Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Mumsnet appreciates feminist brilliance. Catharine A. MacKinnon on Gender Crime: a podcast

photo of Catharine A. MacKinnon is from here

There are so many men in the world who could learn a thing or fifty from Catharine A. MacKinnon, about justice, equality, humanity, and the political condition of being a woman. She is, to me, one of the most intellectually, legally, and politically brilliant women on Earth. I have found all of her work so deeply humane, rooted in reality, committed to justice for women across class and race, and also unwilling to engage in meaningless and needless academic abstractionism for the sake of selling books on theory, as so many "gender theorists" do. So, brava to Ms. MacKinnon!

I found the following link on Mumsnet. It's so refreshing to see a space online that respects women and respects radical feminism too. Please click *here* to link to them. What follows are the comments from that website. And below that, the original website's links to the podcast. MacKinnon speaks for fifteen minutes. Please take that amount of time to hear what she has to say and behold compassionate, fierce intellectual greatness.
Sun 27-Mar-11 12:50:35
Sun 27-Mar-11 15:55:23
Great stuff, thanks for posting this Prolesworth.
It's so exciting to hear feminism in action. Loved it when she said philosophers should engage in reality more. Also, the interviewer going "what about Belle de Jour" when she was talking about how prostitution is a gender crime, and her slapping him (nicely) down pointing out how men are very attached to the idea of the myth of women's choice in prostitution. Also the male belief that the ultimate in female freedom looks like a woman selling herself sexually to men.

Sun 27-Mar-11 15:56:51
(Feminism in action being Mackinnon's work at the International Criminal Court on gender crimes, and also her earlier work on sexual harassment - all coming from feminist analysis and understanding and all applied to make the world a better place for women)
 
Mon 28-Mar-11 09:26:55
What a brilliant woman she is. I liked her point about the way rape law focuses on physical force but fails to recognise social force. She's an extremely clear thinker and communicator. More Catharine Mackinnon on the airwaves, I say!

Here's the info from the Philosophy Bites website:

 
In this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast Catharine MacKinnon talks to Nigel Warburton about the concept of Gender Crime. Philosophy Bites is made in association with the Institute of Philosophy.