It's mainly a few elite women who benefit greatly from standing with the forces that keep women down.
Interpretation
The quote criticizes a small group of privileged women who align themselves with systems that oppress other women.
Catharine Mackinnon highlights the complicity of a minority of elite women who, by supporting patriarchal structures, gain power and privilege at the expense of the majority of women. This statement underscores the idea that not all women are united in the struggle for gender equality, as some may choose to elevate their status by aligning with oppressive forces, thus perpetuating the very systems that undermine women's rights.
In practice
This quote can be used in a women's rights seminar to discuss the complexities of female empowerment.
Stopped as attribute of a person, sex inequality takes the form of gender; moving as a relation between people, it takes the form of sexuality. Gender emerges as the congealed form of the sexualization of inequaltiy between men and women.
So the idea that there is nothing essential, in the sense that there are no human universals, is dogma. Ask most anyone who is going to be shot at dawn.
Feminism is built on believing women's accounts of sexual use and abuse by men.
Politically, I call it rape whenever a woman has sex and feels violated.
Humanity, its dignity and its balance, will depend at every moment and on every place on the globe,on who man is for woman and who woman is for man.
Unconsciously, perhaps, we treasure the power we have over people by their regard for our opinion of them, and we hate those upon whom we have no such influence.
You know, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender - people are people.
Rituals are important. Nowadays it's hip not to be married. I'm not interested in being hip.
She [Evelina] is not, indeed, like most modern young ladies; to be known in half an hour; her modest worth, and fearful excellence, require both time and encouragement to show themselves.
When I was little, my friends would gush over wedding gowns and honeymoons. But I saw too many people flush decades together down the toilet over money or kids or meaningless flings. My own parents chose to stay married, which I think is rather funny, since they show about as much affection for each other as pit bulls in a ring. Tying the knot means slipping a noose around love and choking it to death.
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