Word: mackinnon
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Anyone who doubts that words have consequences ought to talk to the feminist legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon. Certainly her words have had consequences. When Canada's Supreme Court decided to uphold the nation's toughened obscenity laws two years ago, they were moved in large part by MacKinnon's argument that pornography prompts men to a whole panoply of crimes against women, from gender discrimination to outright rape...
...heart of her thinking is the notion that pornography is literally a form of assault by expression, something like saying "Kill!" to a trained attack dog. "Protecting pornography means protecting sexual abuse as speech," MacKinnon writes in her latest book, Only Words (Harvard University Press; $14.95). "Sooner or later, in one way or another, the consumers want to live out the pornography further in three dimensions...
...more proof that words have consequences, there is Carlin Romano, book critic of the Philadelphia Inquirer. His Nov. 15 review of MacKinnon's work in the left-leaning weekly the Nation set off a war of words that is reaching new heights of animosity. Romano, a former philosophy instructor, opened his review with a hypothetical proposition. "Suppose I decide to rape Catharine MacKinnon before reviewing her book. Because I'm uncertain whether she understands the difference between being raped and being exposed to pornography, I consider it required research for my critique of her manifesto...
...their libertarian outlook--one I once shared by no longer--the Gates-Billett perspective acts as if the critical-legal theorists (Duncan Kennedy, Catharine MacKinnon, etc.) never wrote a word. But they have written--and wisely...
Feminist legal scholar Catharine A. Mackinnon was denied tenure last spring, and some of her supporters felt that her controversial approach mattered as much as the quality of her scholarship in the decision...