Review: Only Words
Editorial Review - Kirkus ReviewsThree passionate, intellectually fascinating essays, each arguing an aspect of the case that sexual words and pictures may by their nature be bannable, even though they may also be Constitutionally protected speech--by University of Michigan law professor and noted feminist legal scholar MacKinnon (Feminism Unmodified, 1987, etc). In ``Defamation and Discrimination,'' MacKinnon argues that ``pornography is sex'' and that American law irrationally treats it as a possible cause of individual injury--that is, purely as a matter of true or false content--rather than as a sui generis act of ``sex discrimination based on conditions of sexual inequality''; and she holds that, like other kinds of action speech (saying ``You're fired,'' advertising ``for whites only''), pornography should be banned. In ``Racial and Sexual Harassment,'' MacKinnon declares that ``if ever words have been understood as acts, it has been when they are sexual harassment'' in the workplace, but she regrets that, recently, courts have weakened this confluence by overturning universities' restraints of racial and sexual speech on campus and by dismissing a sexual-harassment complaint made by a female shipyard worker because the harassment consisted in having been shown pornography, which is a form of speech protected by the First Amendment. In ``Equality and Speech,'' MacKinnon makes explicit many of the contradictions she's been suggesting in the earlier essays; she argues that ``the law of equality and the law of freedom of speech are on a collision course in this country'' and must be meshed--for example, by considering ``group defamation'' as ``the verbal form inequality [or group discrimination] takes.'' Although MacKinnon's passionate conviction sometimes causes her ideas to elide and her logic to blur, the ideas are original and gripping, her references are wide-ranging, her legal logic is provocative--and her latest is must reading for anyone interested in either fairness or free speech.
Review: Only Words
User Review - Jasmine - GoodreadsVery interesting view on pornography as protected speech, how this is harmful to women in that it perpetuates the normalizing of violence against women and children, and how freedom of speech and the freedom of equality should line up, which it currently does not in this country. Read full review
Review: Only Words
User Review - Colin - GoodreadsNo real surprises here, it read like the central arguments of Feminist Theory of the State applied specifically to porn and sexual harassment. The first chapter was kind of iffy but I thought the second and third chapters were especially strong. Fun quick read. Read full review
Review: Only Words
User Review - Sarah - GoodreadsMilitant feminism. This book basically says all sex - including heterosexual and homosexual consensual - is bad because it subordinates and takes advantage of women. You have to give some credit to ... Read full review
Review: Only Words
User Review - Heather West - GoodreadsCatherine MacKinnon, with the best of intentions, always seems to end up with the message that all must be constrained in order to protect the women. Here, she argues that pornography is simply too ... Read full review
Review: Only Words
User Review - Sarah - GoodreadsIt's extreme from the very beginning, but there are some subtleties hidden in all of that pomp. The way McKinnon adheres to her beliefs is admirable to a fault, for it is when she only argues and no ... Read full review
Review: Only Words
User Review - chris - GoodreadsShe's crazy, but damn, she's interesting. Although I can't say I agree with her central thesis, I'm curious to see how her ideas about group defamation and a balance of speech and equality (1st and ... Read full review
Review: Only Words
User Review - Carmen something - GoodreadsOne of her most consise and beautifully written texts, Only Words is an eloquent argument against the pornography profiteering rampant in this nation. Though I'm sure she and I would not see eye to eye in practice, her scope of thinking is brilliant, confrontational, and landmark. Read full review
