Mackinnon Feminism, Marxism, Alethod, and the State I he discovery that the female archetype is the feminine stereotype ex men, which means sexual attractiveness, which means sexual posed"woman"as a social construction, Contemporary ind availability on male terms s What defines woman as such is what turns e'ty's version of her is docile, soft, passive, nurturant, vulnerable, weak, men on. Goocl girls are"attractive, "bad girls"provocative "Gendler llart'issistic, childlike, incompetent, masochistic, and domestic, made for socialization is the process through which women come to identify them t hill care, home care, and husband care. Conditioning to these values Ives as sexual beings, as beings that exist for men. It is that process InIcates the upbringing of girls and the images for emulation thrust through whic omen internalize(make their own)a male image of Mon women. Wonen who resist or fail, including those who never dlic. their sexuality as their identity as women. 6 It is not just an illusion fil-lon example, black and lower-class wonen who cannot survive if inquiry into womens own experience of sexuality revises prior hey are stlt and weak and incompetent, 2 assertively sell-respecting comprehensions of sexual issues and transforms the concept of sexual soiuIcD, women with ambitions of male dimensions-are considered less itself--its determinants and its role in society and politics. According to n:le, lesser women. w ho comply or succeed are elevated as this revision, one"becomes a woman"acquires and identifies with the statuis of the female--ne luch through phy atton o their natural place and dismissed as having participated if they com sulcation into appropriate role behavior as through the experience of sexuality: a complex unity of physicality, emotionality, identity, and Literature on sex roles and the investigations of status affirmation. Sex as gender and sex as sexuality are thus defined in sues are read in light of each other, each element of the female gender terms of each other, but it is sexuality that determines gender, not the stereotype is revealed as, in fact, sexual. Vuinerability means the ther way around. This, the central but never stated insight of K trance/reality of al access: passivity means receptivity and Ailletr' s Sexual Politics, a? resolves the duality in the term"sex"itself: wl women learn in order to"have sex, " in order to"become women"- means pregnability by something hard. Incompetence seeks help as yul woman as gendler-comes through the experience of, and is a condition nerability seeks shelter, inviting the embrace that becomes the invasion, for, "having sex"woman as sexual object for man, the use of women,'s ladling exclusive access for protectior from the same access. Domes- sexuality by men. Indced, to the extent sexuality is social, women's sexu icity nurtures the consequent progeny, proof of potency, and ideally ality is its use, just as our femaleness is its alterity waits at home dressed in saran wrap. IVoman's infantilization evokes pedophilia; fixation on dismembered body parts(the breast man, the leg scl any issues that appear sexual from this standpoint have not been n:an)evokes fetishism; idolization of vapidity, necrophilia. Narcissism in example, is commonly seen as a question of distinguishing the real evil, a ures that woman identifies with that image of herself that man hoids up: crime against the family, from girlish seductiveness or fantasy. Con portrait, so that you can begin traception and abortion have been framed as matters of reproduction Iloidd still, we are going to do Masochism that pleasure in violation and fought out as proper or improper social constraints on nature. On becomes her sensuality. lesbians so violate the sexuality implicit in they are seen as private, minimizing state intervention into intimate re. female gendler stereotypes as not lations. Sexual harassment was a nonissue, then became a problem of Socially, femaleness means femininity, which means attractiveness distinguishing personal relationships or affectionate flirtation fror abuse of position. lesbianism, when visible, has been either a perversion am ks, I:J71): R.R. Sears, "Development of (inler Role. aandd Brhunior ed. I or not, to be tolerated or not. Pornography has been considered a ques- tion of freedo to speak and depict the erotic, as against the obscene or 2, Naional hlack enis Organ il iwe -e aersecuit d for raving sur" 9s violent. prostitution has been understood either as mutual Iust and deg- radation or an equal exchange of sexual need for economic need. The 47:1. in. Funvcric' I1uking IFuMtrl. f Iac Kanrnlnry Ilistuly. 160) to the Prement, ed. Ra issue in rape hnas been whether the intercourse was provoked/mutually I 1\. nLull, I indat ( al, and Susin Reverdy (New York: Vintage beKk 35. Indications are th: at tliis is true not unly in Western inchutstrial society: furl caIRI rir onal level. Firestone (n. 2-f above), chap. 6. (OldTaPpan, N. . Fleming It. Revell 37. Mille'tt's initly S).""Total Won: n "inakes blasphemous sexuality into a what prostitutes have marketed as forbidden pointed criticisms of wonmen's dep ler explicit discussion, however, vacillates s.l. Cixous (u. I abxiv'e), P. 892 tween clear glimpses of that argume clements nearly to the contrary