From: gazit@duke.cs.duke.edu (Hillel Gazit)
Newsgroups: alt.feminism,soc.men,alt.sex
Subject: Catharine MacKinnon, Playboy and feminist propaganda (Was: Value of...)
Date: 1 Oct 92 05:26:37 GMT
Reply-To: gazit@cs.duke.edu (Hillel)
Followup-To: alt.feminism
Organization: Nefolet shel nemushot (Fallout of Wimps)

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:

#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.

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...)

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?

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.

Hillel                                      gazit@cs.duke.edu

"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." 
   --  ("AMONG US, AGAINST US the new puritans", Pat Califia)
Newsgroups: alt.feminism