Merry rights
Subjectivities are produced through encounters with the legal system. Feelings and opinions are created when you have dealt with the legal system. Sally Engle Merry talks about how women and their encounters with the law affects a womans identiy. For example it was mentioned in the reading that ” A battered women may be pressured by kin to feel she is a bad wife, while her partner may claim she is taking away his masculinity. The only way she can rescue him from this loss is to deflect the very legal sanctions she has called down upon him. (Merry 345) This situation right here can have such a major impact on a womens sense of self and the way she views the law. why does a woman have to feel like she owes a man something or that she has to change her actions in order to please a man even when she knows deep down in her heart that she needs to guard and protect herself as a woman .
The reading also mentioned police , partners , relatives, friends and neighbors all playing a part in making women feel bad or making them feel as if they did something wrong when they decide to take their abusive husbands to court. Police act as if battered women do not have the right to complain about the violence of their husbands making these women feel as if they are discouraged from seeing themselves as having such a right. (Merry 347) Partners , relatives, friends and neighbors tell these battered women that they are not a good wife for having her husband in court saying that she did something to him for him to hit her. This type of mentality that society has can honestly mess with a woman’s mind. How can people in society cover for these abusive men? It is as if the law and the people involved in the case of a battered woman puts that women in a place od discomfort when its time for her to make her decision on the man that abused her. A battered women turns to the legal system for help but theirs close relatives and friends judging her . There should be no reason why women should be fearful or have any anxiety about turning to the courts. This shows that the people close to these women have a major impact on their decision making . Any one who has been mistreated and brings it to the legal system should be treated fairly and not judged. unlike these battered women who had their own share of judgments
