Feminist Legal Studies

"Anti-immigrant march" is such a telling phrase. An immigrant is just a person who exercises the freedom they are born with, which is recognised by all human rights legislation, and moves across imaginary lines on the ground. Being "anti-immigrant" means anti-movement, anti-freedom and anti-person.

Hand holds up the book, “No Is Not A Lonely Utterance: The Art and Activism of Complaining.”

“To assemble, to say no, to do no, throws so much open … doing what we can, when we can, however we can, in the wear and tear, for as long as it takes.”

Just read @saranahmed.bsky.social’s energising new book on complaining as a collective task of feminist and queer world (un)building. Get a copy!

Call for Papers: Special Issue of Feminist Legal Studies Feminist Responses to the Regression of Trans Rights: Strategies, Alliances, Hope Amidst continuing backlash against trans rights, recognition and inclusion, two recent decisions from the UK have substantially impacted not only trans people’s legal status but also legal and social narratives of sex, gender and identity. The narrative that trans inclusion has a chilling effect on the rights of others, particularly women, has been adopted uncritically by both the UK Supreme Court in For Women Scotland and the Office for Students in its finding that the University of Sussex’s trans-inclusion policy had a chilling effect on free speech. These cases highlight a backlash that has been ongoing for some time, and sparks debates and fear of what may lie in the near future for trans people and kin, as well as other gender-variant persons, not only in the UK, but across jurisdictions and in a global perspective. The discourse of the ‘gender critical’ movement is splintering both the feminist and LGBT+ movements globally, with some aligning politically with the Far- and Christian Right against trans rights, adopting their terminology of ‘gender ideology’ and potentially posing a wider threat to sexual and reproductive rights. While this a difficult situation for trans people, kin and allies, this special issue seeks to emphasise that legal battles – including battles (temporarily) lost – are also an opportunity to seek to reinforce old alliances and to form new ones, to find new legal frontiers and imaginaries, to reinforce the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of legal arguments as well as intergenerational memory of what feminist legal work is, has been and should be about. How, we ask, do these decisions (and those like them globally) reflect and reproduce structures of coloniality, heteronormativity and cisnormativity? What do these decisions add to critiques of legal feminism? What would be construct…

📣🏳️‍⚧️ Call for Papers

We are inviting papers for our special issue, “Feminist Responses to the Regression of Trans Rights: Strategies, Alliances, Hope.” The issue will be dedicated to trans-inclusive feminist legal analysis that addresses attacks on trans rights & lives.

Details below. Please share.

Screenshot of article link.

Feminist Legal Studies is pleased to offer open access to our 2025 prize-winning article by Leon Laidlaw. This powerful article examines how colonial gender norms underpin prison systems, harming trans, Indigenous, and cis women.

You can read it for free here: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

I’m really looking forward to this workshop that I’m co-organising with @pagingdrpaige.bsky.social! If you’d like to join us online, register here: www.eventbrite.com.au/e/feminist-a... or get in touch to join in person (limited spots available)

Why I Wrote No is Not A Lonely Utterance Some thoughts shared on launch day!

It’s launch day for No Is Not A Lonely Utterance! So I shared some of my reasons for writing the book 💜💜

Full text is as follows: The idea of culture war is increasingly deployed to capture a range of political disputes, often centring around the legal and political treatment of institutions such as the nation or the family. Indeed, among the vast range of topics described as being part of the 'culture war', we can find gender, migration, disability, children's rights, and online safety and security, to name just a few. However, culture war issues are not just political in nature. Rather, such arguments both occur around and involve implications for law. For example, the idea that a migrant is 'illegal' often functions as a central facet of political arguments for why that person should be denied state protection. In the context of trans rights, similar dynamics can be seen at play with reconfigurations of the ontological and epistemological basis of rights, featuring as a central element in many arguments. In recognition of this, this current topic invites papers which consider the impacts of contemporary 'culture wars' on the function, nature, and operation of law. As well as the discursive and rhetorical deployment of law within other forms of argument. We welcome papers which explore: - theoretical conceptualisations of ‘culture war’ - the use of ‘law’ within ‘culture war’ arguments - the emergence and deployment of pseudo-law in ‘culture war’ contexts - the impact of ‘culture war’ politics on legal institutions and actors - the effects of ‘culture war’ arguments on law-making conceptions of law in the popular imaginary consideration of the jurisprudential and philosophical implications of ‘- culture wars’ for the nature and form of law - the significance and contestation of norms within equality law and human rights law in the context of current moral panics. Dr Alex Powell (University of Warwick) Alex.Powell@warwick.ac.uk Dr Sandra Duffy (University of Bristol) sandra.duffy@bristol.ac.uk Dr Max Morris (Oxford Brookes University) maxmorris@brookes.ac.uk

The Call for Papers for SLSA2026 is now live!

This year, alongside @sandraduffy.bsky.social, and @maxmorris.bsky.social, I will be running a current topic on "Law in the Culture Wars".

If you have a paper idea, please feel free to get in touch with us!

www.sussex.ac.uk/collaborate/...

At a time when some use the language of feminism to attack trans rights, it’s vital to see feminist activists and scholars counteract such attacks. Feminist Legal Studies is inviting papers for a special issue that will explore how feminist goals and trans liberation are connected. Check it out.

✊🏾🏳️‍⚧️

"Regression" is the word. Glad to see this special issue of Feminist Legal Studies using it.

If you are interested in submitting to the issue, please send an expression of interest including an abstract to the editors by Friday 31st October 2025.

Editors:

Matilda Arvidsson (matilda.arvidsson@law.gu.se)

Nicola Barker (nicola.barker@liverpool.ac.uk)

Loveday Hodson (lch8@leicester.ac.uk)

Call for Papers: Special Issue of Feminist Legal Studies Feminist Responses to the Regression of Trans Rights: Strategies, Alliances, Hope Amidst continuing backlash against trans rights, recognition and inclusion, two recent decisions from the UK have substantially impacted not only trans people’s legal status but also legal and social narratives of sex, gender and identity. The narrative that trans inclusion has a chilling effect on the rights of others, particularly women, has been adopted uncritically by both the UK Supreme Court in For Women Scotland and the Office for Students in its finding that the University of Sussex’s trans-inclusion policy had a chilling effect on free speech. These cases highlight a backlash that has been ongoing for some time, and sparks debates and fear of what may lie in the near future for trans people and kin, as well as other gender-variant persons, not only in the UK, but across jurisdictions and in a global perspective. The discourse of the ‘gender critical’ movement is splintering both the feminist and LGBT+ movements globally, with some aligning politically with the Far- and Christian Right against trans rights, adopting their terminology of ‘gender ideology’ and potentially posing a wider threat to sexual and reproductive rights. While this a difficult situation for trans people, kin and allies, this special issue seeks to emphasise that legal battles – including battles (temporarily) lost – are also an opportunity to seek to reinforce old alliances and to form new ones, to find new legal frontiers and imaginaries, to reinforce the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of legal arguments as well as intergenerational memory of what feminist legal work is, has been and should be about. How, we ask, do these decisions (and those like them globally) reflect and reproduce structures of coloniality, heteronormativity and cisnormativity? What do these decisions add to critiques of legal feminism? What would be construct…

📣🏳️‍⚧️ Call for Papers

We are inviting papers for our special issue, “Feminist Responses to the Regression of Trans Rights: Strategies, Alliances, Hope.” The issue will be dedicated to trans-inclusive feminist legal analysis that addresses attacks on trans rights & lives.

Details below. Please share.

Screenshot of article link.

“Like many others, we will continue to engage and, true to her spirit, also challenge her many ideas and insights.”

We are excited to share our new special issue which explores the work of late feminist scholar Drucilla Cornell.

You can read more here: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

In the Name of Marriage? The Constitutionalisation of Queer Subordination in Singapore - Feminist Legal Studies In 2022, at the same time that Singapore decriminalised male same-sex intimacy, the constitution was amended to insert a new art 156 titled “Institution of marriage”. The new constitutional provision ...

📢 RECENTLY PUBLISHED:

“Informed by comparative constitutional scholarship and queer legal studies, this article argues that art 156 represents the constitutionalisation of queer subordination by enshrining in the supreme law of the land the subordinate status of queer persons.”

By Daryl W. J. Yang

Transgender equality and the UK Supreme Court: a UK Gender Studies community roundtable Published in Journal of Gender Studies (Ahead of Print, 2025)

”Reductionist views which subscribe to and perpetuate misleadingly binary constructs of sex play into misogynistic right-wing politics which harm us all… this is not a theoretical debate, it impacts lived realities and the liveability of our lives.”

Feminist scholars demand trans equality.

I start by talking a lot about how I did not want to become a Libyan Penelope- a female relative of a Libyan dissident activist, silent and mourning, and how human rights activism proved the worst route out, forcing on me even more silence and mourning

The Unbearable Arabness of Being: Anti-Arab Racisms in the Human Rights Sector - Feminist Legal Studies Feminist Legal Studies -

A short reflection on my decade of working in the human rights sector and the daily anti-Arab racisms i had to navigate, kindly published by Feminist Legal Studies link.springer.com/article/10.1...

FYI: @senthorun.bsky.social published a paper in our journal that explores how the emotional dynamics of accountability and vulnerability emerge in the legal classroom and shape the teaching of LGBT rights. You can read it open access here: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

How can the International Criminal Court achieve justice for women?

A new book rewrites judgments in cases decided by the ICC from a feminist perspective.

The Unbearable Arabness of Being: Anti-Arab Racisms in the Human Rights Sector - Feminist Legal Studies Feminist Legal Studies -

In this piece entitled “The Unbearable Arabness of Being: Anti-Arab Racisms in the Human Rights Sector,” Fatima Ahdash reflects on the orientalism and racism underpinning Western human rights organisations, arguing that a complete overhaul of the sector is urgently necessary. Read (for free) here:

A few of us have been working to set up a research network of legal scholars innovating in the teaching of race, colonialism & empire. We have received provisional approval as a new Collaborative Research Network (CRN) of the Law and Society Association (LSA)!

www.lawandsociety.org/crn-58critic...

Author wearing a rainbow dyed t-shirt takes a photo of them showing off their book, The Emotions of LGBT Rights and Reforms: Repairing Law.

My book is published! It’s a critical take on how emotions shape conflicts about LGBT rights and repair in equality law, gender recognition, bans on conversion practices, and sex education in schools. You can download it free via @edinburghup.bsky.social: edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-emo...

M4C Dialogue Day: Dialogues on Feminist Decolonial Methods A day for arts and humanities researchers to explore questions of voice, authority, methods, and the futures of anti-disciplinarity.

Join us for an interactive day on research methods at university of Leicester September 17. PGR travel expenses paid for attendance. @silvilunazul.bsky.social and I will be speaking on decolonial and feminist methods. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/m4c-dialog...

New piece written with my most precious and treasured thinking partner, @samanthapinto.bsky.social. Thinking together about exhaustion, fatigue, and being feminist and bone tired.

Beyond International Human Rights: Islamic Feminism as Alternative Rights Praxis - Feminist Legal Studies This article examines Islamic Feminism (IF) as an example of an alternative rights framework that falls beyond international human rights law (IHRL) in terms of its epistemic and conceptual grounding ...

My latest article is now out with @flsjournal.bsky.social - ‘Beyond international human rights: Islamic feminism as alternative rights praxis’. Available open access here: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Foetal Disability and Abortion in the UK: A Reproductive and Disability Justice Perspective - Feminist Legal Studies This article applies the interconnected frameworks of reproductive justice and disability justice to the issue of abortion on the grounds of foetal disability. There have been recent claims as to the ...

I have a new article out in @flsjournal.bsky.social on thinking about abortion and foetal disability from a reproductive/disability justice perspective link.springer.com/article/10.1... #openaccess

Reflections on Fugitive Practices in the University: Labouring in the Wake of Violence - Feminist Legal Studies Feminist Legal Studies -

“This moment necessitates that we trace & map the linkages between the various forms of oppression & harm we witness, locate their manifestations in the spaces we move in, & draw on these lessons to fight back.”

@norajaber.bsky.social & @leilaullrich.bsky.social reflect on being feminist fugitives.

Medico-Legal Evidence: Survivor Relational Autonomy and Informed Consent in Sexual Assault Examinations - Feminist Legal Studies Survivors of sexual violence often consent to forensic medical examinations for medical and legal purposes, including healthcare treatment, trace evidence collection, and documentation of injuries. In...

RECENTLY PUBLISHED:

“This paper examines the British civil law context… it considers that much can be learnt from the British approach when ensuring survivors of sexual violence undergoing forensic medical examination are adequately informed.”

By Jessica Ritchie & Marianne Doherty

Feminist Studies Editorial Collective Application Feminist Studies is seeking three new editorial collective members to commit to active participation in the journal for a three-year renewable term. We seek editors who are invested in interdisciplina...

Feminist Studies is seeking three new editorial collective members. Application forms online:
forms.gle/1CuqBvkBQe1g...

Transqueer Ecological Justice
Call for papers, concept notes and creative works by 18 August for an online workshop in the week of the 24th November 2025.
More details on scope and how to apply beow. Do reach out if you have any questions.