She's a bracing woman, who calls her philosophy 'feminism unmodified' and thinks wimpish guff such as post-feminism does women no good at all. Why does MacKinnon matter? She is undeniably one of feminism's most significant figures, a ferociously tough-minded lawyer and academic who has sought to use the law to clamp down on sexual harassment and pornography.

So that means not that all the people who wrote it were rapists, but that they are a member of the group who do and who do for reasons that they share in common even with those who don't, namely masculinity and their identification with masculine norms and in particular being the people who initiate sex and being the people who socially experience themselves as being affirmed by aggressive initiation of sexual interaction.' She takes a well-earned breath. The most obvious sense is that most rapists are men and most legislators are men and most judges are men and the law of rape was created when women weren't even allowed to vote.

She writes: 'he 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.'Īre you suggesting that rape law enshrines rapists' points of view, I ask MacKinnon? 'Yes, in a couple of senses. Of all the provocative passages in Catharine MacKinnon's new book Are Women Human? the following hit me hardest.

Catharine mackinnon feminism unmodified