Week Eight
Mackinnon states that, "all women live in sexual objectification the way fish live in water." This relates to Dworkin writing about women as pornography and as whores. They both argue that sexuality is a political institution created by men which erocticises hierarchy. Being a woman means going about one's daily life in a permanent state of objectifying pornography and with the constant threat of physical violence on one's person. Dworkin writes: "In the male system, women are sex; sex is the whore. The whore is porne, the lowest whore, the whore who belongs to all male citizens. Having her is having pornography. Seeing her.... is seeing pornography..... Using her is using pornography. Wanting her means wanting pornography. Being her means being pornography." Dworkin clearly views pornography as violent anti-female propaganda. This parallels the conclusion reached by Mackinnon that all coitus is essentially rape; that there cannot exist in a patriarchal world relationships between men and women that are equal, unpatriarchal, or in some way violent and harmful. Both site part of the reproduction of patriarchy in male created images of women that erase the realities of women's live and histories and that portray them as subhuman. Although Dworkin does not heavily delve into what these things mean for relationships between men and women, Mackinnon goes so far as to suggest that women may have to choose between freedom and sex and association with men.