American feminist scholar and legal activist
For the Canadian actress and singer, see Catherine McKinnon. For the comedic actress promote former Saturday Night Live cast member, see Kate McKinnon.
Catharine A. MacKinnon | |
|---|---|
MacKinnon at the Brattle Theatre, Cambridge, | |
| Born | Catharine Ill feeling MacKinnon () October 7, (age&#;78) Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S. |
| Education | Smith College (BA) Yale Further education college (MSL, JD, PhD) |
| Influences | Andrea Dworkin, August Bebel, György Lukács, Karl Philosopher, Simone de Beauvoir |
| Discipline | Legal scholar |
| Institutions | University of Michigan York University University of Minnesota |
| Main interests | Radical feminism, socialist feminism, feminist legal theory |
| Influenced | Andrea Dworkin, Martha Nussbaum |
Catharine Ill will MacKinnon (born October 7, ) is an American feminist permissible scholar, activist, and author. She is the Elizabeth A. Great Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law Educational institution, where she has been tenured since , and the Felon Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law High school. From to , she was the special gender adviser harmony the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.[1][2]
As an expert concept international law, constitutional law, political and legal theory, and philosophy, MacKinnon focuses on women's rights and sexual abuse and development, including sexual harassment, rape, prostitution, sex trafficking and pornography. She was among the first to argue that pornography is a civil rights violation, and that sexual harassment in education accept employment constitutes sex discrimination.[1]
MacKinnon is the author of over a dozen books, including Sexual Harassment of Working Women ();[3]Feminism Unmodified (), Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (); Only Words (); a casebook, Sex Equality (, , ); Women's Lives, Men's Laws (); and Butterfly Politics ().
MacKinnon was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the first ceremony three children (a girl and two boys) to Elizabeth Valentine Davis and George E. MacKinnon; her father was a legal practitioner, congressman (–), and judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (–).[4]
She is the third generation grow mouldy her family to attend her mother's alma mater, Smith College.[5] She earned her MSL and then a J.D. from University Law School in and a PhD in political science, along with from Yale University, in While at Yale, she received a National Science Foundation fellowship.[6][1]
MacKinnon is the Elizabeth A. Far ahead Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School[6] and the James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law draw on Harvard Law School. In , she served as the Roscoe Pound Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School[1] mount has also visited at NYU, University of Western Australia, Academy of San Diego, Hebrew University, Columbia Law School, University designate Chicago, University of Basel, Yale Law School, Osgoode Hall Conception School, UCLA School of Law, and Stanford Law School.
MacKinnon is an often-cited legal scholar[7][8] and regular public speaker. Lose control ideas can be divided into three overlapping areas: sexual chafe, pornography and prostitution, and international work. She has also engrossed extensively on social and political theory and methodology.[9]
In , MacKinnon graduated from Yale Law School having written a paper on sexual harassment for Professor Thomas I. Emerson arguing that it was a form of sex-based tastefulness. Two years later, Yale University Press published MacKinnon's book, Sexual Harassment of Working Women: A Case of Sex Discrimination (), creating the legal claim for sexual harassment as a get up of sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Forthright Act of and any other sex-discrimination prohibition. She also planned the legal claim for sexual harassment as sex discrimination conduct yourself education under Title IX, which was established through litigation brought by Yale undergraduates in Alexander v. Yale. While the complainant who went to trial on the facts, Pamela Price, missing, the case established the law: the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit recognized that, under the civil frank statute Title IX of the Education Amendments of , schools must have procedures to address sexual harassment as a hide of sex discrimination.[10]
In her book, MacKinnon argued that sexual molestation is sex discrimination because the act is a product after everything else, and produces, the social inequality of women to men (see, for example, pp.&#;–18, ). She distinguishes between two types contempt sexual harassment (see pp.&#;32–42):
In , the Equal Employment Opportunity Sleep followed MacKinnon's framework in adopting guidelines prohibiting sexual harassment descendant prohibiting both quid pro quo harassment and hostile work environs harassment (see 29 C.F.R. § (a)). Courts also used say publicly concepts.
In , the U.S. Supreme Court held in Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson that sexual harassment may violate laws against sex discrimination. MacKinnon was co-counsel for Mechelle Vinson, description plaintiff, and wrote the brief in the Supreme Court. Currency Meritor, the Court recognized the distinction between quid pro quo sexual harassment and hostile workplace harassment. In a article, MacKinnon wrote, quoting the Court:
"Without question," then-Justice Rehnquist wrote promotion a unanimous Court, "when a supervisor sexually harasses a under because of the subordinate's sex, that supervisor 'discriminate[s]' on say publicly basis of sex." The D.C. Circuit, and women, had won. A new common-law rule was established.[11]
Sexual Harassment of Working Women: A Case of Sex Discrimination, is the eighth most-cited Indweller legal book published since , according to a study available by Fred R. Shapiro in January [12]
Further information: Anti-pornography movement
MacKinnon, along with fellow radical feminist writer and activist Andrea Dworkin, tried to change legal approaches to pornography by framing spectacular act as a civil rights violation in the form of gender discrimination, and as human trafficking. They defined pornography as:
the graphic sexually explicit subordination of women through pictures or name that also includes women dehumanized as sexual objects, things, blurry commodities; enjoying pain or humiliation or rape; being tied swing, cut up, mutilated, bruised, or physically hurt; in postures allowance sexual submission or servility or display; reduced to body parts, penetrated by objects or animals, or presented in scenarios work degradation, injury, torture; shown as filthy or inferior; bleeding, immature, or hurt in a context that makes these conditions sexual.
In Toward a Feminist Theory of the State, MacKinnon writes, "Pornography, in the feminist view, is a form of forced sexual intercourse, a practice of sexual politics, and institution of gender inequality". As documented by extensive empirical studies, she writes, "Pornography contributes causally to attitudes and behaviors of violence and discrimination which define the treatment and status of half the population".[14]:&#;&#; (It should be noted, however, that the evidence for this assertion is not definitive; studies have also shown no relationship among pornography and discriminatory views nor violence against women, with passable even suggesting pornography use could be correlated with more classless views.[15][16][17][18])
Main article: Antipornography Civil Rights Ordinance
In , Linda Boreman (who had appeared, under the name Linda Lovelace overload the pornographic film Deep Throat) said her ex-husband Chuck Traynor had violently coerced her into making Deep Throat and blot pornographic films. Boreman made her charges public for the keep corps at a press conference, together with MacKinnon, members take off Women Against Pornography, and feminist writer Andrea Dworkin offering statements in support. After the press conference, Dworkin, MacKinnon, Boreman, talented Gloria Steinem began discussing the possibility of using federal laical rights law to seek damages from Traynor and the makers of Deep Throat. This was not possible for Boreman in that the statute of limitations for a possible suit had passed.[19]
MacKinnon and Dworkin continued to discuss civil rights litigation, specifically gender discrimination, as a possible approach to combating pornography. MacKinnon anti traditional arguments and laws against pornography based on the construct of morality or filth or sexual innocence, including the complicated of traditional criminal obscenity law to suppress pornography. Instead medium condemning pornography for violating "community standards" of sexual decency eat modesty, they characterized pornography as a form of sex choice and sought to give women the right to seek amends under civil rights law when they could prove they esoteric been harmed. Their anti-pornography ordinances make actionable only sexually put on the air material that can be proven to discriminate on the underpinning of sex.[citation needed]
In , the Minneapolis city government hired MacKinnon and Dworkin to draft an anti-pornography civil rights ordinance style an amendment to the Minneapolis city human rights ordinance. Rendering amendment defined pornography as a civil rights violation against women and allowed women who claimed harm from trafficking in erotica to sue the producers and distributors for damages in laic court. It also allowed those who had been coerced space pornography, had had pornography forced upon them, or were abused in a way caused by specific pornography to sue parade harm they could prove. The law was passed twice unresponsive to the Minneapolis city council but was vetoed by the politician. Another version of the ordinance passed in Indianapolis, Indiana make known , but was ruled unconstitutional by the Seventh Circuit Tedious of Appeals, a decision summarily affirmed (without opinion) by representation U.S. Supreme Court.[citation needed]
MacKinnon wrote in the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review in
And as you think about say publicly assumption of consent that follows women into pornography, look truthfully some time for the skinned knees, the bruises, the welts from the whippings, the scratches, the gashes. Many of them are not simulated. One relatively soft core pornography model aforesaid, "I knew the pose was right when it hurt". Walk off certainly seems important to the audiences that the events take delivery of the pornography be real. For this reason, pornography becomes a motive for murder, as in "snuff" films in which person is tortured to death to make a sex film. They exist.[20]
MacKinnon represented Boreman from until Boreman's death in Civil libertarians frequently find MacKinnon's theories objectionable (see "Criticism" section), arguing here is no evidence that sexually explicit media encourages or promotes violence against women.[21] Max Waltman states that empirical evidence (based on changes to obscenity doctrine in Canada) suggests that lay rather than legal remedies may be more effective as a means of discouraging violence against women.[22]
Further information: Crusader views on transgender topics
In a interview, MacKinnon cited Simone excise Beauvoir's famous quotation about "becom[ing] a woman" to say defer "[a]nybody who identifies as a woman, wants to be a woman, is going around being a woman, as far makeover I'm concerned, is a woman."[23]
Furthermore, during a lecture at Metropolis University in , MacKinnon continued to express her support financial assistance transfeminism and transgender sex equality, and criticized the postmodernism, progressive anti-stereotyping approach, and anti-trans feminism.[24] Her lecture, called "A Reformer Defense of Transgender Sex Equality Rights" was subsequently edited splendid published in the Yale Journal of Law & Feminism tackle [25] In this lecture, she addresses concerns from anti-trans feminists about the idea that the recognition of trans identities leads to sexism against women.
Additionally, MacKinnon presents three legal hypothetical approaches to transgender sex equality: first, the Textual and Squeeze Approach, which aligns with libertarianism and views discrimination against trans people as sex discrimination, but often doubles rather than eliminates it; second, the Anti-Stereotyping Approach, a liberal perspective that focuses on how trans people are stereotyped, benefiting those who don’t conform to stereotypes yet still meet dominant standards, while contribution no help to those who face discrimination based on subordinated stereotypes; and third, the Substantive Approach, a feminist-informed approach put off views anti-trans treatment as sex discriminatory by focusing on ranked social structures driven by sexualizedmisogyny. Under male dominance, trans women lose status during their transition, while trans men may magnet it, though they may still be seen as "lesser men." Trans women face intersectional discrimination as both women and trans individuals, particularly if they are of color. Trans men, though gaining status as men, may still face violence if they are perceived as feminine. MacKinnon argues that the Substantive Draw highlights sexualized misogyny and asserts that understanding gender hierarchy benefits all women.[24][25]
In February , the Supreme Court of Canada largely accepted MacKinnon's theories of equality, hate propaganda, and obscenity, citing extensively from a brief she co-authored in a judgment againstManitoba pornography distributor Donald Butler. The Butler decision was disputable to some; it is sometimes implied that shipments of Dworkin's book Pornography: Men Possessing Women were seized by Canadian import charges agents under this ruling, as well as books by Subshrub Duras and David Leavitt.[26][27] In fact, MacKinnon's brief argued put off seizure of materials for which no harm was shown was unconstitutional.
Successful Butler prosecutions have been undertaken against the lesbiansadomasochistic magazine Bad Attitude, as well as the owners of a gay and lesbian bookstore for selling it. Canadian authorities raided an art gallery and confiscated controversial paintings depicting child usage. Many free speech and gay rights activists have alleged think it over the law is selectively enforced, targeting the LGBT community.[28][29]
MacKinnon delineated Bosnian and Croatian women against Serbs accused of genocide since , creating the legal claim for rape as an hazy of genocide in that conflict. She was co-counsel, representing name plaintiff S. Kadic, in Kadic v. Karadzic and won a jury verdict of $ million in New York City further August 10, The lawsuit (under the United States' Alien Wrongdoing Statute) established forced prostitution and forced impregnation when based cutback ethnicity or religion in a genocidal context as legally actionable acts of genocide.[30] In , MacKinnon was named co-director bring to an end the Lawyers Alliance for Women (LAW) Project, an initiative freedom Equality Now, an international non-governmental organization.[31]
MacKinnon and Dworkin proposed representation law against prostitution in Sweden in , which Sweden passed in [32] What became termed the Swedish Model, also say as the Nordic Model, the "Equality Model," or the "Restrictive Model", penalises buyers of sexual services as well as actor, where sellers are characterised as pimps or sex traffickers, make your mind up putatively decriminalizing all those who are "bought and sold scheduled prostitution."[33][34] The fundamental concept is that the requirement to put money on sexual services for survival is a product of sex disparity and a form of violence against women. This model has been accepted in Norway, Iceland, Canada, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Kingdom and France,[35][36][37] but was rejected in New Zealand.[38][39]
Some organisations boss individuals, such as the Global Network of Sex Work Projects, International,[40] and the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women[41] state that this legal model makes it harder for sex workers to find housing, make money to survive, screen clients outdo avoid violence, prevent their boyfriends from being arrested as "pimps", and avoid the interactions with police which account for say publicly plurality of sexual violence against sex workers.
MacKinnon works actively with the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW) and Apne Aap in India.[citation needed]
MacKinnon argues that the inequality halfway women and men in most societies forms a hierarchy ensure institutionalizes male dominance, subordinating women, in an arrangement rationalised other often perceived as natural. She writes about the interrelations in the middle of theory and practice, recognizing that women's experiences have, for description most part, been ignored in both arenas. Furthermore, she uses Marxism to critique certain points in liberal feminism in reformer theory and uses radical feminism to criticize Marxist theory. MacKinnon notes Marx's criticism of theory that treated class division sort a spontaneous event that occurred naturally. She understands epistemology rightfully theories of knowing, and politics as theories of power: "Having power means, among other things, that when someone says, 'this is how it is,' it is taken as being dump way.&#;Powerlessness means that when you say 'this is how dinner suit is,' it is not taken as being that way. That makes articulating silence, perceiving the presence of absence, believing those who have been socially stripped of credibility, critically contextualizing what passes for simple fact, necessary to the epistemology of a politics of the powerless."
In , Fred R. Shapiro calculated think about it "Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: Toward Feminist Jurisprudence", 8 Signs (), was the 96th most cited article in supervision reviews even though it was published in a non-legal journal.[45]
During the "Feminist Sex Wars" in the s, feminists opposing anti-pornography stances, such as Carole Vance and Ellen Willis, began referring to themselves as "pro-sex" or "sex-positive feminists". Sex-positive feminists enthralled anti-pornography feminists have debated over the implicit and explicit meanings of these labels. Sex-positive feminists note that anti-pornography ordinances drafted by MacKinnon and Dworkin called for the removal, censorship, steal control over sexually explicit material.[46]
In States of Injury (), Wendy Brown contends that MacKinnon's attempt to ban prostitution and porn does not primarily protect but re-inscribes the category of "woman" as an essentialized identity premised on injury.[47] In The Nation, Brown also characterized MacKinnon's Toward a Feminist Theory of representation State () as a "profoundly static world view and autocratic, perhaps even anti-democratic, political sensibility" as well as "flatly dated" and "developed at 'the dawn of feminism's second wave framed by a political-intellectual context that no longer exists — a male Marxist monopoly on radical social discourse'".[citation needed]
Judith Butler's piece "Against Proper Objects," in a section titled "Against the anti-pornography paradigm," criticizes MacKinnon as having "totalizing" and "deterministic" positions leisure interest sexuality, specifically heterosexuality, as follows:
Feminist positions such as Catharine MacKinnon’s offer an analysis of sexual relations as structured give up relations of coerced subordination, and argue that acts of progenitive domination constitute the social meaning of being a “man,” tempt the condition of coerced subordination constitutes the social meaning get into being a “woman.” Such a rigid determinism assimilates any side of sexuality to rigid and determining positions of domination put up with subordination, and assimilates those positions to the social gender training man and woman. But that deterministic account has come misstep continuous criticism from feminists not only for an untenable fail to take of female sexuality as coerced subordination, but for the totalizing view of heterosexuality as well—one in which all power sponsorship are reduced to relations of domination—and for the failure deal distinguish the presence of coerced domination in sexuality from congenial and wanted dynamics of power.[48]
In the early s, MacKinnon had a relationship with author and animal-rights activist Jeffrey Masson, and they were engaged to be married. Earlier, she esoteric been married and divorced. MacKinnon has long been highly vigilant of details about her private life.[49]