Posted on 04/25/2005 4:33:15 PM PDT by Lorianne
Incidents similar to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks are occurring every day in the United States and around the world, but few people are doing anything about it. This was the overarching message presented by leading feminist Catharine MacKinnon during a provocative lecture yesterday that underscored the parallels between the ongoing war on terror and what she sees as a war on women. “A kind of war is being fought, but there is no name for this war in which men are the aggressors and women the victims,” she said. MacKinnon, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, is one of the most widely cited legal scholars in the English language.
Just like terrorist attacks, acts of violence against women are carefully planned, targeted at civilians and driven by ideology. Gang rape, pornography and other acts that humiliate and repress women are methodically organized; the targeted victims are essentially all civilians; and the misogynist attitude is as ideological as Islamic fundamentalism, MacKinnon contended.
“The number of people who died at [the terrorists’] hands is the same as the number of women who die at men’s hands-every year,” she said. “9/11 happens in this very country every year.”
More importantly, MacKinnon argued, public responses to the two types of war differ radically. Wars and disputes among nation-states have generated international discussions and conventions. But men’s war against women has not even brought about an ad-hoc tribunal.
“Aggression against women isn’t called the violation of peace, as aggression against nation-states is called,” she said. “There’s no Geneva Convention for this war, and the domestic criminal laws are so under-enforced that they can be considered not there.”
MacKinnon also challenged the audience to reflect on the parallels between the military conflict in Iraq and the hostilities between the sexes.
“The major rationale for the war in Iraq is the preemption of threats posed by Saddam Hussein’s regime — because we’re scared of you, we can kill you,” she said. “Imagine what it would be like if women did the same to men one day.”
MacKinnon acknowledged that her speech was intended to provoke thought, debate and a fresh way of viewing women’s subordination. She stressed, however, that the war on women is by no means a metaphor.
“International law today doesn’t capture the reality that half of society is attacking the other half,” she said. “This is a real war that has gone on for millennia.”
An audience member expressed concern during the question-and-answer session that MacKinnon’s ideas are too confrontational to effectively bridge the divide between the two sexes. But MacKinnon assured that shedding light on the violence perpetrated against women is necessary to make gender equality possible.
“If we’re worried that we’ll be knocked down as soon as we stand up, then we’ll always be crawling on the floor,” she responded.
The outspoken MacKinnon, who taught at Stanford’s Law School in the 1980s, has proven to be as much a lightning rod as she is a magnet of admirers. She has long championed the prohibition of pornography, asserting that producing and viewing pornography degrade women and should be considered a violation of their civil rights.
In introducing MacKinnon, former Law School Dean Kathleen Sullivan applauded MacKinnon’s scholarly contribution to the women’s liberation movement. Sullivan referred to the French feminist Simone de Beauvoir — whose book “The Second Sex” offered groundbreaking critique of the social structure that oppressed women — in describing MacKinnon’s influence on the contemporary study of feminism.
“There are many other prominent feminist theorists in our times, but none of their philosophy is as sweeping and profound as MacKinnon’s,” Sullivan said.
Carol Li, a second-year law student who had studied under MacKinnon at the University of Chicago where MacKinnon served as a visiting professor, praised her as an iconic figure in feminist legal theory.
“Her speech was very loaded and thought-provoking,” Li said following the lecture, which was sponsored by the Women of Stanford Law, a student group, and the Institute for Research on Women and Gender. “MacKinnon doesn’t attack things just on the surface; she goes incisively into the culture and politics. I think she offers a powerful voice to the women who’ve been subordinated in society.”
MacKinnon, 58, received her bachelor’s degree from Smith College and her law degree from Yale Law School. She also holds a doctorate in political science from Yale University. She is holding a book-signing event today in room 180 of the Law School at 12:30 p.m.
You've really found some fruitcakes today!
Well guys, she's on to us. I know I'm short on my wife-beating quota this month.
[/sarcasm off]
Interesting to perennial Sophomores majoring in "Women's Studies" or "Critical Studies". To anyone else this woman is a staggering bore.
Interesting to perennial Sophomores majoring in "Women's Studies" or "Critical Studies". To anyone else this woman is a staggering bore.
Yes, I have.
It must be hypocrisy week on the Left.
I having a hard time typing on the keyboard with my finger down my throat.
Nice, nice, kitty.
Softwarecreator decries war on men.
Film at 11.
Can't we all just get along?
[She stressed, however, that the war on women is by no means a metaphor.]
Darn. I was wrong twice.
"championed the prohibition of pornography"
I've never understood thei feminist contradiction-does a woman own her own her own body, to do with as she pleases, or not?
LOL!
Damn, I wish I would of thought that one up.
Vintage McKinnon. Words have only the meaning she intends them to have, else this claim would be hooted off the stage for the nonsensical hyperbole that it most certainly is. Does she mean that women are being killed by men in flaming buildings that have been hit by hijacked jetliners? No, she means "similar." Well, how similar?
It turns out to be not very. The "war" she is describing is largely a collection of her own prejudices hammered out in hallowed cliches that have become canon in Gender Studies departments and tragicomedy in the minds of those thinking men and women unfortunate enough to encounter them in the field. It is a 9/11 that is not a 9/11 that describes a war that is not a war...and this tripe is taken seriously?
It does, however, function as a justification for a very real war that she intends to conduct to counter the imaginary one. This is, and has been, dangerous and destructive doctrine. Intelligent adults can laugh at it - when it works its way into primary and secondary education the children cannot. McKinnon has every intention of conducting her war on boys, not on men, and there are disturbing signs of success.
LOL!
"God made man and woman. Sam Colt made them equal."
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