More than half a century after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights defined what a human being is and is entitled to, Catharine MacKinnon asks: Are women human yet? If women were regarded as human, would they be sold into sexual slavery worldwide; veiled, silenced, and imprisoned in homes; bred, and worked as menials for little or no pay; stoned for sex outside marriage or burned within it; mutilated genitally, impoverished economically, and mired in illiteracy--all as a matter of course and without effective recourse?
The cutting edge is where law and culture hurts, which is where MacKinnon operates in these essays on the transnational status and treatment of women. Taking her gendered critique of the state to the international plane, ranging widely intellectually and concretely, she exposes the consequences and significance of the systematic maltreatment of women and its systemic condonation. And she points toward fresh ways--social, legal, and political--of targeting its toxic orthodoxies.
MacKinnon takes us inside the workings of nation-states, where the oppression of women defines community life and distributes power in society and government. She takes us to Bosnia-Herzogovina for a harrowing look at how the wholesale rape and murder of women and girls there was an act of genocide, not a side effect of war. She takes us into the heart of the international law of conflict to ask--and reveal--why the international community can rally against terrorists' violence, but not against violence against women. A critique of the transnational status quo that also envisions the transforming possibilities of human rights, this bracing book makes us look as never before at an ongoing war too long undeclared.
By:
Catharine A. MacKinnon
Imprint: The Belknap Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 235mm,
Width: 159mm,
Spine: 19mm
Weight: 567g
ISBN: 9780674025554
ISBN 10: 0674025555
Pages: 432
Publication Date: 01 October 2007
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
"Introduction: Women's Status, Men's States I. THEORY VERSUS REALITY 1. On Torture 2. Human Rights and Global Violence against Women 3. Theory Is Not a Luxury 4. Are Women Human? 5. Postmodernism and Human Rights 6. The Promise of CEDAW's Optional Protocol II. STRUGGLES WITHIN STATES 7. Making Sex Equality Real 8. Misogyny's Cold Heart 9. On Sex and Violence: Introducing the Antipornography Ordinance in Sweden 10. Nationbuilding in Canada 11. Equality Remade: Violence against Women 12. Pornography's Empire 13. Sex Equality under the Constitution of India: Problems, Prospects, and ""Personal Laws"" III. THROUGH THE BOSNIAN LENS 14. Crimes of War, Crimes of Peace 15. Turning Rape into Pornography: Postmodern Genocide 16. Rape as Nationbuilding 17. From Auschwitz to Omarska, Nuremberg to the Hague 18. Rape, Genocide, and Women's Human Rights 19. Gender-Based Crimes in Humanitarian Law 20. War Crimes Remedies at the National Level 21. Collective Harms under the Alien Tort Statute: A Cautionary Note on Class Actions 22. Genocide's Sexuality IV. ON THE CUTTING EDGE 23. Defining Rape Internationally: A Commentary on Akayesu 24. Pornography as Trafficking 25. Women's September 11th: Rethinking the International Law of Conflict Notes Index"
Catharine A. MacKinnon is Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School and the James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law (Long-Term) at Harvard Law School.
Reviews for Are Women Human?: And Other International Dialogues
MacKinnon is the world's leading feminist legal theorist, and her work over the past three decades has helped create an entire field of theorizing about gender, the State, and law. - Charles King, Times Literary Supplement
- Nominated for Joan Kelly Memorial Prize in Women's History 2006
- Short-listed for Diagram Prize for the Oddest Title of the Year 2007
- Shortlisted for Diagram Prize for the Oddest Title of the Year 2007.
