Sex, Gender, and Sexuality: The TransAdvocate interviews Catharine A. MacKinnon
Catharine A. MacKinnon is a lawyer, teacher, writer, theorist, and activist. She is the Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan and James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School (long-term). She holds a B.A. from Smith College, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and a Ph.D. in political science from Yale. Professor MacKinnon specializes in sex equality issues in political theory and under international and domestic (including comparative and constitutional) law. Her work on sex inequality, focusing on sexual violation, has had a substantial impact on law and culture in the United States and internationally. Professor MacKinnon practices law, consults on legislation, litigation, and activism. She is among the most widely-cited legal scholars in the English language and the most widely-cited woman. The following interview occurred over a series of emails between November 2014 and March 2015 and is part of an
The Source Summary reproduces the first 150 words of the source article unless a Collective editor has explicitly locked a replacement.
Why this article may matter
Community significance
“Sex, Gender, and Sexuality: The TransAdvocate interviews Catharine A. MacKinnon” may matter to community readers because it preserves a first-person or testimonial account connected to law and civil rights, while also engaging transgender identity and history. Such accounts can document how an issue was understood and experienced from within the period or community being discussed.
Historical significance
The article may have historical value because it explicitly interprets or preserves material concerning law and civil rights. Published in 2015 by Transadvocate.com, it can be read both for the history it describes and as evidence of how transgender identity and history was framed at that moment.
Policy significance
The article’s strongest policy connection is public accommodations and facilities and criminal justice and public safety. It links that institutional frame to law and civil rights and transgender identity and history, making it potentially useful for tracing how an argument moves from description or history into law, regulation, administration, or public practice.
Ranked themes and framings
Rank 1 is the dominant inferred theme or framing. Parent labels identify broader theme families; the relationship key beneath the diagram explains the line styles used for hierarchy, same-family relationships, overlap, and separate-but-related themes.
Themes
- 1Law and civil rightsTheme family: Institutions, law, and public life100%
- 2Transgender identity and historyTheme family: Identity, culture, and community61%
- 3Feminism and gender politicsTheme family: Power, ideology, and social conflict47%
- 4Education and youthTheme family: Institutions, law, and public life36%
- 5Violence, safety, and dehumanizationTheme family: Power, ideology, and social conflict35%
- 6Community and organizingTheme family: Identity, culture, and community33%
Academic framing
- 1100%
- 267%
- 356%
- 450%
Policy framing
- 1100%
- 228%
- 321%
Editorial function
Source topics
- Overlapping themes
- Separate but related themes
- Related theme in the same family
These classifications are inferred from article text and source metadata and remain directly editable. Relationship labels express corpus-analysis judgments, not immutable facts.
How “Law and civil rights” appears across the Collective corpus
This article appeared 2 year(s) after the theme’s highest annual presence in the registered corpus in 2013.
Relative presence by year
Peak year indexed to 100Presence by member publication
Frequently co-occurring concepts
- Transgender identity and history468
- Community and organizing300
- Public policy and governance165
- Education and youth151
- Violence, safety, and dehumanization146
- Culture, identity, and representation145
- Labor, economics, and institutions136
- Family and relationships130
- Media, rhetoric, and discourse119
- History, archives, and memory117
Academic framings in this topic
Values measure relative presence in the registered Collective corpus, not public search interest or public opinion.
Documented circulation and reception
8 source-held references record early links or citations; the documented sources span 7 distinct domains. The dated evidence currently spans 2015–2017. These observations describe circulation and reuse; they do not assign cultural worth or evaluate the communities, arguments, or people discussed.
Evidence by channel
Independent counts; bars are not additiveCoverage of the evidence search
Shows what has actually been checkedDocumented references over time
Dated source evidence currently stored by the CollectiveRowan Atkinson makes more sense than BBC’s “Woman’s Hour” | The TransAdvocate
This article discusses the clash of ideology and lived experience as exemplified by a recent BBC radio program in the UK. This article uses the term Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF) to distinguish between the trans-supportive Radical Feminism of Andrea Dworkin, Catharine MacKinnon, The Olivia…
Gender Cons – In Struggle
[…] experiences of “real women.” For more on MacKinnon’s and Dworkin’s views on this issue, see this interview and Dworkin’s comments about publicly funded gender reassignment surgery in her 1974 book Woman […]
為什麼我不再討厭「排跨基女」 /Penny White – 基進女性之聲
[…] 關於跨性別女人,基進女性主義先鋒麥金儂(Catharine MacKinnon)曾這麼說:「任何人認同自己作為女人,想成為一個女人,正在嘗試成為一個女人,就我而言,就是一個女人。」 I embrace my transgender sisters, and I refuse to reject them. But I will not reject my so-called “trans-exclusive” sisters either. I will listen and be respectful of their point of view. I will stand with them to dismantle systemic misogyny and…
Beware of Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminism – Affinity Magazine
[…] […]
Sex, Gender, and Sexuality: An Interview With Catharine A. MacKinnon | A Conversation:
Catharine A. MacKinnon questions the presumed unconstructed nature of sex, gender and sexuality while considering the language and concepts within trans feminist and sex essentialist discourse. MacKinnon comments on the work of Kate Millett, Simone de Beauvoir and the political morality promoted by Janice…
Admin
Over on the TransAdvocate, I recently published my interview with Swedish researcher Dr. Cecilia Dhejne, author of the 2011 study, Long-Term Follow-Up of Transsexual Persons Undergoing Sex Reassignment Surgery: Cohort Study in Sweden. I did the interview with Dhejne because her 2011 study was being used by the right…
Ten Questions for Catharine MacKinnon | aoifeschatology
[…] I was curious to peruse her conversation with The TransAdvocate, a trans-militant website that is hostile to corporeal feminism. While the interview never once […]
Cathy Brennan’s Gender Identity Watch supports ‘feminist’ bombing of American infrastructure
[…] They enjoy quotemining radical feminist icons (who support trans people) like Dworkin and Mackinnon to support their TERF dogma. DGR cancelled it’s trans inclusive policy in 2012. A few years […]
Counts describe documented circulation and reception in the sources currently available to the Collective. They are not a score of quality, merit, popularity, or social value, and provider totals can overlap.
Author profiles and related researchers
Related authors in the Collective corpus
Related authors are calculated from co-authorship, shared themes and framings, and citation relationships in the registered corpus. This does not imply a personal or institutional association.
Continue through the Collective
TERF Quotes
Examines legal, institutional, or policy consequences connected to the shared theme.
The first post in this blog is simply going to hi-light some actual quotes from the TERF community. If you would like to have quotes added to this…
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Approaches the shared subject through a related analytical or disciplinary frame.
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Approaches the shared subject through a related analytical or disciplinary frame.
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Supplies historical or archival context for the issue discussed here.
I heard of Poppy years before I met her. I knew her to be a major force behind Southern feminism. Poppy has a long history of working for…