North American scholarship has charted resonances between 1990s legislative and feminist discourse concerning violence against
women. Feminist critique of official discourse surrounding the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 suggests that 1990s resonances
did not reach the UK: however, an examination of the Hansard debates suggests this under-estimates the influence of feminist
discourse. Halley’s discussion of “bad faith” helps to explain both the tendency of feminists to under-estimate their influence
and why this matters. A commitment to an understanding of themselves as powerless may encourage feminists to underplay similarities
between feminist and official discourse, leading feminists to find only what they expect. Such an understanding gives feminism
the capacity to change social life without acknowledging, let alone agonising over, the full range of its distributive effects.
This is most troubling in relation to “carceral” feminism, since under-assessment of feminist impact encourages amplification
and intensification of the carceral message.

This article endeavours to open up a dialogue between succession law and the field of gender, sexuality and the law. It presents
a detailed analysis of five cases concerning inheritance disputes relating to lesbians or gay men. The sexuality of the parties
in the cases is ‘doctrinally irrelevant’ but the analysis demonstrates the significance of sexuality in the resolution of
the legal disputes. In doing so it identifies how legal discourse remains a critical site for the production of societal norms
and in particular how lesbian and gay perspectives reveal the gendered assumptions underlying a number of key succession law
doctrines. It emphasises the importance of taking difference seriously and the limits to formal legal equality.

This article examines the issues of censorship, language and racism through a critical reflection on Peter Tatchell’s response
to the critique of gay imperialism offered by Jin Haritaworn, Tamsila Tauqir and Esra Erdem. In ‘Academics smear Peter Tatchell’,
we are invited to find evidence of ‘Islamophobia, racism or support for imperialist wars’ in the writings that can be downloaded
from Tatchell’s website. The article shows how islamophobia and racism operate in Tatchell’s writings not necessary in the
content of specific arguments but through the very form of proximities (for example in the proximity between the words ‘Islam’,
‘fundamentalism’ and ‘terror’). The article thus reflects on how racism operates in language through the repetition of associations
that get ‘stuck’.

Despite the resistance from radical antiracist formations, autonomously organised by racialized minorities and migrants themselves,
that can be witnessed in many spaces, the success with which antiracism has been both appropriated and relativized by the
state as well as hegemonic activist voices poses a significant threat. The politics of diversity and the consensus around
the notion that western societies are post-race contribute to portraying the critique of racism from people of colour as inaccurate,
alienating and counter-productive to the achievement of social cohesion. The necessity of dismantling the idea of race as
suggested by antiracist activists and scholars has been subverted in the deconstruction of the experience of racism by an
‘antiracialist’—rather than a more radical antiracist—agenda intent on relativizing the struggle against racism as one among
many. The consequence of this in the context of postracialism is for racism itself to be departicularized and dissociated
from its historical roots. Antiracism needs to reclaim the risk, that Goldberg argues is inherent to it, and rescue it from
being universalised into meaninglessness.

In response to critics’ claims that a discussion of sexuality and nationalism vis-à-vis the Israeli-Palestinian conflict bears
no relation to the author’s previous work, or to such discussions within the US or European contexts, this paper details the
complex interconnections between Israeli gay and lesbian rights and the continued oppression of Palestinians. The first section
examines existing discourses of what the author has previously called “homonationalism,” or the process by which certain forms
of gay and lesbian sexuality are folded into the national body as the Muslim/Arab Other is cast as perversely queer, within
Israel and the diasporas. The operations of homonationalism ensure that no discussion of gay and lesbian rights in Israel
is independent from the state’s actions toward Palestine/Palestinians. The second section contains a critique of Israel’s
practices of “pinkwashing” in the US and Europe. In order to redirect focus away from critiques of its repressive actions
toward Palestine, Israel has attempted to utilize its relative “gay-friendliness” as an example of its commitment to Western
“democratic” ideals. Massive public relations campaigns such as “Brand Israel” work to establish Israel’s reputation within
the US and Europe as cosmopolitan, progressive, Westernized and democratic as compared with the backward, repressive, homophobic
Islamic nations, which, in turn, serves to solidify Israel’s aggression as a position of the “defense” of democracy and freedom.
The final section looks at the ways in which accusations of “anti-Semitism” function in academic and activist contexts to
suppress critiques of the implicit nationalism within Israeli sexual politics.

The recent Dutch homo-emancipation policy has identified religious communities, particularly within migrant populations, as
a core target group in which to make homosexuality more ‘speakable’. In this article we examine the paradoxical silencing
tendencies of this ‘speaking out’ policy on queer Muslim organisations in the Netherlands. We undertake this analysis as the
Dutch government is perhaps unique in developing an explicit ‘homo-emancipation’ policy and is often looked to as the model
for sexuality politics and legal redress in relation to inequalities on the basis of sexual orientation. We highlight how
the ‘speakability’ imperative in the Dutch homo-emancipation policy reproduces a paradigmatic, ‘homonormative’ model of an
‘out’ and ‘visible’ queer sexuality that has also come to be embedded in an anti-immigrant and specifically anti-Muslim discourse
in the Netherlands. Drawing on the concept of habitus, particularly in the work of Gloria Wekker, we suggest that rather than
relying on a ‘speakability’ policy model, queer Muslim sexualities need to be understood in a more nuanced and intersecting
way that attends to their lived realities.

How does a sense of touch, figuratively and practically, get deployed within equality governance, and to what questions and
ways of thinking about the state does this direct us? Taking 2009–2010 as a snap-shot moment in the development of British
equality reform—the year leading up to passage of the Equality Act 2010—this article explores the relationship between touch
(the haptic) and equality governance from three angles. First, how have governmental bodies used touch language and imagery,
including in geometrical representations of disadvantage? Second, what other, more challenging encounters and actions are
imaginable; specifically, can touch mobilise the feeling state as a critical form of active citizenship? Third, what re-conceptualisations
of the state does the touching, feeling state invoke, and with what effects? Specifically, does conceiving of the state as
a multi-identity formation reframe the risks associated with a haptic state, thereby opening up new strategies for political
action?

The reform of rape law remains a vexed enterprise. The wager of this article is that the plural traditions and technologies
of criminal law can provide the resources for a radical rethinking of rape law. Parts 1 and 2 return to the historical and
structural forms of rape law reform in Australia. These forms of reform illustrate a variety of criminal jurisdictions, and
a transformation in the way in which rape law reform is conducted now. Against this transformation, Part 3 takes up the technology
of classification in rape law in order to generate a radical legal definition of rape—one which responds to the pain and suffering
of the survivor of rape, at the same time as it holds the legal institution before the law. This has important implications,
it is suggested, not only for domestic legal systems but also the jurisprudence of rape in international criminal law.

Rape conviction rates have fallen to all-time lows in recent years, prompting governments to explore a range of strategies
to improve them. This paper argues that, while the current legal impunity for rape cannot be condoned, increasing conviction
rates is not in itself a valid objective of law reform. The paper problematises the measure of rape law that conviction rates
provide by developing an account of (some) feminist aims for rape law reform. Three feminist aims and associated measures
are explained—all of which look beyond conviction rates to qualitative and victim-centred outcomes of criminal justice processes.
Applying these measures, I argue that strategies designed solely to increase conviction rates are more likely to work against,
rather than in support of, feminist aims. The paper thus underscores the need for continued feminist engagement with rape
law reform, broadly conceived, notwithstanding its acute limitations for feminist anti-violence politics.

This commentary explores the background to, and implications of, the recently published Director of Public Prosecutions guidelines
for prosecutors in respect of cases of encouraging or assisting suicide. It considers the extent of the provisions and questions
the legitimacy of their focus on the compassionate motivation of the assistant, and the apparent prohibition on healthcare
professionals providing such help. It concludes by suggesting that a permissive change in the law would provide better safeguards
for those who seek assisted dying.

This article examines the continuing use of problematic sexual stereotypes at appellate level in the English and Welsh legal
system. Using five cases as illustrations, it argues that, notwithstanding professional training and guidance on sexual equality
matters, certain senior judges in this jurisdiction still at least sometimes openly employ crude and problematic sexual stereotypes
in their judgments or fail to deal appropriately with the use of these stereotypes by trial judges. The central point is that
there is still a significant problem with the open use of crude sexual stereotypes in legal reasoning at a senior level in
this jurisdiction, despite the pressure on all members of the legal system to appear to be ‘politically correct’.

Of all the changes to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 that were introduced in 2008 by legislation of the same
name, foremost to excite media attention and popular controversy was the amendment of the so-called welfare clause. This clause
forms part of the licensing conditions which must be met by any clinic before offering those treatment services covered by
the legislation. The 2008 Act deleted the statutory requirement that clinicians consider the need for a father of any potential
child before offering a woman treatment, substituting for it a requirement that clinicians must henceforth consider the child’s
need for “supportive parenting”. In this paper, we first briefly recall the history of the introduction of s 13(5) in the
1990 Act, before going on to track discussion of its amendment through the lengthy reform process that preceded the introduction
of the 2008 Act. We then discuss the meaning of the phrase “supportive parenting” with reference to guidance regarding its
interpretation offered by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. While the changes to s 13(5) have been represented
as suggesting a major change in the law, we suggest that the reworded section does not represent a significant break from
the previous law as it had been interpreted in practice. This raises the question of why it was that an amendment that is
likely to make very little difference to clinical practice tended to excite such attention (and with such polarising force).
To this end, we locate debates regarding s 13(5) within a broader context of popular anxieties regarding the use of reproductive
technologies and, specifically, what they mean for the position of men within the family.

Recent scholarship has critiqued the tendency for separated mothers in custody disputes to be defined as hostile and alienating.
Through the presentation of three case studies, drawn from an interview-based study with 21 women, we show how such pejorative
constructions only arise when the conflicting gendered moral accountabilities of contemporary motherhood are overlooked. We
found that mothers tend to believe that contact with non-resident fathers is generally in a child’s best interests. However,
as a result of balancing complex moral obligations for the care of their children, they may raise questions about particular
kinds of arrangements for contact with particular fathers. We argue, therefore, that family law practice will lead to better
outcomes for children when professionals listen to the history of, and reasons for, mothers’ positions. To enable family law
professionals to undertake this task, we offer an alternative interpretive framework for making sense of women’s stories.
Should family law professionals make use of this framework, it is likely that they will understand that the positions mothers
adopt are often the outcome of the difficult moral dilemmas they encounter in caring for their children, and that the reductive
rubric of the ‘hostile mother’ needs to be treated with scepticism.

This article analyses the laws that govern the allocation of parental responsibility for children conceived through non-coital
reproduction by lesbians and gay men in England/Wales and Australia. In 2008 both jurisdictions introduced important reforms
affecting this area of law, providing new options for the legal recognition of parent–child relationships in lesbian and gay
households. However, the practical usefulness or effectiveness of the reforms may be limited by the excessive complexity or
obscurity of the system of parental responsibility thus introduced. Furthermore, the reform Acts encourage the formation of
some family structures—especially homonuclear families—while discouraging the emergence of more imaginative and cooperative
parenting configurations at odds with heteronormative parenting scripts. Only through a clearer commitment to intentionality
as a ground for the allocation of parental responsibility will future reform be likely to adequately protect the interests
of lesbian and gay parents and their children.

The claimants brought civil suits against child care institutions and authorities for the sexual abuse to which they were
subject whilst under the defendants’ responsibility. These cases were not initiated until the claimants were well into adulthood
and began recognising the harms they had suffered, and as a result, their claims were time-barred at first instance. However,
after A v Hoare (and Other Appeals), in which the House of Lords significantly altered the laws on limitation, their cases were reheard and allowed to proceed.
In this respect, AB and Others v Nugent Care Society; GR v Wirral MBC demonstrates the benefits of the ruling in Hoare; but at the same time, this note argues that the Court of Appeal utilises a problematic conceptualisation of the harm of
sexual abuse and the case highlights the potential for inconsistency and uncertainty in such delayed claims following the
decision in Hoare—which is not the panacea it initially appears to be.

This article discusses the work of Dr Mary Louisa Gordon, who was appointed as the first English Lady Inspector of Prisons
in 1908, and remained in post until 1921. Her attitude towards and treatment of women prisoners, as explained in her 1922
book Penal Discipline, stands in sharp contrast to that of her male contemporaries, and the categorisation of her approach as ‘feminist’ is reinforced
by her documented connections with the suffragette movement. Yet her feminist and suffragist associations also resulted in
the marginalisation and dismissal of her work, such that Mary Gordon and Penal Discipline are virtually unknown today. Nevertheless, her insights into the position and needs of women prisoners retain a striking
contemporary relevance.

Feminist legal efforts to make sense of the external migration policies of the European Union (EU) have focused almost exclusively
on the EU’s initiatives against trafficking in women. This article examines one of the more neglected areas of EU immigration
policy—the return of ‘illegal immigrants’. It analyses the so-called 2008 Returns Directive in the light of the multidimensional
inequalities experienced by migrant women, which affect their migration status and expose some of them to the threat of removal.
Owing to insecurities over external migration, the Directive constructs even the most vulnerable migrants as a threat to be
controlled and is likely to result in detrimental consequences for many migrants, and in particular already vulnerable women
who are likely to be further disadvantaged by it.

This article explores the tensions between autonomy and expectations of mother-caregivers, in the context of normative trends
in post-separation parenting law. Going back to first principles of feminism, the article asks what scope for autonomy there
is for modern mothers in the face of socio-legal norms that prioritise shared parenting. The very relationship between mother-caregivers
and children illustrates the important connection between relationships and autonomy: the caregiving that mothers provide
enables children to become autonomous persons yet, at the same time, this caregiving relationship constrains maternal autonomy.
In the current context that encourages shared parenting, the potential for maternal autonomy may be even more compromised—a
deep irony in a supposedly post-feminist era. A responsible mother is now expected to nurture a child’s relationship with
the father, unless he is proven to be harmful. The ability of women to be at all autonomous from the fathers of their children
in the face of this normative expectation is dubious, even when the adults live separately. Moreover, the dominance of the
heterosexual and patriarchal family—always a challenge for women’s autonomy—is reproduced in this imposition of equal parenting
in the name of children’s rights. This article uses a contextual approach to relational autonomy to point to an approach that
might challenge the normative climate of shared parenting.

Although nearly 99% of abortions in New Zealand are permitted in order to prevent danger or injury to a woman’s mental health
(the ‘mental health exception’), the reasons why mental health considerations should effectively control access to abortion
are not altogether clear. This article analyses abortion case law, statutes and debates from New Zealand, the United Kingdom
and the United States to attempt to explain the legal connection between mental health considerations and access to abortion.
The article argues that the mental health exception evolved in response to a change in the predominant construction of women
seeking abortion from ‘selfish’ to ‘desperate’, coinciding with increasing societal subscription to an expanded view of psychological
harm. By conceptually accommodating both constructions of women seeking abortion, the article argues that the mental health
exception usefully enabled society generally to proscribe the practice of abortion on the basis that it was unnatural and
irrational, while nevertheless permitting it in cases considered to be deserving.

This paper draws on the concepts of reproduction and scale to suggest that Skeggs and Wilson, in their contributions to this
issue of Feminist Legal Studies, both identify a future-oriented reworking of historically accumulated value. The spectacular emotional labour of British
reality television and the parody of mechanistic labour in Bangkok’s sex shows may be seen as instances in the affective search
for future security in transnational markets. Capitalist subjectivities are still being produced through these gendered and
sexual activities, but they are being produced with television audiences and sex tourists whose geopolitical baggage becomes
part of the show.