Sex Rights: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 2002

by Nicholas Bamforth

Overview

Discrimination due to gender and sexual orientation tends nowadays to be prohibited under international human rights instruments, as well as under the national laws of many countries that express their commitment to defending human rights. Nonetheless, as the work of Amnesty International has shown, violence against women (whatever their sexual orientation), gay men, trans-gendered and transsexual persons remains an appallingly constant phenomenon, both in countries that have an official commitment to fighting these forms of discrimination and in those that do not.

These essays seek to explore some of the inter-connections between human rights, gender, and sexuality. The contributors are united in their belief that it is a serious human rights violation unjustly to penalize people because of their sex or sexual orientation. Many difficult questions are considered. How do we understand and categorize human rights abuses related to a person's sex or sexual orientation, for example? Does their inclusion within the remit of human rights abuses require us to refine what we mean by human rights? What weight, if any, should be given to demands made in the name of particular religious and cultural traditions which seek to restrict the rights of women and sexual minority groups? And how far have we come, and how far have we left to go, in the quest for a world in which discrimination based on sex and sexual orientation is a thing of the past?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780192805614
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	06/23/2005
Series:	Oxford Amnesty Lectures
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	7.78(w) x 5.08(h) x 0.79(d)

About the Author

Nicholas Bamforth is a University Lecturer in Law at Oxford University and a Fellow of The Queen's College. He is the author of Sexuality, Morals and Justice (1997) and editor of Public Law in a Multi-layered Constitution (2003).

Table of Contents

Introduction, Nicholas Bamforth, Queen's College, Oxford1. On Being Beside Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy, Judith Butler, University of California at Berkeley2. Women's Human Rights in the Late Twentieth Century: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, the late Susan Moller Okin, Stanford University3. Women's Human Rights in the Third World, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, Oxford University4. Rape and Rights: Measure for Measure and the Limits of Cultural Imperialism, Alan Sinfield, Sussex University5. Share a Spliff, Share a Girl - Same Difference. The Unpleasant Reality of Gang Rape, Rose George, a writer working in London6. From 'Sex Rights' to 'Love Rights': Partnership Rights as Human Rights, Robert Wintemute, King's College London7. Who's Sorry Now?: Personal Stories, Public Apologies, Marina Warner, a writer working in London

Editorial Reviews

"What unifies the essays is the belief that penalizing people because of their sex or sexual orientation is a serious human rights violation. Examining topics such as sexual autonomy, women's rights, rape, partnership rights, and public apologies, the contributors approach and respond to the issues raised by sex and sexual orientation discrimination in very different practical and theoretical ways, in part because of their diverse academic backgrounds ."—Hypatia

From the Publisher