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Are Women Human?: And Other International Dialogues

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Catherine MacKinnon is back, and she's still fighting the good fight. Like her deceased colleague Andrea Dworkin, a much more obstreperous feminist, MacKinnon came out of the Sixties with a grounding in Marxism, all the better to give her feminist militancy a historical perspective. Here she gives Aristotle's conception of equality ("if men don't need it, women don't get it") the boot. Postmodernist cuties receive their caustic due, too (and it's refreshing to see someone finally point out that the poststructuralist stance is actually cribbed from M+E). 'Free speech' liberals, multicultural apologists and essentialist feminists also get a taste of the lash. So-called Human Rights charters, treaties, declarations and proponents are treated to a megablast of deconstruction. But, in the main, MacKinnon is after the REAL criminals, and, as always, her argument is acute and tenacious.

As she sees it, pornography and prostitution are the same (rendering conflicting US laws, however ineffectual, against only one ridiculous) and are sustained upon gender inequality - in turn perpetuated by economic oppression. It is here MacKinnon's push for CIVIL instead of (old-same-old) CRIMINAL action provides women a fighting chance to hit their oppressors back. "Sexualization of inequality" is MacKinnon's primary target, reaching all the way to the horror of Serbian rape atrocities, where "pornography emerges as a tool of genocide." (We must wonder what free rein US troops 'enjoy' in Iraq.) From there, MacKinnon notes, in the wake of 9/11, how almighty forces of 'justice' can be unleashed upon evildoers who attack civilians (buildings, really) but not unleashed to protect women, thousands of whom die every year - year after year - at the hands of their so-called 'natural' protectors, men.

And yes, MacKinnon still quotes Dworkin.

MacKinnon is a force of nature, ruthlessly brilliant and uncompromising. Are Women Human? shimmers in its breadth and force.