Only Words (book)
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''Only Words'' is a 1993 book by
Catharine MacKinnon Catharine Alice MacKinnon (born October 7, 1946) is an American feminist legal scholar, activist, and author. She is the Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, where she has been tenured since 1990, and the J ...
. In this work of
feminist legal theory Feminist legal theory, also known as feminist jurisprudence, is based on the belief that the law has been fundamental in women's historical subordination. Feminist jurisprudence the philosophy of law is based on the political, economic, and socia ...
, MacKinnon contends that the U.S. legal system has used a
First Amendment First most commonly refers to: * First, the ordinal form of the number 1 First or 1st may also refer to: Acronyms * Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-Centimeters, an astronomical survey carried out by the Very Large Array * Far Infrared a ...
basis to protect intimidation, subordination, terrorism, and discrimination as enacted through
pornography Pornography (colloquially called porn or porno) is Sexual suggestiveness, sexually suggestive material, such as a picture, video, text, or audio, intended for sexual arousal. Made for consumption by adults, pornographic depictions have evolv ...
, violating the equal protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment.


Overview

''Only Words'' was originally presented as the Christian Gauss Memorial Lectures in Criticism in April 1992 at Princeton University, and were later developed and clarified at the Columbia Legal Theory workshop and at the Owen Fiss Feminist Legal Theory class at Yale University.MacKinnon, Catharine A. ''Only Words''. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993. It is divided into three discussions: (1) Defamation and Discrimination, (2) Racial and Sexual Harassment, and (3) Equality and Speech.


Defamation and discrimination

MacKinnon argues that women's reality of systemic subordination is just that: real, not an abstract representation mediated through pornography or academic
deconstruction In philosophy, deconstruction is a loosely-defined set of approaches to understand the relationship between text and meaning. The concept of deconstruction was introduced by the philosopher Jacques Derrida, who described it as a turn away from ...
. In support of this contention, she points out, "Thirty-eight percent of women are sexually molested as girls; twenty-four percent of women are raped in their marriages. Nearly half of women are raped or are the victims of attempted rape at some time during their lives. Eighty-five percent of women who work outside the home are sexually harassed by their employers." According to MacKinnon, however, pornography was categorized as protected speech "before its production required the use of real women's bodies." As a consequence, the law erases harm and renames it speech, an approach, she continues, which "relies centrally on putting it back into the context of the silenced and violated women: from real abuse back to an idea."." The effect is to treat pornography as
defamation Defamation is a communication that injures a third party's reputation and causes a legally redressable injury. The precise legal definition of defamation varies from country to country. It is not necessarily restricted to making assertions ...
rather than
discrimination Discrimination is the process of making unfair or prejudicial distinctions between people based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they belong or are perceived to belong, such as race, gender, age, class, religion, or sex ...
; pornography becomes merely "offensive speech," only words that express something "metaphorical or magical, rhetorical or unreal, a literary hyperbole or propaganda device." MacKinnon rejects this approach, pointing out that bribery, price-fixing under anti-trust laws, and sexual harassment speech are all "only words," but they are not constitutionally protected and prohibited by law. Likewise, a "White Only" sign is "only words," but it not treated merely as offensive speech but as an act of
segregation Segregation may refer to: Separation of people * Geographical segregation, rates of two or more populations which are not homogenous throughout a defined space * School segregation * Housing segregation * Racial segregation, separation of human ...
and discrimination. Pornography, MacKinnon contends, enacts discrimination in exactly the same way. MacKinnon insists that pornography is not what it says, but what it does: "What pornography does, it does in the real world, not only in the mind." She elaborates: MacKinnon proceeds to argue that abuse and coercion need not be present in the production of all pornography in order to restrict it, for all pornography is made under conditions of inequality based on sex. Based on this analysis, she proposes a law against pornography, developed with
Andrea Dworkin Andrea Rita Dworkin (September 26, 1946 – April 9, 2005) was an American radical feminist writer and activist best known for her analysis of pornography. Her feminist writings, beginning in 1974, span 30 years. They are found in a dozen sol ...
, that defines it as "graphic sexually explicit materials that subordinate women through pictures or words." Illegality is necessary, MacKinnon continues, because "in the context of social inequality, so-called speech can be an exercise in power which constructs the social reality in which people live, from
objectification In social philosophy, objectification is the act of treating a person as an object or a thing. Sexual objectification, the act of treating a person as a mere object of sexual desire, is a subset of objectification, as is self-objectification, th ...
to
genocide Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people. Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term, defined genocide as "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" by ...
." For instance, "requiring Jews to wear yellow stars" is symbolic expression, but because the idea is itself part of the discriminatory pattern, it is not harmless speech. Likewise,
cross burning In modern times, cross burning or cross lighting is a practice which is associated with the Ku Klux Klan. However, it was practiced long before the Klan's inception. Since the early 20th century, the Klan has burned crosses on hillsides as a way ...
acts only through the content of its expression, but is illegal because it performs discrimination.


Racial and sexual harassment

In Part II, MacKinnon extends her analysis of speech acts to the realm of
sexual harassment Sexual harassment is a type of harassment based on the sex or gender of a victim. It can involve offensive sexist or sexual behavior, verbal or physical actions, up to bribery, coercion, and assault. Harassment may be explicit or implicit, wit ...
. She writes, "Although all sexual harassment is words, pictures, meaningful acts and gestures, it has been legally understood on the basis of what it does: discriminate on the basis of sex." Harassment is not the expression of ideas but the enactment of discrimination. MacKinnon adduces the example that "courts have not taken chanting 'cunt' at a working woman as conveying the idea 'you have a vagina,' or as expressing
eroticism Eroticism () is a quality that causes sexual feelings, as well as a philosophical contemplation concerning the aesthetics of sexual desire, sensuality, and romantic love. That quality may be found in any form of artwork, including painting, scul ...
, but rather as pure abuse." She argues, further, that abuse need not be directed at a specific individual in order to constitute harassment; rather, group-based attacks are directed instead at every one individual within that group: "Does any Black man doubt, upon encountering "Nigger Die" at work, that it means him?" MacKinnon introduces race into her analysis both as an analogy and a reality of discrimination, which she says is indistinguishable from sex discrimination in the way it functions. Moreover, the similarities in their function can be seen in the pervasiveness of the confluence of sex and race discrimination: "Examples include: 'Jew faggot,' 'Black bitches suck cock,' 'Niggers are the living evidence that the Indians screwed buffalo,' and the endless references to the penis size of African-American men." MacKinnon insists the judiciary has been inconsistent and illogical in punishing race discrimination while permitting sex discrimination to go unchallenged.


Equality and Speech

In the final section, MacKinnon describes equality and freedom of speech as "on a collision course." "More precisely," she continues,"the First Amendment has grown as if a commitment to speech were no part of a commitment to equality and as if a commitment to equality had no implications for the law of speech--as if the upheaval that produced the
Reconstruction Reconstruction may refer to: Politics, history, and sociology *Reconstruction (law), the transfer of a company's (or several companies') business to a new company *''Perestroika'' (Russian for "reconstruction"), a late 20th century Soviet Union ...
Amendments did not move the ground under the expressive freedom, setting new limits and mandating new extensions, perhaps even demanding reconstruction of the speech right itself." The core problem, in MacKinnon's view, is "the substantial lack of recognition that some people get a lot more speech than others," allowing the power distribution to become "more exclusive, coercive, and violent as it has become more and more legally protected." As long as the Fourteenth and First Amendments are interpreted "negatively"—that is, prohibiting violations by government—instead of "chartering legal intervention for social change," inequality of power will continue to persist or deepen.


Reception


Popular press

Writing in ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'', Michiko Kakutani describes MacKinnon's style as "exaggerated, defensive, and willfully sensationalistic." Kakutani describes MacKinnon's thesis as "an all-out-attack on the First Amendment", and points out that under MacKinnon's legal framework,
Madonna Madonna Louise Ciccone ( ; born August 16, 1958) is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and actress. Referred to as the "Queen of Pop", she has been recognized for her continual reinvention and versatility in music production, ...
videos,
Calvin Klein Calvin Richard Klein (born November 19, 1942) is an American fashion designer. In 1968, he launched the company that later became Calvin Klein. In addition to clothing, he has also given his name to a range of perfumes, watches, and jewellery. ...
ads, and movies like ''Basic Instinct'' could all be subject to
censorship Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governmen ...
. Kakutani adds that the statistics cited by MacKinnon are "highly debatable", and questions her "portrayal of women as helpless victims coerced by sadistic men." In the United Kingdom, ''
The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...
'' derided ''Only Words'' for its insistence "immemorial victim status for all females", its "lurid and unsupported statistics", and its "contemptuous handling of other individuals' freedom of choice." In the conservative magazine ''
The New Criterion ''The New Criterion'' is a New York–based monthly literary magazine and journal of artistic and cultural criticism, edited by Roger Kimball (editor and publisher) and James Panero (executive editor). It has sections for criticism of poetry ...
'',
Roger Kimball Roger Kimball (born 1953) is an American art critic and Conservatism, conservative social commentator. He is the editor and publisher of ''The New Criterion'' and the publisher of Encounter Books. Kimball first gained notice in the early 1990s w ...
criticizes "MacKinnon's tendency to treat her central categories as infinitely elastic metaphors," and her "breathtakingly simplistic and reductive view of human behavior." Kimball finds particularly disturbing her proposal of "a sweeping program of censorship that would restrict not only pornography but also 'materials that promote inequality.'" Writing for ''
The New Republic ''The New Republic'' (often abbreviated as ''TNR'') is an American magazine focused on domestic politics, news, culture, and the arts from a left-wing perspective. It publishes ten print magazines a year and a daily online platform. ''The New Y ...
'', American jurist and philosopher
Richard Posner Richard Allen Posner (; born January 11, 1939) is an American legal scholar and retired United States circuit judge who served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit from 1981 to 2017. A senior lecturer at the University of Chicag ...
writes that ''Only Words'' contains "no nuance, qualification, measure, or sense of proportion". Posner points out that MacKinnon "ignores extensive counterevidence" to her claim that pornography causes harm, namely from studies in Denmark and Japan. Finally, Posner suggests MacKinnon misses a crucial difference between verbal sexual harassment and pornography: in the former, the words are aimed at a target of abuse, while in the latter, they are "aimed at a man, and the aim is to please, not to insult or intimidate." He concludes, "I do not know what has caused MacKinnon to become, and, more surprisingly, to remain, so obsessed with pornography, and so zealous for censorship. But let us not sacrifice our civil liberties on the altar of her obsession." In a controversial review printed in ''
The Nation ''The Nation'' is a progressive American monthly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper ...
'',
Carlin Romano Carlin Romano is an American writer and educator. Romano writes for ''The Chronicle of Higher Education.'' Career Romano was a writer for ''The Philadelphia Inquirer''. He teaches at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Commun ...
invites readers to follow along as he fantasizes about raping Catharine MacKinnon, and closes his review by calling her an "authoritarian in the guise of a progressive." In response from its readers, ''The Nation'' received an unusually high volume of mail, multiple subscription cancellations, and calls from two antirape groups for an apology, which it did not issue. In ''Time'' magazine, MacKinnon reported that she was in fact raped by Carlin Romano's review. Prominent law professor
Ronald Dworkin Ronald Myles Dworkin (; December 11, 1931 – February 14, 2013) was an American legal philosopher, jurist, and scholar of United States constitutional law. At the time of his death, he was Frank Henry Sommer Professor of Law and Philosophy at ...
reviewed MacKinnon's book for ''
The New York Review of Books ''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of ...
'', arguing, first, that she fails to establish a causal relationship between pornography and rape: "In spite of MacKinnon’s fervent declarations, no reputable study has concluded that pornography is a significant cause of sexual crime: many of them conclude, on the contrary, that the causes of violent personality lie mainly in childhood, before exposure to pornography can have had any effect, and that desire for pornography is a symptom rather than a cause of deviance." He finds her empirical evidence of wartime rapes of Croatian and Muslim women by Serbian soldiers equally flawed. Dworkin also rejects MacKinnon's argument that women have not only a constitutional right to free speech, but a "right to circumstances that encourage one to speak, and a right that others grasp and respect what one means to say." Dworkin notes that no one would demand such a right for "flat-earthers and bigots". Dworkin further notes that laws already exist to prosecute women who are coerced into making pornography, and further, "economic injustice in America is no reason for depriving poor women of an economic opportunity some of them may prefer to the available alternatives." Dworkin also contends that
speech codes A speech code is any rule or regulation that limits, restricts, or bans speech beyond the strict legal limitations upon freedom of speech or press found in the legal definitions of harassment, slander, libel, and fighting words. Such codes are ...
at universities exist to "protect the reflective atmosphere of the institution," not to enforce an egalitarian ideal. He concludes that MacKinnon's legal goals turn transform equality into a "euphemism for tyranny." MacKinnon responded to Dworkin's critique, arguing that her Indianapolis Ordinance made "behavior, not thoughts, actionable," that the law should "stop sexists and bigots," and that Dworkin himself is representative of men who oppress women. Dworkin, in turn, replied that he could find "no genuine argument" in her claim that pornography is itself rape, that her proposal to "stop" bigots was "chilling," and that "
sensationalism In journalism and mass media, sensationalism is a type of editorial tactic. Events and topics in news stories are selected and worded to excite the greatest number of readers and viewers. This style of news reporting encourages biased or emoti ...
, hyperbole, and bad arguments" undermine the cause of equality. In contrast, Susan Salter Reynolds of the ''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...
'' praised ''Only Words'' for "lighting a fire under the complacent acceptance of pornography and inequality, racial and sexual, in this country."


Academic reviews

The ''
Harvard Law Review The ''Harvard Law Review'' is a law review published by an independent student group at Harvard Law School. According to the ''Journal Citation Reports'', the ''Harvard Law Review''s 2015 impact factor of 4.979 placed the journal first out of ...
'' rejects MacKinnon's main thesis: "The sexual abuse of women who participate in pornographic works cannot provide the basis for banning adult pornography", as "adult women must be presumed competent to consent to their participation in pornographic works." Moreover, the review argues against the idea that mere economic constraints on women's choices "should invalidate the consent of all women involved in pornography", for this would have "disturbing implications in other contexts for women". The review concludes, "MacKinnon's style is meant to shock, but her substance is unable to persuade." James McHugh concludes, "The most profound problem experienced within this book is the lack of a specific and consistent distinction between the concepts of "pornography," which refers to sexually explicit expressions that are harmful in some sense, and "erotica," which refers to sexually explicit expressions that are not strictly harmful." Her attempt to do so is "too unqualified to be sustained."
Ellen Willis Ellen Jane Willis (December 14, 1941 – November 9, 2006) was an American left-wing political essayist, journalist, activist, feminist, and pop music critic. A 2014 collection of her essays, ''The Essential Ellen Willis,'' received the Nationa ...
, a longtime opponent of MacKinnon's effort to suppress pornography, writes that MacKinnon's "inability to see women as exercising even limited autonomy leads to the sort of
cognitive dissonance In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is described as a mental phenomenon in which people unknowingly hold fundamentally conflicting cognitions. Being confronted by situations that challenge this dissonance may ultimately result in some ...
whereby MacKinnon can declare women to be definitively silenced, even as she herself is an outspoken and influential public figure." Susan Fraiman claims MacKinnon's "ideal society" is "deficient in imagination," and worries about MacKinnon's alliance with the
Moral Majority The Moral Majority was an American political organization and movement associated with the Christian right and the Republican Party in the United States. It was founded in 1979 by Baptist minister Jerry Falwell Sr. and associates, and dissolv ...
and its goal to "persecute sexual dissidents." Leora Tanenbaum laments MacKinnon's "notorious alliance with conservative politicians," who simply find pornography "obscene and immoral, without considering the oppression of women." Tanenbaum notes that MacKinnon misrepresents the prevalence of violence and abuse. The most comprehensive study, published in ''The Journal of Communication'', shows that less than five percent of pornography contains simulated violence. Moreover, Tanenbaum challenges MacKinnon's assumption that "all porn models and actresses are coerced by their male employers," noting many women express satisfaction with their work and even direct their own movies. C. Edwin Baker suggests that MacKinnon's political and cultural agenda has already been adequately refuted, but proposes to refute her constitutional arguments as well: "The lack of an adequately specified constitutional mandate permits the theory to be easily manipulated to justify censorship of whatever views the majority decides should be suppressed." Hence, MacKinnon effectively empowers a
tyranny of the majority Tyranny of the majority refers to a situation in majority rule where the preferences and interests of the majority dominate the political landscape, potentially sidelining or repressing minority groups and using majority rule to take non-democrat ...
, which is particularly troubling given her belief that male power is inscribed in law. Moreover, Baker suggests that not all harm justifies an abrogation of the
First Amendment First most commonly refers to: * First, the ordinal form of the number 1 First or 1st may also refer to: Acronyms * Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-Centimeters, an astronomical survey carried out by the Very Large Array * Far Infrared a ...
: "If speech is to receive protection as a fundamental right, the premise must be that some ways of causing harm--especially the characteristic way that speech causes harm--do not justify limiting liberty." In ''
The Threepenny Review ''The Threepenny Review'' is an American literary magazine founded in 1980. It is published in Berkeley, California, by founding editor Wendy Lesser. Maintaining a quarterly schedule (March, June, September, December), it offers fiction, memoirs ...
'', Stuart Klawans writes of ''Only Words'', "Our initial sympathy gives way to discomfort, then pity, then (after a few false hopes) the bleakest horror and despair." He calls her most basic claims "unbounded by fact." For instance, Klawans adduces the first sentence of the book: "Imagine that for hundreds of years your most formative traumas, your daily suffering and pain, the abuse you live through, the terror you live with, are unspeakable--not the basis of literature." He then points out that Sophocles' ''
Antigone ANTIGONE (Algorithms for coNTinuous / Integer Global Optimization of Nonlinear Equations), is a deterministic global optimization solver for general Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Programs (MINLP). History ANTIGONE is an evolution of GloMIQO, a global ...
'', Euripides' ''
Medea In Greek mythology, Medea (; ; ) is the daughter of Aeëtes, King Aeëtes of Colchis. Medea is known in most stories as a sorceress, an accomplished "wiktionary:φαρμακεία, pharmakeía" (medicinal magic), and is often depicted as a high- ...
'', Shakespeare's ''
Measure for Measure ''Measure for Measure'' is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1603 or 1604 and first performed in 1604. It was published in the First Folio of 1623. The play centers on the despotic and puritan Angelo (Measure for ...
'', Kleist's ''Marquise of O--'', and George Eliot's ''
Middlemarch ''Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life'' is a novel by English author George Eliot, the pen name of Mary Ann Evans. It appeared in eight installments (volumes) in 1871 and 1872. Set in Middlemarch, a fictional English Midlands town, in 1829 ...
'' all contain "women who, though abused, face off against male power."Klawans, Stuart. "Further Frolics." ''The Threepenny Review'' 58 (1994): 12-13.


References

{{Radical feminism 1993 non-fiction books Anti-pornography feminism Non-fiction books about pornography Books by Catharine MacKinnon Harvard University Press books Radical feminist books