Becoming Gentlemen and an Introduction

For anyone curious, the title of this blog comes from the article, "Becoming Gentlemen: Women's Experiences at one Ivy League Law School" by Lani Guinier, Michelle Fine, and Jane Balin, with Ann Bartow, and Deborah Lee Stachel, printed in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review , November 1994.

I would repost it here but, um, I'm afraid of copyright law. Anyhow, all you law students can find it pretty painlessly on LexisNexis.

I read this article my freshman year of college, for my 'American Politics' class, and again my senior year of college (after having applied to law school but before I was accepted anywhere) for my 'Politics of Difference' class.

I don't remember deciding that I wanted to attend law school, but I do remember that the first time I read this article law school was already a goal of mine, and this scared the living hell out of me. I hoped it was dated, or that the experience was unique to the particular school. I was, at the same time, taking my first Women's Studies course and was beginning to recognize that there might be a chance that my feminist goals might not totally line up with the experience of a legal education. I didn't really know any lawyers, and the feminists I knew were either casually feminist in their politics and spare time or they were feminism-focused academics. I wasn't sure that either role-model was what I was looking for.

I really began thinking twice about law school, until part way through my junior year when I decided, at the least, that maybe I didn't want to go to law school immediately after college, or even at all. I decided not to take the LSATs. At the end of that summer, however, I abruptly changed my mind after starting to research for my thesis on same-sex marriage in Canada and reading some of the important cases from that movement and contemporary ones in the States (Halpern, Barbeau, re: Same Sex Marriage in Canada, for example, and Lawrence and Goodridge in the US). I realized that a) I actually liked reading cases and b) this was a profession in which, if I were successful (and idealistic and naive, I know, I know), I could actually concretely change people's lives on an individual or larger scale. At the very least, I could better understand the system in which we live so as to best know how to change it.

So, I scrambled and got my LSATs done and my applications, was fortunately accepted to two schools, and picked this one because it had more courses about women in law or domestic violence or LGBT folk, for example. Three of my five professors are women and the administration of my school is majority female. Women in my classes are outspoken and impressive. The cold-calling system, as nerve-wracking as it can be, isn't nearly as traumatic as I feared. The Women's Law Forum and the OUTlaws groups have been good outlets for some of my political and personal focuses, interests, and desire for feminist community, though often it feels like no one has enough time for community, only isolated 'events'. To my delight, I haven't had a class or a professor who hasn't made a point of bringing up gender and feminist issues, and some even have a reputation for it (unfortunately, that reputation, in one case, is that she is 'crazy' and 'too biased'). I think I've lucked out in my choice of schools and that I'm in the best possible place for my personality and politics.

and yet.

Yet, sometimes I'll be talking to another woman in my class, or to a friend at another law school and I'll find myself close to shouting in frustration at some inane comment some guy made while we were discussing J.E.B. v. Alabama and Baston challenges. Or, I'll somehow find myself standing around, fifteen minutes after Crim Law with three other women as we practically grab each other in relief that it wasn't just us who had really obvious answers to the "tough questions" about rape that were posed in class. Speaking out doesn't seem to be as big a problem as I thought it would be when I first read "Becoming Gentlemen", but being heard is.

So, here's a space for women law students. I know for a fact we have a lot to say about this really bizarre experience we're going through these three years. There's scholarship out there about us and how to teach us, but what I really would have liked to have seen, four-and-a-half years ago when I evaluated my goal of attending law school, is something written by a female law student - recently - about her experiences.

This is also an invitation to point out where else I can look for these narratives, discussions, individuals and communities. I don't believe that they're not out there. I know they're out there. And I want them to be heard.