I’ve been listening to the Philosophy Bites podcast regularly (after Ari Kohen emphatically recommended it sometime ago). I appreciated this issue of the podcast specifically because it reminded me why I am not a fan of Catherine MacKinnon, why I sometimes find myself at serious odds with academic feminism and basically how this kind of academic feminism is alienating and far from anything I believe in.
The episode is about gender crimes and what constitutes a gender based crime. I found myself nodding in agreement for the first oh, I don’t know 45 seconds of the interview, where niceties and basic premises where exchanged.
But then she had to go back to the usual alienation that has been a trademark of her entire academic career (from the days when she was an anti pornography activist with Dworkin) by claiming that prostitution is a crime, that there is no single instance of consensual prostitution and that all sex work is basically a form of “serial rape” executed on the sex worker.
When confronted with a question about sex workers who openly state that they are happy with their life choices and that they have no regrets and that they do not feel more oppressed than women doing any other kind of paid work, she goes as far as denying their experiences. She considers those experiences to be lies!
I cannot properly elaborate on how upsetting it is, for me, to hear this academic, someone considered to be a representative of “institutional feminism” speak of the experiences of women everywhere this way. These universal statements that she makes, which completely negate and go as far as oppressing the lived experiences of sex workers are not just infuriating in their ignorance but they contribute to further victimize women.
I am not going to pretend that prostitution is this glamorized version of Pretty Woman or that no exploitation exists, but it is disingenuous and insulting to hear that someone in a position of authority denies the autonomy of sex workers and sex workers rights activists who work very hard to remove a stigma that, sadly, MacKinnon seems very fond of perpetuating.
If MacKinnon is the face of feminism, I’ll be content by being its arse.
For the past decade and a half I have been making all my content available for free (and never behind a paywall) as an ongoing practice of ephemeral publishing. This site is no exception. If you wish to help offset my labor costs, you can donate on Paypal or you can subscribe to Patreon where I will not be putting my posts behind a lock but you'd be helping me continue making this work available for everyone. Thank you. Follow me on Twitter for new post updates.