Feminism Unmodified

Discourses on Life and Law

Paperback

ISBN 9780674298743

Publication date: 01/01/1988

Catharine A. MacKinnon, noted feminist and legal scholar, explores and develops her original theories and practical proposals on sexual politics and law. These discourses, originally delivered as speeches, have been brilliantly woven into a book that retains all the spontaneity and accessibility of a live presentation. MacKinnon offers a unique retrospective on the law of sexual harassment, which she designed and has worked for a decade to establish, and a prospectus on the law of pornography, which she proposes to change in the next ten years. Authentic in voice, sweeping in scope, startling in clarity, urgent, never compromised and often visionary, these discourses advance a new theory of sex inequality and imagine new possibilities for social change.

Through these engaged works on issues such as rape, abortion, athletics, sexual harassment, and pornography, MacKinnon seeks feminism on its own terms, unconstrained by the limits of prior traditions. She argues that viewing gender as a matter of sameness and difference—as virtually all existing theory and law have done—covers up the reality of gender, which is a system of social hierarchy, an imposed inequality of power. She reveals a political system of male dominance and female subordination that sexualizes power for men and powerlessness for women. She analyzes the failure of organized feminism, particularly legal feminism, to alter this condition, exposing the way male supremacy gives women a survival stake in the system that destroys them.

Praise

[MacKinnon’s] book offers an unorthodox but relentlessly consistent perspective on issues fundamental to feminism. It is passionate, brilliant, polemical and sectarian. Ms. MacKinnon defends what is frequently called ‘radical feminism.’ As the title of her book indicates, she believes this approach to be the only true or genuine feminism because it alone speaks for all women… Her position is grounded on a clear assertion of the primacy of the social over the biological… Fundamental to her radical feminism is the claim that gender is a system of dominance rather than of difference… Ms. MacKinnon offers a systematic and persuasive perspective on issues that are central not only to feminism but to social theory in general.

—Alison M. Jaggar, New York Times Book Review
This is heavy stuff. [The book] does not tell us what to do. It may, however, make us think, and challenge, and possibly act.

—Lorraine Schmall, ABA Journal
[The book] is to feminism what The German Ideology is to Marxism. Using the tools of sociology of knowledge, Catharine MacKinnon relentlessly uncovers male bias, also known as objectivity and male perspectives also known as universality… On every page are epigrams one wants to print and hang on one’s walls.

—Pauline B. Bart, American Journal of Sociology
MacKinnon has been perhaps the most important force behind the burgeoning theoretical literature in law on sex discrimination and feminist theory… Each of the essays published in [the book] stands on its own, making the book a collection of separate entries rather than one sustained argument. Because each essay was originally a speech, the discussions are lucid and dramatic, with the dynamism, immediacy, and sense of discovery of a live presentation; they are also filled with irony, wit, and humor… The book contains brilliant insights, genuine creativity, and rare originality. It should have a significant impact on thinking about sex discrimination and on social and legal thought more generally.

—Harvard Law Review
MacKinnon dispatches from her post on the front line of the sexual battlefield searing, sharp communiqués that voice a fierce, relentless, and finally persuasive analysis of how pornography, a perversion of free speech, perpetuates the powerlessness of women.

—Derrick Bell, Harvard Law School
Catharine MacKinnon’s Feminism Unmodified is a remarkably penetrating, bracingly uncompromising view of what it means to be a woman in our society. Written with extraordinary incisiveness and an acid wit, this is an important book for anyone interested in freedom.

—Peter Bogdanovich
In this book MacKinnon enlarges our understanding of the nature of civil rights as applied to women. MacKinnon’s radicalism is thrilling, her determination brilliant, her passion literal. With rigor and irony MacKinnon teaches us what feminism—unmodified by cowardice or by disassociation from other women—is, what it sounds like, and what its goals are. MacKinnon’s identification with silenced women is precisely what defines feminism unmodified.

—Phyllis Chester, Ph.D., author of Women and Madness
It’s a zinger. Ms. MacKinnon has made a difference before, and this book should further change society.

—Miles Lord, former Chief Judge of the Federal Court for the District of Minnesota
Catharine MacKinnon’s discourses in Feminism Unmodified are final evidence, if any were needed, that hers is the most powerful mind and forceful voice now at work in this critical area of law. I commend her book most vigorously to many who question as well as those who accept her position.

—Burke Marshall, Yale Law School
Feminism Unmodified shows Catharine MacKinnon to be one of the most brilliant, original, thought-provoking, and uncompromising feminist theoreticians and strategists in the contemporary United States.

—Diana E. H. Russell, Department of Sociology, Mills College, author of Rape and Marriage
I wish to celebrate this book by a peer, a book for reading by men should they wish to keep up with the human race.

—Gerry Spence, author of Trial by Fire

Author

Catharine A. MacKinnon is Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School and the James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law (Long-Term) at Harvard Law School.