But the sexual-harassment industry universalizes these instances. In the course of things, such cases are rare, which indeed is one reason we continue to be shocked when they come to light. Of course, there are genuine instances of sexual harassment, when an employer or a teacher or even a family member or friend takes unfair sexual advantage of someone. This shows itself above all in what we might call the sexual-harassment industry: the fantastical reinterpretation of everyday life such that every human exchange is potentially open to the charge of sexual malfeasance. But true to form, the demand for sexual liberation has also spawned a counter-movement, an ideologically motivated demand for sexual orthodoxy. So much was a salutary corrective to the excesses of the Sixties and Seventies. It turned out that “the strings”-the emotional and spiritual nourishment that longstanding relationships offer-were essential: sever them and the pleasure chills. They were looking for sex without strings. For one thing, most people found the pursuit of sexual gratification for its own sake ultimately ungratifying. A battery of new sexually transmitted ailments, from herpes to AIDS, arrived in quick succession to make casual sex a dangerous, potentially a deadly affair. The sexual utopia they had envisioned was, literally, no place. (And bourgeois politics: it is remarkable how regularly prophets of sexual revolution have fused, or confused, sex and radical politics.)īy the mid-Seventies, though, the prophets were grumbling. Brown, and a thousand lesser gurus foretold the sensual paradise awaiting those who were bold enough to dispense with the repressive trappings of bourgeois morality. It started in naïve abandon-chanting “Down with monogamy, emotional commitment,” etc.-and proceeded quickly through shock, disillusionment, bitterness, and rage. Born in the 1960s, the movement for sexual liberation has followed a predictable trajectory. The latest access of sexual liberation is a case in point. What was meant to shatter the bonds of convention and establish liberty ends up forging a new set of tyrannous conventions, all the more noxious for being imposed in the name of freedom. Beginning in wholesale rebellion against restraint, it soon sets about erecting its own restraints-often harsher and more irrational than those it intended to replace. The demand for excessive freedom is a curious thing. Catharine MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified It is crazier. It makes grown men cry and smart people stupid. Speaking about pornography is not like anything else.

Mackinnon feminism unmodified