Join us at the Library for a conversation about activism and the law with one the most distinguished thought leaders and public intellectual voices of our time.

Catharine A. MacKinnon has been at the forefront of legal and social fights for gender equality for nearly fifty years. In 1979, she was the first to make the groundbreaking argument that sexual harassment in the workplace violates laws against sex discrimination, setting the legal groundwork for the #MeToo revolution forty years later. Over the course of her career, MacKinnon has contributed to countless issues, including pornography and prostitution, and court cases that have resulted in unparalleled gains for women’s rights. She has developed a robust philosophy devoted to equality.

Prior to the present book, MacKinnon’s Butterfly Politics collected essays and speeches from her fifty years of fighting for legal and social change. The title refers to the “butterfly effect:” the idea that a butterfly opening and closing its wings can–under the right conditions–cause a tornado on the other side of the world. Considering a legal system built to keep inequality in place which can be transformed into a tool to provide equality rights, MacKinnon develops the metaphor of the “butterfly effect” to propose simple steps that everyone can take to generate large-scale social change.

MacKinnon will be joined in conversation with former American Library in Paris Visiting Fellow and renowned feminist philosopher Kate Kirkpatrick.

About the speakers:

Catharine A. MacKinnon is an internationally renowned scholar, lawyer and jurist. She pioneered the legal claim for sexual harassment and with clients conceived and established the legal recognition of rape as an act of genocide in international law. Her theory of equality is increasingly being embraced around the world.

Kate Kirkpatrick is a philosopher based at Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford. Her research focuses primarily on French phenomenology and existentialism; feminism; and ethics. She is author of several books and articles on these topics and an internationally acclaimed biography of Simone de Beauvoir, Becoming Beauvoir: A Life (Bloomsbury, 2019), which has been translated into over a dozen languages. She is currently writing a philosophical commentary on Beauvoir’s The Second Sex.

Portrait of Catharine A. MacKinnon by ©Camille McOuat

Learn more:

In 2017, MacKinnon wrote a piece for The Guardian about the legal history that gave rise to the #MeToo movement. Read it here.

For an introduction to MacKinnon’s approach to law and social change in her most recent book, Butterfly Politics, check out this video.

Important information: The discussion will be available both online and in person. While the conversation will happen in person (the speakers will appear in the Reading Room), the Library will stream the conversation on Zoom for a live viewing experience. Both in-person and online attendees will be able to pose questions.

Attendance at this event constitutes permission for your photograph or video to be taken at the event and used by the American Library in Paris for marketing, promotional, pedagogical, or other purposes.

Copies of Le Viol Redéfini and Butterfly Politics will be available for purchase at the Library in the week leading up to this event and while the event takes place, generously provided by Tome7 and Smith&Son. All sales support this local independent bookstore.

Attendees will have the opportunity to have their copy signed following the conversation.