Womens Lives, Mens Laws

New
Paperback
2007
$34.32

In the past twenty-five years, no one has been more instrumental than Catharine MacKinnon in making equal rights real for women. As Peter Jennings once put it, more than anyone else in legal studies, she has made it easier for other women to seek justice. This collection, the first since MacKinnon's celebrated Feminism Unmodified appeared in 1987, brings together previously uncollected and unpublished work in the national arena from 1980 to the present, defining her clear, coherent, consistent approach to reframing the law of men on the basis of the lives of women. By making visible the deep gender bias of existing law, MacKinnon has recast legal debate and action on issues of sex discrimination, sexual abuse, prostitution, pornography, and racism. The essays in this volume document and illuminate some of the momentous and ongoing changes to which this work contributes; the recognition of sexual harassment, rape, and battering as claims for sexual discrimination; the redefinition of rape in terms of women's actual experience of sexual violation; and the reframing of the pornography debate around harm rather than morality. The perspectives in these essays have played an essential part in changing American law and remain fundamental to the project of building a sex-equal future.

Synopsis

In the past twenty-five years, no one has been more instrumental than Catharine MacKinnon in making equal rights real for women. As Peter Jennings once put it, more than anyone else in legal studies, she has made it easier for other women to seek justice. This collection, the first since MacKinnon's celebrated Feminism Unmodified appeared in 1987, brings together previously uncollected and unpublished work in the national arena from 1980 to the present, defining her clear, coherent, consistent approach to reframing the law of men on the basis of the lives of women. By making visible the deep gender bias of existing law, MacKinnon has recast legal debate and action on issues of sex discrimination, sexual abuse, prostitution, pornography, and racism. The essays in this volume document and illuminate some of the momentous and ongoing changes to which this work contributes; the recognition of sexual harassment, rape, and battering as claims for sexual discrimination; the redefinition of rape in terms of women's actual experience of sexual violation; and the reframing of the pornography debate around harm rather than morality. The perspectives in these essays have played an essential part in changing American law and remain fundamental to the project of building a sex-equal future.

$34.32

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 576
Edition: New Ed
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 14 Sep 2007
ISBN 10: 0674024060
ISBN 13: 9780674024069
Book Overview: The writings in MacKinnon's Women's Lives, Men's Laws continue to be excellent - fresh, concise and incisive. She has new things to say that will continue to enrapture and enlighten a large readership (and perhaps enrage others, many of whom perhaps never actually read her work). -- Frances Elisabeth Olsen, author of Feminist Legal Theory Women's Lives, Men's Laws contains the deepest and best feminist writing around, and there is nothing like it. MacKinnon is a figure of singular importance for the history of feminist thought and for its present. Before MacKinnon, there was no legally usable concept of sexual harassment. Now in any law library there are shelves of publications developing her ideas. Before her work, sexual advances in the workplace were not typically seen to involve an asymmetry of power (although they always did involve this, and women knew it). Now even the most conservative judge will use MacKinnon's framework of analysis in adjudicating cases. Before MacKinnon, again, issues of sexual equality were commonly dealt with by saying equals to equals, unequals to unequals - so if a difference could be shown between women and men, for example that only women get pregnant, not providing employees with pregnancy insurance did not constitute sex discrimination. After MacKinnon the concept of equality was understood in terms of a different antonym - subordination, second-class citizenship. Before MacKinnon, the law of obscenity focused on the alleged offensiveness of the sexy. Now even those who do not agree with her practical proposals agree that issues of violence, subordination, and abuse must be central in coming to grips with the problem of pornography. Finally, it is to a considerable extent due to MacKinnon's influence that sexual abuse of women is now regarded as a major human rights violation internationally. In short, as even critics of her views will readily agree, there is no single person who has done more to change the course of American law. She is among the century's most important thinkers, and I can think of none whose theoretical work has done more to improve human well being. -- Martha Nussbaum, author of Cultivating Humanity

Media Reviews

Women's Lives, Men's Laws offers reminders of what [MacKinnon] thinks sexual equality would look like and how she thinks the law might come to share in the creation of such equality despite having spread its protective arms around sexual inequality for so very long. - Elizabeth Spelman, London Review of Books The book contains much that is impressive, both intellectually and rhetorically, and it is instructive both about the history of MacKinnon's battles and about the issues. - Thomas Nagel, Times Literary Supplement

Author Bio

Catharine A. MacKinnon is Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School and the James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law (Long-Term) at Harvard Law School.