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| | | The utter insufficiency of progress is further evident to me in the way women are treated throughout the world. Abused, raped, mutilated, enslaved, and generally relegated to the status of second-class citizens, women do not enjoy equal status anywhere. For example, in Egypt, the criminal code provides that if a husband beats his wife with good intentions then he will not be subject to criminal penalties. In Saudi Arabia, women are not permitted to vote or to drive. Far from being unique to non-Western countries, United States laws codify the abuse of women as well. In mandating transvaginal ultrasounds, a handful of U.S. states require the non-consensual vaginal penetration of pregnant women who wish to obtain abortions. Though such an act would certainly not be prosecuted as rape, such non-consensual intrusion is hard to distinguish from the federal definition of it. (See http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2012/January/12-ag-018.html.) | |
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True, but beside the point. I don't think anyone would deny that the
actions involved, undertaken with the requisite felonious intent in
the absence of consent, are a crime. But, barring emergency, any
invasive medical procedure or test carried out without consent is a
battery, unless preceded by the patient's informed consent. The fact
that the State is mandating an invasive procedure under circumstances
that smack of punitive behavior against citizens exercising
constitutional rights is deplorable, but that doesn't imply that the
physician or nurse, having gotten the patient's informed consent to
the procedure, is now under any threat of criminal liability. It
isn't that it wouldn't be prosecuted. It's that there is absolutely
no crime.
One can understand why in the discourse of politics, it is may seem
more effective to talk about this as rape than to say that the State
should never require invasive procedures that aren't medically
necessary in the treating physician's judgment. And that to require
such procedures, out of animus against citizens peacefully exercising
their constitutional rights, is an inhumane abomination of the
highest order. But for lawyers it is important to make the
distinction between legal discourse and the other forms of rhetoric
they also employ in their private and public lives.
| | | Conviction | | | It will require considerable courage – in addition to many other enviable qualities – to make the deep, pervasive, and meaningful changes that are necessary. Political correctness and religious tolerance are used to defend and enshrine abuse; women who dare to speak out are vilified as “feminazis”; and many of the world’s worst perpetrators are geopolitically shielded because they have oil, nuclear weapons, or some other chit more valuable than women’s bodies and freedoms. To take on these possibly insurmountable obstacles and threats that have been rooted in society since its inception, we challengers will need the courage to face the inevitable backlash and to charge ahead when progress seems unreachable.
Contrary what the current political discourse would suggest, the “War on Women” is not being fought between Republicans and Democrats. This so-called war, older and more entrenched than all other metaphorical culture wars, is largely a worldwide rout. It will remain so, unless more people join the right side of the fight. John Brown did not end slavery, nor did Martha Tharaud rid the U.S. of at-will employment. Still, they had the bravery and courage of conviction to fight on in the face of true adversity and seeming impossibility. I hope I continue to build the courage and skills it will require as a lawyer, a policymaker, and a woman, to help turn the tide. | |
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I think that there are some important improvements here. I think,
taking the present draft on its own merits, that the tone suffers now
from too much of what in a man's writing might be called
"breast-beating." It's the drum notes, I think: the lists of virtues
it will require of you to undertake the hard and noble work you have
chosen, etc. They're too overwhelmingly present: there's no human
lightness of touch.
The sense of stiffness is emphasized by the peculiar combination of
Martha Tharaud and John Brown, who are maneuvered in duo as though
there were really any substantial similarity between an elderly
Jewish labor lawyer in Manhattan at the end of the 20th century and
the post-Puritan antislavery militant evangelist, only one of whom is
real. Talking about them separately might add something to your own
thoughts, though it would be hard to see how either is systematically
necessary. Treating them as joint avatars of anything seems
freighted with potential absurdity.
So in the end, the essay proclaims that you're gonna need courage.
In its martial tone, with its drumbeat rhythm, it might even be one
of those self-motivating, you can do it rituals, soaring anthems
about how you gotta have heart, that Broadway so loved in the 20th
century.
But I think a draft that tried a more urbane tone, including elements
of irony, for example, and reduced the semi-apprehensive paen to
future courage, however necessary, would be fruitful. Isn't the most
useful courage the stuff that doesn't have to advertise itself?
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