Only Words

In her most cogent and accessible book to date, feminist legal scholar MacKinnon lashes "absolutists" who maintain that all forms of expression, including pornography and hate propaganda, should be constitutionally protected. MacKinnon counters that pornography and hate messages "do the same thing: enact the abuse." Porn, she argues, subordinates and degrades women and incites sexual harassers, wife beaters, child molesters, rapists and clients of prostitutes. MacKinnon, a Univeristy of Michigan law professor, believes that we need to balance First Amendment concerns for free speech with Fourteenth Amendment protection of equality. She advocates "a new model for freedom of expression . . . in which free speech does not most readily protect the activities of Nazis, Klansmen, and pornorgraphers, while doing nothing for their victims." And she hails two recent decisions by Canada's Supreme Court which bolster the rights of persons harmed by pornography or hate propaganda.