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9 Cardozo Women's L.J. 197 (2002-2003)
To Do Feminist Legal Theory

handle is hein.journals/cardw9 and id is 205 raw text is: FOREWORD: TO DO FEMINIST LEGAL THEORY MARIA GRAHN-FARLEY* What does it mean to do Feminist Legal Theory? The participants in the seminar on Feminist Legal Theory that I taught at Golden Gate University School of Law were very insistent in demanding from me a reaction, if not an answer, to their question. The participants called for a place in legal education where feminist theory would meet feminist activism. They called for theory to be put into action. Feminist Legal Theory is in itself an act of solidarity. It is a way to visualize what so many people called women in our society - whether society is defined locally, nationally, or globally - experience as individual and isolated events directed toward them personally, instead of as connected to an over-arching or underlying structure of oppression. An oppression that is based on an ideology of sexism is an oppression rooted in the belief that physical features tell something inherent about the person with those features and that the marks of the female justify different treatment. An ideology of sexism advances the notion that people with those female features, rather than male features, deserve or are made for designated places within the social hierarchy. Feminist Legal Theory questions the legitimacy of any such beliefs. Feminism is about questioning the hierarchy between people called men and people called women. The hierarchy between men and women cannot be questioned if hierarchy as such is not questioned. The Feminist Legal Theory seminar sought not only to question the hierarchy between people called women and people called men, but also to question hierarchy on many other levels. This symposium is an effort to question hierarchy and to respond to the participants' demand for action. A primary purpose of the seminar has been to provide a positive educational experience for all of the participants. One way of doing so has been to allow for the emergence of a wide-ranging set of ideas and political opinions about what a Feminist Legal Theory might © Maria Grahn-Farley, 2002. * Andrew W. Mellon Fellow, University of California Humanities Research Institute's Sawyer Seminar Program Redress in Social Thought, Law, and Literature (2002-2003); Visiting Adjunct Professor, Golden Gate University School of Law (2001-2002); Former member of the National Board of Rddda Barnen (Save the Children, Sweden); LL.M. Gothenburg University, School of Economics and Commercial Law, Sweden.