Language and Materialism

Authors

Christina Crosby, Wesleyan University

Abstract

A report issued by the United Nations recently predicted that "[i]t will take nearly 1,000 years for women to gain the same economic and political clout as men if current trends continue." Indeed, when one reflects on the wrongs done worldwide to women-the silent violence of exploitation and indifference, the pervasive violence of disgust and contempt, the brutal violence of murder and mutilationone wonders, first, whether even a millennium will bring "equal representation in 'the higher echelons of political and economic power,' and second, whether anything would really be changed if women one day come to exercise the same "clout" as men. Drucilla Cornell, whose learned and passionate accounts of the lethal consequences issuing from the "gender hierarchy" are under consideration here, has thought long and hard about what is "to come" as she considers what is. For her, the promise of the future is the possibility of "a different destiny" (BA p. 205), not more of the same. Nor is this destiny in some unforeseeable future, millenaries ahead, for the future is now. With a vivid sense of injustice and of the suffering specific to women, she declares that "we have been sentenced" (BA p. 203) without ever having been heard. Yet the last words of Beyond Accommodation, her study of feminism and the law, declare "Oh, happy day" (BA p. 205).

Disciplines

Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies | Jurisprudence | Law | Philosophy

Recommended Citation

Christina Crosby, Language and Materialism, 15 Cardozo L. Rev. 1657 (1994).
Available at: https://larc.cardozo.yu.edu/clr/vol15/iss5/9