This [unit] introduces nonsubordination theory by pairing John Stuart Mill's description of women's nineteenth-century "subjection" as a "solitary breach" in the fundamental laws of modern civilization with Catharine MacKinnon's identification of the epistemological premise of women's legal subordination as the ability of those with power -- men -- to identify their own point of view as "point-of-viewlessness." The remainder of the [unit] explores, primarily through legal materials relating to sexual harassment, pornography, domestic violence, and heterosexuality, non-subordination theory's claim that the law defines sex and sexual difference in ways that mask the universality of men's point of view and naturalize women's relative powerlessness in this society.

It is no accident that most of the topics of this [unit] relate to sexual behavior -- in and outside traditional families, in the workplace, in educational institutions, in commerce, and elsewhere. This is largely because it is in the sexual realm that dominance theory has the most new and different to offer to an analysis of the relationship between gender and law. With respect to sex-based discrimination in hiring, promotion, and equal pay in the workplace, in access to education and other public benefits, traditional equality theory appears to have achieved benefits for women which are desirable even from a dominance theory perspective. MacKinnon's complaint with equality theory, of whichever variety, is that while it is adequate to handle certain marginal exceptions -- e.g., privileged women who fit the male profile -- it is insufficient to address the central inequalities faced by women -- sexual violence and abuse, poverty, deprivation of control over reproductive decisions, and so on. To get at these questions, MacKinnon moves beyond questions of sameness and difference to the construction of women's sexuality, which she finds to be at the core of the processes through which these more central inequalities are sustained. This construction is made visible in the sexual acts of pornography, sexual harassment, domestic violence, and other topics addressed in this [unit], but according to MacKinnon it underlines women's subordination and devaluation more generally in all spheres of women's lives. To test MacKinnon's theory, you should not only compare her analysis of the topics in this [unit] with the analyses produced by formal and substantive equality, but also reconsider the issues discussed in [unit]s 2 and 3 in light of dominance theory. What does dominance theory add to, and how does it revise, the equality principles studied thus far? Is there one theory that seems to you to be the most satisfactory on all issues?