Comparing Theories of Sex Discrimination: The Role of Comparison

Abstract

Academia these days, like politics, tends to be polarized into opposed camps, theoretical or substantive. In any given domain, members of each often conduct more and more rarefied discussions amongst themselves, seldom venturing into the territory of others. It is rare, therefore, to come across a book, like Timothy Macklem’s Beyond Comparison: Sex and Discrimination, that makes the effort to bridge the divide between the analytical tradition in political philosophy and feminist theory. Macklem takes on the issue of sex discrimination—what it is, and what it isn’t—an issue that has, in recent times, mostly been the preserve of feminist scholars. His effort is all the more commendable, and brave, because his main interlocutors are Catharine MacKinnon and Drucilla Cornell, both of whom, in their different ways, have made careers out of trashing analytical philosophy as ‘male’, or liberal, or both, and therefore not (sufficiently) feminist. As interlocutors go, this...