Toward a Feminist Theory of the State

by Catharine A. MacKinnon

Toward a Feminist Theory of the State presents Catharine MacKinnon’s powerful analysis of politics, sexuality, and the law from the perspective of women. Using the debate over Marxism and feminism as a point of departure, MacKinnon develops a theory of gender centered on sexual subordination and applies it to the state. The result is an informed and compelling critique of inequality and a transformative vision of a direction for social change.

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

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

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

[Manny · Rating 4 out of 5]

On First Reading Catherine MacKinnon, or, A Middle-Aged White Dude Mansplains Feminist Theory

Before I started this book, I expected it to be a polemic. I was surprised to discover that it is actually a work of philosophy. It has its roots in Marxism - which, unfortunately, I don't know at all - but quickly branches out into its own direction.

I can see from the other reviewers that not everyone likes the idea of starting with Marxism, but the author makes it seem logical. Marxism, as even I know, is centered on the concept of work. Simplifying to a kindergarten level, some social classes work, and other social classes get the benefit of that work, which one intuitively feels is wrong. In the book's memorable opening sentence, MacKinnon tells us that sexuality is to feminism what work is to Marxism: that which is most one's own, yet most taken away. Again simplifying to a kindergarten level, men fuck women. Some of the women may want to be fucked, but a great many of them don't, yet get fucked anyway. And once more, one intuitively feels that this is wrong.

MacKinnon starts off in the first part of the book by explaining why a coherent analysis doesn't work inside a Marxist framework. Marx and Engels, it seems, had confused ideas about gender roles. She then gives her own analysis, which I found extremely interesting. I can't decide yet whether I'm prepared to buy it, but it certainly passes my test for what constitutes worthwhile philosophy: it forced me to think about things in a new way. MacKinnon's analysis of feminism doesn't center on the concept of class, but rather on the concept of "objectification". Although the word is one that's frequently bandied about, I was surprised to discover that I apparently didn't know what it meant. I'd naively imagined it meant the process of reducing women to sex objects. This is a part of it, but in fact the idea is much more wide-ranging.

So what is "objectification"? It turns out that it's intimately connected to "objectivity", and to the process of "objective thinking". In another memorable passage, MacKinnon summarizes the key connections as follows:

Objectivity is the methodological stance of which objectification is the social process. Sexual objectification is the primary process of the subjection of women. It unites act with word, construction with expression, perception with enforcement, myth with reality. Man fucks woman; subject verb object.

What does this mean? I'm still not sure I get it - but right now, here's how I would paraphrase her claim. "Objectivity", or "objective thought", is sold as the process by which one understands the world in a way that is independent of the observer, and in particular of the gender of the observer. It is supposed to be the way one understands the world as it is. If one is not objective, one is at best subjective and at worst delusional.

The problem is that "objective" thought doesn't in fact give a picture of the world that is independent of the identity and gender of the observer. It gives a picture of the world as understood by men, since it has been developed by men. In particular, it gives a picture of sexuality and gender as understood by men. This includes the ideas that what is sexy is what men find sexy; what is appropriate or normal in sexual relationships is what men consider appropriate or normal in sexual relationships; what actually happens during sexual relationships is what men consider happens during sexual relationships. So, for example, since men eroticise dominance and submission and find it sexy to be dominant, women must objectively find it sexy to be submissive; since men obtain sexual pleasure from vaginal penetration, women must objectively get sexual pleasure from being vaginally penetrated; since men enjoy pornography and do not consider that it infringes anybody's civil rights, pornography cannot objectively infringe anybody's civil rights; since men consider than women are often fantasizing when they claim that they have been raped and abused, women have objectively not been raped and abused in these situations; since the law, which has been almost entirely constructed by men, considers that women are treated equally, women are objectively treated equally.

I find a great deal of this convincing, but I still have trouble accepting the whole system. In particular, I have trouble accepting the idea that objective thought is a bad thing, which seems to be what she's saying here. I absolutely agree that what people call objective thought may not be objective at all. But what is the real alternative to objectivity? Surprisingly often, she mentions quantum mechanics; she suggests that male thought is classical, referring to an objective reality, while female thought is quantum mechanical, referring to a reality which depends on the observer. I don't feel very happy with this line of reasoning. It's a rather naive characterization of quantum mechanics, which doesn't deny the existence of an objective reality, just the possibility of directly observing it; second, sexual relations occur in the macro-world, where quantum-level phenomena are not relevant. If it's just an analogy, then what is the thing that's analogous to quantum mechanics? Why is there no reality that can be directly observed, even in principle? And I'm also doubtful about the wider implications of her analysis of sex. She frequently objects to the eroticisation of dominance and submission, and says this is essentially male; but at the same time, she says that men find some element of dominance and submission essential to sex, even if they are the submissive partner, and that lesbian couples also find dominance and submission sexy. She never really says what the alternative is. What is this female form of sex, where dominance and submission play no part?

So I'm to some degree sceptical, which is my usual response to philosophy - but at the same time, I find the questions being asked both intellectually fascinating and of burning importance. Professor MacKinnon, you've convinced me that I need to learn more about feminism. I'm going to look around for further reading.
_____________________

[Update, Jul 15 2018]

Adam Becker's excellent book What is Real? , which I read last week, intersects in an interesting way with MacKinnon's arguments. As noted above, I was intuitively unhappy about MacKinnon's claims regarding quantum mechanics. Becker's detailed account lets me be more precise about my grounds for unhappiness.

In fact, the situation is considerably worse than I had thought. It's not just dubious to claim that quantum mechanics denies the existence of an objective reality; it turns out that that whole philosophical position is one which was created by a small group of powerful white men, and maintained using methods which in many cases have been unethical in the extreme. To increase the irony even further, a key counterargument was found at an early stage by a female physicist, Grete Hermann. Hermann's ideas were completely ignored by the scientific community, and only became known when they were independently rediscovered twenty years later by a male physicist.

This certainly drives home how difficult it is to escape from the privileged white male point of view. So at a deeper level, Becker's story can perhaps equally well be read as supporting MacKinnon rather than undermining her.

[C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a difference four years and a lot of reading makes.
_____________________________
I'm mainly giving this four stars because I LOVED the chapter on methodology. Also the last chapter was great - and, finally, clear! - which left me well disposed towards the book as a whole.

But really, I have come to value clarity above all else, and this was not clear at all, on the whole. I would have loved some sub-headings, and to not have had to experience the feeling that the explanation was going to come in the next sentence, or the next - or the next. Seriously, when you say something that is as absurd at face value as "hierarchy came before difference" (paraphrasing) you should explain what you mean. Preferably immediately. Sure, from having read other feminism I can guess at what she means, but I would like to know for sure. And I know some of this comes from my lack of familiarity with philosophy, but not all, I am sure.

[AMS · Rating 5 out of 5]

Did not understand like half of the Marxist analysis. She had some banger quotes in there. A lot of it was a bit repetitive. I still don’t know the answer to my essay question. Good thing I didn’t read this in high school or I would’ve been absolutely insufferable.

[Paul Crider · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was predisposed to dislike this book given my liberal outlook. So my review of three stars means it actually exceeded my expectations. I think overall it offers some valuable insights.

First the good stuff. I appreciated her discussion early in the book about the differences between radical and liberal feminism. The more feminist theory I read the more difficult I find it to distinguish between the two approaches in a way that doesn't leave someone or some topics on the chopping block. In general I think that liberal feminists have addressed many of the valid concerns she addresses, such as situatedness and the social construction of sexuality. Her point that neutrality and an emphasis on negative rights camouflage and maintain status quo male supremacy was described in a novel way, but it's an argument I was introduced to by feminist liberals.

MacKinnon's discussion of the "wages for housework" critique/movement was one of my favorite parts of the book, and perhaps one of the strongest arguments against liberalism she makes. If we associate liberal with incremental, it's very hard to see how we could get from the current model where housework is not remunerated within the market mechanism to one where it is.

One of the weak parts of the book for me was the long introductory chapters on Marxism and feminism. I realize it's integral to her world view and her departure point for "unmodified" feminism, but she takes so much for granted from such a deeply misguided ideology that it was difficult for me to take her seriously for the first four chapters.

Ultimately what I find flawed in MacKinnon's feminism is what I have called its hermeneutical closure. She offers an interpretation of sexuality, pornography, etc based on her understanding of women as a class that is deaf to all alternative interpretations that individual women might offer based on their idiosyncratic beliefs and histories. This closed system offers no hope for dismantling gender hierarchy. Any reform, any evolution in norms and beliefs, can be interpreted as a reaction to and thus yet another perpetuation of male dominance. It's a similar phenomenon to the Christian fundamentalist tactic of suggesting the Devil has planted evidence to tempt us away from faith in God. I've written a more extensive version of this argument here.

[Liz]

I was just writing an essay about the public sphere which reminded me of how much I really really want to read this. I started it a couple of years ago and got sidetracked but it looked awesome. I disagree with MacKinnon on a lot of shit but she's probably the capital-R radical feminist I find the most intellectually stimulating and provocative. there's babies in that bathwater.

[Thomas Essel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I originally wrote a very long review for this book and when I went to post it, Goodreads crashed. So here is a much shorter version, beginning with a passage that I think sums up MacKinnon’s argument:

“Women often find ways to resist male supremacy and to expand their spheres of action. But they are never free of it. Women also embrace the standards of women’s place in this regime as ‘our own’ to varying degrees and in varying voices—as affirmation of identity and right to pleasure, in order to be loved and approved and paid, in order just to make it through another day. This, not inert passivity, is the meaning of being a victim. The term is not moral: who is to blame or to be pitied or condemned or held responsible. It is not prescriptive: what we should do next. It is not strategic: how to construe the situation so it can be changed. It is not emotion: what one feels better thinking. It is descriptive: who does what to whom and gets away with it” (pg. 138).

This book is a theory of power. It is not a theory of male power over females, though it is that too, but a theory about how power actually functions in really existing society. MacKinnon demonstrates that the dominant theories of power, liberalism and left-Marxism, are totally inadequate for understanding the condition of females and, therefore, are inadequate for fully understanding the mechanisms of power itself. Feminism, MacKinnon argues, needs a theory of its own, epistemologically and ontologically distinct. The method of this theory is consciousness raising that exposes the cracks, fissures, and lies behind liberal and leftist promises of equality and egalitarianism. It is in these cracks and fissures that the true nature of power is found: power is domination, domination is eroticized from the male perspective. Domination is experienced as sexuality, and through this it is naturalized and normalized. The method of patriarchy is rape and coercion.

MacKinnon brilliantly shows how at every turn the state reproduces male domination and female subordination. The legal apparatuses surrounding rape, abortion, pornography, and sex equality achieve this by adopting the already dominant male perspective, calling that perspective objectivity, and then actualizing that objectivity by reflecting society back onto itself through state action. “The state is male in the feminist sense: the saw sees and treats women the way men see and treat women….Relatively seamlessly [courts] promote the dominance of men as a social group through privileging the form of power—the perspective on social life—which feminist consciousness reveals as socially male” (pg. 162).

Before reading this book, be sure to have a basic understanding of what constitutes liberalism and Marxism. Otherwise, some of the argumentation will be difficult to follow. I stopped and started this book ten times over the last four years precisely because I didn’t have the knowledge base from which to begin. Hopefully, that doesn’t scare off potential readers. I say it only because the arguments in this book are so fundamentally important for understanding the nature of power. So, go read the great political theorists, then pick up this book to find out how and why they are blind.

[Haley · Rating 5 out of 5]

The theory is extreme but provocative and definitely groundbreaking - written in 1989 but definitely still a must-read for anyone interested in law or trying to understand the structural bases of sex inequality. There is room to challenge and converse with her ideas but they do demand some kind of response. Ideally would be read in conjunction with the theory of black feminists (e.g. bell hooks and Patricia Hill Collins) along with theorists who emphasize the way gender ideologies harm/stratify different groups of men (e.g. RW Connell) as she isn't yet able to fully consider issues of power/hierarchy/difference within each gender category in the context of attempting to sketch out the beginning of a feminist jurisprudence that generally takes men and women as cohesive groups, at least relative to one another.

[Mystical Turnip · Rating 5 out of 5]

the most rigorous and cogent feminist author i’ve read. i think having read other authors like kate millet, juliet mitchell, dworkin, firestone, etc. will increase your appreciation of this text, but it’s not necessary. however, i do think having a basic understanding of engels’ ideas/marxist method will really enhance your experience of her critiques in the earlier sections, which were some of my favourites. she stands liberalism on its head in every chapter.

[Zach · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably the most depressing book I've ever read.

[sube · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book seeks to create a "feminism unmodified", i.e. a postmarxist Feminism - as such the first part of the book is broadly a discussion of the contradictions of feminism and marxism, explaining the limits of each on its own, and arguing that either gender or class is primary - with the author, Mackinnon, ultimately stating that gender is primary. The criticisms levied against Marx are in part good and convincing, however others are more questionable; if the author engaged more with Marx's neglect of the role of women (and children) in the industrial workforce at the time it would have been a stronger criticism. The argument of ultimate tension between both is, however, convincing.

The second part is a discussion of feminism's method, specifically consciousness-raising, and how from this follows views of male power, as well as feminism being the "reconstitution of the meaning of women's social experience." (p. 83) It is quite interesting and helped make me better define what feminism *is*.

The third part is an argument against Liberal Feminism and an attempt at creating a theory of the state from the viewpoint of feminism - with the state being defined as not neutral but specifically male-, which the author argues both Marxism and Liberalism lacks, and applying it to topics such as abortion, rape, pornograpy, etc. The discussions are very good and how 'objectivity' serves to hide structural oppression, as it cannot be by law then tasked as it only deals with individuals.

The concluding chapter is about the necessity of a "feminist jurispudence", which exploits the tension between the assumption of gender equality and the lack of it within societal structure - ultimately, a conclusion I disagree with as this being possible, due to the author wrongly giving law too much autonomy from society.

[Mona · Rating 5 out of 5]

I believe you could hardly find a feminist critique of the world we live in that is more thorough than MacKinnon's. She eloquently describes the different levels of women's oppression under patriarchy, from societal to legal aspects. The book is a collection of texts that touch on a broad range of subjects. The firs part about Marxism and feminism was very interesting, it sheds light on the failure of Marx and Engels to consider women's situation apart from the working class, as women are in fact oppressed by patriarchy, in addition to the capitalist system. The author also has the habit of making connections between subjects that is rather mind-blowing, like the one between psychoanalysis and pornography and how they legitimize each other. Really excellent book, will re-read it for sure.

[Stan · Rating 4 out of 5]

MacKinnon's critique of liberal law from a radical feminist perspective. This book had a pivotal influence on my own thinking. Her struggle to both apply and break with her self-described post-Marxism is all in here; and her description of liberal law as positing abstract equality to preserve actual inequality is devastating.

[Roxie Brookshire]

This view of feminism does not jive well with my own. I found the first section of the book to be overly dismissive of marxist-feminism and to ready to be foundationalist. The second part of the book seemed to be MacKinnon to ready to be the executor of my morality and I've been down that road too often at the hands of others who would claim to know my heart and mind better than I do.

[Ft. Sheridan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alternatively really dead on and not completely convincing, this was definitely worth reading--a pretty extensive, systematic, and provocative theory.

[Sophie Eastwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

um only read like 2 chapters of this for my theories of justice class but a banger. she's an icon and beating the essentialism allegations. like I love how she and crenshaw queen out

[Michael]

I'll limit my summary to chapter 10: "Abortion: On Public and Private." MacKinnon argues here that the liberal notion of privacy is detrimental to women because it keeps the state from intervening in a privat space that is still very public — or political/social in that patriarchal relations still exist in privacy. She uses abortion court cases to show that there is no inconsistency between abortion being legal because of the right to privacy and the state refusing to intervene to remove impediments to abortion access — because liberal privacy cordons off the private arena as a supposedly non-political arena where autonomous people act freely (190). To MacKinnon privacy is used to subordinate other rights (such as bodily integrity) "to specific social imperatives" (187) — thus why rape can be misrecognized as consensual if done in a private, intimate relationship. MacKinnon concludes that "for women there is ni private, either normatively or empirically. Feminism confronts the fact that women have no privacy to lose or guarantee" (191). Privacy protects autonomy, but does not ask in whose interest or benefit. Thus feminism needs to continue to disrupt the public/private dichotomy.

[Harper Prentice · Rating 4 out of 5]

So this was good and one of my first feminist lit books (rip the Audre Lorde book I left in the hotel when I got to England 💔). Basically she puts feminism in conversation w Marxism and then critiques the liberal state as an inherent extension of male domination. I would say that sometimes I don’t agree with her extreme claims (like the idea that all men desire and are turned on by the idea of raping a woman) but maybe that’s me being too generous to men. I also think there’s a general lack of intersectionality that inherently weakens her argument because she doesn’t even really acknowledge how race and sexuality can significantly alter the experiences of gender in a white male supremacist society. She did get me thinking critically about gender neutral laws and how that inherently hurts women and the protection of the “private sphere” as a concept that allows for the abuse and social marginalization of women. I’ll include some quotes I liked. I do think the theory just becomes too much for me & I think she lacks normative claims — this is more a book about what’s wrong with society and men rather than “toward a feminist theory of the state” but who am I to judge. I do think the critique that Marxism places sexism as a result of capitalism and class struggle is an important one — and it applies with race as well at least this idea that class is the primary divider between people before other categories but that’s for me to read more on. I also found the concept of “wages for housework” to be very interesting and while it has been engrained in me that housework is not something I should aspire to I thought it was really interesting and important argument that it is labor that deserves to be adequately compensated (orrrr does that further legitimize capitalism and the idea that work should be compensated for it to be considered legitimate…I.e. the Marxist argument that the family is not an economic sphere but that still leaves an unequal burden on women to be uncompensated and overburdened with emotional labor idk) … “to think that a wage compensates for value created is to idealize capitalism.”

“The Marxist criticism that feminism focuses upon feelings and attitudes is also based on something real: the importance to feminism of women’s own perception of their situation.”
“Through consciousness raising taken more broadly, women’s powerlessness was found to be both externally imposed and deeply internalized.”
“But to the materially deprived, the pain, isolation, and thingification of women who have been pampered and pacified into nonpersonhood is difficult to swallow as a form of oppression.”
For MacKinnon, Marx sees the man as selling his women and children into labor because of capitalism. But this supposes men have authority over women. —> “The introduction of machinery permitted the enrollment of ‘every member of the workman’s family, without distinction of age or sex,’ so the working man who had previously his own labor power ‘now sells his wife and child’ in addition. They do not even sell themselves; he sells them.”
“The rise of private property, class divisions, women’s oppression, and the state ‘coincided with’ and required each other, linking the exploitation of man by man in production and social control through the instrument t of the state with the subordination of woman to man in monogamy and household drudgery.”
“When the home was superseded by the marketplace as a productive center, the fact that women labored in the home ensured male supremacy.”
“To consider the home ‘private’ is to privatize women’s oppression and to render women’s status a question of domestic relations to be analyzed as a derivative of the public sphere, rather than setting the family within a totality characterized by a sexual division of power which divides both home and marketplace.”
“Women are said to value care. Perhaps women value care because men have valued women according to the care they give. Women are said to think in relation terms. Perhaps women think in relational terms because women’s social existence is defined in relation to men.”
“Realities hidden under layers of valued myth were unmasked simply by talking about what happens every day, such as the hard physical labor performed by the average wife and mother, the few women who feel strictly vaginal orgasms and the many who pretend they do.”
“Women learned that men see and treat women from their angle of vision, and they learned the content of that vision.”
“Patterns of treatment that would create feelings of incapacity in anybody are seen to connect seamlessly with acts of overt discrimination to deprive women of tools and skills, creating by force the status they are supposed to be destined for by anatomy.”
“For the first time, the question of what a woman is seems its ground in and of a world understood as neither of its making nor in its own image, and finds, within a critical embrace of woman’s fractured and alien image, the shadow world women have made and a vision of the possibility of equality.”
“Contemporary industrial society’s version of her [the woman] is docile, soft, passive, nurturant, vulnerable, weak, narcissistic, childlike incompetent, masochistic, and domestic, made for childcare, home care, and husband care. Conditioning to these values permeates the upbringing of girls and the images for emulation thrust upon women.”
“The overall objective of female conditioning is to make women perceive themselves and their lives through male eyes and so to secure their unquestioning acceptance of a male-defined and male-derived existence.”
“Representation of the world, like the world itself is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with absolute truth.”
“In women’s experience, sexuality and reproduction are inseparable from each other and from gender.”

[Jessica Kiss · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is almost impossible to comprehend the depth, patience and content necessary to write such a book. MacKinnon's knowledge on the law, feminism, marxism, liberalism and other ideologies is brilliantly combined to critique and make unprecedented remarks. While third wave feminism has debunked much of MacKinnon's discourse on defining gender/sex, her work (especially on pornography) remains very important to contemporary discussions.

MacKinnon is a revolutionary and I will hold this book dear to my heart for her passion and incredible academic contributions.

[Tapji Garba · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mackinnon is a very intense scholar, and her arguments are incisive and well-researched. While the themes might be a bit dated at times, i still think there is material here that makes an important intervention on matters pertaining to gender, sexuality, and political philosophy. Whether one agrees with her conclusions is one thing, but I think she -at the very least - raises a number of unavoidable questions.

[Jenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant and beautifully written. Insightful for me as a lawyer and as a woman. I especially liked the chapters on consciousness raising, methodology, the critique of the liberal state, and those on abortion and sex equality. Not to mention the portion on wages for housewives at the beginning!

I liked her thesis of focusing on hierarchy, dominance, and male supremacy rather than the sameness/difference approach of sex equality law, which still relies on the social reality of sex inequality.

[Astir · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunningly intellectual and a grand achievement; the codification of radical feminist politcs into post-marxist theory. One of the most impressive works of theory and one of the most impressive books I have read.

[John Davis · Rating 1 out of 5]

Mackinnon is considered one of the most influential feminists of the 20th century. She began writing in the 1970’s and expressed Marxist analysis on gender issues that she derived from academic influences from the Marxists of the Frankfurt School.

In her book on the feminist state, she adopts more than contemporary Marxist analysis, and openly includes the Soviet/Bolshevik formulas for feminism. She places particular emphasis on the feminist theories of Lenin and Trotsky.

Her book is divided into three main parts:

• Feminism, Marxism, and the Analysis of Power (Part I)
• Method: Consciousness-Raising and Women's Standpoint (Part II):
• Applications: Sexuality, Law, and the Male State (Part III):

The first part of her book is an expanded rewrite of one of her articles published in 1982: “Feminism, Marxism, Method and the State: An Agenda for Theory,” Signs, Vol. 7, No. 3, Feminist Theory (Spring, 1982), pp. 515-544.

In the first part of her analysis of power, MacKinnon adopts a classic fallacy of Marxism by taking observations of our culture out of context, and misrepresenting the abstracted observations as an accurate representation of reality. [vicious abstraction] She writes: “Sexuality is to feminism what work is to marxism [sic]: that which is most one's own, yet most taken away.

This raises the question: “Who is taking away women’s sexuality?” She goes on to explain that, in her Bolshevik views, any boundaries placed on women’s sexual behavior (including killing unborn babies in abortion) somehow usurps women’s sexuality. She completely omits that we also place heavy boundaries on men’s sexuality and sexual behavior. Even poorly educated people comprehend this cultural mechanism of sexual boundaries on men and women as a social contract permitting men and women to co-exist in a manner that is mutually productive for both.
MacKinnon is not burdened by such elementary concepts as the social contracts necessary for civilization and co-existence.

In MacKinnon’s view, women, and women alone, should have absolute control over the social contract between men and women. In her view, women and women alone should have the benefits of any social contract between men and women. In her view, men and men alone should have any burdens, risks, obligations, responsibilities and duties to richly compensate women for heterosexual activity. In her view, men are completely disposable except as servants for women, and society should tolerate nothing about men’s sexuality except to the extent that men are sperm donors and ATM machines for women.

Her views echo early British Marxists. For example, in a preface to Margaret Sanger’s first book on eugenics, “Women and the New Race,” Havelock Ellis, a radical and racist British feminist wrote: “Woman, by virtue of motherhood is the regulator of the birthrate, the sacred disposer of human production.” Sanger and MacKinnon adopted this false premise in full.

We know from current studies that it is men who are the regulator of the birthrate. If men do not have sex with women then the birthrate plummets. The birthrate is currently (in 2025) plummeting in all Western nations that have adopted MacKinnon’s Bolshevik feminist state. Men are not giving women sex because in our modern cultures, men have virtually no reproductive rights. Men, not women, are the regulators of the birthrate.

MacKinnon goes on to argue that any state should grant women, and women alone, absolute power and control over sexuality and reproduction. In her view, men are completely disposable in terms of sex and reproduction and only function to provide cash for women to exercise their absolute control over sex and reproduction.

The second part of her book is simply plagiarism of a French feminist’s ideas of women wailing in literature as a positive step towards women’s absolute control of gender issues. Hélène Cixous was the French feminist who loudly proclaimed that women need to express themselves in literature. She called for a new form of "écriture feminine" (women's writing)—a fluid, non-linear style that draws on female experiences, sexuality, and the body to challenge patriarchal language structures.

MacKinnon’s second part is simply a verbose version of Cixous’ 1975 essay “The Laugh of Medusa” with notions from Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex” intertwined.
MacKinnon’s views are saturated with hatred of men and androphobia. She implements her hatred of men and androphobia for all of her assumptions and premises.

In the third part of McKinnon’s book, she amplifies her rhetoric expressing hatred of men and androphobia to call for hyperbolic means of empowering women to punish men with proxy violence by the state. What MacKinnon proposes is that the state should assume the same role as the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and torture and lynch any man that a woman chooses to designate as a sexual miscreant. She argues that women, and women alone, should have the power to define sexual misconduct.

In summary, MacKinnon’s book is a work of hyperbolic misandry and androphobia that rests on Aristotelian fallacies as premises for her arguments and theories.

[Mariana P · Rating 5 out of 5]

yes.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent, truly a must-read for anyone interested in feminism or philosophy and the law. Mackinnon is a visionary thinker.

"Objectivity is the methodological stance of which objectification is the social process. Sexual objectification is the primary process of the subjection of women. It unites act with word, construction with expression, perception with enforcement, myth with reality. Man fucks woman; subject verb object"

"To the extent feminist law embodies women's point of view, it will be said that its law is not neutral. But existing law is not neutral. It will be said that it undermines the legitimacy of the legal system. But the legitimacy of existing law is based on force at women's expense...A feminist theory of the state has barely been imagined; systematically, it has never been tried."

[andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

MacKinnon supports plenty of her ideas —pertinent to radical feminist theory— through a simultaneous liberal approach; she situates herself in the middle of a spectrum of grays and not on a black-or-white mindset, which is useful given that the abolition of institutions such as law (or the State as we know it) isn’t happening anytime soon.

Unfortunately for the author, her area of expertise is, ultimately, what limits her perspective regarding women’s liberation. It is not MacKinnon’s fault — it’s simply something that happens when your ideas inhabit the world of legal studies. Having said that, it’s not surprising that some of the author’s ideals are those pertaining to libertarianism (see the trans issue), many of which are not explicitly mentioned throughout the book but definitely shape the way MacKinnon views the world and her place in it as a woman.

[Mariam Rawwas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well done. The legal scholarship background helps flesh a lot of this out, even if the "feminist theory of the state" nevertheless remains a bit undertheorized (hence the "toward a"). Very bold theses that underlie a lot of my thinking (so many quotables that really help highlight was has unfortunately become characterized as "anti-sex" feminism, though this is nothing of the sort), but rhetorically presented in a very rigorous manner, as opposed to the more "inflammatory" Dworkin approach.

[Melted Shine · Rating 5 out of 5]

The classic. This woman will make you a smarter, more well informed, more angry at about injustice and more passionate about fighting it. Catharine is incredible. She is as fierce and fearless a writer as she is brilliantly innovative, deeply researched, and profoundly both political and philosophical. Whenever I read her work, I feel new synapses forming and neurons awakening. You cannot go wrong with any of her books. This was my first.

[Emre vs. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Çeviri inanılmaz derecede kötü, mümkünse ingilizceden okunulmasını salık veriyorum.
Onun haricinde MacKinnon'ın abartı görüşlerinin çoğuna katılmasam da temel feminist kuram okuması gerçekleştirecek insanlar için faydalı olabileceği kanaatindeyim.
Kitabın tümünü okumadım. Okumayı da şimdilik düşünmüyorum.

[Sohum · Rating 4 out of 5]

it is often fashionable to wave away radical feminists like MacKinnon (or Dworkin) because they wrote polemically on the question of inequality on the bases of sex and gender. I think much of this criticism is because gender equality has been rendered unimaginable and so, laughable.

[Jim Levi · Rating 5 out of 5]

A demandingly academic but superb text. Deeply thought provoking and certainly makes me consider the world in a different way.