Mariana Valverde Forced Sex" [Emphasis Mine]
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more acute for more senior positions. identify topics that can be approached appeal to its intended undergraduate au- Women students face difficulties, usually from this perspective. And a shorter con- dience and offers many stimulating lines unrecognized by their teachers and often clusion rightly portrays feminism as a for discussion and research. It will be by themselves in the learning en- challenge to us "to examine our personal, worthwhile reading too for other social vironment - and perhaps suffer at the political and academic lives..." scientists -as much for what geography hands of examiners too! A short section This book is well argued and written can offer to feminism as the latter can to on putting feminist geography into prac- and ought to be read by all geographers - that discipline. tice attempts to encourage students to men and women alike. It is careful to FEMINISM UNMODIFIED: would think this is because she believes change, of the possibilities for non-patri- DISCOURSES ON LIFE AND that the images of pornography shape archal living, she dismisses as "fantasy LAW men's attitudes to women; but this isn't and entertainment" This is another in- how she explains it. She wants to claim stance of her eitherlor, absolutist frame of Catharine MacKinnon. Cambridge: that pornography is not a cultural genre mind: she rejects the vapid optimism of Harvard University Press, 1987. but an actual practice of "male suprem- neo-maternal feminism only to paint a acy;" pornography, she says "is a form of picture of a patriarchy so powerful that it Mariana Valverde forced sex" [emphasis mine]. is difficult to see how any woman has ever That pictures of sex or violence are not rebelled. She goes so far as to claim that The first question facing a prospective in the same ontological plane as actual sex "female power" is "a contradiction in buyer of this book is: what is feminism or violence is thus denied by MacKinnon. terms." How can feminism then exist, one supposed to be unmodified by anyway? The view that pictures of sex are to be wonders? The thought of the important American treated just as if they were sex is precisely The main contribution of the book is its radical feminist Catharine MacKinnon is that implicit in obscenity law (certain critique of liberal feminism. MacKinnon best grasped by answering this question at pictures are illegal because the activity rejects all notion of individual women some length, for she begins by assuming portrayed in them is illegal), which is making a difference in the world or in a position in the centre of a 'pure' femi- rather ironic given MacKinnon's rejec- their private lives. And she has a well- nism and then defending it against all tion of obscenity law as irrelevant to deserved critique of the assumptions of outside (and even inside) threats. feminist concerns. Her unwitting support liberal jurisprudence regarding individ- MacKinnon herself names socialism for the obscenity approach is reinforced ual equality: for instance, she refuses to and liberalism as the twin evils threaten- by her belief that what is pornographic use the term 'person,' which tries to over- ing to undermine or co-opt what she calls and objectionable is not only violence but come actual gender differences through feminism tout court and others would call even sex itself. The infamous terms an abstract and purely formal equality. MacKinnon's thought. We will take up "sexually explicit," which most feminists Now, to criticize American bootstrap these two enemies in aminute, but first let want to eliminate from anti-pom legisla- individualism may be necessary, but us clarify that MacKinnon has profound tion, are included in MacKinnon's pro- MacKinnon goes to the other extreme: disagreements with most influential radi- posed anti-porn ordinance. This is be- she portrays women merely as instances cal feminists, from Susan Brownmiller to cause in MacKinnon's view sex is per se of a gender defined in turn solely through Mary Daly; to explain these is to delineate degrading to women. Why? Well, be- its oppression. Thus her whole approach her particular position within the by no cause it is pornographic, that is degrading, to sexuality neglects to inquire about means homogeneous radical feminist she argues circularly. Those who persist individual desires and fantasies, or for current of the women's movement. in talking about sexual freedom, she says that matter about collective struggles to Mary Daly is, like many other radical "claim not to be able to grasp how sexual- redefine the terms of sexual discourse and feminists, a thorough philosophical ideal- ity could be always already pornography" experience. For her, sexuality is not per- ist. She believes that it is the ideology of [emphasis mine]. meated by contradictionsand tensions (as patriarchy which oppresses women in the Having set up, through circularreason- it is for most other theorists): it is simply first instance; her revolution is located in ing, a closed cycle of male dominatiod dangerous, simply oppressive. This femi- language and in philosophy, not in female victimization, MacKinnon pro- nism is "the night in which all cows are workplaces, streets and homes (See my fesses to be surprised whenever any black," to use Hegel's words. article "The Religion of the 'Race' of woman rebels or even speaks. This brings This brings us to the other 'enemy' who Women: A Critique of Mary Daly," Rites, us to another way in which she differs ought not to modify feminism, namely Oct. 1985,pp. 14-16). MacKinnon rejects from most other radical feminists, namely socialism. (Incidental1y, MacKinnon this and insists that "male supremacy" her refusal to portray women as essen- seems to be unaware of the fact that much [her term] is organized and maintained tially better than men, as morally supe- of her critique of liberalism was devel- through practices more than through rior. Women are simply not subjects, oped over a century ago by Marxist and ideas. However - and this is the first moral or otherwise. (As a whole she has non-Marxist socialists). Socialist-femi- serious problem in MacKinnon's per- little trust in women as a group, which is nism is dismissed as simply a male-left spective -her rejection of idealism does probably why the only feminist favoura- approach to 'the woman question' lacking not lead her to emphasize women's eco- bly referenced in her book is Andrea any alternative analysis of women's very nomic and political struggles. On the Dworkin). The word 'resistance' is there- real class situations. In her list of the contrary, she names pornography as en- fore absent from her vocabulary. Defend- 'practices' that supposedly make uppatri- emy No. l, and has in fact dedicated most ing her use of the term "victims" to refer archy, women's economic subordination of her energy in the last few years to to women, she states that her task is through both paid and unpaid labour is developing a civil-remedies approach to "exposing the truth of women's conspicuously absent. The fact that only a remove pornography from sight. One victimization." Any discussion of social middle-class white woman could possi- 100 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIESLES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME bly make this omission does not occur to ing. Equally appalling is the fact that in American feminist thought and practice. her -for after all, she declares, "you will her discussion of legal precedents and They deservecriticism, andnot only from notice that I equate 'in my view' with legal tactics MacKinnon constantly a socialist perspective. However, radical 'feminism."' makes parallels between civil rights cases feminists who are grassroots activistswill The other possible modifier of the noun and feminist concerns that rely on the not get any help from MacKinnon7s 'feminism' - 'anti-racist' -is not even assumption that racism is and has been apocalyptic and demoralizing speeches mentioned. Her comments about women adequately addressed in the American about women's "victimization" under a of colour regard exclusively their repre- legal system, and that women are far monolithic patriarchy undivided by race, sentation in pornography; one gets the behind black people in their access to class, and nationality. The grassroots impression that MacKinnon believes that legal redress. The constant refrain, 'they radical feminists, who do believe that race is important only as one more trick in wouldn't allow that to be done to blacks' resistance is possible even if it is never the pornographer's bag, and is irrelevant betrays a wilful disregard for the realities 'pure', need to develop their own theory, to women themselves and hence to femi- nism. That someone could publish a of racism (whatever the legal situation one that is not hostile to the class and race feminist book in 1987 as though black may be), and certainly helps to perpetuate struggles of women and one that does not feminism did not exist, as though the violence against blacks, Chicanos and equate 'feminism' in general with the whole idea of "feminism unmodified" other people of colour. views of one legal theorist. Progressive had not been demolished by critiques Liberalism, individualism and idealism radical feminism is still awaiting its theo- from women of colour, is simply astound- are certainly problematic elements in rist. ONE WAY TICKET: MIGRA- this recent migration has been female. In relegates migrant women to a subordinate TION AND FEMALE LABOUR Britain (the context for four of seven position, a "new layer of segmentation" chapters in this volume), large numbers of within the sexually divided labour mar- Edited by Annie Phizacklea. London: women from New Commonwealth coun- ket. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983. tries have anived as independent work- In the absence of aggregate statistical ers, in addition to women from these and data on the labour market positions of Daiva K.