Catharine MacKinnon

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Catharine MacKinnon (2006)

Catharine Alice MacKinnon (born October 7, 1946 ) is an American feminist activist, lawyer and professor of law . She is one of the most important representatives of so-called radical feminism and influenced this current of the women's movement significantly.

Life

MacKinnon grew up in Minnesota . Her father, George MacKinnon, was an attorney and a member of the House of Representatives . She studied at Smith College (BA), which her mother had also attended. In 1987 she received her PhD from Yale University (Ph.D. in Political Science). She has taught law at the University of Michigan since 1990 . In 2005 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Feminist position

MacKinnon attributes the oppression of women to social structures and calls for equality between men and women. She sees the difference between men and women in positions of power and power structures. In order to overcome the dominance of men, women must gain power and social status. According to MacKinnon, equality does not mean accepting values, attitudes and attributes that are assigned to the male gender and adapting to them. Furthermore, the woman should not emphasize her supposedly innate 'feminine values' such as affection, care and closeness to the earth and develop them further, since the emphasis on different values ​​between the two sexes leads to greater gender differences.

Fight against pornography

MacKinnon has been campaigning for a legal ban on pornography since the early 1980s. She does not justify this with moral arguments, but sees a violation of the civil rights of the women depicted. In social reality, pornography and prostitution are neither sex (in the sense of equally shared intimacy and pleasure) nor work.

Web links

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  1. ↑ See: Catharine MacKinnon: Only Words , Harvard University Press 1996, ISBN 978-0-674-63934-8
  2. ↑ Clyde E. Willis: The Phenomenology of Pornography: A Comment on Catharine MacKinnon's Only Words, in: Law and Philosophy Vol. 16, No. 2 (1997), pp. 177-199, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3505024
  3. ↑ Catherine A. MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin (Ed.): The Harm's Way. The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings , Harvard University Press 1987. ISBN 978-0-674-44579-6
  4. ↑ Catherine A. MacKinnon and Susanne Baer: Equality, realistic . In: Yearbook of Public Law of the Present (JÖR) . tape 67 . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2019, ISBN 978-3-16-157052-0 , p. 360-375 .
personal data
SURNAME MacKinnon, Catharine
ALTERNATIVE NAMES MacKinnon, Catharine Alice
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American lawyer and feminist
DATE OF BIRTH October 7, 1946