å Saturday, April 22nd, 2017

In “Rights Talk and the Experience of Law: Implementing Women’s Human Rights to Protection from Violence,” Sally Engle Merry begins her article with a question pertaining to one’s understanding of their entitled or assumed rights and the problems that are associated with these rights, or lack thereof. The understanding and adoption of rights, according to Merry, needs legal intervention and protection by the law. However, this intervention by authorization only contributes to subjectivity and acknowledgement of existing subjectivity of those who need and want to acquire, understand, and fight for their rights.

“Rights-defined selves emerge from supportive encounters with police, prosecutors, judges, and probation officers. This empirical study shows how victims of violence against women come to take on rights consciousness,” (p. 343).

Subjectivities are produced through encounters with the legal system, according to her article, through various instances. For example, domestic violence specifically against women serve as a contribution to subjectivity. Although women may be in a dangerous and violent situation, they pick and choose when they want to assert, defend and reject their rights with inclusion of the law. This may be due to their splitting decision of wanting to claim their rights and security while simultaneously preserving their autonomy and role as a good wife. “They clearly fear retaliation by the batterer, but they also resist the shift in subjectivity required by the law,” (p. 345).

“Thus, an individual’s willingness to take on rights depends on her experience trying to assert them,” (p. 347). Merry shares that acting upon rights is dependent on an individual’s experience and understanding of rights in correspondence with their identity. In other words, if one believes that they are treated unjust and have the right to make a change, chances are that they will advocate and fight for that change. If rights are treated with insignificance, though, by law and the general population, the injustice in question may not be associated with rights and unjustness of rights. In either scenario, that individual is subjected to either go through some process of encounters with the legal system or is subjected to the dominant opinion of worth regarding the injustice felt by that individual.

According to Merry, encounters with the law cause women to switch up roles in accordance to the subjectivity at hand. Depending on the discourse and social practice at hand, women’s positions may switch from assertiveness to feeling out the waters of the situation they’re in and what they may want the outcome to be. Consciously adopting rights, then, requires shifts in behavior and subjectivity that correspond with an individual’s understanding and experience, their seriousness regarding implication of rights, and what is not worth reinforcing.

What I think Merry means when she says that subjectivities are produced through encounters through the legal system is that people, more specifically women, bias especially through the legal system. An argument that merry makes is that women that are in abusive relationship or marriages, the women who are being abused reports the abuse and other wrongdoings towards them and as a result they are choosing themselves over the man and that is when the woman gains power over the man. “At the same time her actions allow the law to define her husband/partner as a criminal under the surveillance and control of the state”. After reading that I feel that the mistreated or battered woman now has power over her husband or partner. I also think what Merry is trying to say is that after going to the legal system, the woman’s family tries to convince her that she’s not a good wife or girlfriend and will also try to. Convince her that she took away her husband’s or partner’s masculinity. “A battered woman may be be pressured by king to feel she is a bad wife, while her rather may claim she I staking away his masculinity.” Then right after, Merry states that a woman is considered a bad wife or girlfriend when after she goes to the legal system and asks for help then she takes it back. Then they are considered as having identity transformation.
A problem that Merry points out is what if those in the legal system favored the male and thought that the woman is overreacting and didn’t take the situation serious. This makes the woman thinks twice about what power she has to protect herself and her rights. Another problem that I noticed was when Merry said that when the male tries to reassert his masculinity, the female tries to find the new subject within the law alienating and empty. However, on the other hand, she also says that the female’s family would pressure her into leaving the abusive male and get new services to protect herself within the legal system. In my opinion, after reading that women often go to the legal system for help then try to take it back in fear of what her family thinks or that she fears that she is challenging the male. I don’t think that women should try to take back going to the legal system for help, because in a way the woman herself is taking away her own power. Not only to stop the abuse, but just having he own power in fear of being judged or fear of retaliation from the abusive male. “As women confront the demand to testify against an offender in open court, unsure of the penalty that will follow, but certain of the anger he feels as a result of her testimony, the nature of the new subjectivity offered to her by the law appears ambiguous and unclear”. I felt that this was another reason as to why women try to back out because the legal system doesn’t make what comes next clear and being that the female is unclear, scared, etc., she thinks twice about wether or not she should go through with whatever service it was that she chose.