SOURCE: Posner, Richard A. “Obsession.” New Republic 209, no. 16 (18 October 1993): 31-6.

In the following review, Posner maintains that Only Words is “eloquent and forceful,” but derides the work for lacking “brevity,” “careful distinctions, scrupulous weighing of evidence and fair consideration of opposing views”

The title of Catharine A. MacKinnon's new book is intended as an ironic commentary on the belief that pornography is “only words” and therefore, unlike sticks and stones, can never hurt anyone. There is a further irony that is unintended: Only Words is a rhetorical, rather than an analytical, production; it is only words. It is eloquent and forceful but it lacks, perhaps because of its brevity, the careful distinctions, scrupulous weighing of evidence and fair consideration of opposing views that one is entitled to expect in a work written by a professor at an eminent law school (Michigan) and published by a distinguished university press...