From: sheaffer@netcom.com (Robert Sheaffer)
Subject: Re: MacKinnon (was Re: Please explain this quote)
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1992 00:56:06 GMT

In article <1992Nov3.080955.22573@netcom.com> barry@netcom.com (Kenn Barry) writes:
>>gf:
>>MacKinnon writes books.  I take it they contain something.
>>I suspect that I would find some of her ideas bad, and
>>possibly others good, or at least interesting.
>
>	I don't know if MacKinnon _has_ written any books, though I
>suppose there must be something out under her name. She's a law
>professor and lecturer. She writes legal articles, and has her talks
>published. Would you like some of it? Probably. Judging by your

Oh, indeed she has written several books. One of them is "Feminism
Unmodified," which I'd love to see, but haven't located yet. Another
is "Toward a Feminist Theory of the State" (Harvard Univ. Press, 1989).

In it, MacKinnon starts out with "Feminism and Marxism" (you didn't
think that a "feminist theory of the state" would be otherwise,
did you?) She starts with a quote from Heidi Hartmann and Amy
Bridges, "Marxism and feminism are one, and that one is Marxism."
MacKinnon does not really disagree with this, and goes on to provide
a "Feminist Critique of Marx and Engels" (they liberated the proletariat,
but ignored women), and a "Marxist Critique of Feminism" (they liberated
women, but left the male proletariat still in chains), followed by
an attempt at synthesis. Yep, that's correct, folks - a big feminist
honcho builds her intellectual foundation on "Marxist theory" in the year
that Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe, yet people STILL think she's
looking toward the future rather than stuck in the past!.

In later chapters, she shares with us her wisdom about Rape and
Pornography.  Some interesting quotes:

    Under law, rape is a sex crime that is not regarded as a crime
    when it looks like sex... Like heterosexuality, male supremacy's
    paradigm of sex, the crime of rape centers on penetration ...
    Womens' sexuality is, socially, a thing to be stolen, sold,
    bought, bartered, or exchanged by others. But women never own
    or possess it, and men never treat it, in law or in life, with
    the solicitude with which they treat peoperty. To be property
    would be an improvement. The moment women "have" it - "have
    sex" in the dual gender/sexuality sense, it is lost as theirs.
    To have it is to have it taken away. [??????] (p. 172-3)

    Perhaps the wrong of rape has proved so difficult to define 
    because the unquestionable starting point has been that rape is
    defined as difficult from intercourse, while for women it is
    difficult to distinguish the two under conditions of male
    dominance.  (p. 174)

    Almost half of all women, by contrast, are raped or victims of
    attempted rape at least once in their lives. Almost 40 percent 
    are victims of sexual abuse in childhood. [!!!!!!!] (p. 174)

    men are systematically conditioned not even to notice what women
    want. Especially if they conume pornography, they may not have
    a glimmer of women's indifference or revulsion, including when
    women say no explicitly. (p. 181)

    A feminist inquiry into the dstinction between rape and intercourse,
    by contrast, would inquire into the distinction from women's point
    of view, which is neither. What is wrong with rape in this view is
    that it is an act of subordination of women to men. (p. 182)

    What is it reasonable for a man to believe concerning a woman's
    desire for sex when heterosexuality is compulsory? What is
    reasonable for a man (accused or juror) too believe concerning
    a woman's consent when he has been viewing positive-outcome rape
    pornography? (p.183)

    The theory of the First Amendment under which most pornography
    is protected from governmental restriction proceeds from liberal
    assumptions that do not apply to the situation of women. (p. 204)

    So while the First Amendment supports pornography on the belief
    that concensus and progress are facilitated by allowing all
    views, however divergent and unorthodox, it fails to notice that
    pornography (like the racism, including anti-Semitism, of the
    Nazis and the Klan) is not at all divergent or unorthodox. It is
    the ruling ideology. Feminism, the dissenting view, is suppressed
    by pornography. Thus, while defenders of pornography argue that
    allowing all speech, including pornography, frees the mind to
    fulfill itself, pornography freely enslaves women's minds and
    bodies inseparably, normalizing the terror that enforces silence
    on women's point of view. In liberalism, speech must never be
    sacrificed for other social goals. But liberalism has never
    understood this reality of pornography: the free so-called speech
    of men silences the free speech of women. (p. 205)

    The law of the First Amendment comprehends that freedom of expression,
    in the abstract, is a system but fails to comprehend that sexism (and
    racism), in the concrete are also systems. As a result, it cannot
    grasp that the speech of some silences the speech of others in a
    way that is not simply a matter of competition for airtime. That
    pornography chills women's expression is difficult to demonstrate
    empirically because silence is not eloquent. (p.206)

If the paragraphs discussing "pornography" seem to make no sense, it is
probably because the reader is unfamiliar with the technique that Marxists
call "the Dialectic," which enables one to prove anything one wishes
by demonstrating that everything both is, and is not, the same as 
its opposite. (This is what Orwell was parodying when he wrote "War
is Peace", "Freedom is Slavery", etc.). MacKinnon is trying to argue
here that freedom for men means repression for women.

So: MacKinnon builds her intellectual foundation on the theories of
Marx and Engels. She savages heterosexuality, saying that all sex is
rape. She is willing, even eager, to jettison the First Amendment to
suppress so-called "pornography". She is *already* dictating how you
are allowed to behave in your workplace, and in Canada she is now
dictating what you may read or see.

And you thought that Marxist totalitarianism was dying or dead!  
    
-- 
  
        Robert Sheaffer - Scepticus Maximus - sheaffer@netcom.com
  
 Past Chairman, The Bay Area Skeptics - for whom I speak only when authorized!

       "Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.
        Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has
        broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is safe, or
        where it will end."
                               - Emerson: Essay, "Circles"
Xref: sparky alt.feminism:3673 soc.men:18636 soc.women:18807