Speaking volumes: musings on the issues of the day, inspired by the memory of Mary Joe Frug.

• Position: Why a Feminist Law Journal?

Liz: The symposium began with a discussion about history--the history of feminism and of women's law journals. Many of us who participated were part of this history, and Mary Joe Frug was as well. Since April 4, the day that the symposium was held, was the twelfth anniversary of Mary Joe's tragic death, Regina and I were asked by the conveners of this symposium to bring Mary Joe into our conversations. Mary Joe was a feminist law professor at New England Law School. She had previously taught at Villanova Law School, and before that she had been a legal writing instructor here at Columbia Law School. She was murdered on April 4, 1991, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she lived. She was a dear friend of ours and Regina and I have both spoken and written on her work. (1)

Mary Joe was an extraordinary woman, brilliant, engaged, and alive; she was an inspiring teacher, an important scholar, and a true "girlfriend," in the best sense of the word. (2) She would have loved to be at this symposium, and would have added a great deal to our discussions about feminism. We miss her terribly. We also want to make her present and honor her memory.

In 1991, I was visiting at Harvard Law School and spent a lot of time with her, including the morning of the day that she was killed. Regina had been visiting at Harvard the year before and had spent a lot of time with her that year. We have many recollections of being with her during those years, especially at her wonderful dinner table.

In this short piece we want to bring Mary Joe's spirit, the liveliness of her ideas, and her dinner table to all of you.

Regina: There is no way that we can convey in the space allotted to us what a wonderful person Mary Joe Frug was. We cannot even hope to explore the range of her ideas about gender, postmodernism, and the law. This is our second effort to generate a dialogue between ourselves, and among ourselves and other feminists, using as a starting point Mary Joe Frug's A Postmodern Feminist Legal Manifesto (An Unfinished D raft), which w as published in the Harvard Law Review after her death. (3) Our first effort focused on passages and themes taken from her Manifesto. (4) We see Mary Joe's work as a bridge between Second Wave feminists, whom she knew and prodded, and Third Wave feminists, whose inspiration in postmodernism she shared.

What is the difference between the two? Permit us to overgeneralize a bit. Whereas Second Wavers fervently sought and seek women's relief from victimization through consciousness-raising, mobilization in the political and legal spheres, and the creation and enforcement of equal rights, Third Wavers eschew victimization and pursue power, pleasure, contradictions, hybridity, inclusiveness, and coalition-building primarily through their efforts in the cultural sphere. Mary Joe's work suggests that there ought to be an acceptance, if not a celebration, of this proliferation of differences among feminists, and a commitment to work through them to arrive at strategies that will support localized disruption and legal reform efforts. As she wrote in her Manifesto,

Although a powerful, broad, and coherent legal community is critical to feminist law reform projects, I believe it is a mistake to fear or avoid or condemn differences among feminists as we pursue these projects. Accepting ... our differences, in my view, is a critical component of challenging the ideology of gender difference, which includes the assumption that there is a feminine essence that unalterably unites women, binding us together under the generic category "woman." (5) As a way of honoring her memory, we thought we would turn this space into the equivalent of her dining room, where we used to talk about a range of topics suggested by the news and current events. We kicked her husband, Harvard Law professor Jerry Frug, out of the house. Stephen, her son, was in college, and her daughter, dear Emily, sweet Emily, would give us a look and head for her room.

Feminists need spaces where we can hash out our differences and develop our points of view. Of course, in lieu of a dining room table, there are always feminist law journals. Whereas television rips stories from the headlines, we thought we would just start with the headlines themselves and see what kind of a discussion they generate; we must keep in mind the idea that differences are nourishing for the psyche and the body, particularly the body politic.

Liz: We are calling our dialogue today "Speaking Volumes." We think that the title captures several aspects of what we are doing at this symposium. We are speaking volumes in terms of the substance of our discussion because there is much to be said about the topics we raise. But we are also talking about actual volumes of law journals. So Regina and I are going to offer some provocative headlines to spark dialogue on feminist issues and Mary Joe's work. (6) We see this approach as related to the important work that feminist law journals do. Feminists take headlines, fragments of news or current events, and turn them into the stuff of conversation and scholarship, which generate more conversation, more scholarship, and hopefully activism.

HERE WE/THEY GO AGAIN!

Headline: "Hormone Therapy, Already Found to Have Risks, Is Now Said to Lack Benefits"

Text: Medical experts report that while hormone replacement therapy "somewhat diminished hot flashes and night sweats in a subgroup of women, they were no better than placebos in improving other measures of quality of life."

"Women taking the drugs did not feel more energetic, or have more sexual pleasure or even more restful sleep. They were not less depressed, their minds were no clearer and their memories did not appear to have improved."

Cindy Pearson, executive director of the National Women"s Health Network, an advocacy group, "said so many women had told her the drugs made them feel better that she assumed it was true." (7)

Headline: "Delusions of Feeling Better"

Text: "A lot of the presumed benefit [of hormone replacement therapy] may have been a placebo effect." (8)

Regina: A mind is a terrible thing to waste. How many times are we going to let ourselves be caught in the same mind/body bind? When the medical establishment and t he pharmaceutical industry h ave a p ill that t hey think will work, the problem is our bodies. When they discover that the pill does not and will not ever work, suddenly it was all in our minds. Our concerns are somewhat a ge-dependent; that I must admit, but whether the issue is menopause, sexual dysfunction (i.e., sexual dissatisfaction), (9) contraception, or infertility (the latter two of which are more likely of concern to younger women), we should be able to unite on the need to politicize women's...