Catharine Alice MacKinnon (born October 7, 1946) is an American feminist legal scholar, activist, and author. She is the Elizabeth A. Long Professor Emerita of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, where she has been tenured since 1990, and the James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. From 2008 to 2012, she was the first Special Gender Adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.
As an expert on international law, constitutional law, political and legal theory, and jurisprudence, MacKinnon focuses on women's rights and sexual abuse and exploitation, including sexual harassment, rape, prostitution, sex trafficking and pornography. She was among the first to argue that pornography is a civil rights violation, and that sexual harassment in education and employment constitutes sex discrimination.
MacKinnon is the author of over a dozen books, including Sexual Harassment of Working Women (1979); Feminism Unmodified (1987); Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (1989); Only Words (1993); a casebook, Sex Equality (2001, 2007, 2016); Women's Lives, Men's Laws (2005); and Butterfly Politics (2017).
Early life MacKinnon was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the first of three children (a girl and two boys) to Elizabeth Valentine Davis and George E. MacKinnon; her father was a lawyer, congressman (1947–1949), and judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (1969–1995).
She is the third generation of her family to attend her mother's alma mater, Smith College. She earned a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1977 and a Ph.D. in political science, also from Yale University, in 1987. While at Yale, she received a National Science Foundation fellowship.
Career overview Since 1990, MacKinnon has been the Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, assuming Emerita status in 2023.University of Michigan faculty biography; accessed September 7, 2026 She is also the James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. In 2007, she served as the Roscoe Pound Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and has also visited at NYU, University of Western Australia, University of San Diego, Hebrew University, Columbia Law School, University of Chicago, University of Basel, Yale Law School, Osgoode Hall Law School, UCLA School of Law, and Stanford Law School.
MacKinnon is an often-cited legal scholar and regular public speaker. Her ideas can be divided into three overlapping areas: sexual harassment, pornography and prostitution, and international work. She has also written extensively on social and political theory and methodology.MacKinnon, Catharine A. (2000). "Points Against Postmodernism", 75, Chi.-Kent L. Rev., pp. 687–688.
Research and legal work Sexual harassment In 1977, MacKinnon graduated from Yale Law School having written a paper on sexual harassment for Thomas I. Emerson arguing that it was a form of sex-based discrimination. Two years later, Yale University Press published MacKinnon's book, Sexual Harassment of Working Women: A Case of Sex Discrimination (1979), creating the legal claim for sexual harassment as a form of sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and any other sex-discrimination prohibition. She also conceived the legal claim for sexual harassment as sex discrimination in education under Title IX, which was established through litigation brought by Yale undergraduates in Alexander v. Yale. While the plaintiff who went to trial on the facts, Pamela Price, lost, the case established the law: the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit recognized that, under the civil rights statute Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, schools must have procedures to address sexual harassment as a form of sex discrimination.Alexander v. Yale Univ., 631 F.2d 178, 181 n.1 (2d Cir. 1980).
In her book, MacKinnon argued that sexual harassment is sex discrimination because the act is a product of, and produces, the social inequality of women to men (see, for example, pp. 116–18, 174). She distinguishes between two types of sexual harassment (see pp. 32–42): "quid pro quo", meaning sexual harassment "in which sexual compliance is exchanged, or proposed to be exchanged, for an employment opportunity (p. 32)" and the type of harassment that "arises when sexual harassment is a persistent condition of work (p. 32)".
In 1980, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission followed MacKinnon's framework in adopting guidelines prohibiting sexual harassment by prohibiting both quid pro quo harassment and hostile work environment harassment (see 29 C.F.R. § 1604.11 (a)). Courts also used the concepts.
In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson that sexual harassment may violate laws against sex discrimination. MacKinnon was co-counsel for Mechelle Vinson, the plaintiff, and wrote the brief in the Supreme Court. In Meritor, the Court recognized the distinction between quid pro quo sexual harassment and hostile workplace harassment. In a 2002 article, MacKinnon wrote, quoting the Court: "Without question," then-Justice Rehnquist wrote for a unanimous Court, "when a supervisor sexually harasses a subordinate because of the subordinate's sex, that supervisor 'discriminate[s]' on the basis of sex." The D.C. Circuit, and women, had won. A new common-law rule was established.Catharine A. MacKinnon, "The Logic of Experience: Reflections on the Development of Sexual Harassment Law", 90 Geo. L.J. 813, 824 (2002).
Sexual Harassment of Working Women: A Case of Sex Discrimination, is the eighth most-cited American legal book published since 1978, according to a study published by Fred R. Shapiro in January 2000.
Pornography Position
MacKinnon, along with fellow radical feminist writer and activist Andrea Dworkin, tried to change legal approaches to pornography by framing it as a civil rights violation in the form of sex discrimination, and as human trafficking. They defined pornography as:
In Toward a Feminist Theory of the State, MacKinnon writes, "Pornography, in the feminist view, is a form of forced sex, a practice of sexual politics, and an institution of gender inequality". As documented by extensive empirical studies, she writes, "Pornography contributes causally to attitudes and behaviors of violence and discrimination which define the treatment and status of half the population". (However, the evidence for this claim is not definitive; studies have also shown no relationship between pornography and discriminatory views nor violence against women, with some even suggesting pornography use could be correlated with more egalitarian views.)
Anti-pornography ordinances
In 1980, Linda Boreman (who had appeared, under the name Linda Lovelace, in the pornographic film Deep Throat) said her ex-husband Chuck Traynor had violently coerced her into making Deep Throat and other pornographic films. Boreman made her charges public for the press corps at a press conference, together with MacKinnon, members of Women Against Pornography, and feminist writer Andrea Dworkin offering statements in support. After the press conference, Dworkin, MacKinnon, Boreman, and Gloria Steinem began discussing the possibility of using federal civil rights law to seek damages from Traynor and the makers of Deep Throat. This was not possible for Boreman because the statute of limitations for a possible suit had passed.
MacKinnon and Dworkin continued to discuss civil rights litigation, specifically sex discrimination, as a possible approach to combating pornography. MacKinnon opposed traditional arguments and laws against pornography based on the idea of morality or filth or sexual innocence, including the use of traditional criminal obscenity law to suppress pornography. Instead of condemning pornography for violating "community standards" of sexual decency or modesty, they characterized pornography as a form of sex discrimination and sought to give women the right to seek damages under civil rights law when they could prove they had been harmed. Their anti-pornography ordinances make actionable only sexually explicit material that can be proven to discriminate on the basis of sex.
In 1983, the Minneapolis city government hired MacKinnon and Dworkin to draft an anti-pornography civil rights ordinance as an amendment to the Minneapolis city human rights ordinance. The amendment defined pornography as a civil rights violation against women and allowed women who claimed harm from trafficking in pornography to sue the producers and distributors for damages in civil court. It also allowed those who had been coerced into pornography, had had pornography forced upon them, or were assaulted in a way caused by specific pornography to sue for harm they could prove. The law was passed twice by the Minneapolis city council but was vetoed by the mayor. Another version of the ordinance passed in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1984, but was ruled unconstitutional by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, a decision summarily affirmed (without opinion) by the U.S. Supreme Court.
MacKinnon wrote in the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review in 1985:
And as you think about the assumption of consent that follows women into pornography, look closely some time for the skinned knees, the bruises, the welts from the whippings, the scratches, the gashes. Many of them are not simulated. One relatively soft core pornography model said, "I knew the pose was right when it hurt". It certainly seems important to the audiences that the events in the pornography be real. For this reason, pornography becomes a motive for murder, as in "snuff" films in which someone is tortured to death to make a sex film. They exist.Catharine A. MacKinnon, "Pornography, Civil Rights, and Speech", 20 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 1 (1985). As support for the existence of snuff films, MacKinnon wrote in footnote 61, "In the movies known as snuff films, victims sometimes are actually murdered."' 130 Cong. Rec. S13192 (daily ed. October 3, 1984; statement of Senator Arlen Specter introducing the Pornography Victims Protection Act). See People v. Douglas, Felony Complaint No. NF 8300382 (Municipal Court, Orange County, Cal. August 5, 1983); "'Slain Teens Needed Jobs, Tried Porn"' and "Two Accused of Murder in 'Snuff' Films", Oakland Tribune, August 6, 1983 (on file with Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review); L. Smith, The Chicken Hawks (1975)(unpublished manuscript; on file with Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review).
MacKinnon represented Boreman from 1980 until Boreman's death in 2002. Civil libertarians frequently find MacKinnon's theories objectionable (see "Criticism" section), arguing there is no evidence that sexually explicit media encourages or promotes violence against women.Dworkin, Ronald. "Women and Pornography", New York Review of Books 40, no. 17 (October 21, 1993): 299. "no reputable study has concluded that pornography is a significant cause of sexual crime: many of them conclude, on the contrary, that the causes of violent personality lie mainly in childhood" Max Waltman states that empirical evidence (based on changes to obscenity doctrine in Canada) suggests that civil rather than legal remedies may be more effective as a means of discouraging violence against women.
Transgender sex equality
In a 2015 interview, MacKinnon cited Simone de Beauvoir's famous quotation about "becom[ing] a woman" to say that who identifies as a woman, wants to be a woman, is going around being a woman, as far as I'm concerned, is a woman."