Toward a Feminist Theory of the State by Catharine A. MacKinnon

Toward a Feminist Theory of the State Reviews

• 
  Manny

  On First Reading Catherine MacKinnon, or, A Middle-Aged White Dude Mansplains Feminist Theory
  
  Before I started this book, I expected it to be a polemic. I was surprised to discover that it is actually a work of philosophy. It has its roots in Marxism - which, unfortunately, I don't know at all - but quickly branches out into its own direction.
  
  I can see from the other reviewers that not everyone likes the idea of starting with Marxism, but the author makes it seem logical. Marxism, as even I know, is centered on the concept of work. Simplifying to a kindergarten level, some social classes work, and other social classes get the benefit of that work, which one intuitively feels is wrong. In the book's memorable opening sentence, MacKinnon tells us that sexuality is to feminism what work is to Marxism: that which is most one's own, yet most taken away. Again simplifying to a kindergarten level, men fuck women. Some of the women may want to be fucked, but a great many of them don't, yet get fucked anyway. And once more, one intuitively feels that this is wrong.
  
  MacKinnon starts off in the first part of the book by explaining why a coherent analysis doesn't work inside a Marxist framework. Marx and Engels, it seems, had confused ideas about gender roles. She then gives her own analysis, which I found extremely interesting. I can't decide yet whether I'm prepared to buy it, but it certainly passes my test for what constitutes worthwhile philosophy: it forced me to think about things in a new way. MacKinnon's analysis of feminism doesn't center on the concept of class, but rather on the concept of "objectification". Although the word is one that's frequently bandied about, I was surprised to discover that I apparently didn't know what it meant. I'd naively imagined it meant the process of reducing women to sex objects. This is a part of it, but in fact the idea is much more wide-ranging.
  
  So what is "objectification"? It turns out that it's intimately connected to "objectivity", and to the process of "objective thinking". In another memorable passage, MacKinnon summarizes the key connections as follows:

  Objectivity is the methodological stance of which objectification is the social process. Sexual objectification is the primary process of the subjection of women. It unites act with word, construction with expression, perception with enforcement, myth with reality. Man fucks woman; subject verb object.

  What does this mean? I'm still not sure I get it - but right now, here's how I would paraphrase her claim. "Objectivity", or "objective thought", is sold as the process by which one understands the world in a way that is independent of the observer, and in particular of the gender of the observer. It is supposed to be the way one understands the world as it is. If one is not objective, one is at best subjective and at worst delusional.
  
  The problem is that "objective" thought doesn't in fact give a picture of the world that is independent of the identity and gender of the observer. It gives a picture of the world as understood by men, since it has been developed by men. In particular, it gives a picture of sexuality and gender as understood by men. This includes the ideas that what is sexy is what men find sexy; what is appropriate or normal in sexual relationships is what men consider appropriate or normal in sexual relationships; what actually happens during sexual relationships is what men consider happens during sexual relationships. So, for example, since men eroticise dominance and submission and find it sexy to be dominant, women must objectively find it sexy to be submissive; since men obtain sexual pleasure from vaginal penetration, women must objectively get sexual pleasure from being vaginally penetrated; since men enjoy pornography and do not consider that it infringes anybody's civil rights, pornography cannot objectively infringe anybody's civil rights; since men consider than women are often fantasizing when they claim that they have been raped and abused, women have objectively not been raped and abused in these situations; since the law, which has been almost entirely constructed by men, considers that women are treated equally, women are objectively treated equally.
  
  I find a great deal of this convincing, but I still have trouble accepting the whole system. In particular, I have trouble accepting the idea that objective thought is a bad thing, which seems to be what she's saying here. I absolutely agree that what people call objective thought may not be objective at all. But what is the real alternative to objectivity? Surprisingly often, she mentions quantum mechanics; she suggests that male thought is classical, referring to an objective reality, while female thought is quantum mechanical, referring to a reality which depends on the observer. I don't feel very happy with this line of reasoning. It's a rather naive characterization of quantum mechanics, which doesn't deny the existence of an objective reality, just the possibility of directly observing it; second, sexual relations occur in the macro-world, where quantum-level phenomena are not relevant. If it's just an analogy, then what is the thing that's analogous to quantum mechanics? Why is there no reality that can be directly observed, even in principle? And I'm also doubtful about the wider implications of her analysis of sex. She frequently objects to the eroticisation of dominance and submission, and says this is essentially male; but at the same time, she says that men find some element of dominance and submission essential to sex, even if they are the submissive partner, and that lesbian couples also find dominance and submission sexy. She never really says what the alternative is. What is this female form of sex, where dominance and submission play no part?
  
  So I'm to some degree sceptical, which is my usual response to philosophy - but at the same time, I find the questions being asked both intellectually fascinating and of burning importance. Professor MacKinnon, you've convinced me that I need to learn more about feminism. I'm going to look around for further reading.
  _____________________
  
  [Update, Jul 15 2018]
  
  Adam Becker's excellent book
  What is Real?, which I read last week, intersects in an interesting way with MacKinnon's arguments. As noted above, I was intuitively unhappy about MacKinnon's claims regarding quantum mechanics. Becker's detailed account lets me be more precise about my grounds for unhappiness.
  
  In fact, the situation is considerably worse than I had thought. It's not just dubious to claim that quantum mechanics denies the existence of an objective reality; it turns out that that whole philosophical position is one which was created by a small group of powerful white men, and maintained using methods which in many cases have been unethical in the extreme. To increase the irony even further, a key counterargument was found at an early stage by a female physicist, Grete Hermann. Hermann's ideas were completely ignored by the scientific community, and only became known when they were independently rediscovered twenty years later by a male physicist.
  
  This certainly drives home how difficult it is to escape from the privileged white male point of view. So at a deeper level, Becker's story can perhaps equally well be read as supporting MacKinnon rather than undermining her.
• 
  C.

  What a difference four years and a lot of reading makes.
  _____________________________
  I'm mainly giving this four stars because I LOVED the chapter on methodology. Also the last chapter was great - and, finally, clear! - which left me well disposed towards the book as a whole.
  
  But really, I have come to value clarity above all else, and this was not clear at all, on the whole. I would have loved some sub-headings, and to not have had to experience the feeling that the explanation was going to come in the next sentence, or the next - or the next. Seriously, when you say something that is as absurd at face value as "hierarchy came before difference" (paraphrasing) you should explain what you mean. Preferably immediately. Sure, from having read other feminism I can guess at what she means, but I would like to know for sure. And I know some of this comes from my lack of familiarity with philosophy, but not all, I am sure.
• 
  Liz

  I was just writing an essay about the public sphere which reminded me of how much I really really want to read this. I started it a couple of years ago and got sidetracked but it looked awesome. I disagree with MacKinnon on a lot of shit but she's probably the capital-R radical feminist I find the most intellectually stimulating and provocative. there's babies in that bathwater.
• 
  Thomas Leroux

  I originally wrote a very long review for this book and when I went to post it, Goodreads crashed. So here is a much shorter version, beginning with a passage that I think sums up MacKinnon’s argument:
  
  “Women often find ways to resist male supremacy and to expand their spheres of action. But they are never free of it. Women also embrace the standards of women’s place in this regime as ‘our own’ to varying degrees and in varying voices—as affirmation of identity and right to pleasure, in order to be loved and approved and paid, in order just to make it through another day. This, not inert passivity, is the meaning of being a victim. The term is not moral: who is to blame or to be pitied or condemned or held responsible. It is not prescriptive: what we should do next. It is not strategic: how to construe the situation so it can be changed. It is not emotion: what one feels better thinking. It is descriptive: who does what to whom and gets away with it” (pg. 138).
  
  This book is a theory of power. It is not a theory of male power over females, though it is that too, but a theory about how power actually functions in really existing society. MacKinnon demonstrates that the dominant theories of power, liberalism and left-Marxism, are totally inadequate for understanding the condition of females and, therefore, are inadequate for fully understanding the mechanisms of power itself. Feminism, MacKinnon argues, needs a theory of its own, epistemologically and ontologically distinct. The method of this theory is consciousness raising that exposes the cracks, fissures, and lies behind liberal and leftist promises of equality and egalitarianism. It is in these cracks and fissures that the true nature of power is found: power is domination, domination is eroticized from the male perspective. Domination is experienced as sexuality, and through this it is naturalized and normalized. The method of patriarchy is rape and coercion.
  
  MacKinnon brilliantly shows how at every turn the state reproduces male domination and female subordination. The legal apparatuses surrounding rape, abortion, pornography, and sex equality achieve this by adopting the already dominant male perspective, calling that perspective objectivity, and then actualizing that objectivity by reflecting society back onto itself through state action. “The state is male in the feminist sense: the saw sees and treats women the way men see and treat women….Relatively seamlessly [courts] promote the dominance of men as a social group through privileging the form of power—the perspective on social life—which feminist consciousness reveals as socially male” (pg. 162).
  
  Before reading this book, be sure to have a basic understanding of what constitutes liberalism and Marxism. Otherwise, some of the argumentation will be difficult to follow. I stopped and started this book ten times over the last four years precisely because I didn’t have the knowledge base from which to begin. Hopefully, that doesn’t scare off potential readers. I say it only because the arguments in this book are so fundamentally important for understanding the nature of power. So, go read the great political theorists, then pick up this book to find out how and why they are blind.
• 
  Haley

  The theory is extreme but provocative and definitely groundbreaking - written in 1989 but definitely still a must-read for anyone interested in law or trying to understand the structural bases of sex inequality. There is room to challenge and converse with her ideas but they do demand some kind of response. Ideally would be read in conjunction with the theory of black feminists (e.g. bell hooks and Patricia Hill Collins) along with theorists who emphasize the way gender ideologies harm/stratify different groups of men (e.g. RW Connell) as she isn't yet able to fully consider issues of power/hierarchy/difference within each gender category in the context of attempting to sketch out the beginning of a feminist jurisprudence that generally takes men and women as cohesive groups, at least relative to one another.
• 
  Mona Dennaoui

  I believe you could hardly find a feminist critique of the world we live in that is more thorough than MacKinnon's. She eloquently describes the different levels of women's oppression under patriarchy, from societal to legal aspects. The book is a collection of texts that touch on a broad range of subjects. The firs part about Marxism and feminism was very interesting, it sheds light on the failure of Marx and Engels to consider women's situation apart from the working class, as women are in fact oppressed by patriarchy, in addition to the capitalist system. The author also has the habit of making connections between subjects that is rather mind-blowing, like the one between psychoanalysis and pornography and how they legitimize each other. Really excellent book, will re-read it for sure.
• 
  Stan

  MacKinnon's critique of liberal law from a radical feminist perspective. This book had a pivotal influence on my own thinking. Her struggle to both apply and break with her self-described post-Marxism is all in here; and her description of liberal law as positing abstract equality to preserve actual inequality is devastating.
• 
  Roxie Brookshire

  This view of feminism does not jive well with my own. I found the first section of the book to be overly dismissive of marxist-feminism and to ready to be foundationalist. The second part of the book seemed to be MacKinnon to ready to be the executor of my morality and I've been down that road too often at the hands of others who would claim to know my heart and mind better than I do.
• 
  Zach

  Probably the most depressing book I've ever read.
• 
  sube

  The book seeks to create a "feminism unmodified", i.e. a postmarxist Feminism - as such the first part of the book is broadly a discussion of the contradictions of feminism and marxism, explaining the limits of each on its own, and arguing that either gender or class is primary - with the author, Mackinnon, ultimately stating that gender is primary. The criticisms levied against Marx are in part good and convincing, however others are more questionable; if the author engaged more with Marx's neglect of the role of women (and children) in the industrial workforce at the time it would have been a stronger criticism. The argument of ultimate tension between both is, however, convincing.
  
  The second part is a discussion of feminism's method, specifically consciousness-raising, and how from this follows views of male power, as well as feminism being the "reconstitution of the meaning of women's social experience." (p. 83) It is quite interesting and helped make me better define what feminism *is*.
  
  The third part is an argument against Liberal Feminism and an attempt at creating a theory of the state from the viewpoint of feminism - with the state being defined as not neutral but specifically male-, which the author argues both Marxism and Liberalism lacks, and applying it to topics such as abortion, rape, pornograpy, etc. The discussions are very good and how 'objectivity' serves to hide structural oppression, as it cannot be by law then tasked as it only deals with individuals.
  
  The concluding chapter is about the necessity of a "feminist jurispudence", which exploits the tension between the assumption of gender equality and the lack of it within societal structure - ultimately, a conclusion I disagree with as this being possible, due to the author wrongly giving law too much autonomy from society.
• 
  Michael

  I'll limit my summary to chapter 10: "Abortion: On Public and Private." MacKinnon argues here that the liberal notion of privacy is detrimental to women because it keeps the state from intervening in a privat space that is still very public — or political/social in that patriarchal relations still exist in privacy. She uses abortion court cases to show that there is no inconsistency between abortion being legal because of the right to privacy and the state refusing to intervene to remove impediments to abortion access — because liberal privacy cordons off the private arena as a supposedly non-political arena where autonomous people act freely (190). To MacKinnon privacy is used to subordinate other rights (such as bodily integrity) "to specific social imperatives" (187) — thus why rape can be misrecognized as consensual if done in a private, intimate relationship. MacKinnon concludes that "for women there is ni private, either normatively or empirically. Feminism confronts the fact that women have no privacy to lose or guarantee" (191). Privacy protects autonomy, but does not ask in whose interest or benefit. Thus feminism needs to continue to disrupt the public/private dichotomy.
• 
  Astir

  Stunningly intellectual and a grand achievement; the codification of radical feminist politcs into post-marxist theory. One of the most impressive works of theory and one of the most impressive books I have read.
• 
  Mariana P

  yes.
• 
  Jessica Kiss

  It is almost impossible to comprehend the depth, patience and content necessary to write such a book. MacKinnon's knowledge on the law, feminism, marxism, liberalism and other ideologies is brilliantly combined to critique and make unprecedented remarks. While third wave feminism has debunked much of MacKinnon's discourse on defining gender/sex, her work (especially on pornography) remains very important to contemporary discussions.
  
  MacKinnon is a revolutionary and I will hold this book dear to my heart for her passion and incredible academic contributions.
• 
  Jenny Domino

  Brilliant and beautifully written. Insightful for me as a lawyer and as a woman. I especially liked the chapters on consciousness raising, methodology, the critique of the liberal state, and those on abortion and sex equality. Not to mention the portion on wages for housewives at the beginning!
  
  I liked her thesis of focusing on hierarchy, dominance, and male supremacy rather than the sameness/difference approach of sex equality law, which still relies on the social reality of sex inequality.
• 
  Emre vs.

  Çeviri inanılmaz derecede kötü, mümkünse ingilizceden okunulmasını salık veriyorum.
  Onun haricinde MacKinnon'ın abartı görüşlerinin çoğuna katılmasam da temel feminist kuram okuması gerçekleştirecek insanlar için faydalı olabileceği kanaatindeyim.
  Kitabın tümünü okumadım. Okumayı da şimdilik düşünmüyorum.
• 
  Jim Levi

  A demandingly academic but superb text. Deeply thought provoking and certainly makes me consider the world in a different way.
• 
  Carla RÁ

  Muy bueno. A pesar de ser una teórica feminista radical se desmarca de las nuevas tendencias transexclusionistas y biologicistas que existen en su corriente de pensamiento y se agradece al leerlo.
• 
  Icten keskin

  keşke yasa ve mahkeme kararlarından örnekler vererek anlatsaymış.
• 
  Yasmin Yoon

  This book really tied together many loose strands i was left wondering about from both liberal and marxist discussions on gender inequality. Questions that were either dismissed or answered only halfway through. Actually, mackinnon made me realize how many questions i was not asking either. im realizing how so much of gender inequality ive accepted as the truth, as the way things are. Mackinnon then demonstrated the absolute need to challenge everything, ‘cause an earthquake of thinking’ to rearrange our intellectual landscape, and how equality can really not be achieved any other way.
  Book begins with a very useful breakdown of all the feminist theories out there. Parts that esp left a strong impression on me are ‘conscious raising,’ ‘sexuality’ and the last chapter, ‘toward feminist jurisprudence.’ Mackinnon is radical, but she does convince you that any perception of self-possession is prob an illusion. This book is emotionally draining esp for women, but id say everyone should read this book