International Journal of Gender, Sexuality and Law

The Architecture of Desire: How the Law Shapes Interracial Intimacy and Perpetuates Inequality, Solangel Maldonado [NYU Press, 2024, 240pp, £29.99 (hardback)]

Senthorun Raj — 2024-07-18

Review of The Architecture of Desire: How the Law Shapes Interracial Intimacy and Perpetuates Inequality, Solangel Maldonado [NYU Press, 2024, 240pp, £29.99 (hardback)]

Gender Based Violence: Reflections on the World Envisaged in “After Dark” by Jayne Cowie: Using Literature to Critically Explore Current Legal Responses to GBV in the Home and in Public

Claire Bessant — 2024-07-18

This special issue of The International Journal of Gender, Sexuality and Law, edited by Claire Bessant and Kayliegh Richardson, brings together academic voices from across law and criminology in discussion of the issue of gender-based violence (GBV). Many of the ideas included in this special issue were presented previously at a 2022 conference funded by the Society of Legal Scholars, titled ‘Gender Based Violence: Reflections on the world envisaged in “After Dark” by Jayne Cowie’. That conference sought to use the book ‘After Dark’ as a focal point for a multi-disciplinary discussion about how society and the law should respond to tragedies such as the deaths of Sarah Everard and Ashling Murphy but also to the issue of violence against women. Building on the academic discussion that took place at that conference, this special edition firstly considers some of the legal interventions discussed in After Dark and their potential application within the real world. The second part of the special edition, then considers the potential benefits of using literature and other fictional works to stimulate discussion around legal issues.

A Right to a Male Curfew

Jonathan Herring — 2024-07-18

This article explores the case for a right to a male curfew. It argues the epidemic of male violence and harassment against women in public spaces is a major breach of women’s human rights. This generates an obligation on the state to protect women. The article substantiates that claim and explains why a male curfew would be a reasonable way for the state to fulfil its obligations and is therefore required unless an alternative can be found.

Policing Men, Policing Women: Responsibility and Accountability for Violence Against Women and Girls, Including Domestic Abuse and Femicide

Mandy Burton — 2024-07-18

Existing legal responses to violence against women and girls (VAWG) often focus on the behaviour of the victim as much as, or sometimes more than, that of the alleged perpetrator. The laws that are supposed to protect women and girls from abuse are used to ‘police’ the behaviour of women; access to remedies and redress can seem to be contingent on whether the victim has adhered to stereotypes of an ‘ideal/real’ or ‘deserving’ victim. Female victims of male violence, including femicide, are often judged for their own behaviour; what they ‘ought’ to have done to keep themselves safe. This ‘responsibilisation’ is evident in both the substantive law and in the implementation of the law in practice. This article will highlight some of the examples of victim blaming in existing legal responses to VAWG in England and Wales. It will consider the question: how can we focus less on victim behaviour and more on perpetrator responsibility and accountability? Jayne Cowie’s book After Dark offers a useful lens for examining this question. The article will explore the parallels between some of the existing preventative measures for domestic abuse in England and Wales and some of the fictional measures enacted in Cowie’s world, in particular cohabitation contracts and domestic violence disclosure schemes.

Against a Dark Background: The Prevention of Femicide Act 2023 and the Problem of Legislating for Control

Ross Fletcher — 2024-07-18

The plot device at the heart of Jayne Cowie’s 2022 novel After Dark is the Prevention of Femicide Act 2023, a (fictitious) piece of legislation enacted by Parliament in response to high-profile cases of gender-based violence, and implemented to prevent future occurrences of such crimes. The events of the novel demonstrate that this legislation proves to be flawed in several respects, not least in its failure to prevent the very crime that it was enacted to stop. In this article, I will look at the flaws evident in the legislation as depicted in the novel, and in doing so demonstrate the difficulties inherent in drafting legislation that aims to uphold the rights of one group while at the same time depriving a different group of their rights. I will highlight the formidable obstacles faced by real-world lawmakers in drafting legislation aimed at bringing about radical social change in the face of public hostility to that very change, and will ask whether it is the proper place of the legislature to attempt to effect such changes, or whether society itself ought rightly to be the vehicle for the radical change of mindset necessary to prevent crimes perpetrated by one group in society against another.

Dystopian Fiction: Can it Enable us to Think Critically about Gendered Violence and Power?

Kim McGuire — 2024-07-18

This article discusses the issues of power sex, gender, and the law with regard to identifying and controlling violence against women. It discusses these concepts within dystopian works of fiction and their application, both actual and potential, to real life. The novels and films below have been selected for their perceived relevance to the author as examples of dystopian fiction, but importantly they engage with Gadamer’s concept of language and socially and historically affected consciousness. Hence, the themes, but also their reception, are products of their time and place.

The central themes of the novels will be those typical for dystopian fiction, such as power, governmental control and loss of individualism. However, other themes particularly pertinent to feminist dystopian fiction are also investigated, such as imagining a matriarchal society, misogyny and misandry, sexual violence, and the limitations upon the behaviour of individuals, usually female, but not always. Feminist theory has engaged with ‘essentialism’, both arguing for an essential difference between ‘males’ and ‘females’, but also disputing essentialism for limitations upon the sexes. One criticism of such works is that they are based upon biological sex and as such promote a dichotomous essentialism. However, since this article is discussing violence against women, biological or gendered, it is not engaging with the subtlety of multi-faceted ‘gendered’ identities, except in the stereotyping of such ‘attributes’.

The selected novels have enabled different interpretations over time, due to the diversity of readers, and of social norms, values, and beliefs. Whether we can distance ourselves from our socially and historically embedded understandings through these works of fiction, to critique the contemporary world is discussed. Arguably, for Attwood the critique and change potential is not guaranteed, for: “Humanity is so adaptable. Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.” This article argues that, crucially, with what, and with whom, we identify, are influential in our interpretations.

Popular Criminology, Sexual Violence and Alternative Modes of Justice

Louise Wattis — 2024-07-18

The idea of ‘popular criminology’ has gained currency within academic criminology, with criminologists recognising that popular cultural portrayals of crime, violence and justice offer alternatives discourses which enhance the criminological imagination beyond the limits of academic criminology, offering more complex understandings of crime and violence and reimagining the nature of justice (Brown and Rafter, 2012; Rafter, 2007; Wakeman, 2013; Wattis, 2018, 2022). This article will consider cultural representations of sexual violence as progressive portrayals which reveal the harms of sexual violence, disrupt stereotypical rape narratives and highlight the victim experience (Powell et al., 2015; McGlynn and Westmarland, 2019).

There is now a growing activist and academic movement calling for a reimagining of justice beyond formal redress. This is in part a response to the widely acknowledged failure of formal justice systems to deliver justice for victims of sexual violence and the anti-carceral critique of feminism’s support for carceral justice responses to violence against women. Ultimately, I consider how popular culture might contribute to a more progressive vision of justice which resonates with McGlynn and Westmarland’s (2019) notion of ‘kaleidoscopic justice’ where victims are centred and the harms of sexual violence are fully recognised. I conclude by considering the ethics of representations of violence against within popular culture.