"Francis Biddle's Sister: Pornography, Civil Rights, and Speech" (1984), p. 193
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We are stripped of authority and reduced and devaluated and silenced. Silenced here means that the purposes of the First Amendment, premised upon conditions presumed and promoted by protecting free speech, do not pertain to women because they are not our conditions. Consider them: individual self-fulfillment – how does pornography promote our individual self-fulfillment? How does sexual inequality even permit it? Even if she can form words, who listens to a woman with a penis in her mouth?

— Catharine A. MacKinnon

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "We are stripped of authority and reduced and devaluated and silenced. Silenced here means that the purposes of the First Amendment, premised upon conditions presumed and promoted by protecting free speech, do not pertain to women because they are not our conditions. Consider them: individual self-fulfillment – how does pornography promote our individual self-fulfillment? How does sexual inequality even permit it? Even if she can form words, who listens to a woman with a penis in her mouth?" in the context of ""Francis Biddle's Sister: Pornography, Civil Rights, and Speech" (1984), p. 193" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "Catharine A. MacKinnon" (Quotes, Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (1987)) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Catharine A. MacKinnon

About Catharine A. MacKinnon

Catharine Alice MacKinnon (born 7 October 1946) is an American radical feminist, scholar, lawyer, teacher, and activist.