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From: kiran@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (Kiran Wagle)
Newsgroups: soc.men,soc.women,misc.legal,talk.rape
Subject: Re: Catharine MacKinnon critiques presumption of innocence
Message-ID: <1991Dec29.072240.5618@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Date: Sat, 28 Dec 91 23:22:40 PST
References: <295a7b33.1d99@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU> <1991Dec28.222755.17691@midway.uchicago.edu> <1991Dec29.005652.4935@parc.xerox.com> <1991Dec29.013423.21820@midway.uchicago.edu>
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Organization: Indiana University
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thf2@ellis.uchicago.edu (Ted Frank) writes:

>I mentioned NOW to demonstrate that MacKinnon's wholesale attack on
>the First Amendment (of which only the tip of the iceberg has been
>posted) is not supported by most feminists, as other posters have
>implied.

I would be surprised if MacKinnon et al. were supported by most
feminists. For the notion of rights, of a government of laws, have led
to many victories for women. But unfortunately, many feminist legal
scholars do support MacKinnon's views. And they are dangerous views.

Michael Weiss, writing in _Reason_ magazine, details the views of some
of these feminist legal scholars. Their attack is not only on the
first amendment, but on the entire legal system which has given both 
men and women those things called "rights".

"Our legal system rests on an ethnocentric, androcentric racist
Christian, and class-based vision of reality and human nature, all of
which makes it inherently flawed," writes Syracuse University law prof
Leslie Bender. "All of our norms and standards have been male. If we
extract the male biases from our language, method, and structures, we
will have nothing--no words, no concepts, no science, no methods, no law."  

Indeed their attack goes further, to the whole of reality itself.
"Feminist  analysis begins with the principle that objective reality
is a myth," writes Ann Scales of the University of New Mexico. 

If these so-called legal scholars succeed in their goal of abolishing
the notion of rights, of rights violated, of government not of "men"
but of laws, even of reality, what then?  
       
-- 
	...kiran
		______kiran@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu______(812) 332-5589 

From the corrections column in a July Fresno, CA _Bee_: