Legal Crimes

OPPRESSION IS A difficult subject, particularly when the oppressors are so often unaware of their oppressive actions. Unfortunately, it's often easy for rallying victims to become oppressors themselves. In Karen DeCrow's Sexist Justice, reverse sexism often tarnishes a basically bright and accurate description of legal sexism--the kind that is written into the law--in the United States.

DeCrow is a lawyer. Her book is well-researched; in fact, it is a good compilation of those legal inequities which negatively affect women. But it is a poor representation of feminist philosophy. The book is overtly sexist. Men are hate objects.

A book like DeCrow's should pursue two goals: one, to provide information for members of the movement, giving them background for defense and furthering their efforts in finding justice; two, and perhaps more important, to convince those not involved with the movement of its merits. In other words, if those who hold legal or legislative power are made aware of the inherent disparities between men and women in the system, perhaps they will be more willing to help combat those inequities.

DeCrow acknowledges the fact that men are in control of the entire country--legally, economically, and socially. She also realizes that nearly all potential forces of change in the judicial or legislative system are male. But after establishing those facts she launches into hateful attacks, not against a few men, but against all of them. This kind of blanket condemnation constitutes reverse prejudice. Why should a group of people sensitive to injustice participate in additional injustice?

ON PORTRAYING MAN as villain, DeCrow cites several estate law cases in which women have signed business documents and tax forms without knowing what the forms meant. After the deaths of their husbands, several widows find that their funds have been squandered or used illegally. The women are then forced to make restitution. The men in these cases certainly don't seem to be exemplary husbands, but shouldn't the point be that the women themselves should take some sort of financial initiative? It is their consciousness which should be raised in these cases. The women were not coerced into signing; they simply didn't ask any questions.

DeCrow's view of females as passive objects of injustice is particularly demeaning to women. At one point DeCrow says,

All women are poor. Even 'rich' women have gotten their money from men--husbands, lovers, fathers. And when these ornately attired women cease to please (even the male banker who is administering the trust), they find they aren't rich any more.

DeCrow's view of the integrity of women seems appallingly low.

Sexist Justice does give a fairly accurate picture of the problem women encounter in obtaining good jobs, maternity leaves, abortions, and their own names--in short, equal rights. One of the most outrageous tyrannies waged against women in DeCrow's book is the difficulty of obtaining credit. In many instances where a husband and wife both work, the couple applying for a mortgage is not allowed to include the wife's income in the application, particularly in cases where the woman is of childbearing age. In order to count the income, many women have been told by banks in the recent past that they must provide a doctor's statement indicating that they are physically unable to bear children. Otherwise they must submit to sterilization. This holds true for women who do not wish to have children or who do not wish to be married. As DeCrow puts it, this is "another in the line of existential traps for women: penalize them if they don't bear children, penalize them if they do, and penalize them if they can."

DECROW GOES TO great lengths in speaking about the root of inequality in the legal system--the law school. She cites problems she encountered in her own legal education. An especially interesting quotation came from a "popular first-year property casebook" which says, "For after all, land, like women, was meant to be possessed." At the beginning of the book DeCrow provides extensive historical background for her theories. Most of this material is not germane to her present subject--today's injustice--because it is concerned with legal practices long dead and buried. DeCrow does spare her reader the oft-used propaganda rhetoric of some "movement" books, but the hesitating, abrupt style and odd organization is at times irritating.

Perhaps the problem with DeCrow's book is that it lacks the total perception or awareness needed for such a work. The one-sided view is accompanied by few suggestions for improvement or action. DeCrow says that her book is not a summary of laws on women. That is unfortunate, for Sexist Justice would function better as a strictly informational work than as a "feminist interpretation" which negates human dignities. Nonetheless this is a valuable book, if only because legal injustices are still painfully real to women in this country. As Abigail Adams once told John:

Remember: all men would be tyrants if they could...If attention is not paid to the ladies, we shall foment a rebellion and will not hold ourselves bound by laws in which we have no voice or representation.