Butterfly Politics

by Catharine A. MacKinnon

The minuscule motion of a butterfly's wings can trigger a tornado half a world away, according to chaos theory. Under the right conditions, small simple actions can produce large complex effects. In this timely and provocative book, Catharine A. MacKinnon argues that the right seemingly minor interventions in the legal realm can have a butterfly effect that generates major social and cultural transformations.

Butterfly Politics brings this incisive understanding of social causality to a wide-ranging exploration of gender relations. The pieces collected here many published for the first time provide a new perspective on MacKinnon's career as a pioneer of legal theory and practice and an activist for women s rights. Its central concerns of gender inequality, sexual harassment, rape, pornography, and prostitution have defined MacKinnon's intellectual, legal, and political pursuits for over forty years. Though differing in style and approach, the selections all share the same motivation: to end inequality, including abuse, in women s lives. Several mark the first time ideas that are now staples of legal and political discourse appeared in public for example, the analysis of substantive equality. Others urge changes that have yet to be realized.

The butterfly effect can animate political activism and advance equality socially and legally. Seemingly insignificant actions, through collective recursion, can intervene in unstable systems to produce systemic change. A powerful critique of the legal and institutional denial of reality that perpetuates practices of gender inequality, Butterfly Politics provides a model of what principled, effective, socially conscious engagement with law looks like.

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Politics, Philosophy, Feminist Theory, Womens, Gender

504 pages, Hardcover

Published April 17, 2017

About the author

Catharine A. MacKinnon is the Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan and the James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School (long-term). She holds a BA from Smith College, a JD from Yale Law School, and a PhD in political science from Yale, and specializes in sex equality issues under international and domestic (including comparative and constitutional) law.

Prof. MacKinnon pioneered the legal claim for sexual harassment and, with Andrea Dworkin, created ordinances recognizing pornography as a civil rights violation and the Swedish model for abolishing prostitution. The Supreme Court of Canada has largely accepted her approaches to equality, pornography, and hate speech, which have been influential internationally as well. Representing Bosnian women survivors of Serbian genocidal sexual atrocities, she won with co-counsel a damage award of $745 million in August 2000 in Kadic v. Karadzic under the Alien Tort Act, the first recognition of rape as an act of genocide.

(source: law.umich.edu)

Reviews

[Kaushik · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an amazing introduction to Catharine MacKinnon's radical feminist ideas, and how even small and strategic interventions in the legal system can and have paved the way for sex equality for women. Her work with the law on rape, sexual harassment and rape as a weapon on war and genocide is indispensable, and highly prudent.

There are some aspects I disagree STRONGLY with, especially her analysis of sex work (her analysis gets very SWERFy and uncomfortable), however - she made me rethink my stances in ways I had not foreseen. Mackinnon is a gifted writer, writing with great clarity and prescience on matters of utmost and alarming importance. Her vision of sex inequality as subordination and oppression is valuable.

The chapters I enjoyed the most were - 2, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 15, 18, 20, 25, 28.

This book is a must read for any and every law student who wishes to understand questions of sex equality, and wishes to fight for it. I hope you find it as informative and inspiring as I did.

[Rita]

NOT TO READ, but to carry some notes:

LRB Jan 2018: "At her best -- in 'To Change the World for Women' [article not book], MacKinnon makes explicit her recognition that the LAW is just one of the tools at the disposal of women who want to change the world, and that it is one with significant limitations." [MK is a lawyer]

MK and her "close collaborator Andrea Dworkin take on the pornographers..."
They urge us to see that:

in societies saturated with pornography, we see domination as sexy
we see violence and torture as sex
we see coercion and abuse as 'choice' or 'speech'.
In prevailing liberal approaches to law and philosophy, inequality appears as 'mere difference';
what reflects and serves the interests of men appears as universal or 'gender neutral'.

MK has been criticized for being soft on Israel.

[Mairead · Rating 4 out of 5]

A revelation to quote RBG

[emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

first book from catharine mackinnon, i watched her lecture on prostitution and knew i had to read one of her books. the essay “on torture” is one of the best, i definitely want to read some of her other works, maybe i will read one a little less law heavy next because i am not that versed on american law and codes

“In isolation, in image, butterflies are delicate, vulnerable, even fragile. They can be reduced to decoration or flit by overlooked. In life, their endurance and power lies in collectivity. On its journey, a butterfly can be smashed against a windshield or die of lack of nutrition or be collected and categorized, pinned in a box. But what butterflies together-sometimes even one-can set in motion cannot be stopped”

[Ebrown3 · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.8 ⭐️