are women human?

A number of people sent me this link to last week's Guardian interview with Catherine MacKinnon, and so I thought it should be mentioned here, too. One of them, a former student, astutely noted that Camille Paglia and Katie Roiphe are quoted to show the "other side" of the argument, and lamented that even in an article on a new feminist text "we are informed about MacKinnon's age, looks, and clothes! Some things have not changed."

MacKinnon's new book, Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues argues (this is from the reviewers, as it's on my list of to-reads post-diss) that women are still treated more like "things" than people. In the Guardian interview, she talks to Stuart Jeffries about her war on porn...

A couple of excerpts:

Of all the provocative passages in Catharine MacKinnon's new book Are Women Human? the following hit me hardest. She writes: "[T]he fact that the law of rape protects rapists and is written from their point of view to guarantee impunity for most rapes is officially regarded as a violation of the law of sex equality, national or international, by virtually nobody."

Are you suggesting that rape law enshrines rapists' points of view, I ask MacKinnon? "Yes, in a couple of senses. The most obvious sense is that most rapists are men and most legislators are men and most judges are men and the law of rape was created when women weren't even allowed to vote. So that means not that all the people who wrote it were rapists, but that they are a member of the group who do [rape] and who do for reasons that they share in common even with those who don't, namely masculinity and their identification with masculine norms and in particular being the people who initiate sex and being the people who socially experience themselves as being affirmed by aggressive initiation of sexual interaction." She takes a well-earned breath.

The full article (from 12 April 2006) can be read here or here.

I've used MacKinnon in a lot of the courses that I teach, partically because she's so often touted as the 'voice of feminism' in the mainstream press, but also because her writing works so well to help frame discussions superficially as "feminist debates" when really - upon close reading - they're far more nuanced than the simple read. Her comments are relevant to this kind of method, and her approach offers much to move either/or dialogues to both/and/neither perspectives on a hot hot issue.