Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law

by Catharine A. MacKinnon

Overview

Catharine A. MacKinnon, noted feminist and legal scholar, explores and develops her original theories and practical proposals on sexual politics and law. These discourses, originally delivered as speeches, have been brilliantly woven into a book that retains all the spontaneity and accessibility of a live presentation. MacKinnon offers a unique retrospective on the law of sexual harassment, which she designed and has worked for a decade to establish, and a prospectus on the law of pornography, which she proposes to change in the next ten years. Authentic in voice, sweeping in scope, startling in clarity, urgent, never compromised and often visionary, these discourses advance a new theory of sex inequality and imagine new possibilities for social change.

Through these engaged works on issues such as rape, abortion, athletics, sexual harassment, and pornography, MacKinnon seeks feminism on its own terms, unconstrained by the limits of prior traditions. She argues that viewing gender as a matter of sameness and difference--as virtually all existing theory and law have done--covers up the reality of gender, which is a system of social hierarchy, an imposed inequality of power. She reveals a political system of male dominance and female subordination that sexualizes power for men and powerlessness for women. She analyzes the failure of organized feminism, particularly legal feminism, to alter this condition, exposing the way male supremacy gives women a survival stake in the system that destroys them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674298743
Publisher:	Harvard
Publication date:	04/01/1988
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Catharine A. MacKinnon is Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School and the James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law (Long-Term) at Harvard Law School.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Art of the Impossible

Part I: Approaches

1. Not by Law Alone: From a Debate with Phyllis Schlafly

2. Difference and Dominance: On Sex Discrimination

3. Desire and Power

4. Whose Culture? A Case Note on Martinez v. Santa Clara Pueblo

5. On Exceptionality: Women as Women in Law

Part II: Applications

6. A Rally against Rape

7. Sex and Violence: A Perspective

8. Privacy v. Equality: Beyond Roe v. Wade

9. Sexual Harassment: Its First Decade in Court

10. Women, Self-Possession, and Sport

Part III: Pornography

11. Linda's Life and Andrea's Work

12. "More Than Simply a Magazine": Playboy's Money

13. Not a Moral Issue

14. Francis Biddle's Sister: Pornography, Civil Rights, and Speech

15. On Collaboration

16. The Sexual Politics of the First Amendment

Afterword

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

What People are Saying About This

Miles Lord

It's a zinger. Ms. MacKinnon has made a difference before, and this book should further change society.
— Miles Lord, former Chief Judge of the Federal Court for the District of Minnesota

Phyllis Chester

In this book MacKinnon enlarges our understanding of the nature of civil rights as applied to women. MacKinnon's radicalism is thrilling, her determination brilliant, her passion literal. With rigor and irony MacKinnon teaches us what feminism--unmodified by cowardice or by disassociation from other women-is, what it sounds like, and what its goals are. MacKinnon's identification with silenced women is precisely what defines feminism unmodified.
— Phyllis Chester, Ph.D., author of Women and Madness

Gerry Spence

I wish to celebrate this book by a peer, a book for reading by men should they wish to keep up with the human race.
— Gerry Spence, author of Trial by Fire

Derrick Bell

MacKinnon dispatches from her post on the front line of the sexual battlefield searing, sharp communiqués that voice a fierce, relentless, and finally persuasive analysis of how pornography, a perversion of free speech, perpetuates the powerlessness of women.
— Derrick Bell, Harvard Law School

Peter Bogdanovich

Catharine MacKinnon's Feminism Unmodified is a remarkably penetrating, bracingly uncompromising view of what it means to be a woman in our society. Written with extraordinary incisiveness and an acid wit, this is an important book for anyone interested in freedom.

Burke Marshall

Catharine MacKinnon's discourses in Feminism Unmodified are final evidence, if any were needed, that hers is the most powerful mind and forceful voice now at work in this critical area of law. I commend her book most vigorously to many who question as well as those who accept her position.
— Burke Marshall, Yale Law School

Diana E. H. Russell

Feminism Unmodified shows Catharine MacKinnon to be one of the most brilliant, original, thought--provoking, and uncompromising feminist theoreticians and strategists in the contemporary United States.
— Diana E. H. Russell, Department of Sociology, Mills College, and author of Rape and Marriage

Editorial Reviews

[MacKinnon's] book offers an unorthodox but relentlessly consistent perspective on issues fundamental to feminism. It is passionate, brilliant, polemical and sectarian. Ms. MacKinnon defends what is frequently called "radical feminism." As the title of her book indicates, she believes this approach to be the only true or genuine feminism because it alone speaks for all women...Her position is grounded on a clear assertion of the primacy of the social over the biological...Fundamental to her radical feminism is the claim that gender is a system of dominance rather than of difference...Ms. MacKinnon offers a systematic and persuasive perspective on issues that are central not only to feminism but to social theory in general.
— Alison M. Jaggar

New York Times Book Review

MacKinnon has been perhaps the most important force behind the burgeoning theoretical literature in law on sex discrimination and feminist theory...Each of the essays published in [the book] stands on its own, making the book a collection of separate entries rather than one sustained argument. Because each essay was originally a speech, the discussions are lucid and dramatic, with the dynamism, immediacy, and sense of discovery of a live presentation; they are also filled with irony, wit, and humor...the book contains brilliant insights, genuine creativity, and rare originality. It should have a significant impact on thinking about sex discrimination and on social and legal thought more generally.

Harvard Law Review

[The book] is to feminism what The German Ideology is to Marxism. Using the tools of sociology of knowledge, Catharine MacKinnon relentlessly uncovers male bias, also known as objectivity and male perspectives also known as universality...On every page are epigrams one wants to print and hang on one's walls.
— Pauline B. Bart

American Journal of Sociology

This is heavy stuff. [The book] does not tell us what to do. It may, however, make us think, and challenge, and possibly act.
— Lorraine Schmall

ABA Journal

[MacKinnon's] book offers an unorthodox but relentlessly consistent perspective on issues fundamental to feminism. It is passionate, brilliant, polemical and sectarian. Ms. MacKinnon defends what is frequently called "radical feminism." As the title of her book indicates, she believes this approach to be the only true or genuine feminism because it alone speaks for all women...Her position is grounded on a clear assertion of the primacy of the social over the biological...Fundamental to her radical feminism is the claim that gender is a system of dominance rather than of difference...Ms. MacKinnon offers a systematic and persuasive perspective on issues that are central not only to feminism but to social theory in general.

New York Times Book Review - Alison M. Jaggar

Catharine MacKinnon's discourses in Feminism Unmodified are final evidence, if any were needed, that hers is the most powerful mind and forceful voice now at work in this critical area of law. I commend her book most vigorously to many who question as well as those who accept her position.

Burke Marshall

[The book] is to feminism what The German Ideology is to Marxism. Using the tools of sociology of knowledge, Catharine MacKinnon relentlessly uncovers male bias, also known as objectivity and male perspectives also known as universality...On every page are epigrams one wants to print and hang on one's walls.

American Journal of Sociology - Pauline B. Bart

This is heavy stuff. [The book] does not tell us what to do. It may, however, make us think, and challenge, and possibly act.

ABA Journal - Lorraine Schmall

Feminism Unmodified shows Catharine MacKinnon to be one of the most brilliant, original, thought--provoking, and uncompromising feminist theoreticians and strategists in the contemporary United States.

Diana E. H. Russell

I wish to celebrate this book by a peer, a book for reading by men should they wish to keep up with the human race.

Gerry Spence

It's a zinger. Ms. MacKinnon has made a difference before, and this book should further change society.

Miles Lord

Catharine MacKinnon's Feminism Unmodified is a remarkably penetrating, bracingly uncompromising view of what it means to be a woman in our society. Written with extraordinary incisiveness and an acid wit, this is an important book for anyone interested in freedom.

Peter Bogdanovich

MacKinnon dispatches from her post on the front line of the sexual battlefield searing, sharp communiqués that voice a fierce, relentless, and finally persuasive analysis of how pornography, a perversion of free speech, perpetuates the powerlessness of women.

Derrick Bell

In this book MacKinnon enlarges our understanding of the nature of civil rights as applied to women. MacKinnon's radicalism is thrilling, her determination brilliant, her passion literal. With rigor and irony MacKinnon teaches us what feminism--unmodified by cowardice or by disassociation from other women-is, what it sounds like, and what its goals are. MacKinnon's identification with silenced women is precisely what defines feminism unmodified.

Phyllis Chester

This is a collection of lectures given by the author, a feminist and legal scholar. Mainstream feminism, with its emphasis on obliterating the differences between the sexes, she states, has failed to deal with the real problem: the existence of a social hierarchy in which power is vested in men, and women have a vested interest in their own subordination. Rape, sexual harassment, and pornography as evidences of the social and legal subjugation of women are explored in detail. MacKinnon, whose legal and philosophical arguments are not easily absorbed, aims to shake the complacency of those who claim there has been real progress resulting from the women's movement. This thoughtful contribution to feminist literature deserves a place in women's studies collections. Anne Twitchell, Univ. of Maryland Architecture Lib., College Park

Library Journal