Difference and Dominance: On Sex Discrimination

Hande Lara Sever

“This social status in which we can be used and abused and trivialized and humiliated and bought and sold and passed around and patted on the head and put in place and told to smile that we look as though we’re enjoying it all is not what some of us have in mind as sex equality.” Catherine MacKinnon

In her article Young argues that Marxist theory’s definition of oppression is not comprehensive since it reduces the injustices of racism and sexism solely to affects of class domination. Young thinks that Racism, sexism, homophobia etc. are distinct forms of oppression and can not be reduced to a sole perpetuator. Thus articulates five categories to define oppression and oppressed. MacKinnon clearly agrees with Young’s definition of oppression and applies her rubric to analyze the oppression that women face and she articulates an approach called the dominance approach that she believes is the only accurate approach to dismantle the women’s oppression. Young mentions Frye’s bird cage analogy in her article and it is clear that Young theorized what this bird cage is while Mackinnon concentrates on developing a method that would eliminate this bird cage to a certain extend.

MacKinnon argues that the sex equality has been inefficient in terms of providing women what they need. She states that even though sex equality laws were being legislated women lacked access to reasonable security, self expression, individuation and minimal respect and dignity. Thus women continued to experience the “five faces of oppression” and in her article MacKinnon exposes how the sameness/ difference theory of sex equality does not work.

She states that both of the approaches refer to masculinity and malesness because gender neutrality is male standard and difference is female standard- as stated in Lloyd’s article female standard is constructed through masculinity. According to MacKinnon the main pitfall of sex equality is that every quality distinguishing women from men is already compensated in this society. Since we live in a patriarchal society women face what Young calls Cultural Imperialism as the norms of the society is set by men. She states that the difference approach does not work as well because it further perpetuates “the five faces of oppression” especially powerlessness because adopting the difference approach in a society where difference creates a system of dominance is not a solution for women. Also Iris Young defines powerlessness in her article through social associations with professional culture. MacKinnon takes it further and exemplifies it though the silence of women. She says “… when you are powerless you don’t just speak differently. A lot, you don’t speak. Your speech is not just differently articulated, it is silenced.”

After criticizing the difference and sameness approaches MacKinnon states that “an equality question is a question of the distribution of power.” and defines what she calls the dominance approach. She states that the dominance approach relies on the most sex differential abuses of women as a gender which is an aspect that was overlooked by the difference and sameness approach. For instance, it includes not only sex segregation into poverty but also violence against women. Young states that “Oppression refers to structural phenomena that immobilize or diminish a group.” MacKinnon’s dominance approach aims to elevate this structural phenomena by addressing all of the five categories of oppression and dealing with them on a situationist basis. Lastly, MacKinnon states that the dominance approach is a feminist approach because it aims to elevate the subordination of women to men while difference and sameness approaches are not.