Female Lawyers: Lose the Emotion, Bring the Cupcakes
GettyIt was still a struggle for me to find female role models in law school. My Feminist Jurisprudence teacher had shaggy gray hair and shopped exclusively in the “men’s section of Eddie Bauer,” she proudly announced early in the semester. Somehow, she was not a lesbian. The most popular female professors—like Nicole Porter—affected a masculine persona. They spoke algorithmically, wore suits designed to conceal the fact that they had female bodies, and haughtily referenced their clerkships with current SCOTUS justices every twelve seconds. They seemed to favor men, found nothing worth noticing in me, or any female classmate who didn’t fit within their narrow vision of womanhood.I didn’t want to be anything like these women. The only professors I actually thought were cool were pointedly not professors. They were the legal writing instructors, also known as the “mommy instructors,” because they all were women and most seemed to have kids. Everyone knew that they were paid the least, despite the fact that legal writing is by far the most relevant class to actually practicing law.But in Feminist Jurisprudence, I was finally introduced to a legal scholar I admired: Catharine MacKinnon, the radical queen of feminist legal theory. MacKinnon—or “Kitty,” as loved ones call her—has cold blue eyes, impeccable style, scathing opinions, and an iconic striped haircut that would make Susan Sontag jealous. Think of her as the Anna Wintour of the law. She is famous for her pioneering work in the areas of workplace sexual harassment and pornography laws, as well as for her incendiary public statements.Read more at The Daily Beast.
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