This potentially recurring feature, curated for now by Pilgrim Soul unless other Harpies wish to leap in, directs Harpy readers to important feminist thoughts and concepts as spoken by some of her favourite feminists on and off the web. The appraisal of the value of these snippets is, of course, entirely Pilgrim Soul’s, and does not necessarily reflect the views of other Harpies. Feel free to discuss in the comments here.
Today’s offering comes from one of my favourite all time feminists, Catharine MacKinnon, who is much maligned these days in feminist circles but who has an extraordinary knack for making a whole lot of sense in very few words. To wit, her view on the postmodern, cultural relativist, “but it’s what [insert culture] does!” critique of feminism:
I would also like to know in what culture some men don’t kill their wives for perceived infidelity (or just because . . .), and in what culture men are not supported in culturally-specific ways in believing that force is part of sex. (Let’s move there.) What postmodernism gives us instead is a multicultural defense for male violence—a defense for it wherever it is, which in effect is a pretty universal defense. Pornography also provides an excellent cultural defense to rape in most Western cultures: the more pornography is consumed, the more difficult it is for men to know that they are using force when they force women into sex—so they will culturally believe that women consent to sex no matter how much force is used. Why are we coming up with a multicultural defense for each culture in which men specifically and particularly are permitted to believe rape is sex, instead of looking at the assumption that rape happens in a man’s mind rather than in a woman’s body in all of them? None of this would be possible if the dissenting women of each culture—the women who say, I was raped—were credited with knowing the reality of what was done to them.
Discuss!
Or don’t discuss, whatever.
See, I need to get all these books and read them because I never feel like I quite know how to comment on some of these shorter passages. But Spring Break is coming and mayhap my job will be ending. So yay for MacKinnon et al reading time.
I never went to college or had a proper education in feminism, so I especially appreciate this series. I have never heard of MacKinnon, except when she was condemned in concert with Dworkin, by men and young feminists. I always suspected for that reason that I might like her.
ARE YOU SAYING YOU DON’T SPEND ALL YOUR FREE TIME READING FEMINIST LEGAL SCHOLARSHIP?
I have issues with arguments against a multicultural approach (I wrote some scathing critiques of Susan Okin in my day) because they tend to wind up it “enlightened white woman saves brown women from themselves and their culture!” territory.
That being said, this passage at least makes a good point, that unquestioning multiculturalism is dangerous as well. Just because someone is using a multiculturalist perspective doesn’t mean that they know jack squat about the cultures involved, and it can be used to excuse behaviors that are not culturally supported anywhere but in stereotype. Where we, as hypothetical outsiders in a hypothetical situation in which we hypothetically have to deal with the “but its their culture!!!11!” defense of misogyny, must tread carefully is in taking time to educate ourselves about the culture and LISTENING to the women involved.
I’m not sure if any of that made sense.
It made total, one hundred percent sense, Dori, and it’s true.
Elsewhere in this article MacKinnon talks about her belief that the “woman” of feminism can only be described through the lived, concrete experiences of actual women, and where that has actually been put in place (which is by no means everywhere) it seems to me that should account for the “enlightened white woman” problem.
@Pilgrim Soul: oh good! I’ve been at work for 15 hours, so the edges are a bit fuzzy at this point.
I have other points that want to leave my head, but my brain is shutting down
PS- OMG YOU ARE TRYING TO TAKE AWAY MY FEMINIST CARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!11
I hate cultural relativism as an explanation for women’s oppression with the heat of a thousand suns. My dad used it in court during my parents’ divorce trial. An Indian friend of his got on the stand and said that his beating of my mother was reasonable discipline for wives in India. He also worked bride burning in there as a normal cultural practice. Fortunately the (male) judge wouldn’t have any of it.
I think it’s important to acknowledge, though, that there are cultural differences and they are not all parallel. Not to justify oppression, but, because opression is treated differently in different places and it is still oppression.
[...] Feminist Food For Thought: Catharine MacKinnon – [...]
Hold up lady I’m trying to read the whole article so I don’t get all snippy unnecessarily.
Haha JD.
I did think “uh oh, JD’s not going to like me” when I posted the article. It’s one of my all-time fave MacKinnon smackdowns, though since posting it I’ve realized the context can be confusing.
MacKinnon defends her own work well, but I think she commits the same sins of reductionism against postmodern feminists that they may do to her. She seems to assume that postmodern feminists are all academics, that only her brand of feminists have engaged in activism or engagement in material improvements of peoples’ lives. She claims to listen to the voices of women, but dismisses the voices of women who say the way she describes women does not seem to include them as idealists who don’t acknowledge abuse of women. What about all those committed postmodern feminist activists who, on feminist grounds, have advocated for the decriminalization of prostitution, say, or who have opposed pornography bans on free speech grounds, activist grounds, intended as sincerely to improve real lives as MacKinnon’s activism has. She seems to reduce real controversies to sophistry. But the claims of feminist critics of radical feminism have more consequence in the world than MacKinnon gives them credit for — take the tension between gay and lesbian advocates of gay marriage and queer activism to abolish it. That’s not just an academic head game, that’s a policy difference which depends on whether certain institutions are capable of providing one with security and liberty. Her reliance on the child abuse scandals in her own defense is bewildering. The question of recovered memories of childhood abuse is incredibly complex and claims of abuse are indeed subject to cross narratives and multi layered power, that in some cases feminists did exploit children to fit the narrative of widespread abuse of children. I think this denial is related to her denial of feminists’ power. Because her theory of feminism is grounded in a theory of subordination, it often fails to take into account those occasions and ways in which women and feminists are not subordinated. And that can blind us to our own mistakes as a movement, those incidences in which we did wield our power and we got it wrong, or people were harmed. She gets in trouble I think when she says things like this: “the reality of people who don’t have power exists independently of what they think.” Okay, yes, and if they think differently about their situation than you do, Ms. MacKinnon, whose description of that reality is true? She claims to be listening to the voices of the harmed, except when they deny that the harm is as she describes it, and then their reality exists whether or not they think it does. Claims of harm, it seems, are incontrovertible and unquestionable even by their subject.
JD – there’s a whole lot in there. This happens to be a piece of MacKinnon’s that I strongly agree with, though I don’t agree with her on everything, but I feel like you are reading in some things that aren’t in there, perhaps from prior readings of yours? To add layer upon layer, I also think you may be reducing her arguments in the following ways:
1. It’s strange to me that you would claim that postmodern “activism” even exists outside the academy. I don’t know who these “postmodern feminist activists” in favour of decriminalization of prostitution are, or where it is that they are agitating. (I see some so-called “sex-positive” feminists agitating for it – many of the rest of them seem awful busy blogging about their sex lives as opposed to actually doing anything for prostitutes. In any event, I doubt many of them would explicitly term themselves “postmodern.”) Judith Butler, last I checked, hasn’t been agitating for anything. (In fact, she thinks the only way we can agitate at all is in small parodic performances. In the old days, this was known as quietism. See Martha Nussbaum’s critique of Butler, for example.) I don’t really hear a lot of postmodernism outside the academy generally, other than in the soft form of “multicultural” critiques and the like, which I think most postmodern feminists would also dismiss as reductive (because they don’t think there’s any such thing as an easily-defined “culture”).
2. … her theory of feminism is grounded in a theory of subordination, it often fails to take into account those occasions and ways in which women and feminists are not subordinated.
I am confused by this, generally, though it’s a critique I hear often. I would like someone to explain to me where it is that women are not subordinated. (As she says, let’s move there.) If what you are referring to is that in the context of an overarching culture in which women are second-class citizens, women do have the ability to make small choices like empowering themselves by education and, well, high heels and sex work and the like, well, great, but I’m not sure that a theory of liberation can ever think that’s enough. (How ’bout a world in which the amount of sex you have is wholly irrelevant?) Which is all, in all the MacKinnon I have ever read, I hear her saying.
3. … if they think differently about their situation than you do, Ms. MacKinnon, whose description of that reality is true?
This is kind of belligerently phrased, no? Anyway, I think her point is more that there are not an inconsiderable number of those without power who do recognize the gravity of their situation, and to deny that they are without power because a similarly situated someone else does not “feel” oppressed is kind of odd. If Jenna Jameson feels empowered by porn, truly and seriously, bully for her. But should and does that supercede the claim that there are women who are trafficked, who appear in porn when they would prefer doing something else, whose reality is rape, who don’t find liberation in sexuality but find pain instead? I mean, let’s not kid ourselves. Those women who are harmed exist. And in which case, why wouldn’t it be a feminist priority to help them out of their situation, rather than ignoring them in favour of people whose claim is that they are already comfortable?
Also, JD, this is Twisty, not MacKinnon, but since it goes to the heart of a disagreement you and I have talked about often, about this “women aren’t entirely subordinated” position of yours, I wanted to see what you thought:
It’s not that I think there is one place to which we could move where women are not subordinated, and I agree that generally speaking, in all cultures, women generally are subordinated, but it doesn’t mean that all women are only subordinated, or that women don’t wield power as well. You mentioned the case earlier, I forget the victim’s name, where she IDed the wrong guy who ended up being wrongly convicted. Yes, she was victimized and that patriarchal narrative is true. BUT there’s another narrative laid on top of that one of the subordination of black men, and of a history of excessive punishment of black men accused of raping white women. In that context white women and their claims of harm DO have power, enormous power, which is wielded against other subordinated groups. Having one kind of power doesn’t cancel out being a member of a subordinated group, but it does mean that the ways you experience misogyny for example are going to be very different than those of dissimilarly situated women. There is something a little disturbing to me about hearing Catherine MacKinnon, born to a legal dynastic family, given the best education, succeeding at the highest levels of academia, tying her own victimhood in this society (I don’t deny there is some) to that of say virgins sacrificed to a volcano in ancient Mesopotamia, or wherever that example took place. Or say, where feminists have pushed for harsher sentences for crimes that affect women, you can see how that kind of movement might (might! depending on the person) be viewed differently by white women or by women of color. But she dismisses that kind of “multicultural” critique of her feminism as collusion with abusers, when I actually think it is a lot more complex than that. I also think she should be careful going around accusing people of being colluders with folks based on who uses their arguments, since she was able to build coalition with right wing anti obscenity groups for the Meese Commission et al. I’m not dogging her for that, I just find if surprising that she doesn’t see the similarity between her own collusion with the oppressor class and that of multiculturalists.
Post modern and queer feminists are engaging in activism all over! Transfeminisms, “third wave” activists for labor rights for sex workers worldwide for example, and they are also within older movements taking different views and new tactics. I tried to mention a couple of examples where postmodern feminist activists and other kind of feminist activists disagree to point out the fact that “postmoderns” or “thirdwavers” or multiculturalist feminists or whoever else criticizes MacKinnon really do exist in the world and not just in the academy.
I also understand that it is true that many women and other people are victimized without knowing/fully realizing it, however I do not think that MacKinnon seriously unpacks or addresses the difficulty we have in “speaking for” other women, or anybody else. Surely in some situations paternalism is necessary, I’m not doing an outright libertarian rejection of double consciousness, and I honestly didn’t mean it belligerently — but I think it is a real question feminists have to face when we make claims about double consciousness and the reality of harms that are not acknowledged by their victims, or times when victims claim that the feminist remedy will not improve their situation. Especially if we just spent pages grounding our epistemology in listening to women’s voices.
I also just want to make clear that I’m not saying I don’t “like” MacKinnon or this article or that I don’t think she is right about a lot of things. I can totally understand why it is one of your favorite pieces. I’m just exploring the places in it that make me feel uncomfortable.
Re your first point: I’m not sure you are reading her multicultural critique properly – i.e. I am not sure it is, indeed, directed at the critique non-white American women often make of the white bourgeois American “women’s lib” movement. Last I checked, there aren’t any Black (or Hispanic, or Arab) feminists out there arguing that rape isn’t rape, or domestic violence isn’t domestic violence, in their “culture.” But there are others making that argument. And then, there is post-modern academia that contextualizes these things to death under the guise of “problematizing the discourse.” And it is the latter two at which I think this argument is directed.
As to the Cole case, as I said in that post, I think the situation is far, far more complicated there too than a white woman wielding enormous power against black men. I am not sure how much power one can be said to have when one has it only at the express permission of someone else. And as Twisty said later, thus, when a woman complies with the patriarchy, obliges it by giving it an opportunity to attack black men, is what she’s doing an act of volition? I have my doubts.
Second, I’m not sure that a white woman claiming that her oppression has some commonality with ancient Mesopotamian misogynist practices should make anyone uncomfortable. Now, if she said they were identical we would have an argument. But both women are targeted in some instances because they are women, and that deserves recognition. It’s from that commonality that we could even begin to build solidarity among women as a class, IMHO. Furthermore
Third, I don’t understand the prevalence of this myth of her “building an alliance with the Meese Commission.” I don’t have time right now to look up my references, but IIRC, I believe she would strongly object to she and Dworkin’s being characterized as having actively colluded. I think that your point re: “who uses their arguments” is closer to the mark, and is thus well-taken. But in the case of post-modernists, which, again, I would say are different than WOC feminists/womanists, I’m not sure who their arguments can or could be for other than grad students.
Fourth, as for your claim about post-modern and queer feminists, again, I think that those activists, insofar as they exist, are not postmodernists in the strictest sense. Why not? Because they believe, fundamentally, that oppression is not in your head or in some kind of undefined “ether,” that it is exercised by one person on another, and that political agitation is not only possible but necessary. These are all ideas generally eschewed in postmodern theory because they rely on “totalizing narratives.” Whatever transfeminism is doing, in other words, is based on a rejection of some pretty essential tenets of postmodernism.
I think you’re right about the double-consciousness question, though. The most I can remember seeing MacKinnon saying on this point, and I think this is a fair defense but not a total one, is that in general, in her work, she has not relied on these abstract women. Her Bosnian clients, and Linda Lovelace, and Dworkin for that matter, socially exist. These other women for whom she does not speak, well, they socially exist, but like I said in my last comment, it often seems to me their offense at her “speaking for them” is misplaced.
I guess my personal solution to this issue is that in general, in my own life, I find it pretty easy to distinguish between unreflective and reflective people. You can tell who has thought carefully about a situation and who has not. And generally, I just leave unreflective people the fuck alone unless they are hurting someone else, or denying someone else’s truth, to get melodramatic about it.
P.S. Janet Halley finally came in the mail. I shall weigh in eventually, she has a couple of femibooks ahead of her.
No time for a proper response but it seems like there is some real confusion/disagreement over who and what is a postmodern feminist (shocking, given postmodernists’ penchant for definition!). In my view postmodernists do take activist stances, and their resistance to totalization does not preclude (provisional) coalition and solidarity. But maybe that is another conversation for another day.
I also agree that double consciousness is not a total devastating critique, and I also agree that it exists. I just think it’s tricky. I think MacKinnon gets into trouble more with tone than substance. She just SPEAKS so grandly, using a lot of “we” statements, that even if she doesn’t mean her descriptions of women’s lives to be universalist, it has that effect.