The Antithesis of Negative Liberty

Catharine MacKinnon’s Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (1989) challenges two dominant ways of thinking about politics: liberalism, which wants to protect us from the power of the state, and Marxism, which wants to liberate us through the power of the state. What if neither is good enough to emancipate women? Mackinnon explains why patriarchal power permeates all forms of modern politics. David

discusses what she thinks we can do about it.

Recommended version to purchase: 

• Catharine A. MacKinnon, Toward a feminist theory of the state (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989).
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Going Deeper:

• Lorna Finlayson in the LRB on Catharine MacKinnon, feminism, and the law
• Catharine A. MacKinnon, Sexual harassment of working women: a case of sex discrimination (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979).
• Drucilla Cornell, ‘Sexual difference, the feminine, and equivalency: a critique of MacKinnon’s Toward a feminist theory of the state’, Yale Law Journal, vol. 100, no. 7, article 12.
• The NYTimes on Catharine MacKinnon and sexual harassment
• Catharine Mackinnon for The Atlantic on #MeToo

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