Mackinnon Feminism, Alurxisn, Method, and the State 15 triarchal fanily, becoming society as a patri Feminism has not been pei d as having a method, or even a extensions, by tl central argument, with whicl: to contend. It has been perceived not as a chy";or as caused by artificial gender roles and their attendant y sleliatit analysis but as a loose collection of factors, complaints, and titudes, 2& Informed by these atlempts, but conceiving nature, law, the issues which, taken together, describe rather than explain the mis- fortunes of the female sex. The challenge is to demonstrate that feminism fundamentally identifies sexuality as the primary social sphere of male power. The centrality of sexuality emerges not from Freudian Teiinisin systematically converges u a central explanation ol sex inequility through an approach distinctive to its subject yet applicable to inceptions 2s butt from fe nist practice on diverse issues, including abortion, birth control, sterilization abuse, domestic battery, rap nce te wiole of social life, including class L'neler the rubric of feminism, woman's situation has been ex- lesbianism, sexual harassment, prostitution, female sexual slavery, and plained as a consequence of biology2+or of reproduction and mothering pornography. In all these areas, feminist efforts confront and change Iw'ial organizations ol biolog: s as caused by the marriage law26or, as women's lives concretely and experientially. Taken together, they are producing a feminist political theory centering upon sexuality: its social H intine prtl determination, daily construction, birth to death expression, and ulti he clouninant tradition Feminist inquiry into these specific issues began with a broad un- masking of the attitudes that legitimize and hide women's status, the mational envelope that contains woman,'s body ons that women e only lay creating that girls'experiences n of life whil that career women plot and advance by sexual parlays prosit are lustful, that wife beating expresses the intensity of love. Beneath aleI4'p4sHm al all val destined for the each of these ideas was revealed bare coercion and broad connections to oman's social definition as a sex. Research on sex roles, pursuing e\imple. wluc:ler the social value placed upon"repetition of life, "the fact that it is seen as x'an,I'e Mal Simone de beauvoir insigl ila\e la ther than generative, ar the fact tha women are more identified with it than are Ilh'31, ate IIIemselves secial artifacts of wumeo's subordination, rather than existential de woman,"disclosed an elaborate process: how and what one learns to logical lia t. Shulamith Firestone substitutes the contradiction of sex for ckt become one. Gender, cross-culturally, was found to be a learned quality, an acquired characteristic, an assigned status, with qualities that vary ndepenclent of biology and an ideology that attributes them to nature. uet dhiMtibutiontt"(Thr Dialectic identic f Sex: The Case Far FewiniMf Revoluion [New York Il.an Mhn Itw &(., 19721, P. 3). Iler solutions are consistent; Ile freeing of ory, generalized in much contemporary feminism, that women are appressed by y, meaning a systen originating in the househol wherein the father doni- inyOur ivill: Alen, I1'a A Se listen, 19 7bn)exp bilogical theory of rape within a cial rchy,'s chief instituion is the family"(Sexual Politics[New York: Ballantine Books, 1969] 3】,45) dra l Bem and Daryl J Bem, "Case Study of Nonconscious Ideology: Train- a natural predator and the human Culi「 prey"φpp.4,6).Sh not seem to think it necessiry to logy df Sex Differences(Stanford, Calif y Press, 1974); and ssibility Crit eitz, Sex Roles: BioLogical, Psychological and Sacial Foundations(New York: Oxford with rape, she finds them ess, 1977) Nor does it grow directly I roots. although French feminists have 2. and Institution(N from within that tradition. 30. De Beauvoir(n 24 alx nceptions of Sex Role: Some Cross-cultural and Longite Iiz:line Arns, Iumarulale Deception: d Nau Look at l omen and Childbirth int Americe 3H邮2mn 973):512-26: Nancy Chodorov he Socialization of Males and laughton Millin Co., 1975) Being and Doing: A Cross-cultural Examin 26. I take Mill's"The Subjection of Women"(n. 4 above)to be the original articulation Females, "in WomeN in Sexist Sociely, ed, V. Gornick and B. K Moran (New York: Basic