Catharine MacKinnon Quotes
Politically, I call it rape whenever a woman has sex and feels violated.
MacKinnon, Catharine A. Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law. Harvard University Press, 1987, p. 82.
Note that in pre-Muslim Arabia, a woman was not punished if she was raped as is currently done in some Muslim countries.
This quote illustrates how ignorant some members of Congress are about basic science and human reproduction. There is absolutely no physiology whereby the trauma of rape can cause a contraceptive effect. Akin was in the midst of a Senate race, and his opponents and the press pilloried him for his ignorance. The previous year there were about 32,000 pregnancies resulting from rape in the United S tates. Worse for Akin, his use of “legitimate rape” got him into trouble with the voters also. His implication that there were some rapes that were NOT legitimate infuriated many voters. He lost the election in a state where the Republicans were predicted to win.
Pakistan follows a version of Islamic Law—Sharia—which provides that a man can be convicted of rape only if there are at least 4 male witnesses. Since it is virtually impossible to ever get 4 witnesses to a crime like that, there will never be a conviction. However, the complaining victim runs two additional dangers. First she is admitting to fornication and or adultery and can be jailed or even killed for that. Further, Pakistan males regard her as a prostitute and the police will also rape her very often.
This proverb which actually has the force of de facto law in much of the Arab world, while detested by many sophisticated Westerners and Americans in particular, was actually a custom in America for many years. Under the principle, a rapist is not a rapist if he marries the girl. A seducer is not a seducer. In the Bedouin culture there is no difference between the rapist and the seducer. The reason that the practice is so hateful is that it assumes that when a woman is raped or seduced the damage is to the woman’s male relatives—to their honor. Therefore, the “crime” can be remedied by marrying the girl and satisfying the male relative’s sense of honor. Then no harm has been done, except of course to the woman who often becomes the double victim, first of the rape or seduction and then of a forced marriage. In modern America the honor of the male relatives has no standing in law, yet even today some judges and prosecutors will go easy on a statutory rapist or worse if he marries the girl and the girls family goes along with the arrangement. The term “shotgun wedding” stems from a time when family members would force the alternative on seducers.
Catharine Alice MacKinnon is an American radical feminist legal scholar, activist, and author. She is the Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, where she has been tenured since 1990, and the James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. From 2008 to 2012, she was the special gender adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.
