Legal Pornography: a conclusion to chapter 2 in the works

The evidence is overwhelming: depending on the sex that actually occurs in the facts of these federal sexual harassment cases, the language in the cases–from which precedent is built, lawyers take heed, and students learn–shifts dramatically. This shift is in the same mode as pornography: Women are objectified, body parts are center stage, and lascivious, prurient detail is the norm when the sex is heterosexual. When the sex is threatening to heterosexual masculinity, heterosexual masculinity is carefully shored up with the omission of "undignified"” details, and sometimes dwelling on homophobic violence. When two women are involved the When courts are talking about sexually harassed women or girls, legally irrelevant sexual details are announced to the world. When the wronged party is a gay man, the details are somewhat similarly prurient; when it is a heterosexual man wronged by "“gay"” sexual activity, the sex is weirdly depersonalized and unmentionable.

This is the conclusion so far for my strange and beautifully horrible dissertation's chapter two. I've finally realized that the data (every circuit and Supreme court case involving sexual harassment since 1994) can't tell me what everyone really wants to know: exactly why this should be so. My hunch tells me that the answer to that question lies in a massive interviewing project, interviewing the judges themselves about each of the cases they've worked on. Speculation is the best I can do on this issue. Here are some thoughts:

Titillation: You can't read some of these cases and think that some of the judges aren't titillated.
Shame: Using sexual shame, some judges are trying to educate the public: "No woman should be subjected to this kind of behavior–do something about it!". No woman should be subjected to sexual harassment, it goes without saying. But this logic bleeds into something insidious: the idea that women should be protected from sex.

Next time I will discuss the possible ramifications of this phenomenon, that the cases read like porn.

Hateful chapters

So right now I'm working on chapter 2. It's incredible, actually: I have a really profound finding to share with the world. That finding is:

Depending on what the "sex" is that happened in a case, judges on federal sexual harassment cases write the cases differently.

That's not a clear statement; if I weren't drunk on margaritas I'd be able to say it better. But this is the first time I've been able to say it in one sentence...I think.

At any rate, let me elaborate:

I've read every federal circuit sexual harassment case since 1994, and every sexual harassment case of the US Supreme Court. And I can tell you that the cases vary in a predictable way: if the case is about a woman being harassed by a man, sexually, the cases read one way; if it's about a man being harassed by a man, it's another; if it's about a woman being harassed by a woman, it's another; and so on.

This difference is clear, strong, and salient. I think it reflects nothing less than differing standards of dignity for men and women and heterosexual and not heterosexual.

I'll elaborate when I'm less hammered.

Mark

Hanzie made me do it

So, it's true. I haven't been able to work on my blogs, much less my dissertation, in ages; I'm juggling a new full-time job, a teaching gig monday, wednesday, and friday nights, to say nothing of a relationship, an active social life, two lovely cats, and so on.

Perhaps blogging is the answer?

At the very least I can think about what it is I want to say in text form, and then perhaps that will get me in the habit of writing regularly.

I do believe it will take off the pressure of writing something super-fabulously-intelligent and get down to just writing, which I can then after the sucky first draft make super-fabulously-intelligent.

Test - submitting an entry from MacJournal

As you probably know, I'm a Macintosh fundamentalist. I can't really even discuss the relative merits of Windows-based PCs versus Macintoshes rationally; Windows blows, and that's it for me. It's sad, really, and perhaps a telling statement of the struggles I have in developing good writing habits. Ah well. One struggle at a time.

One of the things I like doing is testing all of these neat free or low-cost programs people make for Mac OS X. I'm using one right now to post to this blog: MacJournal 2.6. It's free (although 3.0 won't be) and keeps multiple journals, etc., and when you want to publish an entry to a blog you just click a few buttons. If you're on a Mac and want to configure MacJournal to post to this blog, just let me know.

Here goes...

Introduction: A Dissertation Blog

Welcome to the daily journal of my struggle with the dissertation process. What? Why would anyone want to read about the travails of some lonely graduate student, working long hours in the dusty libraries of UC Berkeley? First off, the beauty of blogs is simply that no one ever has to justify an audience; blogs just -are-, for the reading and the writing.

Second, that lonely graduate student isn't me. I'm a human, have a great life, a fab husband, and generally have a lot of fun. (New hobby: www.velerosa.com.) Furthermore, after long years of the dusty-library kind of work, I've hit upon a field of research and a topic to work on which both involve meeting people, talking to them about the intimate details of their lives - often ideas, fantasies, or thoughts they would never tell their friends or partners - namely, sex.

Lots of people study sex, of course; but I'm talking about something that seems almost totally absent from academic literature: the daily experience of life as a sexual creature. Humans are, of course, sexual creatures - it seems intuitively obvious that our hard-wiring must influence, to varying degrees, our daily experiences. But almost no one has written much about the interaction between our sexual feelings, our rational lives, and (in my case), the world of work. In fact, there's kind of a void of literature directly relevant to the topic, even if it's not right on point.

It usually surprises people to hear that sociologists don't know very much about the way sexuality manifests itself in everyday life. But this is the only conclusion I can draw after a few years of reviewing the existing literatures in law, sociology, queer theory, organization management, etc. One of these days I'll get around to publishing my analysis - tentatively I call it the "shadow of sexual harassment" phenomenon, which basically means that social scientists and legal scholars, following their good intentions, tend to study the horrifying and all-too-common attacks and discrimination against (mostly) women.

For now, though, that's just the background for those of us reading, posting and commenting on this blog - it's the starting point. I've started this blog to help the creative juices flow and allow the communities I'm studying - that's you - to guide me in my analysis. Hope you enjoy reading, and I hope you enjoy commenting or posting even more!

Who knew? Dissertation blogs are a growth market

Check out this thoughtful commentary circa March 2004 on the appearance of the genre by clicking on the title above, or if that doesn't work: http://blogger.iftf.org/Future/000368.html

Welcome to my very own dissertation blog! Check out the Introduction post to see what this dissertation is all about.

Cheers! And please don't forget to comment!