Victim No More
Women’s Resistance to Law, Culture and Power
This book challenges the idea that women are simply victims. It celebrates women’s resistance. It explores the moments beyond victimization. It argues that women do not stay crushed and broken, but move on, build and grow. The contributors to this edited edition celebrate the various forms of resistance: political resistance at both the collective and individual levels, legal resistance and resistance to cultural forms and labels. The editors argue that “Women-as-victim is not an emancipatory cry that encourages all women to join efforts in combating patriarchy. It is, at its core, highly analogous to the right-wing, conservative agendas that keep women politically passive, smiling stewards of male futures, still adhering to ‘men’s way’ in the boardroom and the bedroom.”
About the book
This book challenges the idea that women are simply victims. It celebrates women’s resistance. It explores the moments beyond victimization. It argues that women do not stay crushed and broken, but move on, build and grow. The contributors to this edited edition celebrate the various forms of resistance: political resistance at both the collective and individual levels, legal resistance and resistance to cultural forms and labels. The editors argue that “Women-as-victim is not an emancipatory cry that encourages all women to join efforts in combating patriarchy. It is, at its core, highly analogous to the right-wing, conservative agendas that keep women politically passive, smiling stewards of male futures, still adhering to ‘men’s way’ in the boardroom and the bedroom.”
Contents
- Section I: Theory and Praxis
- Introduction (Ellen Faulkner and Gayle MacDonald)
- Rethinking the Critique of ‘Victim Feminism’ (Rebecca Stringer)
- Section II: Legal Challenge/Reform and Resistance
- Flight: Women Abuse and Children’s Habitual Resistance in The Hague Convention on International Child Abduction (Rebecca Jaremko Bromwich)
- Bad Girls like Good Contracts: Ontario Erotic Dancers Collective Resistance (Suzanne Bouclin)
- ‘Be Active, Be Emancipated’ (BABE)-Women’s Response to Violence and War (Doris Goedl)
- Section III: The Politics of Resistance
- The Raging Grannies: Outrageous Hats, Satirical Songs and Civil Disobedience (Carole Roy)
- “Not a Tough Enough Skin?”: Resisting Paternalist Relations in Academe (Norma Jean Profit)
- Representing Victims of Sexualized Assault (Linda Coates and Penny Ridley)
- Section IV: Resilience/Identity Formation
- Queer Dispositions: A Case Study in Trans-gressing the Limits of Law (Lisa Passante)
- In Defiance of Compulsory Mothering: Voluntarily Childfree Women’s Resistance (Debra Mollen)
- Playing Games With the Law: Legal Advocacy and Resistance (Karen Rosenberg)
- Resistance and Recovery: Three Women’s Testimony on Addiction and Collective Sites of Recovery (Jean Toner)
- Section V: Historical Forms of Resistance
- Milk Enough for All: Breast-giving, Fugitivity and the Limits of Resistance (Lynn Makau)
- Insane But Not an Ideological Convert: Nakamoto Takoto’s Claim to Political Dissidence in Prewar Japan (Janice Matsumura)
- Bibliography
