Reconstructing Liberty

It is commonly and rightly understood in this country that our constitutional system ensures, or seeks to ensure, that individuals are accorded the greatest degree of personal, political, social, and economic liberty possible, consistent with a like amount of liberty given to others, the duty and right of the community to establish the conditions for a moral and secure collective life, and the responsibility of the state to provide for the common defense of the community against outside aggression. Our distinctive cultural and constitutional commitment to individual liberty places very real restraints on what our elected representatives can do, even when they are acting in what all of us, or most of us, would consider our collective best interest. For example, we cannot outlaw marches by the Ku Klux Klan, or the burning of flags by political extremists, or the anti-Semitic, racist, or hateful speech of incendiary and potentially dangerous bigoted zealots. Nor can we simply outlaw those practices of religious sects that may have deleterious effects on the members, such as the refusal of certain Amish sects in the Eastern United States to allow their children to receive a public education past the eighth grade, the explicit exclusion (until recently) of blacks from positions of influence in the Mormon Church, or the continuing exclusion of women from positions of power, prestige, and influence in our dominant, mainstream, Protestant, Catholic, and Judaic faiths. We may believe correctly that a full civic education for every individual is not only desirable for its own sake but is an absolute prerequisite for meaningful participation in our shared political life. We may believe that racist speech is antithetical to the racial tolerance necessary to our continued existence as a pluralistic society, that flag-burning communicates no message worth hearing, and that women and blacks are entitled to the opportunity to aspire to positions of full participation and responsibility in religious life. Nevertheless, we are precluded from legislating in a way that would put the weight of the law behind these values because to do so ostensibly would do great violence to something we hold even more dear: the right and responsibility of the individual to think, speak, and act autonomously in matters of religious, political, and social life-to reach one\u27s convictions on one\u27s own and for oneself, unfettered by the moral dictates of the state, even where those dictates are benign and wise. In constitutional discourse, this complex aspiration is often captured by the phrase ordered liberty. The first thing to note about this aspiration of ordered liberty is that it is a relatively modern and distinctively liberal interpretation of our constitutional heritage. Thus, although Justice Cardozo coined the phrase ordered liberty in the 1930s, our modern understanding of ordered liberty protected by the Constitution came to full fruition with the liberty-expanding cases of the liberal Warren Court era. Quite possibly it received its most definitive formulation in the 1960s case Poe v. Ullman. To paraphrase a bit, our modern understanding of ordered liberty implies that the state may not interfere with the personal or individual decisions that are most fundamental to a free life or with those liberties the protection of which is what prompts individuals -- or would prompt individuals if given the explicit option -- to enter civic society in the first place. The driving idea behind this notion of ordered liberty is that the protection of those liberties by the state against its own tendency to intrude in the name of some shared political end is of a higher order or of greater importance to civic life than any other conceivable and temporal state goal. Which particular liberties we view as fundamental and hence requiring this constitutional protection against even wise and benign state regulation is, of course, a subject of deep and profound disagreement. There is, however, a remarkably broad consensus in our contemporary legal culture and in our national community generally about the quite modern and quite liberal idea or aspiration of ordered liberty: that there are some liberties, whatever they may be, so essential to an autonomous life that they must be kept free of state control. In my comments, I will be largely critical of this understanding of ordered liberty, which I occasionally will call the modern or liberal interpretation of our constitutional heritage. I want to make two objections to this concept of liberty, one political and one historical. The political objection is that the modern conception of ordered liberty is a largely empty promise for women. My claim, very briefly, will be that even the ideal expressed by this conception of ordered liberty-to say nothing of the actual practices it protects is skewed against women in a significant manner. The historical objection is that the liberal conception of liberty is also a cramped, inaccurate understanding of our constitutional history. I will conclude by arguing that we could fundamentally reconceive liberty in a more generous and explicitly feminist way without doing violence to either liberalism or to the document we have inherited

The Elimination of the Sexual Exploitation of Children: Two Policy Briefings

The Oak Foundation child-abuse programme has funded and supported a range of civil society actors over the course of the last ten years, with the aim of reducing the incidence of the sexual exploitation of children, focusing primarily on work in East Africa, Eastern and Central Europe, Brazil and India. The Foundation is committed to expanding this work, focusing 50 percent of resources over the next five years, within two priority areas: * The elimination of the sexual exploitation of children; * The positive engagement of men and boys in the fight against the sexual abuse of children. Under the first of these priorities Oak Foundation requested Knowing Children to produce two documents to guide a strategic-planning meeting of the child-abuse team in mid-October 2011: * Reducing societal tolerance of sexual exploitation of children; * Preventing children's entry into all forms of sexual exploitation

“Yes, My Career Would End”: How the Existence of Illicit Digital Media May Inhibit Women from Participating in Politics

The challenges faced by women in their quest to be equal participants with men in politics is not hidden. This study set out to examine how women may be restrained from rising to the highest offices in politics amidst fear of their existing nude contents that exist digitally. The body and sexuality of women have countlessly been employed as a tool to keep them out of political participation. Relying on data gathered through interviews with twenty four respondents, the study confirmed that women who have their illicit digital media in existence are less likely to take lead roles in politics due to fear of being rejected by political parties, media and the electorates in general

No Girls Allowed: Television Boys’ Clubs as Resistance to Feminism

This article analyzes the male-only spaces present in four television series, FX’s The Shield, Nip/Tuck , Rescue Me, and ABC’s Boston Legal, which each include a gendered territory as a recurring feature. I argue that these homosocially segregated environments enforce boundaries against women and shelter intense bromance relationships that foreclose romantic relationships of any kind, acting as physical incarnations of troubling retrograde sexual politics and ideologies. I also assert that the “boys’ clubs” in which these narratives take place, enabled and empowered by the aesthetic dimensions of architecture and design, help establish workplace patriarchy as commonplace, reasonable, and benign. This article reveals that in these television boys’ clubs, problematic gender ideologies are protected and celebrated, misogyny is naturalized, and patriarchal beliefs and behaviors legitimized

THIRD SPACE FEMINISM

This project explores the potentials of women-centric digital spaces that attempt to co-create feminist futures with women in a patriarchal society. The main objective is to investigate how women-centric digital spaces can act as third spaces and impact the future of gender equity. The context of the research is urban Bangladesh, involving adult women and men from Dhaka, the capital. Despite remarkable economic progress and empowerment of women, gender injustice and violence with widespread gender inequalities persist in both the public and private domains of Bangladesh. Spaces are often restricted and limited for women because of the dominance of patriarchy. In a culture where women are expected to be domestic, quiet, and passive, women are finding their voices through digital technology in the 21st century, thus breaking the boundaries of physical spaces. In the current literature review, a significant limitation discovered is the sustainability, physical impact, and future scopes of these spaces. This study uses evidence from academic literature as well as primary research to understand the context and challenges and explores the possibilities within different parts of the system. Keywords: activism, co-design, collaboration, community, digital culture, gender-based discrimination, human factors, human-computer interaction, participatory design, social innovation, social media, technology, strategic foresight, intersectionality, interdisciplinary, interconnectedness, inclusive design, domestic violenc

Invisible women in reproductive technologies: Critical reflections

The recent spectacular progress in assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) has resulted in new ethical dilemmas. Though women occupy a central role in the reproductive process, within the ART paradigm, the importance accorded to the embryo commonly surpasses that given to the mother. This commentary questions the increasing tendency to position the embryonic subject in an antagonistic relation with the mother. I examine how the mother’s reproductive autonomy is compromised in relation to that of her embryo and argue in favour of doing away with the subject-object dyad between them, particularly in the contexts of surrogacy and abortion. I also engage with the Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2016. A critical discussion of the privacy judgment passed by the Supreme Court of India helps examine how personal autonomy of the body and mind extends to include the reproductive autonomy of women as well

From inequality to diversity:perceptions of bangladeshi grassroot level feminists on gender in education

Abstract. This research aims to understand the prevalent gender norms in the education system of Bangladesh through the perceptions of grassroot level feminists and therefore, seeks answers to two questions: a) How do grassroot level feminists perceive the causes for gender inequality in the education system of Bangladesh? b) How can the Bangladeshi feminist critique help to reformulate the norms of education in Bangladesh to better take into consideration diverse gender experiences? Following a theoretical framework of postmodern feminism, postcolonial feminism and decolonial theory, the study illuminates the notions of gender inequalities in education of Bangladesh. The study used a qualitative approach to understand the views and experiences of the participants who were the grassroot level feminists from Bangladesh. In depth interviews with the participants worked as the main source of data and thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. The study found that the grassroot level feminists in Bangladesh perceive patriarchy as one of the reasons behind gender inequality in the education system of Bangladesh. Other reasons include religion, social values and family pressure, economic condition, outdated structure and curricula from the colonial period. However, these reasons are intertwined with each other making gender inequality a complex phenomenon. The research also suggested that government initiatives in terms of curriculum reformation, budgeting and enforcing strict laws are crucial to make the education system more diverse and along with that exposure to outside knowledge is also necessary. This research can be used by the policy makers to reform the education system in Bangladesh through a feminist and decolonial lens and this can be a way forward to other research concerning gender and education in Bangladesh. Moreover, this research has tried to incorporate authors from Bangladesh and South Asia (or in general from Global South) mostly so that the western and colonial perceptions can be avoided