Women

My understanding of MacKinnon’s Concept of Woman

Catherine MacKinnon defines a woman as follows: A person is a woman if and only if she stands in relation of sexual subordination to men. If we look closely to her definition: a person is not a woman if she is not being sexually subordinated by men or feeling so. This means that being subject to subordination is an essential property. This essence that is shared by the whole women class turns out to be universal. That is, once it is initiated it occurs the same way in each individual member of the class. For a better understanding of concept of universal, let me give an example: If the object A is a triangle it should have three edges no matter where the object is. This property occurs the same way at all triangles and A’s being a triangle does not affect the other objects being a triangle. That is it can be initiated at the same time at different places by different objects, but once it is initiated this property occurs the same way. If we turn back to the universal of "womanness" which is “being subordinated by a man” this is a social one while most universals that are attached to "womanness" also to be mentioned below were considered natural (coming from nature). Universals can be social or natural but MacKinnon’s social universal will be rhetorical in terms of referring to woman identity as a socially constructed one. Here we should note that a group of people sharing a universal does not mean it is also universal of that group. For example: All students taking feminist philosophy class may be females but this does not mean that all people to take the class should be females. All students being female may be a coincidence and so it may not be a universal of the group. On the other hand all universals do not have to be essential for individual beings, which we can be called “inessential universal”. That is, the property which occurs at all members may not be essential in the sense the individual can be the same person even without having that property. For example: Say there is a group of blonde people. Having blonde hair is essential to be in the group but it is not something that changes the way a person is. In other words, your blonde hair is essential to be a member of the group but it is not an essential component of your personality and existence. Clarification of these concepts through examples is important since we will be using them to analyze MacKinnon’s view and some disputes to it.
Her definition seems to be narrow and ignoring many features of women, as it addresses to one property which is commonly experienced by an enormous number of women and we will discuss them at the last part of the paper in terms of objection to her definition. But before that we have better understand the origin of this definition by looking at her paper “Difference and Dominance”. Once we understand the theory behind, we can easily see the significance and its role in feminist theory. She claims in her paper that the dominance came out randomly without any evidence of man’s superiority or female’s inferiority. After the unequal distribution of power, the gender division occurred to maintain the status of men close to power and women far away from it, fixed. That is why she defines the womanness as a social and political concept. There fore woman is nothing else but the name standing for dominated class of people. Another aspect of this definition is that it is alternative to naturalism argument. Naturalism argument believes in the existence of a natural universal of womanness which is mainly inferior, fixed and does not change. Mackinnon’s universals are not natural but they are social ones, so they are not fixed anymore, they can be changed by changing the social set up which causes it.
After understanding her motivation for this definition let us see why it is significant. Naturalism argument is quite anti-feminist in the sense it attributes an unchanging inferior nature to all woman. However, MacKinnon is defining the woman in terms of social universals, in a way that emphasizes on the inequality and as a consequence the injustice in social life. This makes it crucial for the feminism. Once the problem is explicitly mentioned and agreed on, there can come out a motivation for social changes that will give the woman her rights and protect her against subordination of man. Because she believes the subordination continues to happen as the laws which are based on mans needs do nothing to prevent subordination of woman which is only issue of women.
Although MacKinnon has a consistent theory in itself, and serves to feminist theory very well by identifying the problem of women so explicitly and rhetorically, there are objections to her definition of woman. The strongest of them comes from Stoljar by using diversity argument. Diversity argument broadly says that women of different races, cultures, social classes or intersexes do have different kind of "womanness" and face different problems; so it may not be possible to find universals for this diverse class of people. Even if we mange to do so, how can we be sure that they are universals for "womanness". They may be an accidental universal shared by all women. Okay, assuming it is not accidental, that’s they are really universals of womanness, they may or may not be essential for individual beings. Therefore, the point is: Is it possible to find universals of womanness that are also essential to individuals or universals that really matter for well-being of individuals? While these are quite ambiguous MacKinnon thinks of subordination as an essential universal. This means it is common among all women and a requirement to be a woman. Does this mean we should stop calling females who are not subordinated as woman, and focus on this narrow definition and only women it points to? Probably MacKinnon would not disagree with this. Because her theory rejects gender differences, she thinks they are socially constructed notions, and so in her perception womanness is a name for the people who are left at the bottom of hierarchy with respect to distribution of power. Mackinnon’s feminist perspective is about eliminating the power inequality, and her definition for woman aims at saving people who are subordinated. Obviously her definition works efficiently for her ideology. However it is not enough to project all woman identities and their problems in wide understanding of woman.
Instead Stoljar comes up with the notion “cluster woman”. This definition can be said to take its basis from Locke’s resemblance nominalism. Resemblance nominalism, gives the opportunity to classify or define objects with respect to some common properties they exhibit without making universals or tying to come up with the information of individual’s essence. In Alger’s words: Nominal essence is an epistemological essence [Stoljar]. Stoljar observes some main common points (exactly four of them) that are shared by reasonable number of members (not necessarily all) of woman class and defines any person who fulfills at least three of them as a woman. There are no universals of womanness so it avoids most controversies that Mackinnon’s definition invokes.
In addition many people who are called and who would call themselves as woman are referred to by this definition.
To conclude, MacKinnon’s definition of woman “ A is a woman iff she is subordinated to man” is a strong argument since it handles concept of woman as a socially constructed one giving opportunity and hope in a way to stop subordination of woman. On the other hand it makes universals, which are not applied to all woman in general understanding of woman.
RERENCES:
Mackinnon C., Difference and Dominance: Sex Discrimination, CA, Feminist Theory a Philosophical anthology.