FEMINISM UNMODIFIED
Catharine A. MacKinnon
Harvard University Press, paperback edition (1988)
(first published in 1987)

"...I speak as a feminist, although not all feminists agree with everything I say. Mrs. Schlafly speaks as a conservative. She and I see a similar world, but we portray it differently. We see similar facts but have very different explanations and evaluations of those facts.

We both see substantial differences between the situations of women and of men. She interprets the distinctions as natural or individual. I see them as fundamentally social. She sees them as inevitable or just—or perhaps inevitable therefore just—either as good and to be accepted or as individually overcomeable with enough will and application. I see women's situation as unjust, contingent, and imposed.

...I need first to correct Mrs. Schlafly's impression of the women's movement. Feminism is not, as she implicitly defines it, liberalism applied to women. Her attack on the women's movement profoundly misconstrues feminism. Her critique of the women's movement is an artifact, an application, of her long-standing critique of liberalism, just as her atack on the ERA is an artifact of her opposition to the federal government. Women as such are incidental, a subplot, not central, either to liberalism or to her critique...." Catharine MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified (1988 paperback), Part I, Approaches, Chapter 1, "Not by Law Alone: From a Debate with Phyllis Schlafly (1982), pp. 21–22

BOOK DESCRIPTION
PUBLISHER
Catharine A. MacKinnon, noted feminist and legal scholar, explores and develops her original theories and practical proposals on sexual politics and law. These discourses, originally delivered as speeches, have been brilliantly woven into a book that retains all the spontaneity and accessibility of a live presentation. MacKinnon offers a unique retrospective on the law of sexual harassment, which she designed and has worked for a decade to establish, and a prospectus on the law of pornography, which she proposes to change in the next ten years. Authentic in voice, sweeping in scope, startling in clarity, urgent, never compromised and often visionary, these discourses advance a new theory of sex inequality and imagine new possibilities for social change.

Through these engaged works on issues such as rape, abortion, athletics, sexual harassment, and pornography, MacKinnon seeks feminism on its own terms, unconstrained by the limits of prior traditions. She argues that viewing gender as a matter of sameness and difference—as virtually all existing theory and law have done—covers up the reality of gender, which is a system of social hierarchy, an imposed inequality of power. She reveals a political system of male dominance and female subordination that sexualizes power for men and powerlessness for women. She analyzes the failure of organized feminism, particularly legal feminism, to alter this condition, exposing the way male supremacy gives women a survival stake in the system that destroys them.

BOOK REVIEWS
LIBRARY JOURNAL– Anne Twitchell, University of Maryland Architecture Library, College Park
"This is a collection of lectures given by the author, a feminist and legal scholar. Mainstream feminism, with its emphasis on obliterating the differences between the sexes, she states, has failed to deal with the real problem: the existence of a social hierarchy in which power is vested in men, and women have a vested interest in their own subordination. Rape, sexual harassment, and pornography as evidences of the social and legal subjugation of women are explored in detail. MacKinnon, whose legal and philosophical arguments are not easily absorbed, aims to shake the complacency of those who claim there has been real progress resulting from the women's movement...."

Phyllis Chesler, Ph.D., author of Women and Madness
"In this book MacKinnon enlarges our understanding of the nature of civil rights as applied to women. MacKinnon's radicalism is thrilling, her determination brilliant, her passion literal. With rigor and irony MacKinnon teaches us what feminism—unmodified by cowardice or by disassociation from other women—is, what it sounds like, and what its goals are. MacKinnon's identification with silenced women is precisely what defines feminism unmodified."

Burke Marshall, Yale Law School
"Catharine MacKinnon's discourses in Feminism Unmodified are final evidence, if any were needed, that hers is the most powerful mind and forceful voice now at work in this critical area of law. I commend her book most vigorously to the many who question as well as those who accept her position."

Diana E. H. Russell, Department of Sociology, Mills College, author of Rape and Marriage
"Feminism Unmodified shows Catharine MacKinnon to be one of the most brilliant, original, thought-provoking, and uncompromising feminist theoreticians and strategists in the contemporary United States."

Alison M. Jaggar–NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
"MacKinnon's] book offers an unorthodox but relentlessly consistent perspective on issues fundamental to feminism. It is passionate, brilliant, polemical and sectarian. Ms. MacKinnon defends what is frequently called 'radical feminism.' As the title of her book indicates, she believes this approach to be the only true or genuine feminism because it alone speaks for all women...Her position is grounded on a clear assertion of the primacy of the social over the biological...Fundamental to her radical feminism is the claim that gender is a system of dominance rather than of difference ...Ms. MacKinnon offers a systematic and persuasive perspective on issues that are central not only to feminism but to social theory in general."

HARVARD LAW REVIEW
"MacKinnon has been perhaps the most important force behind the burgeoning theoretical literature in law on sex discrimination and feminist theory...Each of the essays published in [the book] stands on its own, making the book a collection of separate entries rather than one sustained argument. Because each essay was originally a speech, the discussions are lucid and dramatic, with the dynamism, immediacy, and sense of discovery of a live presentation; they are also filled with irony, wit, and humor...the book contains brilliant insights, genuine creativity, and rare originality. It should have a significant impact on thinking about sex discrimination and on social and legal thought more generally."

Pauline B. Bart–AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
"[The book] is to feminism what The German Ideology is to Marxism. Using the tools of sociology of knowledge, Catharine MacKinnon relentlessly uncovers male bias, also known as objectivity and male perspectives also known as universality...On every page are epigrams one wants to print and hang on one's walls."

Lorraine Schmall–ABA JOURNAL
"This is heavy stuff. [The book] does not tell us what to do. It may, however, make us think, and challenge, and possibly act."

Gerry Spence, author of Trial by Fire
"I wish to celebrate this book by a peer, a book for reading by men should they wish to keep up with the human race."  

Miles Lord, former Chief Judge of the Federal Court for the District of Minnesota
"It's a zinger. Ms. MacKinnon has made a difference before, and this book should further change society."

Peter Bogdanovich
"Catharine MacKinnon's Feminism Unmodified is a remarkably penetrating, bracingly uncompromising view of what it means to be a woman in our society. Written with extraordinary incisiveness and an acid wit, this is an important book for anyone interested in freedom."

Derrick Bell, Harvard Law School
"MacKinnon dispatches from her post on the front line of the sexual battlefield searing, sharp communiqués that voice a fierce, relentless, and finally persuasive analysis of how pornography, a perversion of free speech, perpetuates the powerlessness of women."