“‘On Being the Object of Property’ was something I had written just at the point at which I’d convinced myself that I was going to leave legal education. It was really in part the product of conversations with the feminist legal theory summer workshops that I wrote down what I was most concerned about. In a very ironic way, that piece went the equivalent of viral in those days and actually started a conversation that brought me back to the legal academy in a very different capacity.
“Feminism teaches us that the best ideas come from working together in inclusive, supportive groups,” said Fineman. “Feminism has grown through consciousness raising and the sharing of experience. The best ideas and the best politics emerge from collective engagements and processes.” “This shift from a focus on discrimination to a criticism of social institutions and arrangements, even if they are formally inclusive or gender neutral, represented the theoretical and political passage from a ‘women in law’ model to a feminist model for social reform,” said Fineman. “It demanded institutions be transformed to reflect and incorporate the realities of women’s lives and recognized the positive role law could play in that transformation.
“In the Feminism and Legal Theory Project, we created what I called ‘uncomfortable conversations’—events where people who shared values, but disagreed about strategies and implementation, could talk,” said Fineman. “If there were areas of disagreement around collective objectives, you could talk about them and work through them hopefully in a constructive manner. That’s how actual progress can be made.