Butterfly Politics: Changing the World for Women, With a New Preface

by Catharine A. MacKinnon

“Sometimes ideas change the world. This astonishing, miraculous, shattering, inspiring book captures the origins and the arc of the movement for sex equality. It’s a book whose time has come―always, but perhaps now more than ever.”
―Cass Sunstein, coauthor of Nudge

Under certain conditions, small simple actions can produce large and complex “butterfly effects.” Butterfly Politics shows how Catharine A. MacKinnon turned discrimination law into an effective tool against sexual abuse―grounding and predicting the worldwide #MeToo movement―and proposes concrete steps that could have further butterfly effects on women’s rights. Thirty years after she won the U.S. Supreme Court case establishing sexual harassment as illegal, this timely collection of her previously unpublished interventions on consent, rape, and the politics of gender equality captures in action the creative and transformative activism of an icon.

“MacKinnon adapts a concept from chaos theory in which the tiny motion of a butterfly’s wings can trigger a tornado half a world away. Under the right conditions, she posits, small actions can produce major social transformations.”
― New York Times

“MacKinnon [is] radical, passionate, incorruptible and a beautiful literary stylist… Butterfly Politics is a devastating salvo fired in the gender wars… This book has a single overriding to effect global change in the pursuit of equality.”
― The Australian

“ Sexual Harassment of Working Women was a revelation. It showed how this anti-discrimination law―Title VII―could be used as a tool… It was the beginning of a field that didn’t exist until then.”
―U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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

528 pages, Paperback

Published April 1, 2019

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 ⭐️