Melbourne Law School - Research Publications

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    Priggish, Pitiless, and Punitive or Proud, Passionate, and Purposeful? Dichotomies, Sexual Harassment, and "Victim-Feminism"
    Morgan, J (UNIV TORONTO PRESS INC, 2005)
    Australia's version of the popular genre of the "victim-feminism" debate played out via a case of sexual harassment in a university college, in which two young women alleged that they had been sexually harassed by the master [chief executive officer] of their college. This event became much more than a matter of parochial interest when one of Australia's best-known novelists decided to write a book about it. The book generated enormous media attention, though this was often very polarized and not very useful in furthering our understanding of sexual harassment. However, there was some interesting debate in the wake of the book that did manage to transcend the dichotomy of "power" versus "powerlessness." La version australienne du débat populaire du « féminisme de victimisation » s'est déroulée par le biais d'un cas de harcèlement sexuel dans un collège universitaire, dans lequel deux jeunes femmes ont allégué avoir été harcelées sexuellement par le maître [p. d.g.] de leur collège. Cet événement a eu une portée qui déborde largement son lieu d'origine lorsque l'une des romancières les plus connues en Australie a décidé d'écrire un livre à ce sujet. Le livre a été trèsmédiatisé, bien que les reportages aient été souvent très polarisés et sans grande utilité pour approfondir notre compréhension du harcèlement sexuel. Il y a eu, néanmoins, dans la foulée de la publication du livre, un débat intéressant qui a réussi à transcender la dichotomie du « pouvoir » face à « l'impuissance ».
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    THE POWER OF STORYTELLING: A QUEST FOR A PUBLIC DISCOURSE ON SEXUAL HARASSMENT
    Morgan, J (SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC, 2005-09)
    This article explores the possible reasons for the absence of a public discourse about sexual harassment in Australia, which can be contrasted with a relatively well-developed legal discourse. It also briefly compares the debate about sexual harassment in the United States and Australia that followed in the wake of controversial and very public sexual harassment cases in each country. It argues that the debate in the wake of the Clarence Hill-Anita Thomas hearings in the United States was much more productive than the debate in Australia after the publication of Helen Garner’s book, The First Stone. The discussion in Australia focused on whether the young women in the case had ‘over-reacted’ and whether there were generational differences in women’s reactions to sexual harassment. The more interesting (and I would argue, far more important) questions of what is sexual harassment is and what are its effects were ignored. This article goes on to explore one aspect of what sexual harassment is and does by examining what women actually do in response to sexual harassment through an analysis of some of the stories of targets of harassment as they appear in the law reports. In this way it tries to make some of the legal discourse about sexual harassment a part of the public discourse about the phenomenon.
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    Law reform: What's in it for women?
    GRAYCAR, R ; MORGAN, JJ ( 2005)