Essays on Rape

Essays on Rape

Only Words, by Catharine MacKinnon is a collection of three essays; each essay argues her claim that sexual words and pictures should be banned instead of Constitutionally protected under the First Amendment as free speech. In her first essay, “Defamation and Discrimination,” MacKinnon takes the stance that pornography is sex, and should not be treated as speech, but as a sexist act. She claims that pornography is an action, just as, “a sign saying ‘White Only’ is only words, but … it is seen as the act of segregation that it is.”(MacKinnon 13) MacKinnon claims that other action words, such as death threats, are banned, pornography should be banned as well. According to her essay, pornography rapes women. First, the photographers select already victimized women to be photographed, and thereby re-victimizing them. Then each man who views the pornography uses the ideas he attains from it to force his own sexual partner to perform the acts in the pornography. In the second essay, “Racial and Sexual Harassment,” MacKinnon states, “if ever words have been understood as acts, it has been when they are sexual harassment.”(MacKinnon 45) She explains how written words can have the same effects on a reader as an action. They can evoke the same fear and violation as a physical threat of rape. In her final essay, “Equality and Speech,” MacKinnon suggests that the words as actions that she has describes in her previous essays should be subject to a group defamation lawsuit. She states that the Constitution protects speech that promotes sexual inequality. She feels that the Fourteenth Amendment should cover the discrimination allowed in the First Amendment.

Susan Estrich’s Real Rape is an essay preaching proposed changes in rape statutes.

Estrich first describes, in great detail, the history of rape legislation in England.

She follows pertinent cases through history, citing changes and analyzing the effects of those changes. Estrich bases her findings on summaries, dissents, and other legal documentation. She then describes the current law, and evaluates how it has changed the way in which the court views rape. Throughout her essay, Estrich makes a distinction between classic rape and simple rape. She defines the former as aggravated rape by a stranger, and the latter as rape by a date or acquaintance. Estrich focuses on simple ...

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... although it can be used to hurt, it can also be used to bring aid and information to those in need. Imposing limits on freedom of expression would dampen our nation’s uniqueness and suppress the voice of the people. Her idea that pornography acts as sex and can therefore be banned because it is no longer speech is ludicrous and rash. The repercussions of such an amendment would change our society to one of ultimate government control. The examples that she gives to relate pornography to racism are limited in scope. She suggests that because Henri Matisse’s “The Blue Nude”(Matisse) portrays an unclothed female that a man may, in her words, “get off on,”(MacKinnon 58) it should be banned. The line between art and explicit pornography is not one that the government should be able to draw. The government should, however, protect victims from physical acts of rape as Susan Estrich describes.

Bibliography:

Estrich, Susan. Real Rape. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1987.

MacKinnon, Catharine. Only Words. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993.

Matisse, Henri. The Blue Nude. The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Maryland.