Are Women Human?
by Catharine A. MacKinnon
Harvard University Press, HK$280
To refer to Catharine A. MacKinnon - the author of 11 brilliant and theoretically rigorous books, professor of law at the University of Michigan, and a fellow at the Centre for Advanced Study at Stanford - as a feminist scholar is somewhat like describing her as a bookish blonde: accurate, but also a little ridiculous. MacKinnon is a towering figure on the world stage, far beyond categorisations that in application, trigger derision or marginalisation. The leitmotif of her work is the correction of social injustice, and her role in shaping perception of quotidian iniquities, incalculable.
Her latest offering, Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues, is an anthology of essays and speeches. Originally part of Women's Lives, Men's Laws (2005), these luminous dialogues are presented in chronological order and within themes, and call for social reform and 'legal teeth'.
'Women are half the human race,' she states. 'Women are ... prostituted, and increasingly live pornographic lives in contexts saturated more or less with porn-ography. Women do two-thirds of the world's work, earn one-tenth of the world's income, and own less than one-hundredth of the world's property. Women are more likely to be property than to own any.'