The erotic triangle, in which two men compete for a desired woman, is a foundational archetype of Western culture. This dissertation, through its three separately-published articles, examines how this cultural archetype is manifested in law and legal structures, and the relationship between law’s erotic triangulations, gender inequality, and third-party responsibility. Each of the three articles of this dissertation focuses on a different manifestation of third-party responsibility, and each offers its own self-contained argument. At the same time, the “graphic schema” of the erotic triangle analytically enriches each of them. The erotic triangle is a “sensitive register […] for delineating relationships of power and meaning,” and using it in this context illuminates the shifting ways gender, power, and legal responsibility circulate in these male-female-male legal structures. Together, the articles suggest that law both replicates and reproduces erotic triangulations in ways that contribute to gender inequality, but also that it may be an important site for their renegotiation. The first article, A New Tortious Interference with Contractual Relations: Gender and Erotic Triangles in Lumley v. Gye, explores how the tort of interference with contractual relations was created out of a factual scenario involving an erotic triangle (two rival opera-house managers competing for the services of a renowned chanteuse). The court converted past regulations of erotic triangles (in particular, criminal conversation, which allowed a husband to bring an action against a man for sexual interference with his wife) into a new cause of action, one which removed a triangulated woman’s responsibility for breaching a contract, and instead assigned responsibility to the man who induced her to breach. While this first iteration involves the removal of responsibility from a triangulated woman, the second article, Home Rules, involves an inversion of this responsibility allocation: here responsibility is removed from a usually male wrongdoer and instead imposed upon a triangulated woman. Home Rules examines how, through a series of ordinances, local governments are imposing responsibility on female heads of household for the wrongful actions of their typically male household members. In so doing, local governments disrupt kinship structures and assert the state’s dominance over the family and intimate life. The third article, Triangulating Rape, evidences a more positive shift in responsibility. It traces the transformation of rape law as a progression from a tradition of erotic triangulation to a subversion thereof. Unlike the historical rape law triangle, in which rape is legally constructed as a wrong that one male does to another through the body of a woman; and unlike the criminal rape law triangle, in which rape is legally constructed as a wrong that one man does to the state through the body of a woman; civil actions in which women bring claims against both perpetrators of sexual assault and the third-party entities that facilitate or fail to prevent those assaults allow harmed women to assert their own subjectivity and climb out of their traditionally passive role in the erotic triangle. In so doing, this reconfigured triangulation ultimately challenges the gender status quo that produces sexual harms, and suggests that subverting the usual functioning of triangulated patterns may hold promise as a tool of social change.

This study brings together the works of Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) and Gratian’s Decretum, the 12th-century textbook that became foundational to the teaching of medieval canon law. Boccaccio studied canon law for six years, and the Church’s legal system deals with many of the issues that interested Boccaccio: marriage, sexuality, adultery, consent, coercion, and gendered forms of violence. Boccaccio and Gratian each showed close attention to women’s interior perspectives and a marked emphasis on the importance of consent. This dissertation illuminates the intertextual connections between Boccaccio’s works and Gratian’s Decretum, and argues that Boccaccio understand the law much better than has previously been recognized. In fact, Boccaccio’s most perceptive insights on the nature of debt, obligation, and consent derive from legal sources. The first chapter of this project introduces the figures of Boccaccio and Gratian. Boccaccio’s own works and a few surviving documents attest to his years of legal study in Naples as well as his lifelong engagement with the law, both in politics and his personal life. Little is known of Gratian’s biography, but his Decretum became a standard teaching tool in the curriculum of canon law. Boccaccio undoubtedly read the Decretum, and the following chapters show the extent to which its innovative cases and viewpoints influenced him. Chapter 2 begins with the “conjugal debt,” the idea in canon law that spouses incur a mutual sexual obligation by virtue of being married. Boccaccio expands the concept of sexual debt to include metaphorical usury and theft, drawing on medieval economic theory and offering an economic model of human relationships. Though Boccaccio’s view is transactional, it does not reduce human beings to commodities; rather, the economic system expresses relationships of trust and obligation. Chapter 3 extends the legal-economic discourse to several stories in the Decameron that deal with adulterous relationships, demonstrating that Boccaccio’s idiosyncratic application of legal theories is nevertheless solidly grounded in his reading of canon law. Chapter 4 focuses on Boccaccio’s treatment of consent in matters of marriage and legislation. Relying heavily on Gratian’s treatment of error and mistaken identity, as well as the legal principle of quod omnes tangit, Boccaccio argues for women’s right to offer informed consent to decisions that concern them. Chapter 5 continues the discussion of consent in the context of sexual violence, exploring the idea of vis (force) in Gratian’s Decretum as well as Boccaccio’s Decameron and Ninfale fiesolano. Canon law emphasizes women’s right to consent to marriage; Boccaccio extends this principle to matters of sex and violence, recuperating the power of women’s consent in an area where medieval law often faltered.

During the second-wave feminist movement, anti-rape activists sought to heighten cultural awareness about the pervasiveness of rape and instigate legal reforms that would increase the number of prosecutions and convictions of rapists. Despite resulting legal reforms that expanded the definition of "rape" and that eliminated resistance requirements and marital exemptions, reform efforts have been a failure in terms of increased reporting and achieving heightened response from the criminal justice system. I attribute the ineffectiveness of rape law reforms partially to the way in which the concept of rape was framed during the anti-rape movement. In particular, I argue that broadening the concept, detaching it from its sexual features, and paralleling the phenomenon to other violations such as property and assault have the effect of obscuring the unique indignity of rape. This, in turn, has inhibited the full legal recognition of the victim and her injury. I explore possibilities for an alternative conceptualization of rape that instead acknowledges and accommodates the distinctive features of the phenomenon in terms of sexuality, embodied differences of gender and race, subjective states of submission, and the encompassing nature of the injury as a violation of the integrity of self in both bodily and psychological dimensions. In order to enhance the recognition of the victim and her injury, I suggest that: a) legal discourse should be opened up to better account for concrete circumstances and embodied differences (as opposed to the reliance on abstract rights and principles and the generalized subject); b) victims should be allowed to provide an uninterrupted narrative of their rape experience and its consequences; and, c) "consent" as the predominant guiding legal standard should be reevaluated and replaced with an assessment of how force was subjectively experienced. / text

In an effort to establish a clearer understanding of the sentencing of sexual assault offenders, this study analyzes data generated from a content analysis of sexual assault cases, using feminist theory as a backdrop for the analysis. The sample consists of ninety-seven sexual assault cases from across Canada for the period of August 15, 1992 through August 15, 1993. Using a statistical analysis, the data were analyzed for evidence of whether certain factors aggravated or mitigated sentence length. The findings indicate that factors not affecting sentence length include breach of trust, sex of the judge, sex of the complainant, plea and show of remorse. Factors that work to mitigate sentence length include the youth or old age of an offender. Finally, variables that, when present, aggravate an offender's sentence length are prior offences, force, sexual intercourse and psychiatric considerations. These findings indicate that while there has been some response to feminist concerns regarding criminal justice processing of sexual assault, some of the myths that have been traditionally associated with its victims and offenders are still influencing the judiciary.

This study presents a theory supporting single-gender, public institutions for women based on constitutional and legal history, educational theory, and feminist theory. Evidence from these areas suggest that single-gender, public institutions can be legally reviewed as constitutionally sound; that women can positively affect their situation in public life by learning the tools necessary to succeed in an educational environment without the added competition of men; and that once women experience leadership positions in college, they will understand how to gain access to channels of power. In order to reach the masses of women, this form of education must be offered as a choice in the public system of higher education so that all women, regardless of geographic or financial restrictions, can take advantage of a single-gender education. / Department of Secondary, Higher, and Foundations of Education

This thesis is about the origins and implementation of the Equal Pay Act and Sex Discrimination Act in Britain. For historical and methodological reasons the subject is treated comparatively with similar American policies. British policy makers looked to the United States as an exemplar in this field. The thesis discusses one theory about innovation which predicts such a process. Accounts of policy formation and implementation are used as a method of comparing the general political processes of the two countries. The first chapter introduces ideas about the study of policy and the pattern and timing of policy innovations. It also refers to early moves in the emancipation of women in Britain and America. Part I is about the origins of laws promoting equality of opportunity for working women. It deals with the problems the legislation was supposed to solve, the growth of interest in economic as well as political emancipation and with the actual provisions of the new laws. The emphasis is on Britain to which three chapters are devoted. Similar trends and events in America are dealt with more briefly in a single chapter. Part II discusses implementation in both countries, stressing the essentially political aspects of this process. That is to say, Chapters VI and VII consider the activities of the principle administrative agencies and departments and the courts. The concluding chapter compares the different approaches of American and British institutions promoting equality in the light of variations in more general aspects of politics. Thus it attempts to contribute to the discipline of comparative politics.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina Wilmington, 2008. / Title from PDF title page (October 20, 2008) Appendices: p. 51-63. Includes bibliographical references (p. 45-50)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Carleton University, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 184-208). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

“Indeed in rape cases it is the victim who is most often placed on trial rather than the perpetrator, accused of having ulterior motives and subjected to degrading questions with often pornographic overtones. Prosecutors might fail to adequately address the victims needs and all too often, information is either intentionally or unintentionally withheld from victims.” The victims of sexual offences have to face not only the consequences of the sexual crime that was perpetrated upon them, but they also have to deal with the effects of the criminal justice system. Victims who take part in the criminal justice system should not be exposed to unnecessary distress and trauma. The victims of sexual offences must not be re-victimised by the criminal justice system. Re-victimisation has been coined to describe the experience where victims are subjected to further victimisation by the very state organs to whom they turn for assistance. This has the effect that the victim is victimised twice, first by the offender and then by the criminal justice system. It is therefore the duty of the law to protect this group of witnesses from such a traumatic and damaging experience. The question that needs to be answered in this research is whether the Sexual Offences and Related Matters Amendment has made any difference in respect of protection of victims sexual crimes. It was concluded that the Sexual Offences Act is indeed a step in the right direction to protect the rights of victims of sexual offences but that it could have afforded more protection.

The study undertaken is concerned with the reformulation of the common law crime of rape from a juridical and socio-psychological perspective. It is based on the premise that the common law definition of rape is insufficient. Specific attention is given to the current crime of rape and the proposed amendments introduced by the South African Law Commission. In the haste to transpose the concept of gender-neutrality implemented in other countries to the crime of rape in South Africa, the basic reasoning behind why the crime of rape should be extended to certain categories of victim has been neglected. Rape as a form of penetrative sexual assault is critically examined. The focus of this study is to identify categories of penetrative sexual assault victim in order to justify the extension of the crime to certain victims and to facilitate the application of an extended definition to factual situations. The classification of victims is accomplished with reference to psycho-social data in order to provide a plausible explanation as to why the crime of rape, which was originally created as a property crime, should be extended to additional victims. The common law crimes which can be applied to penetrative sexual assault victims are critically examined. A comparative overview of the definitions of rape adopted in Australia, Britain and the United States of America is undertaken. An investigation is also undertaken into the impact of HIV on rape victims. The extension of the definition of rape to persons who engage in unprotected sexual intercourse with a person who intentionally exposes him or her to the HIV virus or another life threatening illness is examined. The possibility of consolidating the common law crimes into a statutory offence applicable to harmful HIV related behaviour for purposes of expediency and deterrence is examined. A perspective is therefore provided as to the motivation behind why additional penetrative sexual assault victims should be classified as rape victims. The efficiency of the current and proposed definitions of rape is highlighted and examined. Where lacunae are established, solutions are proposed. / Thesis (LLD)--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Jurisprudence / Unrestricted