SOURCE: Dinielli, David C. Review of Only Words, by Catharine A. MacKinnon. Michigan Law Review 92, no. 6 (May 1994): 1943-52.

In the following review, Dinielli delineates MacKinnon's feminist legal theories and addresses the critical reaction to Only Words.

Professor Catharine MacKinnon's¹ short book, Only Words, has already produced a flurry of reactions. Only a few who have reviewed the book, which sets out MacKinnon's theoretical framework for her campaign against pornography, have treated it, or MacKinnon, kindly. Most have been unabashed in their criticism. Judge Richard Posner in the New Republic, for example, labels her “reckless.”² In the Nation, Carlin Romano closes his review, in which he invites the reader to follow along as he fantasizes raping MacKinnon,³ by calling her an “authoritarian in the guise of a progressive.”⁴ Ronald Dworkin's review in the New York Review of Books, while generally respectful, spells MacKinnon's first name Catherine rather...