Word: genderism
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...legalese, the major arguments came through loud and clear. Fried described a slippery-slope scenario, whereby the precedent set by VAWA would allow Congress to circumvent state sovereignty indiscriminately. MacKinnon dismissed these concerns out-of-hand, postulating that civil suits remedy flaws in state legal systems that have allowed gender violence to be "kept private and kept silent" for so long...
...other VAWA advocates need to understand that on such matters one needs to tread carefully. Too often, supporters of civil rights bend to the cloying, putrescent of political correctness instead of relying upon substantive judicial precedent and hard facts. Even the most genuine, visceral appeal against gender violence cannot serve as the basis for the kind of far-reaching, personal consequences that exist under VAWA...
Fried's constitutional arguments are that gender violence does not directly affect the national economy (thus VAWA is an invalid exercise of Congress lawmaking power under the Commerce Clause), and that Congress has no authority to use the 14th Amendment to regulate the behavior of individuals (because the 14th Amendment is designed to rein in states, not citizens). Both of these claims can be disproved with empirical evidence. Congress funded a four year fact-finding mission before passing VAWA, where it was determined that employers lose $3 billion a year to domestic violence as a result of workplace absenteeism. That...
...second argument, 41 states officially registered their support for VAWA when arguments were heard for U.S. v. Morrison in January, with 21 of them placing individually-researched gender bias studies on the record. Much of this testimony was to the point that the civil rights remedy provided by VAWA would be helpful and to state that since victims are allowed to pursue the case through the criminal state courts concurrently with any federal civil case, there was no real sovereignty issue...
...recognize the significant impact VAWA can have on our lives. The aforementioned U.S. v. Morrison concerns a rape case at Virginia Tech: when denied proper legal proceedings at the university, the plaintiff was able to use VAWA to seek damages. Acknowledged or not, rape and other forms of gender violence constitute a problem that penetrates without compunction the ivy walls surrounding our own campus. Both enduring and watching others endure the turmoil of such violence is already a devastatingly painful experience; without the rights guaranteed by VAWA, the process of seeking reparations for our peers in the public sphere...