Catharine MacKinnon
Sexual harassment
According to an article published by Deborah Dinner in the March/April 2006 issue of Legal Affairs, MacKinnon first became interested in issues concerning sexual harassment when she heard that an administrative assistant at Cornell University resigned after being refused a transfer when she complained of her supervisor's harassing behavior, and then was denied unemployment benefits because she quit for 'personal' reasons. It was at a consciousness-raising session about this and other women's workplace experiences that the term sexual harassment was first coined.[11] In 1977, MacKinnon graduated from Yale Law School after having written a paper on the topic of sexual harassment for Professor Thomas I. Emerson. Two years later, MacKinnon published "Sexual Harassment of Working Women," arguing that sexual harassment is a form of sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and any other sex discrimination prohibition. While working on "Sexual Harassment", MacKinnon shared draft copies with attorneys litigating early sexual harassment cases, including Nadine Traub, who represented Yale undergraduates in Alexander v. Yale, the first test case of MacKinnon's legal theory.[12][13] In her book, MacKinnon argued that sexual harassment is sex discrimination because the act reinforces the social inequality of women to men (see, for example, pp. 116–18, 174). She distinguishes between two types of sexual harassment (see pp. 32–42): 1) "quid pro quo," meaning sexual harassment "in which sexual compliance is exchanged, or proposed to be exchanged, for an employment opportunity (p. 32)" and 2) the type of harassment that "arises when sexual harassment is a persistent condition of work (p. 32)." In 1980, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission followed MacKinnon's framework in adopting guidelines prohibiting sexual harassment by prohibiting both quid pro quo harassment and hostile work environment harassment (see 29 C.F.R. § 1604.11(a)). In 1986, the Supreme Court held in Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson that sexual harassment may violate laws against sex discrimination. In Meritor, the Court also recognized the distinction between quid pro quo sexual harassment and hostile work place harassment. Wrote MacKinnon in a 2002 article: "'Without question,' then-Justice Rehnquist wrote for a unanimous Court, 'when a supervisor sexually harasses a subordinate because of the subordinate's sex, that supervisor "discriminate[s]" on the basis of sex.' The D.C. Circuit, and women, had won. A new common law rule was established."[14]
Pornography
MacKinnon, along with feminist activist Andrea Dworkin, has been active in reforming legal postures towards pornography, framing it as a form of sex discrimination and, more recently, a form of human trafficking. She (and Dworkin) define pornography as follows: "We define pornography as the graphic sexually explicit subordination of women through pictures and words that also includes (i) women are presented dehumanized as sexual objects, things, or commodities; or (ii) women are presented as sexual objects who enjoy humiliation or pain; or (iii) women are presented as sexual objects experiencing sexual pleasure in rape, incest or other sexual assault; or (iv) women are presented as sexual objects tied up, cut up or mutilated or bruised or physically hurt; or (v) women are presented in postures or positions of sexual submission, servility, or display; or (vi) women's body parts — including but not limited to vaginas, breasts, or buttocks — are exhibited such that women are reduced to those parts; or (vii) women are presented being penetrated by objects or animals; or (viii) women are presented in scenarios of degradation, humiliation, injury, torture, shown as filthy or inferior, bleeding, bruised, or hurt in a context that makes these conditions sexual."[1] MacKinnon characterizes pornography as a particularly graphic and violent means of subordinating women. In Toward a Feminist Theory of the State, she writes, “Pornography, in the feminist view, is a form of forced sex, a practice of sexual politics, and institution of gender inequality.”[2] MacKinnon chooses a few points to focus on specifically. She depicts the sexual exploitation of women as a means of showing their inferiority by dehumanizing them, and displaying them as sexual objects, things or commodities. She argues that any display of women enjoying humiliation or pain should be a violation of the law. She writes, “Pornography contributes causally to attitudes and behaviors of violence and discrimination which define the treatment and status of half the population.”[3] MacKinnon also highlights how pornography reduces women to their sexual body parts (vaginas, breasts, or buttocks’). This is a central part of her argument of dehumanization, as women are simply seen as sex parts, i.e., objects, things, or commodities for the sexual enjoyment of men.
Antipornography ordinances
Main article: Antipornography Civil Rights Ordinance
Obscenity laws are the ways that the liberal state has attempted to regulate pornography. MacKinnon states that the liberal state views obscenity as a form of expression under the First Amendment, but MacKinnon disagrees with this view. Obscenity is concerned with morality, “good and evil, virtues and vices.”[9] MacKinnon argues that feminism approaches pornography from a political standpoint, while the obscenity law focuses on morality. “The concerns of feminism with power and powerlessness are first political, not moral.” [10] MacKinnon states that obscenity is about morality, and pornography is “a political practice.” [11] In 1980, Linda Boreman (who had appeared in the pornographic film Deep Throat as "Linda Lovelace"
stated that her ex-husband Chuck Traynor had violently coerced her into making Deep Throat and other pornographic films. Boreman made her charges public for the press corps at a press conference, together with MacKinnon, members of Women Against Pornography, and feminist writer Andrea Dworkin offering statements in support. After the press conference, Dworkin, MacKinnon, Gloria Steinem, and Boreman began discussing the possibility of using federal civil rights law to seek damages from Traynor and the makers of Deep Throat. Linda Boreman was interested, but backed off after Steinem discovered that the statute of limitations for a possible suit had passed (Brownmiller 337).
MacKinnon and Dworkin, however, continued to discuss civil rights litigation as a possible approach to combatting pornography. MacKinnon opposed traditional arguments against pornography based on the idea of morality or sexual innocence, as well as the use of traditional criminal obscenity law to suppress pornography. Instead of condemning pornography for violating "community standards" of sexual decency or modesty, they characterized pornography as a form of sex discrimination, and sought to give women the right to seek damages under civil rights law. “Pornography, in the feminist view is a form of forced sex, a practice of sexual politics, an institution of gender inequality” (Mackinnon 197).[15] Pornography in turn promotes the idea of men's sexuality being dominant over women and combines dominance and submission into the natural construct of men and women in relation to each other. In 1983, the Minneapolis city government hired MacKinnon and Dworkin to draft an antipornography civil rights ordinance as an amendment to the Minneapolis city civil rights ordinance. The amendment defined pornography as a civil rights violation against women, and allowed women who claimed harm from pornography to sue the producers and distributors for damages in civil court. The law was passed twice by the Minneapolis city council but vetoed by the mayor. Another version of the ordinance passed in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1984.
International work
MacKinnon has also represented Bosnian and Croatian women against Serbs accused of genocide since 1992. She was co-counsel, representing named plaintiff S. Kadic, in the lawsuit Kadic v. Karadzic and won a jury verdict of $745 million in New York City on August 10, 2000. The lawsuit (under the United States' Alien Tort Statute) also established forced prostitution and forced impregnation as legally actionable acts of genocide. In MacKinnon’s view, traditional approaches to human rights gloss over abuses specific to women (e.g., sexual violence), both in wartime and peacetime.
MacKinnon has also worked to change laws, or their interpretation and application in Mexico, Japan, Israel, and India. In 2001, MacKinnon was named co-director of the Lawyers Alliance for Women (LAW) Project, an initiative of Equality Now, an international non-governmental organization.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharine_MacKinnon#Sexual_harassment
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i am listening to her now in a lecture.
do we really want to throw our educated, successful, activist women away because a few men on this board ridicule and define these women for us?
= new reply since forum marked as read
