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1 Mich. J. Gender & L. 59 (1993)
Male Sexuality: Why Ownership is Sexy

handle is hein.journals/mjgl1 and id is 65 raw text is: MALE SEXUALITY: WHY OWNERSHIP IS SEXYt$ 3ohn Stoltenberg* This year, 1992, has been getting a lot of dubious attention because five hundred years ago three wayward ships of European registry rudely arrived on this continent. Myself, I would have preferred to commemo- rate a more liberatory event, and I have one in mind-something that happened exactly two hundred years ago, in 1792. That was the year a book was first published-Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Womanl.without which this conference would have been unthinkable. I suspect that if Mary Wollstonecraft were alive and here in this room today, she would find that many of the words she wrote two hundred years ago are still disconcertingly current. After all, WoUstonecraft was an explorer in quest of sexual equality. And two hundred years later, not one of us is there yet. For instance, here is a sentence Wollstonecraft wrote about men-men then: Men, in general, she said, seem to employ their reason to justify prejudices, which they have imbibed, they can scarcely trace how, rather than to root them out.2 Now it seems-so far as anyone can tell-that men's justification of prejudice is still the prevailing wind of social discourse, whether in forums of public policy or interpersonal relations. And if you look t © 1992 John Stoltenberg, all rights reserved. * This paper is essentially the speech that Mr. Stoltenberg presented at the Michigan Journal of Gender & Law Symposium entitled Prostitution: From Academia to Activism, held on October 31, 1992, at the University of Michigan Law School. Most of its speechlike characteristics have been preserved so as to maintain its authenticity. In addition, the punctuation and style are the author's. * John Stoltenberg is author of REFUSING TO BE A MAN: ESSAYS ON SEX AND JUSTICE (Penguin USA/Meridian 1989) and is featured in SEX AND SELFHOOD: NEw ISSUES FOR MEN OF CONSCIENCE, an educational videotape series in four parts: Sexual Objectification, Male Bonding, Homophobia, and Pornography (for information contact Kundschier/Manthey Video Design, (612) 333-7414). He is co-founder of Men Against Pornography, a group in New York City that conducts workshops to help men understand how pornography subordinates women. THE END OF MAN- HOOD: A BooK FOR MEN OF CONSCIENCE-his practical sequel to REFUSING TO BE A MAN-was published in Fall 1993 by Dutton. 1. MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT, A VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN: AN AUTHoR- ITATIVE TExT, BACKGROUNDS, CRTICISM (Carol H. Poston ed., 2d ed., 1975). 2. WOLLSTONECRAFT, supra note 1, at 12.

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