Feminist? I think not..

Photo taken from thedartmouth.com
By: Chris Valletta

In Susie Bright's essay "The Prime of Miss Kitty MacKinnon", her objective is to tear down everything that Catharine MacKinnon has said regarding sexuality and females. MacKinnon is considered to be the premiere legal scholar and feminist activist who battles pornography and claims that the liberation of women's freedom is her motive. However, almost immediately Susie Bright condemns her, saying "her content is what rams my vagina and chills me to the bone (pg. 1)." For some reason, MacKinnon has an unbreakable connection to both pain and sex. Meaning, there cannot be sex without pain for a woman. This line clearly shows repression from MacKinnon, since she is so against sexual pleasure and won't even acknowledge that it feels good, going so far as to say that all it does is feel painful. But she claims that this pain only occurs in women somehow.

In regards to pornography, MacKinnon believes that all of the actresses are "poor desperate homeless pimped women who were sexually abused as children (pg.3)." Obviously this statement is based on no facts whatsoever, and just goes to show ignorant she is. As a matter of fact as Laura Kipnis highlighted, the pornography industry is one of the most profitable in the country. Bright sums up MacKinnons view on pornography by stating: "MacKinnon draws a picture of pornographic film-making as a montage of concentration-camp documentary, high-fashion fascism, and draconian male conspiracy (pg. 4)." Bright displays here her displeasure of MacKinnon's false and erroneous comments towards pornography and the sinful spin she puts on something that is actually supposed to be pleasurable.

MacKinnon even believes that pornography is a trigger to male sexual violence. However, Bright points out that it would be impossible for pictures and masturbation to cause physical harm to others. In actuality, no one knows why such violent acts occur, but it certainly is not because of viewing a pleasurable video. Saying that porn is sexist is irrelevant because there are multiple other mediums where that is true. However, the main difference between porn and everything else is the depiction of sexual acts with no holds barred in a society where sex acts out in display are not tolerated. It is too easy for anyone in this society to say that sexuality is sinful, because that is what our society says since it all is mostly kept private.

MacKinnon does not even acknowledge the notion that females masturbate, saying that it is something only men perform in a disrespectful and harmful way. How could she hold one sex to a certain standard but not the other? What is it about masturbation that makes it so bad? It seems as though she cannot deal with the fact of sex being pleasurable, especially as a woman. Therefore, her only response to this is to deny and repress any sort of desires and put it all on the other sex (males), building on any instances of male sexual violence to back her case. This leads to men not wanting to live up to their full potential of sexuality for fear of being guilty, while women are new to this eroticism in the open and may be eager to go out and explore what has not been avilable to them before. Bright points out many great flaws in MacKinnon's teachings and I completely agree with her. She is not a feminist, and sex, masturbation, and pornography is not evil; repressing pleasure and desire while pinning down the opposite sex however can be seen as evil.