From: lynch@ils.nwu.edu (Richard Lynch)
Newsgroups: alt.feminism
Subject: Re: Catharine MacKinnon, Playboy and feminist propaganda (Was: Value of...)
Date: 2 Oct 92 21:47:15 GMT
Organization: The Institute for the Learning Sciences

In article <717917196@lear.cs.duke.edu> gazit@cs.duke.edu (Hillel) writes:
>Two weeks ago we had the following exchange in soc.men:
>
>From: farthing@leland.Stanford.EDU (ljf)
>Subject: Re: What is Wrong with this picture?????
>Date: Thu, 10 Sep 92 05:17:39 GMT
>
>In article <1992Sep9.163008.11590@lmpsbbs.comm.mot.com> bhv@areaplg2.corp.mot.com (Bronis Vidugiris) writes:
>>In article <1992Sep6.101010.7218@morrow.stanford.edu> farthing@leland.Stanford.EDU (ljf) writes:
>>)And guess who wrote this:
>>)
>>)"I also think a male-only draft is profoundly anti-male.  Every man
>>)drafted would have a 50 percent chance of not being (drafted) if women
>>)were.  The male-only draft discriminates against men."
>>)
>>
>>I give up.  Who wrote it and where did they write it?
>
>Catharine A. MacKinnon in _Feminism Unmodified_.
>
>######################################################################
>
>I wondered if Catharine A. MacKinnon became a different person, so I
>checked _Feminism Unmodified_ in a public library.  It looks just like
>what *I* would expect from MacKinnon.  Full with wild claims like:

Do you not think the draft is anti-male?  My impression (maybe you've said it,
but I'm not sure, so I'll down-grade to impression) of you would be that you
would be anti-draft first, gender-ignored-women-in-combat-draft second, and the
remaining options (gender-ignored-no-women-in-combat-draft and male-only-draft)
I'm not sure about.
Anyway...

#1.  WHEN was this book published.  If it's old, some of the statements I make
below may not even apply.  Reader discretion advised.

>#Women are poor, and pay is at least as far from being sex-equal as it
>#was before the passage of legislation guaranteeing equality by law.

I think the data posted (thank you, somebody for REAL data!!!) made it clear
that pay is fairly equitable after experience and education were accounted for.
So, the above statement (if made recently, see disclaimer above which I won't
insert again) may be poorly researched.
But it is also clear that there are still fewer women than men, and it is
entirely possible that hiring is still biased in favor of men.
On a meta-level, it is not as if everything is all hunky-dory now.
[Anybody got some studies/data on hiring preferences wrt gender?]


>and:
>
>#Under the rule of gender neutrality, the law of custody and divorce has
>#been transformed, giving men an equal chance at custody of children 
>#and alimony.
>
>(Equality is when in 90% of the cases women have sole custody...)

Perhaps the law has been transformed, but the judges haven't yet.  A cheap out,
I will admit, but it seems to me it's improving slowly but steadily.

So your point is that since two statements are wrong, a third by the same
person MUST be garbage?  Oh, sure, you have to consider the source, but that's
certainly not sufficient to single-handedly blow away a statement.

>I don't think that even farthing@leland.Stanford.EDU (ljf) will try
>to defend such opinions in a non-moderated forum, so I wonder why
>she tried to give us such false impression about MacKinnon?

Maybe she won't, but I have.  :-)

>And to a related issue:
>
>In article <1992Sep28.200059.1@vms.cis.pitt.edu> tjw+@pitt.edu writes:
>%If you want examples of men's groups being seen as threatening to women's
>%groups, get a subscription to Playboy.  (Check out the copies for the blind
>%at the local library if the pictures offend you).
>
>Terry, what offends *good* feminists like MacKinnon is not only the
>pictures, but also the articles.  I quote again from farthing's
>recommended source of garbage:
>
>#From feminist perspective, what exactly does _Playboy_ do?  It takes a 
>#woman and makes her sexuality into something any man who wants to can
>#buy and hold in his hands for three dollars and fifty cents.  His access
>#to her sexuality is called freedom - his *and hers*.  She becomes 
>#something to be used by him, especially, an object for his sexual use.
>#Think of it this way.  A cup is part of the object world, valued 
>#according to its looks and for how it can be used.  If someone breaks it,
>#maybe that is considered an abuse, or maybe it is briefly mourned and then
>#replaced.  But using it does not violate anything, because that is what
>#it is for.  _Playboy_ as a standard means that to use a woman sexually
>#does not violate her nature because it expresses her nature; it is what
>#she is *for*.  To criticize _Playboy_ as a standard for how a woman 
>#should be treated is to say something very simple: a woman is not a cup,
>#and her sexuality isn't either.
>#
>#What _Playboy_ does to women is very carefully legitimized, both inside
>#and outside the magazine.  _Playboy_'s articles push their views, 
>#including their views of the First Amendment, in an expressly sexualized
>#context, and at the same time those articles serve to legitimize what
>#their pictures do to women.  Masturbating over the positions taken by
>#the women's bodies associates male orgasm with the positions expressed
>#in the articles.  Ever wonder why men are so passionate about the First
>#Amendment?  At the same time the articles help make it seem legitimate
>#to treat women the way _Playboy_ does, because the articles are so
>#legitimate.  The sex contextualized the articles and the articles
>#contextualized the sex.

The statement seems to me to be cogent and relatively well-thought-out.
It certainly has some flaws, but as it's rather long and complex I wish you had
expressed your (sort of) labeling it as garbage.

I was going to make a valiant attempt at second-guessing you, and *then*
responding to those, but since I don't find _Playboy_ objectionable, it was too
hard for me.  I *do* understand, somewhat, what the objections are, and agree
that _Playboy_ really shouldn't exist in that better world we all yearn for.
(Or at least that it would be so radically different as to not be _Playboy_
anymore.)  But, I don't think cencorship is a valid answer.  Anyway, my point
is that if you want somebody to defend the opinions expressed (or at least 
discuss them with you) I don't know where to start unless you specifically
outline your disagreements.
[It's quite probably that my answer will just be agreed on this, anyway.]


>"WAVMP has yet to make any public statements in support of gay rights, sex
>education in schools, birth control and abortion, children's right to sexual
>information and freedom, decriminalization of prostitution or civil rights of
>sexual minorities.  They continue to grow larger to grow larger, more powerful
>and more pro-censorship and antisex in their positions.  Few members of the
>liberal press will risk opposing or criticizing them because they travel under
>the protective, self-applied label `feminist'.  It is obvious that no one in
>the conservative press will oppose them, either - unless they get too public
>about having a large lesbian membership." 
[Attribution which is NOT, repeat NOT, Hillel (sp?) Gazit, accidentally del'd]

Which group is WAVMP?  Why would they be expected to make statements on these
issues?

How are:
gay rights,
sex ed in schools,
children's right to sex info and freedom, and
civil rights of sexual minorities
(presumably gay, lesbian, bisexual, and polyamorous [tried real hard not to
miss any, probably did])
feminist issues anyway?

Ed note:
I have intentionally left out the 2 that I believed to *be* feminist, others
may differ, natch.

The various political groups at all ends and in the middle of the spectrum have
long been non-cooperative, even when they shoulda.  What else is new?
-- 
"TANSTAAFL"     lynch@aristotle.ils.nwu.edu
Newsgroups: alt.feminism