Word: mackinnons
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Walk through the Harvard University Press Shop and you'll see a rape victim. Maybe. You'll have to search hard; look at the author photo on a copy of Catherine A. MacKinnon's Only Words, an anti-pornography text which argues that in the case of sex acts, "To say it is to do it and to do it is to say it," In other words, looking at pictures and reading about violent sex acts are tantamount to actually committing the crime of rape. And MacKinnon now believes she has been raped...
...first things first. MacKinnon's supposition is that pornography is a dangerous specter that is abusing women and must be censored. In the United States the idea has yet to defeat the First Amendment in head-to-head competition, but MacKinnon Assisted in writing the brief which led to the Canadian Supreme Court decision that pornographic material can be banned because of its "negative impact on the individual's sense of self-worth...
Enter Carlin Romano, book critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Writing for the leftist weekly The Nation, Romano started off his review of Only Words on a decidedly personal note, "Suppose I decided to rape Catharine MacKinnon before reviewing her book." Not exactly objective journalism. But by writing about deeds he did not do, Romano is trying to expose the absurdity of MacKinnon's argument that words and pictures equal deeds...
...Katie Roiphe's date rape polemic, The Morning After, she pulls that typical trick of grouping all of her opponents together. She assumes that every feminist on every campus in the world thinks like Catharine MacKinnon, who believes that all social contact between men and women is tantamount to rape. Roiphe's arguments sound reasonable, but only if you really are speaking against a world of Catharine MacKinnons...
...People claim I dehumanized her," Romano complains. "In fact, I did worse -- I took her seriously. The worst thing that can happen to a flamboyant claim is to be tested." To put it another way, MacKinnon's contention that depictions of sex can be equivalent to sexual assaults may come as news to women who have suffered the atrocity of an actual rape. When Romano charges that what he sees as her representation-equals-reality thesis threatens to trivialize what such women have endured, MacKinnon replies that Romano is merely pointing to their suffering as a diversion from...