“Gender Crimes” vs. “Sex Crimes”

From the Philosophy Bites podcast.

Catharine MacKinnon on Gender Crime

Do we need a special category to understand certain sorts of crime based on relationships of power? Catharine MacKinnon believes that the concept of gender crime brings into focus the special nature of a range of crimes.

Catharine A. MacKinnon, is the Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan and long-term James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, specializes in sex equality issues under international and constitutional law.

Listen to Catharine MacKinnon on Gender Crime here .

Roger’s comment:

First of all, by what objective moral standard is Prof MacKinnon referring to when she discusses the moral wrongness of “gender crimes”?

To prove accusations of misandry incorrect, feminist scholars like Prof MacKinnon should abandon the restricted concept of “male on female gender crime” and recognise what most reasonable human beings of either gender already know.

That is that sex crimes almost always involve a person (gender irrelevant) in a position of power and trust perpetrating sexually criminal behaviour on another person (again gender irrelevant) who is in a position of social or situational disempowerment. This element of the crime is what is ultimately most reprehensible and deserved of punishment.

By definition, by expanding the definition of sex crime  to this more over-arching concept of power inequality (rather than simply gender inequality) it would encompass male-on-female sex crimes, but also better recognize the equally as criminal and morally reprehensible crimes of male-on-male, female-on-female and female-on-male (as seen in recent teacher-student crimes).

Gender is only one aspect of human beings. In sex crimes, gender is less relevant than social and situational power differentials, and the vulnerability of the victim related to this inequality.