성희롱에 대한 법적 규제와 여성주체의 문제: 하버마스와 포스트모더니즘의 비판

Abstract

This paper deals with the issues when feminists take law as a strategic way to address sexual harassment. In particular, it focuses on how women as subjects are created if protective law is taken to tackle sexual harassment. Firstly of all, by relying on MacKinnon’s feminist jurisprudence which lays a foundation to provide sexual harassment policies, it is addressed what sexual harassment law aims at so that it provides a basis for a further criticism of sexual harassment law. This criticism can be found in the theories of Habermas and postmodernism. From the view of Habermas's dicourse theory, sexual harassment law may distort the autonomy of women as subjects although it originally aims at gender equality. According to postmodern feminism, sexual harassment law tends to provide women with a fixed idea of a sexually pure and vulnerable victim. Ironically, this is the stereotypes of gender identity of men and women that sexual harassment law originally tries to correct. Concerning these problems, this paper suggests that, rather than law legal approaches, more flexible and contextualized approaches to sexual harassment should be adopted as a way to prohibit sexual harassment.