University of Miami Law School University of Miami School of Law Institutional Repository Articles Faculty and Deans 1993 Whiteness and Women, In Practice and Theory: A Reply To Catharine MacKinnon Martha R. Mahoney University of Miami School of Law,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.law.miami.edu/fac_articles Part of the Law and Gender Commons, and the Law and Society Commons Recommended Citation Martha R. Mahoney, Whiteness and Women, In Practice and Theory: A Reply To Catharine MacKinnon, 5 Yale J.L. & Feminism 217 (1993). This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty and Deans at University of Miami School of Law Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles by an authorized administrator of University of Miami School of Law Institutional Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Whiteness and Women, In Practice and Theory: A Reply To Catharine MacKinnon Martha R. Mahoneyt I. INTRODUCTION As a white woman, I want to respond to Catharine MacKinnon's recent essay subtitled "What is a White Woman Anyway?"' I am troubled both by the essay's defensive tone and by its substantive arguments. 2 MacKinnon's contribution to feminism has emphasized the ways in which gender is constructed through male domination and sexual exploitation, and the profound structuring effect of male power on women's lives. This emphasis on what is done to women creates conceptual problems in understanding race and particularly in understanding whiteness. Defining gender by what is done to women makes it hard to see the many ways in which women act in our own lives and in the world.