Representing Identities: Legal Treatment of Pregnancy and Homosexuality

Abstract

This article explores some of the ways in which judges treat pregnancy and homosexuality in discrimination cases. In examining some of these cases, I map some of the doctrinal maneuvers and political strategies which courts employ in representing these traits, and explicate some of the images of gender or sexual identity which the judicial opinions contain. My sense is that looking critically and systematically at the complex and multiple modes in which judges represent pregnancy and homosexuality may improve our capacity for understanding for legal doctrine's potential to embody richer and more satisfying conceptions of selves or identities.