This is the title or an article in the Guardian today, and the of a new book by a Feminist scholar and lawyer, Catharine MacKinnon. (She graduated from Smith, which makes her an amazing woman for me already) bas having read some of what she says, I am even more impressed. She has been fighting for women's rights in the legal context, and is not afraid to state that the laws currently in place when it comes to rape,"the fact that the law of rape protects rapists and is written from their point of view to guarantee impunity for most rapes is officially regarded as a violation of the law of sex equality, national or international, by virtually nobody."There are famous feminists who do not like here, call her a Fascist (even more reason to like her), that she is promotes "Victim Feminism", Naomi Wolf claims that Mackinnon, "urges women to identify with powerlessness, even at the expense of taking responsibility for the power they do possess."
But to listen to what this woman has to say is quite mind opening, and really honest.
She states that that until sex inequality is tackled legally women will continue to be raped, murdered and served up as masturbation fantasies for men. To follow her logic, she says that heterosexual sex in our societies is based on inequality, she states that: . "In the same way that, say, friendships between black people and white people in societies that are racist do." She goes on to criticise the governments in all the world. Saying that even though they all say that they want to end sexual discrimination in all its forms, hardly any have delivered on this. "You don't have countries saying that, 'Yes, we have sex discrimination here and we want it. We're entitled to it and we enjoy it.' You don't have them saying that; you have them doing it."
In her new book, Are Women Human? MacKinnon answers the question stating that no they are not. "If women were human, would we be a cash crop shipped from Thailand in containers into New York's brothels? Would we be sexual and reproductive slaves? Would we be bred, worked without pay our whole lives, burned when our dowry money wasn't enough or when men tired of us, starved as widows when our husbands died (if we survived his funeral pyre)? ..."
MacKinnon writes that violence against women "qualifies as a casus belli and a form of terrorism every bit as much as the events of September 11 do". Is she serious that violence against women should be treated as a war? "I think only because it's men doing it against women that it isn't seen as a war."
