Only Words

When is rape not a crime? When it's pornography--or so First Amendment law seems to say: in film, a rape becomes "free speech." Pornography, Catharine MacKinnon contends, is neither speech nor free. Pornography, racial and sexual harassment, and hate speech are acts of intimidation, subordination, terrorism, and discrimination, and should be legally treated as such. Only Words is a powerful indictment of a legal system at odds with itself, its First Amendment promoting the very inequalities its Fourteenth Amendment is supposed to end. In the bold and compelling style that has made her one of our most provocative legal critics, MacKinnon depicts a society caught in a vicious hypocrisy. Words that offer bribes or fix prices or segregate facilities are treated by law as acts, but words and pictures that victimize and target on the basis of race and sex are not. Pornography--an act of sexual domination reproduced in the viewing--is protected by law in the name of "the free and open exchange of ideas." But the proper concern of law, MacKinnon says, is not what speech says, but what it does. What the "speech" of pornography and of racial and sexual harassment and hate propaganda does is promote and enact the power of one social group over another. Cutting with surgical deftness through cases of harassment in the workplace and on college campuses, through First Amendment cases involving Nazis, Klansmen, and pornographers, MacKinnon shows that as long as discriminatory practices are protected as free speech, equality will be only a word.

Politics & Social Sciences

MacKinnon, Catharine

Philosophy

HarperCollins Canada, Limited

"Pornography is central in creating and maintaining the civil inequality of the sexes. Pornography is a systematic practice of exploitation and subordination based on sex which differentially harms women. . . ."\nWith those bold words began the groundbreaking local antipornography law drafted by writer Andrea Dworkin and lawyer Catharine A. MacKinnon.\nTheir completely new legal approach--in which pornography is defined as sex discrimination and therefore a violation of civil rights--would allow anyone injured by pornography to fight back by filing a civil lawsuit against pornographers.\nFirst passed in December 1983 in Minneapolis, where it was supported by a grassroots coalition of women, people of color, neighborhood groups, and the city's welfare poor and working poor, this law has transformed the way people of conscience understand the devastating impact of pornography on women's right to equality. This new law also offers hope: an effective legal tool for making sex equality real.\nIn this comprehensive and easy-to-read guidebook, now available on line, the coauthors of the anti-pornography civil-rights ordinance explain:\nHow pornography hurts women and how and why the 
civil-rights ordinance would make a difference. 
Why the pornography is so important to women's 
equality. 
The truth about the antipornography civil-rights 
ordinance--what it is, what it does, 
what it means, how it works. 
Answers to the lies about it--lies that the media have 
spread to protect the pornography industry. 
What you can do to stop the pornographers and 
further women's equality.\n"The Ordinance does not take 'rights' away from anyone, . . . it takes the power to hurt women away from pornographers." --from Pornography and Civil Rights\nOnline Edition: http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dwork...

Pornography and Civil Rights: A New Day for Womens' Equality

Politics & Government

Organizing Against Pornography

Penetratingly re-thinks gender relations as it maps legal doctrine with cutting-edge theoretical tools. Equips the litigator with basic technical skills while examining the political and theoretical issues on procedural terrain.

MacKinnon's Sex Equality Rape Law (University Casebook Series)

Criminal Law

Foundation Press

Law school casebook that maps the legal doctrine of sex equality, using materials drawn from theory, social science, history, and comparative law. Cases on racism, work, education, athletics, and pregnancy are examined in detail. A chapter on ; Sex, Race and Nation; expands on the connections between racism and sexism raised throughout. ; Burdens of Proof; equips the litigator with basic technical skills. Explores issues that have received less attention, including the law of the family, rape, abortion, prostitution, and pornography. The argument that gay and lesbian rights are sex equality rights is advanced. Sexual harassment in employment and education are discussed in depth.

Sex Equality (University Casebook Series)

Social Sciences

Sex Equality, third edition, comprehensively updates and analyzes the legal doctrine and social concept of sex equality in theoretical, comparative, international, historical, and social scientific context. Together with the relative situation of women and men, detailed attention is given throughout to racism, the treatment of Native peoples, economic class, sexual orientation, and transgender status. Centered on U.S. legal cases, the book maps and interrogates the traditional approach to sex discrimination based on sameness and difference and develops a theory of substantive equality based on hierarchy as well. Materials on race, work, education, athletics, and pregnancy are included. An updated chapter on burdens of proof equips the litigator with basic technical tools in critical perspective. Expanding sex equality concepts, including arguments gaining increasing recognition, the law of the family, rape, sexual harassment in work and education, gay and lesbian rights, reproductive issues including abortion and surrogacy, prostitution, and pornography are thoroughly explored in light of contemporary cultural, legal, and transnational developments and controversies. This volume provides detailed information on inequality between the sexes, an expert grasp of the legal and conceptual tools of sex equality in its manifold dimensions, and visions of future possibilities. This stimulating, flexible, up-to-the-minute treatment of a rapidly expanding and changing area―one of the most frequently litigated―provides an accessible basis for courses in law schools and undergraduate colleges by a widely recognized leading expert in the field.

Sex Equality, 3d (University Casebook Series)