Catharine A. MacKinnon Criticism
Catharine A. MacKinnon is a pivotal figure in feminist legal theory, primarily known for her groundbreaking work in redefining sexual harassment as a form of sexual discrimination. Her seminal text, Sexual Harassment of Working Women (1979), is a cornerstone in advancing sex equality cases globally. MacKinnon's work extends to critiquing pornography and hate speech, arguing—often with Andrea Dworkin—that such materials perpetuate male dominance and should not be shielded by the First Amendment, a stance that has provoked both acclaim and controversy.
MacKinnon's career is marked by significant legal achievements, including influencing U.S. Supreme Court decisions and contributing to international law by establishing rape as a genocidal offense. Her academic career includes professorships at prestigious institutions like the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago. She continues to engage deeply in feminist legal discourse, exploring subjects like pornography, sexual harassment, and gender inequality.
MacKinnon's major works, such as Feminism Unmodified and Toward a Feminist Theory of the State, critique traditional legal frameworks from a feminist perspective and have been both lauded and critiqued for their radical approach. Her work, Only Words, addresses the intersection of free speech and gender discrimination, challenging prevailing legal protections of pornography by likening it to racial discrimination.
Critics like Anna Coote and Susan MacManus have noted the complexity and clarity in her legal analysis. While some view her as polarizing and her views on censorship as contentious, her contributions to sexual harassment law are widely respected and have inspired significant legal and social change, garnering her recognition as a leading social theorist and influential legal writer, despite the mixed critical reception of her controversial views on pornography's legal status.
Contents
- Principal Works
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Essays
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Would You Mind?
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Coote asserts that in Sexual Harassment of Working Women, “MacKinnon's legal analysis gives us some unexpected insights into the complexities of sex discrimination; and her study of sexual harassment provides a useful discipline for examining the law.”
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Review of Sexual Harassment of Working Women
(summary)
In the following review, MacManus praises Sexual Harassment of Working Women for MacKinnon's ability to present complex legal arguments in a clear and simple manner.
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Review of Sexual Harassment of Working Women
(summary)
In the following review, Russell contends that Sexual Harassment of Working Women provides valuable insight into the problem of sexual harassment in the workplace. Sexual Harassment of Working Women is the first scholarly analysis of a pervasive and pernicious problem that has existed ever since women entered the paid workforce, but that has only recently begun to be named, talked about, and challenged in the courts.
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Hard Cop, Soft Cop
(summary)
In the following review, Mullarkey derides both Andrea Dworkin's Intercourse and MacKinnon's Feminism Unmodified as sensationalistic, irrational, and polarizing attacks on the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
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In Search of Equality
(summary)
In the following review, Hein delineates the major thematic concerns of the essays collected in Feminism Unmodified.
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Review of Feminism Unmodified
(summary)
In the following review, Mack offers a negative assessment of Feminism Unmodified.
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Law and Sex
(summary)
In the following review, Whitman outlines MacKinnon's feminist perspective of law, calling Feminism Unmodified a “rough, powerful, important work.” In Feminism Unmodified, a collection of speeches given between 1981 and 1986, Catharine MacKinnon talks of law from the perspective of feminism. MacKinnon does not approach her topic as a lawyer with a uniquely legal perspective on feminism; she brings, instead, a distinctively feminist approach to law. Nor is the feminism from which she speaks grounded in the standard political theories: MacKinnon disclaims and attacks the Marxist approach to feminism, the socialist approach to feminism, and, most emphatically and repeatedly, the liberal approach to feminism that has been embraced by many lawyers in their effort to use law to eliminate discrimination on the basis of sex. MacKinnon's goal is to define feminism on its own terms. That is what she means by “unmodified.” This book both exemplifies and discusses the difficulty, and the considerable success, of her project. It is a rough, powerful, important work.
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Review of Feminism Unmodified
(summary)
In the following review, Bartlett investigates the relationship between MacKinnon's themes in Feminism Unmodified and Susan Estrich's Real Rape.
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Review of Feminism Unmodified
(summary)
In the following review, Hart compliments Feminism Unmodified as a “tightly-argued, consistent and provoking work of social theory.”
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A Radical's Odyssey
(summary)
In the following review, Nicholson contends that Toward a Feminist Theory of the State exposes the strengths and weaknesses of radical feminism.
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Prisoners of Gender
(summary)
In the following review, Kristol contrasts the feminist theory found in Susan Moller Okin's Justice, Gender, and the Family with MacKinnon's Toward a Feminist Theory of the State.
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Review of Toward a Feminist Theory of the State
(summary)
In the following review, Eisenstein argues that the essays in Toward a Feminist Theory of the State are “theoretically significant and important contributions” to feminist theory but notes flaws in MacKinnon's “homogeneous” view of male power.
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Review of Toward a Feminist Theory of the State
(summary)
In the following review, Menkel-Meadow contrasts the feminist legal theory of Deborah L. Rhode's Justice and Gender with MacKinnon's Toward a Feminist Theory of the State, addressing important questions about how law has constructed 'woman' and the contributions of legal feminism to political feminism and feminist theory.
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Differentiation and Stratification: Age Groups, Class, Gender, Race, and Ethnic Groups
(summary)
In the following review, Farrell regards Toward a Feminist Theory of the State as a valuable study for both feminist theorists and sociologists with an interest in feminist legal theory.
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Review of Toward a Feminist Theory of the State
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In the following review, Meyer argues that, despite its flaws, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State is a provocative, insightful, and worthwhile addition to feminist studies.
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Feminisms and the State
(summary)
In the following review, Elshtain contrasts stylistic elements of MacKinnon's Toward a Feminist Theory of the State with Mary Lyndon Shanley's Feminism, Marriage, and the Law in Victorian England.
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The Logic of the Development of Feminism; or, Is MacKinnon to Feminism as Parmenides Is to Greek Philosophy?
(summary)
In the following essay, Bernick maintains that the position of MacKinnon's work in relation to radical feminism is analogous to the place of Parmenides's work in ancient Greek philosophy.
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With Due Respect
(summary)
In the following review, MacCormick examines MacKinnon's feminist legal theory in Toward a Feminist Theory of the State and finds parallels between her ideas and those of Elizabeth F. Kingdom in What's Wrong with Rights.
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Sex in the Twilight Zone: Catharine MacKinnon's Crusade
(summary)
In the following essay, Kimball summarizes MacKinnon's case against pornography, describing her arguments as obsessive and extreme as well as concluding that MacKinnon exhibits a reductive view of human behavior.
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Obsession
(summary)
In the following review, Posner maintains that Only Words is “eloquent and forceful,” but derides the work for lacking “brevity,” “careful distinctions, scrupulous weighing of evidence and fair consideration of opposing views.”
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Women and Pornography
(summary)
In the following review, Dworkin outlines MacKinnon's arguments against pornography in Only Words, speculating on how her opinions affect national and state governments and the issue of censorship.
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Kiss Me, Cate
(summary)
In the following review of Only Words, Scruton enumerates the weaknesses of MacKinnon's case against pornography and free speech and asserts that her arguments function to incite hatred against men.
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Who May Speak?: Amending the First Amendment
(summary)
In the following review, Pasewark considers how MacKinnon's arguments will affect the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and asserts that Only Words "has the appearance, both in form and content, of a hastily constructed affair born more of anger, invective and deadlines than careful thought."
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The Worst Book of the Year
(summary)
In the following essay, Tyrrell argues that MacKinnon's arguments in Only Words are both “specious and sophomoric.”
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Rancorous Liaisons
(summary)
In the following review, Young asserts that, despite the “hypnotic power” of MacKinnon's prose, the central arguments in Only Words are exaggerated, “spurious,” and poorly constructed.
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Is Pornography ‘Free Speech’?
(summary)
In the following review, McCabe contends that, although there are some weaknesses in MacKinnon's reasoning in Only Words, the work is “on the whole quite persuasive in arguing that we need to rethink our approach to the pornography debate.”
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Fighting the First Amendment's Free Ride
(summary)
In the following review, Stepp lists several flaws in MacKinnon's theories on pornography and hate speech in Only Words but notes that the debate the work has inspired is ultimately important and worthwhile.
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Review of Only Words
(summary)
In the following review, Dinielli delineates MacKinnon's feminist legal theories and addresses the critical reaction to Only Words.
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Drawing Lines
(summary)
In the following review, Williams comments that the legal arguments in Only Words will be difficult for British readers to fully comprehend.
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Devils and Deep Blue Seas
(summary)
In the following review, Golding explores MacKinnon's concept of free speech as presented in Only Words, focusing on the question of speech versus action as it relates to pornography.
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Pornography and Power
(summary)
In the following review, McHugh considers Only Words to be a valid and notable contribution to the discussion of the limits of free speech under the U.S. Constitution. This book offers a continuation of Catharine MacKinnon's earlier writings on the subject of speech, freedom of expression, and constitutional law from her unique perspective of feminist legal thought. It extends her already familiar approaches to this broad issue by challenging dominant civil libertarian attitudes regarding the relationship between women and speech.
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The New Censorship
(summary)
In the following review, Sennett notes that while Only Words is MacKinnon's weakest work, it owes its popularity “to the assimilation of feminism into a rhetoric of aggression, sexual repression, and community building which marked the mythology of the American frontier.”
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Catharine MacKinnon and the Feminist Porn Debates
(summary)
In the following review, Fraiman summarizes the debate among feminists regarding pornography and highlights the strengths of MacKinnon's arguments in Only Words.
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Review of Only Words
(summary)
In the following review, Olson presents several objections to MacKinnon's arguments in Only Words but concludes that the book will “almost certainly reconfigure the national debate over pornography, harassment, free speech, and equality.”
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Pornography
(summary)
In the following review, Witt places MacKinnon's Only Words within the feminist debate over pornography, contrasting her views with Nadine Strossen's Defending Pornography.
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In Defense of Gender-Blindness
(summary)
In the following review, Rosen traces the development of sexual harassment law, discusses the law's recent challenges, and considers MacKinnon's impact on theories of sexual harassment.
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The Outsider
(summary)
In the following essay, Olsen presents an overview of MacKinnon's life and body of work.
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Feminism and Liberalism Reconsidered: The Case of Catharine MacKinnon
(summary)
In the following essay, Schaeffer argues that certain aspects of MacKinnon's feminist theory must be understood within a liberal framework.
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Would You Mind?
(summary)
- Further Reading