Boyle, Christine

English

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Feminism Unmodified, Discourses on Life and Law. Catharine A . M a c K i n n o n . Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-versity Press, 1987, Pp. 315. T o remake society so that women can live here requires a feminism unqual i f i ed by preexisting modifiers. 1 Catharine M a c K i n n o n is an Amer ican feminist lawyer, legal theorist and activist. Her work has been extremely inf luent ia l w i t h i n the Canadian feminist movement, and her influence is l ikely to increase since she has spent some time v is i t ing and teaching at the Osgoode H a l l L a w School i n Toronto. H e r new book, w i t h the confident title, Feminism Unmodified, has been available for some months now. It is a col lect ion of essays, w h i c h , as a matter of choice, retain the f lavour of the speeches they or iginal ly were. A reader of this book w o u l d very q u i c k l y develop a sense of Professor M a c K i n n o n ' s politics, of her formidable intellect, and her dramatic style. There are a number of u n i f y i n g themes; the analysis that the social relations of the sexes are organized around male dominat ion and female submission and that "this relation is sexual—in fact, is sex" 2 ; a crit ique of the idea that gender can be analysed as a matter of difference rather than hierarchy; and the identification of pornography as the most significant means of actual izing "these two d y n a m i c s " 5 , that is, the eroticization of male dominat ion and gender hierarchy. T h e subject matter of the speech/essays ranges over rape, privacy and equality i n relation to abortion, equality i n relation to the cul tural survival of Indians, sexual harassment 4, pornography and women i n sport. Some of the material has been publ ished before, for instance, " N o t by L a w Alone : F r o m a Debate w i t h P h y l l i s Sch la f ly" 5 and "Pr ivacy v. Equal i ty : Beyond Roe v. W a d e " 6 . It is very convenient to have so m u c h of Professor M a c K i n n o n ' s work available i n one volume. F r o m place to place throughout the book can be found a devastating critique of l iberalism and liberal feminism. M a c K i n n o n attaches words to the experience of the defi-ciencies of l iberal ism, and her words become part of the vocabulary of feminism. They demystify "the substantive misogyny of liberal neutra l i ty" 7 . They give us the lan-guage of hierarchy, d o m i n a t i o n and subordination wi th w h i c h to talk about equality. T h u s , inequality can be understood as the subordination of women rather than as different treatment. T h e bedrock of such an analysis as the reality of women's experiences of poverty, violence, rape, the sexual assult of chi ldren, prost i tution and pornog-raphy. It is crucial that this analysis and these realities be made part of a basic j u d i c i a l and pol i t i ca l understanding of the const i tut ional guarantee of equality i n section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms*. There is a g r o w i n g body of work i n Canada i n w h i c h M a c K i n n o n ' s analysis is used i n an attempt to influence the construction of equality that is now taking place. A good example can be found i n a recent background paper issued by the Canadian Advisory C o u n c i l o n the Status of W o m e n . In "Personal A u t o n o m y and the C r i m i n a l L a w : E m e r g i n g Issues for W o m e n , ' ' the author, Elizabeth Sheehy, uses the "subordination p r i n c i p l e " as part of a theoretical approach to issues such as wife battering, sexual assault and special defences for women. Sheehy states that this pr inc iple has the " a b i l i t y to detect, expla in , and alter women's oppres-sion beyond a legalistic analysis, and it is the most capable of generating a creative vis ion of a society where women can pursue autonomous but connected l ives" 9 . Catharine M a c K i n n o n is also famous for her work o n pornography. Together w i t h Andrea D w o r k i n she drafted a p o r n o g r a p h y ordinance for M i n n e a p o l i s 1 0 , w h i c h a l lowed the vict ims of coercion, force, assault and traffick-i n g , to take c i v i l action against those w h o harmed them through p o r n o g r a p h y 1 1 . T h e use of the law against por-nography is a controversial issue for feminis t 1 2 , w i t h some feminists choosing to categorize pornography as the exer-cise of freedom of speech. Included i n this collection is a powerful response to such views, entitled " O n Col labora-t i o n . " T h e social phenomenon of pornography is des-cribed. It is a specific and compel l ing behavioural st imulus, conditioner, and reinforcer. T h e way it works is unique : it makes orgasm a response to bigotry. It is a major way that dominance and submission—a daily dynamic of social hierarchy, particularly of gender inequality—are enjoyed and practiced and rein-forced and experienced. A n d fused w i t h male and female. Pornography makes sexism sexy. 1 5 Speaking to the N a t i o n a l Conference o n W o m e n and the L a w i n 1985, M a c K i n n o n passionately denounces the " w o m e n lawyers, feminists" w h o choose to use their speech to misrepresent the ordinance and then attack it. I really want you to stop your lies and misrepresen-tations of our posi t ion. I want you to do something about your thundering ignorance about the way w o m e n are treated. I want you to remember your o w n lives. I also really want you on our side. But, f a i l i n g that, I want you to stop c l a i m i n g that your l iberal ism, w i t h its e l i t ism, and your Freudianism, w i t h its sexualized misogyny, has a n y t h i n g i n com-m o n w i t h f e m i n i s m . 1 4 Some of the above ideas o n equali ty and pornography w i l l be famil iar to many feminists. However, the book contains material that has not been accessible i n the past. I a m t h i n k i n g part icular ly here of the speech entitled "Whos e Culture? A Case Note o n Martinez v. Santa C l a r a P u e b l o , " given at the N o r t h Amer ican Survival School, R e d Earth , St. P a u l , Minnesota , i n 1983. T h e ideas expressed i n this are important for those w h o are troubled by the interaction of equality and the respect for the c u l -ture of native Canadians. J u l i a Martinez sued her tribe because of a rule w h i c h excluded her chi ldren f rom membership if she married outside the tribe. T h e U n i t e d State Supreme Court held that tr ibal membership was a matter to be resolved by the tribe itself . 1 5 T h u s , the tribe was to define what equali ty is w i t h repect to the question of membership, w h i c h left them free to use an exclusionary rule out of fear of the loss of native land through inter-marriage between native w o m e n and white men. T h e issue, if seen i n this way, can be constructed as a clash between cul tura l survival and the " w h i t e " n o t i o n of equality. M a c K i n n o n asserts, for J u l i a Martinez, the right to c la im equality as an Indian idea, and rejects the confl ict between cul tura l survival and equality. She suggests instead that survival is "as contingent u p o n equal i ty between women and men as it is u p o n equality a m o n g peoples" 1 6 . She asks when male supremacy became a t r ibal tradit ion. Perhaps inequality is the " w h i t e " idea. Such a way of t h i n k i n g does not provide any easy responses to the problems, but does take us out of the deadend blocked by the dichotomy between cul tural auto-nomy and equality. W h a t else can be learned f rom this book? We should not shr ink from knowledge of the subordination of women. "Since when is polit ics therapy?" 1 7 N o r should we deny ourselves the use of law because it cannot be trusted. W o m e n cannot restrict demands for change to spheres we can trust, because there s imply are not any, not medicine, not theology, not technology, not the environment and not the m e d i a . 1 8 For myself, a lawyer tempted to succumb to the idea of the pointlessness of legal change, as for other feminists, this book can be a source of reassurance as w e l l as inspirat ion. Christ ine Boyle Dalhousie University L a w School N O T E S 1. MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified, p. 16. 2. MacKinnon, p. 3. 3. MacKinnon, p. 3. 4. An earlier, and much more extensive discussion of sexual harass-ment, which has influenced American judicial thinking about this form of discrimination can be found in MacKinnon, The Sexual Harassment of Working Women, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979. 5. "Excerpts from a Debate with Phyllis Schlafly." Law and Inequal-ity: A Journal of Theory and Practice, Vol . 1, 1983, p. 341. 6. "The Male Ideology of Privacy: A Feminist Perspective on the Right to Abortion." Radical America, Vol . 17, 1983, p. 23. 7. Supra, in. 1, p. 15. 8. The Constitution Act, enacted by the Canada Act, 1982 (U.K.), c. 11, Sched. B. 9. Sheehy, "Personal Autonomy and the Criminal Law: Emerging Issues for Women," Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women, 1987, p. 8. 10. Ordinance #3, City of Minneapolis (1984). The United States Supreme Court has held that an Indianapolis version of the ordi-nance violates the First Amendment guarantee of free speech. Amer-ican Booksellers v. Hudnul, 771 F. 2d 323 (7th Cir. 1985), affd 106 S. Ct. 1172 (1986). 11. For the definition of pornography, see MacKinnon, "Not a Moral Issue," Yale Law and Policy Review, Vol. 2, p. 321. See also "Pornog-raphy, Civil Rights, and Speech," Harv. Cir. Rts. Civ. Lib. Law Review, Vol. 20, p. 1. 12. See, for the views of some Canadians, V. Burstyn, editor, Women Against Censorship. Vancouver: Douglas and Mclntyre, 1985. 13. Supra, in. 1, p. 200. 14. Ibid., p. 205. 15. Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez, 436 U.S. 49 (1978). 16. Supra, in. 1, p. 68. 17. Ibid., p. 220. 18. Ibid., p. 228. Women's Ways of K n o w i n g : T h e Development of Self, Voice and M i n d . M a r y Field Belenky, Blythe McVicker Cl inchy , Nancy Rule Goldberger, and J i l l Mattuck Tarule . New York: Basic Books Inc., 1986, Pp. 256. Women's Ways of Knowing deserves to be as stimulat-i n g to feminist epistemology as C a r o l G i l l i g a n ' s In a Different Voice was to feminist ethics. L i k e G i l l i g a n ' s study, this book begins by asking whether a paradigm of development designed to expla in men's behaviour and experience can be appl ied to women. T h e paradigm is W i l l i a m Perry's 1970 description ( in Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development in the College Years. N e w York : H o l t , R i n e h a r t a n d Wins ton , 1970) of the epistemological development of a group of male Harvard students d u r i n g their college careers. Women's Ways of Knowing answers no, that Perry's model does not apply very wel l to women, but this question and answer are only the beg inning and not the heart of the book. Its heart is i n the descriptions and analyses of women's perspectives o n knowledge. 

Feminism Unmodified, Discourses on Life and Law. Catharine A.
                    MacKinnon.

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Feminism Unmodified, Discourses on Life and Law. Catharine A. MacKinnon.

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