Author(s): Catharine A. Mackinnon

Culture Ideas Politics

A Times Higher Education Book of the Week

Under certain conditions, the right small simple actions can produce large and complex "butterfly effects," as the #MeToo movement has shown. Thirty years after Catharine A. MacKinnon won the U.S. Supreme Court case establishing sexual harassment in law, this timely collection captures MacKinnon in action: the creative and transformative activism of an icon. Butterfly Politics provides the grounding for #MeToo, explains its momentum, and proposes more legal interventions that could have further butterfly effects on women's rights.

"Sexual Harassment of Working Women was a revelation. It showed how this anti-discrimination law--Title VII--could be used as a tool... It was the beginning of a field that didn't exist until then."
--Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

"MacKinnon adapts a concept from chaos theory to show how] small actions can produce major social transformations."
--New York Times

"MacKinnon is radical, passionate, incorruptible and a beautiful literary stylist... Butterfly Politics is a devastating salvo fired in the gender wars."
--The Australian

"MacKinnon is encouraging...precise engagement, principled creativity, imagination, instinct and adaptability: small actions in a collective context producing systemic changes."
--Lawfare