AHA Session 249
Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History 7
Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History 7
Sunday, January 8, 2023: 11:00 AM-12:30 PM
Congress Hall C (Loews Philadelphia Hotel, 4th Floor)
Chair:
Marc R. Stein, San Francisco State University
Papers:
Comment:
Marc R. Stein, San Francisco State University
Session Abstract
This session explores how LGBT activists and organizers engaged law and legal systems as part of wider political strategies for social change. It enters into this question from a variety of positions--including how trans plaintiffs challenged the meaning and applicability of federal employment and disability law, the ways in which gay and lesbian law students organized and sought to serve diverse and underserved LGBT community legal needs, and how lesbian feminists engaged in the fight for abortion rights and against sterilization abuse. As these papers suggest, histories of litigation, law student organizing, and feminist movements must address the involvement of LGBT people and communities in those struggles. Moreover, our papers suggest that histories of such engagement must assess the difference made by the social identities and locations these participants brought to such struggles. These papers also raise questions about whether and how engaging law and legal institutions as part of organizing strategies led to the kinds of transformations sought, exploring in multiple ways the headwinds faced by those challenging sexism, heterosexism and transphobia through legal means.
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