Only Words

Catharine A. MacKinnon

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 1996
• ISBN:
  9780674504059
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Féminisme et théorie féministe

When is rape not a crime? When it's pornography--or so First Amendment law seems to say: in film, a rape becomes "free speech." Pornography, Catharine MacKinnon contends, is neither speech nor free. Pornography, racial and sexual harassment, and hate speech are acts of intimidation, subordination, terrorism, and discrimination, and should be legally treated as such. Only Words is a powerful indictment of a legal system at odds with itself, its First Amendment promoting the very inequalities its Fourteenth Amendment is supposed to end. In the bold and compelling style that has made her one of our most provocative legal critics, MacKinnon depicts a society caught in a vicious hypocrisy. Words that offer bribes or fix prices or segregate facilities are treated by law as acts, but words and pictures that victimize and target on the basis of race and sex are not. Pornography--an act of sexual domination reproduced in the viewing--is protected by law in the name of "the free and open exchange of ideas." But the proper concern of law, MacKinnon says, is not what speech says, but what it does. What the "speech" of pornography and of racial and sexual harassment and hate propaganda does is promote and enact the power of one social group over another. Cutting with surgical deftness through cases of harassment in the workplace and on college campuses, through First Amendment cases involving Nazis, Klansmen, and pornographers, MacKinnon shows that as long as discriminatory practices are protected as free speech, equality will be only a word.

INDEX

Abernathy v. Sullivan, 140n18

Abrams v. United States, 135n1

Alexander v. Yale University, 117n18

American Booksellers Ass’n v. Hudnut, 92, 96, 97, 115n9, 118n21, 119n26, 126nn63, 65, 66, 142n29, 143n42, 143nn44, 46, 145n63

American Civil Liberties Union, 130n28, 141n28

Austin, J. L., 121n31

Barbetta v. Chemlawn Servs. Co., 130n27

Barnes v. Glen Theatre, 31–33, 123nn42, 43, 124n45, 143n43

Beauharnais v. Illinois, 81, 82, 83, 84, 131n29, 133n47, 139nn19, 21, 140nn25, 28

Bennett v. N. Y. City Dep’t of Corrections, 130n27

Berhanu v. Metzger, 125n54

Black men, lynching of, 33–35

Black women, rape and battery of, 7, 48–49

Brandeis, Justice Louis, 103

Brandenburg v. Ohio, 86, 142n33

Braun v. Soldier of Fortune Magazine, 120n30

Brockett v. Spokane Arcades, 125n55

Broderick v. Ruder, 130n30

Brooms v. Regal Tube Co., 126n1

Brown v. Board of Education, 79, 139n18

Buckley v. Valeo, 142n30

Bush, George, 66

Butler, Donald Victor, 100

Butler v. Regina, 100–102, 144n59, 145n60

California Federal Savings and Loan Ass’n v. Guerra, 144n57

California v. LaRue, 123n44

Canada, Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 97–106

Carter v. Sedgwick County, 133n46

Censorship, 8, 77, 87; defined, 10; “marketplace of ideas” metaphor, 75–76, 93, 102, 137n8; offensiveness of censored opinion, 75, 145n63; “bad tendency” or “witch-hunt” doctrine, 76; “slippery slope” hazard of restricting speech, 76, 102; libel law and, 78–79. See also Obscenity law; Speech

Child abuse, 7, 20, 35, 105; obscenity law and, 91

Child pornography, 23, 35–36, 91, 122n35, 125n58

City of Richmond v. J. A. Croson Corp., 144n57

Cohen v. California, 138n13

Crawford, Trish, 113n3, 114n4

Crossburning, 33–34, 85

Davis v. Monsanto Chem. Co., 127n3

Davis v. Passman, 117n18

Defamation: pornography as, 11; group libel, 51–52, 54, 56, 80, 81–82, 84–85, 87, 93, 99–100; censorship and, 78–79; equal protection law and,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Acknowledgement
• Contents
• I Defamation and Discrimination
• II Racial and Sexual Harassment
• III Equality and Speech
• Notes
• Index