Maria Bevacqua

III. Feminist Theory and the Question of Lesbian and Gay Marriage

For feminists, the question of lesbian and gay marriage is, or should be, inextricably bound to the ongoing critique of marriage as an institution. That critique originates in the theoretical and practical indictment of all social institutions, built upon inequality and exclusion, which function as tools of male dominance. The existing political movement to acquire marriage rights for lesbians and gays appears to avoid this critique; instead, in the liberal political tradition, it seeks simply to secure for gay and lesbian people the same legal rights that heterosexual people enjoy. In this article, I explore the question of lesbian and gay marriage through the lens of feminist theory, first delineating briefly the feminist critique of marriage as articulated historically and contemporarily. I then argue why it is necessary for gays and lesbians to press for the right to marry: the second-class citizenship created by the state’s differential treatment of gays and lesbians, I contend, is no position from which to launch a viable challenge to the status quo. I intend here to enrich the theoretical debate with practical considerations of the meaning of inequality, and to enhance the social movement for lesbian and gay rights with ideological insights from the feminist struggle. I write as a feminist, a lesbian, and a thinker deeply concerned with the meanings of liberation on multiple fronts. Feminist critiques of marriage have ranged from philosophers’ censure of marriage as fostering gender inequality (Mill and Mill, 1970[1869]) to the free lovers’ admonition that marriage shackles the human spirit (see D’Emilio and Freedman, 1988). They comprise Emma Goldman’s (1970[1917]) assertion that marriage makes woman a parasite at best, a prostitute at worst, and The Feminists’ flamboyant actions rejecting this ‘inherently inequitable’ institution in theory and practice (Echols, 1989: 176). They further include the radical feminist

Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain! Power, Privacy, and the Legal Regulation of Violence Against Women

Abstract This paper considers issues of violence against women through the conceptual lens of public/private ideology, exploring numerous ways that the public/private dichotomy is reinforced in the law and public policy of rape, domestic violence, and sexual harassment. We argue that the power of this ideology continues into the contemporary law of gendered violence, as evidenced most recently by the Supreme Courts decision in United States v. Morrison (2000). We find that public/private ideology offers men a “violence shield”: freedom from scrutiny that enables gendered violence to thrive. Although gendered violence is now on the public agenda, these crimes remain shielded from scrutiny because they are associated with the private sphere. We suggest that feminist activists concentrate on undermining these ideological roots when crafting strategies to combat violence against women.

Challenging Narratives of the Anti-Rape Movement’s Decline:

A recent trend in scholarship characterizes the anti-rape movement as founded with radical goals and achieving success at reforming rape laws, but then declining because of co-optation by the state. This article challenges narratives of decline in light of the history of the anti-rape movement and current anti-rape activism. By focusing their critique on criminal justice and therapeutic approaches to sexual violence, and failing to account for the diversity of the anti-rape movement, advocates for narratives of decline ignore parts of the movement that challenge the state and other parts that use broader cultural and community-based strategies to end rape.

Review of Addressing Rape Reform in Law and Practice (Columbia University Press, 2009) by Susan Caringella

organize demonstrations for the August 26, 1970, Women’s Strike for Equality Day—or when activists worked together on concrete feminist issues such as reproductive rights and sexual violence that were seen as broader community problems amenable to local redress. In these instances, DC’s hybrid local-as-national status left feminist activists to draw on the skills of important “mainstream” feminist allies like Federally Employed Women, who helped to organized the Equality Day and who later participated in citywide cross-racial/ethnic coalitions to push for women’s reproductive rights. In the chapters that show coalitional efforts by feminists and others across social-structural and ideological divides, Valk makes a contribution to a literature that increasingly questions the self-evident status of the grass roots vis-à-vis institutionally situated actors. In contrast, Valk’s narrative is less interesting when addressing divisions among leftists in DC itself; while the reader gets more information about, say, local black nationalist challenges to feminist political organizing, in these chapters Valk merely recounts the relationships of contention and division rather than analyzing them. The uncritical recounting of division sits uneasily in a narrative in which efforts at cooperation have been treated with more analytical care. Taken together, both Feminist Coalitions and Radical Sisters will interest readers seeking an understanding of why feminist unity across difference was so hard to achieve during the 1960s and 1970s. Although clearly all of the authors want to celebrate moments of feminist unity in the second wave, I see these works as contributing to a normalization of the study of postwar feminist protest, insofar as they help to paint a picture that shows many activists, organizations, and movements confronting the contradictions of forging unity in divided and contradictory political spaces. ❙

Review of Sexual Inequalities and Social Justice, ed. Niels Teunis and Gilbert Herdt (University of California Press, 2007)

Sexual Inequalities and Social Justice makes an important contribution to the literature of sexuality studies, gender and health, and gender studies. Composed of an introduction and ten chapters by an array of authors, it covers a diversity of topics, including sex education, sexuality and older gay men and lesbians, sexual negotiations of Catholic Latina immigrants, and reclaiming gay male circuit culture. Linking the emergence of sexuality as a field of social scientific study to the radical protest movements of the midto late-20th century, the co-editors highlight the grounded nature of both the research contained within the volume and its usefulness to public policy. The diverse contents share a focus on the constructed sexualities of historically marginalized, stereotyped, invisible, or disenfranchised groups and communities. The book is divided into three sections—“Sexual Coercion and Sexual Stigma,” “Seeking Sexual Pleasure,” and “Sexual Inequality and Sociality”— each introduced by a brief overview that synthesizes the contents for the reader and connects back to the themes outlined in the introduction. This format helps hold the distinct essays together and makes the volume more useful for teaching. (The inclusion of an index also lends to the book’s usability.) Of special concern, according to the introduction by co-editors Niels Teunis and Gilbert Herdt, are the ways in which social inequalities are reproduced at the intersection of sexual inequality and other disenfranchised identities based on race, ethnicity, age, ability, and so on. They identify, without mincing words, racism, classism, homophobia, and xenophobia as “structural violence,” which is replicated on numerous levels of social interaction, from the individual to the institutional to the cultural. The editors foreground sexual inequality because “its analysis has lagged behind the exposure of other forms of structural violence, especially within the United States” (p. 3). With this focus, each chapter makes a unique contribution to the social science study of sexuality. Some of the essays in Sexual Inequalities and Social Justice are particularly successful at interrogating intersectionality as promised in the introduction. Sonya Grant Arreola’s “Childhood Sexual Abuse and HIV

Sexual Inequalities and Social Justice edited by Niels Teunis and Gilbert Herdt

Sexual Inequalities and Social Justice makes an important contribution to the literature of sexuality studies, gender and health, and gender studies. Composed of an introduction and ten chapters by an array of authors, it covers a diversity of topics, including sex education, sexuality and older gay men and lesbians, sexual negotiations of Catholic Latina immigrants, and reclaiming gay male circuit culture. Linking the emergence of sexuality as a field of social scientific study to the radical protest movements of the midto late-20th century, the co-editors highlight the grounded nature of both the research contained within the volume and its usefulness to public policy. The diverse contents share a focus on the constructed sexualities of historically marginalized, stereotyped, invisible, or disenfranchised groups and communities. The book is divided into three sections—“Sexual Coercion and Sexual Stigma,” “Seeking Sexual Pleasure,” and “Sexual Inequality and Sociality”— each introduced by a brief overview that synthesizes the contents for the reader and connects back to the themes outlined in the introduction. This format helps hold the distinct essays together and makes the volume more useful for teaching. (The inclusion of an index also lends to the book’s usability.) Of special concern, according to the introduction by co-editors Niels Teunis and Gilbert Herdt, are the ways in which social inequalities are reproduced at the intersection of sexual inequality and other disenfranchised identities based on race, ethnicity, age, ability, and so on. They identify, without mincing words, racism, classism, homophobia, and xenophobia as “structural violence,” which is replicated on numerous levels of social interaction, from the individual to the institutional to the cultural. The editors foreground sexual inequality because “its analysis has lagged behind the exposure of other forms of structural violence, especially within the United States” (p. 3). With this focus, each chapter makes a unique contribution to the social science study of sexuality. Some of the essays in Sexual Inequalities and Social Justice are particularly successful at interrogating intersectionality as promised in the introduction. Sonya Grant Arreola’s “Childhood Sexual Abuse and HIV