Catherine MacKinnon - The Lecture on Monday the 17th of November

[eumelia]

On Monday the 17th of November, Professor Cathrine MacKinnon - yes, that MacKinnon - gave a guest lecture at a joint event put together by the Tel-Aviv Uni Law Department and my very own Women and Gender Program.

My friend [Gossip!Girl] and I had been *squeeing* about this lecture ever since we got the notices about it, so for about a week we were going around Gilman (the Humanities building) talking about MacKinnon. She is such a celeb!
On the day, Monday, we decided to seat ourselves about hour before the lecture was scheduled, which was a good call, because half an hour before it was due the hall (which can house approx. 200) was packed. People were sitting on the floor and milling outside the door.

There were short opening speeches by the event organizers and the department heads of Law and the Women & Gender Program.

And then she spoke.

I feel I should mention that the woman is tall, with an awe inspiring presence. The minute she walked into the hall the energy spiked and it revolved around her. She began her lecture and wow! she speaks like she writes; no holds barred, with fire and no-nonsense.
She's not just awe-inspiring, she's just plain inspiring.
She cuts through the bullshit and spreads out the reality of the world like an Augur (yes I know they had to be of the masculine persuasion) cutting open the guts of a goat.
Only we're the goat and the guts sure aren't pretty.
And with that lovely metaphor in mind, you may have an idea of the way she speaks and writes her radical theory (despite being active through mainstream channels).
I jotted down some bullet points that I found to be important in her lecture. I hope you can forgive my own disjointed interpretation of her points and for mangling her ideas and very impressive speaking style.

Finally, I'd like to note that I'm not writing down MacKinnon unexamined, she has plenty to account for in her theory and practice and of course by trying to recreate what she spoke of and what I myself to be of import, I'm immersing my own ideas and opinions.
Without further adieu:

The lecture was titled "Gender - The Future", which is vague to say the least.
MacKinnon began the lecture by mentioning a sci-fi book published in the 1970's titles Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy. In this book two potential futures are presented - an androgynous future in which gender (or sex roles) are abolished and the term "equality" is redundant. The second is a future in which sex is nothing bu pornography, television depicts the degradation of women and reality copies and performs what is depicted.

MacKinnon rhetorically asks towards which future are we headed, confidant that we know.
And we do.
The lives of some women are better due to the women's movement.
Women as a group are not yet free or equal anywhere. Blatantly inserting myself here for mo, because I really can't ignore the underlying essentialism of this statement - the reality is that no one is free (equality is not equivalent to freedom) and the categories of the binary Genders subjugate us into the roles we are taught to perceive and believe as natural. Woman, as a gender category, has historically (and currently) been the most oppressed gender (intersectionality brought into account of course).

The question which is posited in this reality (both MacKinnon's essentialist one and the constructionist I put forth) is why? Why are women still the oppressed and subjugated group?
What do women need liberation from?
MacKinnon answers: The all encompassing male domination - a domination of masculinity despite the criticism under which it has been put since the 1970's.
One of the reasons for this reality is the sexualisation of power, which today is easily translated as Profit, this is visible through pornography and prostitution, which in turn is made up of women who have been abused and continue to be abused. MacKinnon really doesn't make any distinction, to her all sex workers are victims and those who say otherwise are trapped in a false consciousness, which is, ha, ridiculous.

What isn't ridiculous is that through the media and pop-culture consciousness is dictated and through this dictation we, society, learn and recreate the Gender hierarchy which is promoted in order to keep women sexually available. Therefore, MacKinnon makes this brilliant leap, the economy is interested in keeping gender inequality because it's good for business. The economy, that is the Capitalist industries of sex and entertainment, make their profit off women being sexually available.

Because this is a Capitalist structure, the training of women to be this way begin in the family - the nuclear family which the smallest unit (not the individual - one can't be a good Capitalist, if you don't have someone House Keeping and Rearing) in the Capitalist economy. In this unit we replicate and are taught the values we need to succeed and the ideals of who we must be in order to be Normal.

Normal is that men want women who want to be sexually used.

MacKinnon posits that this pattern of masculine dominance begins and is replicated, as mentioned, in a family unit in which children are sexually abused.
This, we know, happens far more often than statistics can even begin to show.

Girls who are abused grow up to be "everyone", with a high percentage of abused women in the sex industry. The vast majority of abusers are men, very likely to have been abused themselves as boys - almost no statistics on sexually abused boys exist and the stats that do exist more likely show an extremely small percentage of what actually happens.
Abused boys have two choices according to MacKinnon - become allies with a socially inferior group (women) or become abusers (men).
In other, shorter words:
Girl children who are abused continue to be abused. This is Gender Feminine.
Boy children who are abused become abusers. This is Gender Masculine.
And what is needed is solidarity among women and men who are aware of this dynamic.

Whew!
That's a lot of info isn't it?

MacKinnon is dated in her theory, because she really does still lump all women together and is binary in the way she posits the categories of gender.
Beyond that essentialist streak, she ignores the fact that there are feminist sex workers, who work within the industry both mainstream and alternative and aim to change it.
I would hardly call the indie Lesbian erotica, mainstream industrial pornography - it really is more like art and why can't sex be viewed in that way - is entertainment not art either?
And yes, people get paid for entertaining others and sexuality is a part of that and really, that isn't the issue.
The issue is lumping the entirety of sexual entertainment as porn, which I feel is what always got MacKinnon (and Andrea Dworkin and the rest of the Anti-Pron movement in the 70's and 80's) a whole lot of flak.

The guts of her argument aren't pretty and MacKinnon herself seems to be aware of the short comings in her theory and the way she presents her theory (at least, I like to believe so), I think this happens because MacKinnon has to be able to use her theory in praxis - that is through the mainstream channels - the Law, in MacKinnon's case.

It was a fascinating lecture, with plenty to argue about and dig deeper, she presents a very disturbing root cause of why humanity does what it does.
It's worth thinking about and breaking apart again and again.
Also, one doesn't go to see MacKinnon speak in order to agree or disagree, you go to see a Very Important Person in action.
And it was totally worth it.

And you, my vastly intelligent friends, readers and lurkers, what are your thoughts on what I've presented here?

Comments

[lilacsigil.livejournal.com]

Whew, that's a lot to take in! From all the McKinnon I've read, she does seem to take a gender essentialist position, but she's got far more able to recognise "allies" than before, though I suspect that there are far more men and women able to break out of the nuclear family confines than ever before. It's the classic Second Wave/Third Wave difference, I think - to a Second Wave feminist, heterosexuality is a major part of the oppression of women. I would say that no, compulsory performance of heterosexuality is the problem, not relations between actual women and actual men except in that they fall into that trap.

ETA: And I meant to say that "Woman on the Edge of Time" is really pretty interesting, but "He, She and It"/"Body of Glass" by the same author is a lot more nuanced.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

She is still stuck in the classic Second Wave paradigm but one can't ignore her theory, mainly for the theories that came after that depended on her postulations.

I really want to read Marge Piercy's work now :)

[wijsgeer.livejournal.com]

DO read Piercy and after you've read Body of glass you might consider reading Donna Haraway who aims not to be binary and essentialist in thinking about sex&gender (also not binary in human versus machine hence the often quoted cyborg figure). She explicitly uses body of glass in one of her works, if I remember correctly "Modest Witness@Second Millennium : Femaleman Meets Oncomouse : Feminism and Technoscience" (http://www.amazon.com/Modest-Witness-Millenium-FemaleMan-OncoMouse/dp/0415912458/ref=pd_bbs_sr_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227211757&sr=8-5) It is powerful in its own way but uses a very different rhetoric from McKinnon.
It has its own faults but I feel much more at home in her world.

[omnivorously.livejournal.com]

What, nothing about race and class? Masculine = bad?

Of course, I was biased from the minute I saw that it was McKinnon, so I *had* to provide a critique ; ) And gender essentialism is so not my thing.

Other stuff, but ... I need to get things done.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

As I said, she still looks at women as a cohesive category or population and that everyone has the same basic experience because we all live in the Patriarchy... which is, as we know, not true.
She briefly mentioned the majority of impoverished people are poor people, but she didn't bring intersectionality into her talk at all.
And yeah the whole masculine=bad was getting grating, I could see that a lot of Butch dykes and transmen were getting irritated. Funnily enough, the cis men that I could see sitting in the audience were taking what she was saying quite well.

[omnivorously.livejournal.com]

"And yeah the whole masculine=bad was getting grating, I could see that a lot of Butch dykes and transmen were getting irritated. Funnily enough, the cis men that I could see sitting in the audience were taking what she was saying quite well."

Makes sense to me. A female with a feminist ethos who is on the transmasculine spectrum doesn't think masculinity is necessarily bad, and has in fact worked very hard to learn to understand and express zir masculinity. Also, gender essentialism leaves us out in the cold. Which isn't to say that I think the cismen were ok with just accepting it. The point isn't to divest themselves of conventional masculine qualities, or feel guilty about them. The point is to define masculinity in a way which doesn't require one to treat females/women as if they were inferior, etc.

[lotus82.livejournal.com]

I wish I had more time now to go into an actual discussion...
Anyway, thank you for bringing here this entry - very interesting to read, plenty of food for thought.
I wrote a paper on Piercy's book last year - amazing book - so rich.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I now have to find all her books!

[lishablog.livejournal.com]

Like the other commenters, I really wish I had the time to give this a thoughtful comment right now. I ought to be running out the door to work, but I haven't finished my coffee yet. :)

Look, I'm not clear headed today about any gender issues. I'm so angry and frustrated right now about the whole billboard thing. That may seem silly, but it angers me specifically because I feel completely powerless to really change the situation. You could say my "masculine side" wants to see Bnei Brak obliterated. But, taking that present imbalance into consideration...

I have a problem with feminist theory that puts sexuality into some space that belongs to men. What if *I* want women to be sexually available to me? What if *I* want men to be sexually available to me? I mean, we are sexual beasts. And no, we don't want everyone to be available all the time, but when you are horny and you are attracted to someone, you do want. It is disempowering to women to pretend like sexual desire is strictly a masculine thing or always an abusive thing.

The whole dominance thing seems over simplified, too. Women use the inequality to maintain dominance over "their" men, through various methods, whether it's using their sexuality against men or using other tools (like nagging, belittling, etc). The problem of gender inequality is not that some people have power, but rather that power is held "over" rather that "through". (I think that is the most important lesson I learned in my 20's, both in terms of gender relations and in terms of life in general.)

OK, so many more thoughts, but I must run AND I don't want to take over your post with my long blah, blah commenting. Again. *grin*

Glad you had the chance to see MacKinnon in person, though. Like you said, it's not agreeing or disagreeing, but having the opportunity to experience this Very Important Person in person.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I have a lot of issues with MacKinnon, as do many third wave feminists who view power as a multi way street. It isn't just one gender subjugating another, it's the categories themselves that create this dichotomous society which enables one group to be more privileged, but on the other hand must also prescribe to behavior patterns which are not necessarily positive to that group.

I can't wait for people to have time to comment :D

[mao4269.livejournal.com]

First, regarding the notion that the nuclear family is the smallest unit of capitalism, I very much disagree. You wrote, "one can't be a good Capitalist if you don't have someone House Keeping and Rearing", but capitalism would dictate that all work is done by the person with the minimum of skills required to accomplish it. So long as someone can be hired for minimum wage (or less) to rear your children, a parent who can earn more than minimum wage in the labor market should do so because their time is "better spent" that way. This, of course, begs the question of what constitutes quality child care (and after a year working at an organization with that as one of its primary foci I can go on about this at length), but my point is that the most capitalist structure for raising children would arguably be something like the children's houses that kibbutzim established.

"The economy is interested in keeping gender inequality because it's good for business. The economy, that is the Capitalist industries of sex and entertainment, make their profit off women being sexually available."
I think it's important to distinguish between profiting from women being sexually available and profiting from the illusion of women sexually desiring men. Obviously the latter automatically includes the former, but the reverse isn't true. Much of the profit capitalists make off the hypersexualization of women is in advertising, with imagery that suggests that if you use [insert product name here] you'll be irresistible to women. I attribute childhood sexual abuse not to training the next generation in their appropriate gender roles (being sexual available to men and exploiting women's sexual availability) but rather to the unrealistic expectations established by advertising that says that if you just succeed in the capitalist system it will bring you sexual (and every other type) of gratification. Children are simply the most vulnerable target for this misguided rage; this is a *very* tentative hypothesis, but I think they may also be fetishized based on their perceived innocence of the disappointment this system brings (though of course any child being abused or prostituting hirself is hardly protected from the effects of said system). It's not a matter of perpetuating a dichotomy between sexually-available and sexually-exploitative, but sexually exploiting because that's the closest thing to being sexually desired that's available within the current system. I'm not sure how coherent this comment is, so feel free to ask for clarification.

All that being said, your post was really interesting and it's awesome that you got a chance to see a Living Legend in person. :D

(sorry that it is long and only sideways about your post...)

[wijsgeer.livejournal.com]

Just having said I feel less at home in McKinnon's world I must confess strongly longing for her last Tuesday.
I was with a friend at Felix & Sofie, a monthly philosophical cafe that generally gets opened by a column, generally someone tries to talk about a current topic referring to a philosopher or approaches something in a philosophical way. and if at all possible this should be done in a witty and funny way. It may be controversial, but it should at least show some clarity of thinking.

Now, you might think, I know what a column is, go on with your story, but I am just repeating this for myself because I can still not get over it how inappropriate this weeks column was, it was not just offensive, it was a bad column.

The speaker responded to several articles in Dutch news papers and magazines about the changing sexual ethos of the time and how this ended up being a disadvantage to women. The current idea is that women and young girls are permanently in for hard sex, that girls of 14 are prudes if they don't want to be fucked anally, that they feel "asking for lube" is weak and unsexy, that gynecologists get you girls who have vaginal and anal wounds due to to hard, to repeatitive and unlubed sex.
Now, I must say I have no idea how widespread this is, though every girl (or woman) who maintains damage because she is afraid of asking for lube is definitely 1 to many (and I'd also assume there might well have been more she didn't dare saying). The authors postulate that the whole porno/advertisement culture, with women as sexual available etc. is the reason/major influence in this (note, dif. articles, dif. authors). Sex being reduced to a certain part of the sexual spectrum, cutting out foreplay and communication and leaving over the (lube-less) hard stuff. Basically a major part of McKinnon's argument.

Now what do we get of this man who obviously thought himself very learned and much maligned? According to him women were winners and men were the losers, they were aroused by the women in porn/adverts and then the kept being rejected time and time again when they approached the girls and the women that dressed just like the available women from world of porn. Instead of the supposedly abused women who were the victim it were the men who had wounds on their genital from the need to masturbate excessively. (the NEED!)
Oh, it is always the fault of the woman looking either to prudish or to sexy. For some men it is just always the fault of the woman.

So yeah, I may not agree with all MacKinnon says, but when I hear such columns I can feel were she is coming from.

BTW my friend send him an email pointing out that it would be better to say that both men and women suffered from the wrong impression the porn/advertisement gives about sex and the wishes/expectations of women and men. And that his stand point was not really constructive. (My friend is very nice). But since the guy even complained about castrating feminists I don't think he will be made to think by her email.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Wow... that's such a narrow minded (and sexist!) way of reading a social phenomena.

I admit to using MacKinnon when I try to prove the point of women's weakened status in certain areas of culture (specifically the way they are portrayed in commercials, porn and prostitution are different arguments) because her theory goes deep into the root causes of inequality.

But in general, she lumps all women, all pornography, all experiences together and that doesn't work. Not by a long shot.

Thanks for sharing that anecdote, just goes to show that dated knowledge is still useful in small doses :)

Catharine A. MacKinnon

[radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

The woman has done more for womankind that most women in the West. So while all the Ivory Tower academic discussion goes on and on could someone please tell me: what has the Third Wave done to challenge the white male supremacist forces, the institutions and individuals, to STOP rape or racism? MacKinnon's work always deals with race and class in her books. Read "Only Words" for one example.

The Third Wave ended a while ago. The Fourth Wave, if you want to call it that, has been in existence for a while. Read Jennifer McLune, Yanar Mohammed, Andrea Smith, Patricia Hill Collins, Yolanda Carrington, and check out the woman's blog Arooo. The Third Wave is a deceased academic creation; it usually takes the academy a few years to get with the realities of poor women of color globally. (Are they still teaching U.S. postmodernism uncritically? Check out MacKinnon's essays on that subject in "Women's Lives, Men's Laws", and also in "Are Women Human?") When rape and other forms of misogynist sexual assault are endemic and celebrated as "liberating", and white heterosexual male supremacy rules and kills, theorising about "masculinity" is not something many people can afford to do, instead of activism, that is.

Even the butch lesbian feminists (the few that feel is is safe in queer community to still call themselves lesbian-feminist) I know will acknowledge that masculinity is harmful. MacKinnon is talking about how this construct plays out in the actual world, not in theory. Man's fist hits woman's face and breaks her bones. That's not theory, that's reality. Father figure incests girl-child disproportionately. That's not theory, that's reality. Femininity, constructed and variant, is also harmful, to women. And masculinities and femininities vary from class to culture to era to region. And nowhere is femininity valued more than masculinity, unless in societies untouched by white heterosexual male supremacy.

And if you respect someone isn't it appropriate to spell their name correctly?

The good news is the the cismen were caring to listen.