“You’re Creating New Categories:” Anglo-American Radical Feminism’s Constitutionalism in the Streets

Yxta M. Murray, Loyola Law School, Los Angeles

Abstract

In this paper, I examine the constitutional meaning of two political protests: The 1968 Miss America protest by New York Radical Women and the 1970 British radical feminist protest of the Miss World competition in London. Using the work of Reva Siegel, Jack Balkin, and Lynda G. Dodd as a foundation for my inquiry into how these social movement protests influenced constitutional culture concerning women's rights, I first engage in historical and social analyses of the protests themselves. In particular, I study the different approaches the U.S. and British feminists had to using lawbreaking, violence, and other outrageous acts in their protests. I then examine how each protest infiltrated constitutional conversations in these countries, focusing on the influence the protests had on legislative debates surrounding abortion, sexual discrimination laws, the U.S.'s E.R.A., and British child care laws. In addition, I trace the influence these protesters had on feminist legal theory concerning constitutional questions, by parsing the work of Catharine MacKinnon and the British theorist Carol Smart. My penultimate section contains observations on the legacies of violence, outrage, and lawbreaking in radical feminist protest, noting where these tactics had the most and least influence on constitutional culture. I conclude with the argument that while radical feminist violence may have had some utility in certain contexts, it backfired in others, which may account for its diminishment in contemporary radical feminist methods.