Category: law

Wendy Murphy on Equal Treatment vs Equal Rights

Policing the Womb, Michele Goodwin

Recommended!

A few quotes and notes:

“… pregnancy as a proxy for punishment …” (p.x)

But only for the women, even though the men are mostly responsible for causing the pregnancy (males have 100% control over ejaculation in a vagina; females have no control over whatsoever over ovulation and very seldom force a man to …

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excerpts from MacKinnon’s Women’s Lives, Men’s Laws

I’ve just finished reading yet another MacKinnon book, Women’s Lives, Men’s Laws, and as usual, it’s absolutely brilliant. The book is well worth a complete read; I paste below some perfect gems.

(My used copy is marked DISCARD by the Porter County Library system. In itself, telling. Sigh.)

Reading this now.  It’s heavy-going, but well …

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Rape: a men’s issue

Men are the ones who rape, so why is rape a women’s issue?  Because men see nothing wrong with rape. 

Men: the sooner you recognize this, the sooner you’ll see rape as a men’s issue.

Women have fewer rights than a corpse

Thanks to

Dear Forced Birth Advocates…

“…no doubt it would be declared illegal…”

– “… no doubt it would be declared illegal, like everything else women wanted to do without men.”  Our History in New York, Linsey Abrams

Among the things that don’t count …

[Bernadette Powell, a black woman from Ithaca, New York, is now serving a 15-year-to-life sentence … because in 1978 she shot and killed her ex-husband.]

[T]he Tompkins county prosecutor … argued … that [she] had no reason to fear bodily harm from her ex-husband because although the man admittedly had committed many violent acts against …

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I’m too drunk. No I’m not.

According to the Canadian Criminal Code, (self-induced) intoxication is no defence against charges of assault (33.1): if you’re drunk, you’re still able to form the general intent to commit said assault.

And yet, with regard to the sub-category of sexual assault, belief that someone is consenting is cancelled if that someone is intoxicated (273.1(2)): if …

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The Provocation Defence – Condoning Testosterone Tantrums (and other masculinities)

According to the Canadian Criminal Code (and probably a lot of other criminal codes), murder can be reduced to manslaughter if the person was provoked.  Provocation is defined as “a wrongful act or an insult that is of such a nature as to be sufficient to deprive an ordinary person of the power of self-control …

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YAY Canada!

– we’re barely in the top quarter when it comes to the gender gap in wages (we’re fourth worst)

– we’re barely in the top quarter when it comes to the gender gap in health (it’s safer to be pregnant in Estonia than in Canada)

– speaking of which, we’re one of the last six …

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