of sex equality
1)
the
sameness/difference model
CEDAW
Limits
women to what
men need
e.g. what to do with
sex specific needs of
women such as pregnancy and sex specific/sexual violence?
No male corollaries
Vs.
2)
a substantive model
of equality
As in the
Inter-american Convention on th Prevention, Punishment and Eradication
of
Violence Against Women (Convention of Belem do Para)
Which “recognizes
violence against women as ‘a manifestiation of the historically unequal
power
relations between women and men’ as a distinctive human rights
violation ‘based
on gender, which causes death or physical, sexual or psychological harm
or
suffering to women, whether in the public or the private sphere’” (8)
Grants right to women
to be free from violence in both spheres and the right to “simple and
prompt
recourse to a competent court for protection against acts that violate
her
rights (9)
Also includes right
“to be valued and educated free from stereotyped patterns
of behavior and
social and cultural practices based on concepts of inferiority or
subordination
(9).
And the “African
Protocol” which recognizes women’s right :
“to live in a
positive cultural context”
to peace
and to sustainable
development