SOURCE: Bartlett, Katharine T. Review of Feminism Unmodified, by Catharine A. MacKinnon. Signs 13, no. 4 (summer 1988): 879-85.

In the following review, Bartlett investigates the relationship between MacKinnon's themes in Feminism Unmodified and Susan Estrich's Real Rape.

Catharine MacKinnon's Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law and Susan Estrich's Real Rape are two of the best recent examples of feminist legal writing.¹ The authors are prominent feminist lawyers and legal theorists. They both write about the powerlessness of women and the role of the legal system in enforcing this powerlessness.

MacKinnon's Feminism Unmodified, which is a collection of speeches delivered from 1981 to 1986, serves as a comprehensive and readable summary of the critique of American society and its legal system that has established MacKinnon's reputation as one of the most original and uncompromising of contemporary feminist thinkers. MacKinnon's central theme is that the whole of society is organized hierarchically, by sex...