“Unsettling in the best sort of way, Are Women Human? shows her to be not only a prodigiously creative feminist thinker who can see the world from a fresh angle like nobody else (and I mean the angle of reality, as opposed to the usual one of half-reality) but also one of our most creative thinkers about international law. As elsewhere in MacKinnon's work, we find plenty of trenchant and eloquent writing; but we also find more systematic analysis and more extensive scholarship than we sometimes get, and the book is the richer for it.”
Martha Nussbaum reviews Catharine MacKinnon's work in
The Nation this week.
However, MacKinnon as known to her friends and critics alike, is not beyond scathing criticism, worst of which, from feminist circles themselves. Even Nussbaum herself is not fully convinced by Mackinnon’s several arguments. She writes:
About some of MacKinnon's specific claims, however, I have doubts. I wonder, for example, whether her expressed preference for civil over criminal law as a vehicle for pressing sex-equality claims is not unduly influenced by the particular success of her strategy in Kadic v. Karadzic. She is certainly right that criminal laws are frequently underenforced, and that when criminal prosecution is impossible, a civil suit may be a victim's only way of attaining justice. But that doesn't show that civil remedies ought in general to be "favored"; and surely women's lives will not improve much unless and until the criminal law in the place where they live has become both adequate in its content (defining rape appropriately, recognizing that it can take place in marriage, etc.) and adequately enforced.
……
MacKinnon sometimes comes quite close to saying that the modern state is a sexist relic that has had its day. Surely, however, the state is the largest unit we know of so far that is decently accountable to people's voices, and thus it is bound to be of critical importance for women seeking to make their voices heard. I think there is also a moral argument for the state: It is a unit that expresses the human choice to live together under laws of one's own choosing. Once again, it is the largest unit we yet know that expresses this fundamental human aspiration. A world state, should it exist, would either be too dictatorial, imposing on Indians and South Africans and Canadians alike a Constitution that each group might like to determine and fine-tune separately, or else it would be little more than a charade, as some international agreements are today.
…..
MacKinnon is a lawyer, and her imagination has always been galvanized by the experiences of women in specific legal situations, whether they are her formal clients or not: the plaintiffs in the landmark sexual harassment cases, the victims of abuse in the pornography industry whose testimony is gathered in her book In Harm's Way, the Bosnian women she recently represented. I think that this powerful empathy explains why she is impatient with the slow work of Constitution-making and Constitution-changing that is required for sex equality at the state level, and drawn to the more personal and informal encounters among women in the international women's movement. If the state has in many ways been deaf to women's voices, however, why should she believe that--without changing the nature of each liberal state, one by one--women can get good results at the international level? Surely the two levels need to work in tandem, informing each other. And both need to be informed by grassroots work at the most local level, as India's democracy has been powerfully influenced recently by the insights and achievements of women who now, by constitutional amendment, hold one-third of the seats in the panchayats, or local village councils.
So what is it that makes MacKinnon so fiercely volatile? What is so politically incorrect about her that appears so socially relevant nevertheless? Between administrative research and critical research traditions, we are aware that the larger battles of ideas are within the critical strands. But why is it that MacKinnon often upsets even the critical scholars so much that she does to feminism what Marx would have done to Marxism: to proclaim as Zinn’s Soho would have showcased: “I am not a Marxist”!
MacKinnon upsets the reviewer of The Nation (and you can say, that of Mother Jones, and The Progressive, and Democracy Now) through her sheer radical propositions that are still by and large missed out by most of liberals of the day today. By refusing to view feminism within the narrow framework of men-women equality, or through constitutional changes of existing systems of oppression, MacKinnon applies a “false consciousness” theory on most liberal feminists even of the third wave, that’s discomforting at times, and results in cognitive dissonance at others.
MacKinnon is a lawyer no doubt, but Nussbaum’s perception that her “imagination has always been galvanized by the experiences of women in specific legal situations” is far from the truth. In fact, a close reading of MacKinnon’s works would suggest quite the reverse. She may have won accolades from the legal profession and practice of academics. But she knows best that her efforts are directed essentially against these very ‘superstructures’ that guard the interest of the state in very sophisticated manner. For example, MacKinnon does not seek mere constitutional reforms, despite Bosnia case, rather she seeks a thoroughbred replacement of the structure that’s inherently sexist in nature. This was the reason why she has to radically project heterosexual relationships as patriarchal sexist exploitation of women, and pornography as abuse of women. Unlike the conservatives who pose as moral guardians by reforming the law in order to censor some obscene movies, she calls for declaration of pornography as sexual oppression by definition.
MacKinnon for example, is not interested in some state laws in favor of women, so that the country can be glorified as being progressive, for she knows well that, exploitation of women is a matter of human order of power equation that needs changes, not a matter of ill-informed judges.
That’s the reason why MacKinnon does not seek equality among sexes. She has, right from her championing against sexual harassment at workplace, always pointed out in various ways how there is inequality among women and men, that must require revolutionary replacement of order. For example, women get pregnant, men do not.
MacKinnon, like Marx for workers, seeks the solidarity of women across borders, and nation-states. What women stand to lose is nothing. What they stand to gain is an upper echelon in a new society that would be governed by women themselves. She is not seeking representation of women in the local village councils of India as Nussbaum envisages as a positive step, rather MacKinnon says not to fight the master with masters’ tools to begin with.
Why she prefers civil laws over criminal ones is precisely for this reason. It is in the body of the existing structure to be sexist by nature, not of some isolated actions somewhere. Feminists are divided over the punishment levels in cases of rape. There are debates about capital punishment for rapists. MacKinnon is not worried over why some women do not resent rape. She is worried why most women accept it to begin with. For she feels, marriage as a social institution promotes rape, as it plays into a legal system that defines rape—based on ‘consent’! She indicates that rape is not just violation of women’s body, but also encroachment of another man’s property, i.e., the women who is not the wife of the man, in most cases. The consent, she knows, she will not receive from many women she seeks to represent (because of what Marx would call false consciousness) but she fights on their behalf and hers, nevertheless.
A criminal act such as abuse of women at workplace and warplace is not a premeditated act of heinous nature initiated by some ill-meaning oppressing men. No, MacKinnon does not think so. She believes that men are geared up, and grown up, and cheered into becoming rapists by the existing socio-political system. Indeed, men just reflect the class character of their privilege by abusing women everyday.
MacKinnon has been controversial and been condemned by many conservatives for her outspoken ‘rhetorics’. But what is more disturbing is the lack of understanding that still continues to prevail within feminist circles whom she perceives as potential comrades, about her views. The issue is not reform or change, the issue is replacement of order. Issue is not that homosexuality is a matter of debate, the issues is heterosexuality is the root cause of the oppression. The issue is not if men are welcome into the women’s movement, the issue is if women are victims of a notion of liberation offered to them by men on a sexist plate that looks palatable but works to maintain the male domination in place.
As MacKinnon herself has said,
“When I speak of male dominance, I mean …. the facts have to do with the rate of rape and attempted rape of American women, which is 44 per cent...Some 4.5 percent of all women are victims of incest by their fathers, an additional 12 per cent by other male family members, rising to a total of 43 per cent of all girls before they reach the age of 18...If you ask women whether they’ve been sexually harassed in the last two years, about 15 percent report very serious or physical assaults; about 85 per cent of all working women report sexual harassment at some time in their working lives. Between a quarter and a third of all women are battered by men in the family. If you look at homicide data, between 60 and 70 percent of murdered women have been killed by a husband, lover, or ex-lover...About 12 percent of American women are or have been prostitutes.”
The issue is to notice the real failures of male domination, not perceived sustainable progresses. Because revolutions are not brought about in a gradual peaceful manner!
