Catharine MacKinnon wrote the essay entitled "Sex and Violence." MacKinnon is a well-known feminist legal scholar who teaches at the University of Michigan and who has written several books. In this essay she addresses the relationship she perceives between sex and violence.
Violence: Much of MacKinnon's argument is to redefine violence in terms of its effects on the victim rather than in terms of some objective assessment of an action that can be called violence.
Sex: In part, she defines sex itself as violence.
Eroticism: Something that is sexually arousing without involving violence.
MacKinnon states at the outset that she is discussing and unifying four issues--rape, sexual harassment, pornography, and battery--each seen as an example of violence against women. She also begins by answering critics who would ask if she is against sex when she talks of these things as violence, Her argument here is somewhat convoluted, but in some sense she does seem to be against normal sex as well as these examples of violence because she says that the feminists use the word "violence" in order not to be charged with being against sex. She does make it clear that she believes women have a different view of sex and violence than do men, and it is this point of view--this subjective point of view, as opposed to the objective male definitions--that she is explaining.
Some types of violence she sees as defined by males, so she would offer female definitions that are more inclusive and more in keeping with what she sees as the violation of women's experience of their sexual being. MacKinnon develops the argument that rape and sex are more directly related than we might think because there is much violence in normal intercourse. She says that her approach involves asking "a series of questions about normal, heterosexual intercourse and attempt to move the line between heterosexuality on the one hand--intercourse--and rape ...