(POL1) Global Perspectives on Law, Gender, and Power in Contemporary Times

This session explores global perspectives on law, gender, and power in contemporary times with a focus on how gender-based inequalities and injustices are constructed, maintained, and/or reinforced legally. Specifically, the papers engage with empirical research and theorizing on gender, law and legal practices/institutions in different parts of the world, including Canada, Brazil, and Turkey. The primary issues and debates that the presentations focus on center around law and gender, and include legal responses to domestic and sexual violence, gender-based violence and discrimination against 2SLGBTQ+ individuals as well as the politics of violence against women and law reform, and gendered political conflicts. Tags: Gender, Law, Politics

Organizer: Tuğçe Ellialtı-Köse, University of Guelph; Chair: Tuğçe Ellialtı-Köse, University of Guelph

Presentations

Roberta Pamplona, University of Toronto

Feminist Repurposing: Activism Against Violence, State Incorporation, and the Feminicídio Law in Brazil

Feminists have brought attention to acts of violence that were previously not considered public concerns, such as domestic violence (Frazer and Hutchings 2020). In doing so, they have actively engaged with the state and its ideological disputes (Gramsci 1971; Hall 1996). In these disputes, studies have examined how feminist ideas on violence are implemented by noting an alignment with neoliberal agendas and conservative movements (Bumiller 2008; Bernstein 2012; Whittier 2018; Halley 2018). Studies on the Global South have revealed a double-edged sword for women’s movements as feminist politics through the state can encourage women to administer the law with their own hands (Roychowdhury 2020), strengthen mobilizations in the battles for democracy (Youssef 2023) and allow for new interpretations on the meanings of violence (Wright 2006; García-Del Moral 2016). Activists are particularly concerned about the outcomes of institutionalization for feminist projects (Ferree and Martin 1995), considering contemporary critiques on the depoliticization of feminism (Eschle and Maiguashca 2014) and the rise of anti-feminist discourses (Krizsán and Roggeband 2021). Given these contemporary apprehensions, Orloff, Ray, and Savci (2016) advocate for a more contextual approach to theorizing feminist politics and the state, considering how different contexts shape feminist activism and political dynamics. I answer their call by investigating feminist formulations around feminicídio after its institutionalization in Brazil across different feminist communities (Alvarez 1990; Carneiro, 2003). Through a case study of the Feminicídio Law in Brazil, I examine feminist formulations after the state incorporation of feminicídio, a category that broadly names the killing of women based on gendered reasons. I challenge the supposition that institutionalization necessarily leads to depoliticization. Examining feminist writings on feminicídio following its criminalization, I argue that feminist communities mobilized a legitimized framework to strategically confront state initiatives by employing an individual criminal classification as a tool against the state. I show how feminists directly contested the right-wing governments’ projects, such as the firearm ownership project and cuts on public health services, through the category of feminicídio. These tactical formulations were accompanied by justifications to expand welfare services, highlighting the overlap of criminalization dynamics and welfare projects. Relying on previous socio-legal studies on the repurpose of laws (Reynolds 2022; Garrick 2014), these data allow me to theorize feminist repurposing as an analytic approach that explains how feminists reformulate their ideas after the state incorporation for new political purposes. Feminist repurposing relies on feminist reformulations of legal categories by activists beyond their ordinary state incorporation. This analysis highlights how feminist activism against violence is dynamic and can mobilize institutionalized ideas against the state. My analysis of the feminicídio case in Brazil poses theoretical contributions to the impact of feminist institutionalization considering the rise of a global right in Latin America (Correa and Kalil 2021; Blofield, Ewig, and Piscopo 2017) and elsewhere (Krizsán and Roggeband 2021). The feminicídio case joins a feminist call for research on the role of feminist ideas on violence in expanding not only the carceral state but also welfare projects (Sweet 2023), depending on how feminists articulate them. My findings highlight that activists play a crucial role in the course of feminist ideas after institutionalization through the praxis of repurposing categories. Their formulations and mobilizations around institutionalized ideas reveal how specific legal reforms might have more political impacts than other projects and push for further social changes than just a penal policy.

Tuğçe Ellialtı-Köse, University of Guelph

Protecting Women, Punishing "Perverts": When Feminist Demands for Legal Reforms Meet Conservative Gender Politics

Twenty-first century Turkey can be best identified by two virtually incompatible trends: a wave of transformative, if not altogether progressive, legislative reforms that remade many aspects of law, and the detrimental effects of the increasing authoritarianism of the government on the rule of law. It is within this context that I examine the making of the sexual assault law, including its drafting, which witnessed many controversies and disagreements, mainly between women’s groups and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government. I argue that, despite bringing about important changes, the process of legal reforms operated through a series of inclusions and exclusions within which the demands of women’s groups were appropriated and reinterpreted by the government, resulting in a rather narrow understanding of violence against women and greater emphasis on punishment in sexual violence cases. Engaging with the insights of the recent feminist socio-legal scholarship on sexual violence and the law, I discuss the gendered effects of these reforms within the context of AKP’s reconfiguration of the state and their implications for women’s relationship with the state in Turkey. I show that, within the frame of the conservative politics of the AKP, the legal reforms contributed to the pathologization of sexual violence and framing of it as a moral issue that is to be almost exclusively dealt with by the punitive instruments of the state. I argue that this entire process reflects a new form of state feminism within which the Turkish state redefines itself as the protector of women (and children) vis-à-vis the pathologized perpetrators of sexual assault through its apparatus of punishment. I further argue that the effect of this has been the singularization, decontextualization, and depoliticization of sexual violence to the detriment of the agenda of the women’s and feminist movement. I conclude with a discussion of the current debates on medical castration and capital punishment that the AKP government has proposed as potentially prospective methods of punishment in cases of sexual violence.

Mandi Gray, Trent University

Suing for Silence: A Global Strategy to Suppress Discourse about Gendered Violence

In the last decade, there has been growing global interest in responding to sexualized and gendered violence. In turn, there is also growing anti-feminist backlash targeting those who have been vocal about their experiences of sexual and gendered violence. One tactic is the use of defamation lawsuits or the threat of a defamation lawsuit to silence survivors of gendered violence and their allies (Gray, 2024). Most notably is the case initiated by actor Johnny Depp against his former partner Amber Heard, who was sued for writing an opinion piece that described herself as a victim of domestic violence. It is not just famous men who are using defamation law, but those are the cases that tend to receive the bulk of media attention (Gray, 2024). In 2021, the United Nations noted a global rise in defamation lawsuits, specifically against those who denounce perpetrators of sexual violence. There have been media reports of men suing for defamation following an allegation of sexual violence in countries such as Australia, Canada, France, India, Japan, United Kingdom, United States, Peru, and South Korea (Gray, 2024). This paper builds on an earlier qualitative study by the author on defamation lawsuits against survivors of sexual violence. In this paper, I systematically analyze global media coverage of defamation lawsuits due to allegations of gendered violence. The analysis demonstrates a noted increase of such lawsuits following the #MeToo Movement. The analysis also reveals bias in reporting that perpetuates the commonly held belief that false allegations of gendered violence are a common occurrence. It is argued that the lawsuits combined with the media coverage may hinder discourse about gendered violence on a global scale and may have a chilling effect on formal reporting, which will have a disproportionate effect on women and gender diverse peoples while protecting abusive men from consequences of their actions. 

Momin Rahman, Trent University

Queer/Muslim/Canadian: understanding queer Muslim experiences and finding pathways to belonging with heteronormative Muslim communities

Canada has increasingly seen Muslim groups organize against LGBTQ/queer rights, most recently in 2023 when Muslim organizations took a leading role in the Million Children March against LGBTQ issues in education. Moreover, what happened in Canada is simply another iteration of global examples of mutual antipathy between Muslims and queers. This orthodoxy, however, relies upon Muslim disavowals of sexual diversity within their own communities. In this paper I detail the qualitative results of a large scale study conducted on the experiences and identities of queer Muslims in Canada and explore the possibilities for recognition from mainstream Muslim communities. I begin with a brief discussion of my theoretical model of homocolonialism and queer Muslim intersectionality that frames the standpoint methodology of centring queer Muslim knowledge. I also point out how this approach can refine dominant assumptions about identity categories and their experiences of oppression. I then provide a summary of the demographics of our interview data and then I illustrate the five core thematic clusters in our results, drawing on the specific interviews. These comprise the two main cluster themes of identity intersections and spirituality, as well as three further clusters centred on family relationships, the absence of community groups and the overarching culture of Islamophobia and homophobia experienced in the west and through Muslim communities. I conclude with an illustration of where there are shared areas for anti-oppression between queer Muslims, mainstream LGBTQ populations and mainstream heteronormative Muslims, as a beginning to identifying how we might build such understanding and alliances.