SOURCE: Mack, Raymond W. Review of Feminism Unmodified, by Catharine A. MacKinnon. Contemporary Sociology 17, no. 2 (March 1988): 148-49.

In the following review, Mack offers a negative assessment of Feminism Unmodified.

“Gender is an inequality of power, a social status based on who is permitted to do what to whom. Only derivatively is it a difference. Differences between the sexes do descriptively exist; being a doormat is definitely different from being a man. … Inequality comes first; differences come after” (p. 8). If you share (or are interested in) this notion of social stratification and a truly simplistic interpretation of the distribution of power in human society, this book is for you. It allows you to skip Max Weber and C. Wright Mills and go directly to “feminism stresses the indistinguishability of prostitution, marriage, and sexual harassment” (p. 59).

This book [Feminism Unmodified] consists of a congeries of speeches, mostly devoted to the...