Catherine mackinnon sexual harassment

The following conversation was held over Skype on June 4, An edited transcript is below. Catharine A. It never has been. And keeping it continuing as a broad-based movement will make a big difference.

From experience, women often assume that any opposition to power will produce retaliation followed by retrenchment: not only that any progress made will be clawed back, but that those pushing for it will be punished. While often realistic, fear of blowback can impede insistence on change and the collective mobilization it requires. This contributes to keeping dominance in place. When I was working in the early s to shape the concept and create the legal claim for sexual harassment when it did not exist, I called the organization then called 9to5 and explained to the woman who answered the phone what I was trying to do, asking if she would be willing to talk with her members about my project on unwanted sexual attention and pressure at work.

The story would go on to become one of his best known, a wounding abrasion to the surface view of postwar American fortitude. Intended as a chilling admonition against female volatility, read 64 years later, amid the current reckoning, it presents itself least ambiguously as a chilling admonition against male entitlement. Turned off by her fragility and imperfections — Blake cannot abide her sloppy handwriting — he orders personnel to fire her the day after their sexual encounter. Miss Dent has come for her turn at revenge.

Skip to main content. A Case of Sex Discrimination. Description Reviews. Sexual harassment of working women has been widely practiced and systematically ignored. Considered trivial or personal, or natural and inevitable, sexual harassment has become a social institution.