We are the hollow men

I'm particularly perplexed by Haraway's dismissive takedown of MacKinnon. Before I get to specifics, here's my holistic objection: for someone who purports to study epistemology, whose very 'informatics of domination' recognizes an ideological movement from Freud to Lacan, she seems rather limited in the ability to grasp that epistemologies can only be born in the crucible of the culture in which they are created, like the agar in the petri dish. Epistemology can only see the present through the lens of the past, and trace a wobbly, fuzzy vector into a possible future.

Thus, Freud is less a 'pervert' than reflecting the obsessions of the culture in which he was raised, and his future step was the idea of the talking cure, that a medicine theory that structured itself on healing and cure rather than mere quarantine and isolation, could apply to mental diseases as well. 

MacKinnon, similiarly, is recording the world in which she lives, the water in which she swims.  She is not wrong, or inaccurate. She is, if Haraway is 'right', at best, at most, outgrown.

But honestly, I don't think she is.

You see, the issue Haraway finds so objectionable is MacKinnon's notion of the female as constructed as the subject of male desire, in other words, as a non subject.  It's worth perhaps quoting Haraway at length to dissect her objection:

"Ironically, MacKinnon's 'ontology' constructs a non-subject, a non-being. Another's desire, not the self's labour, is the origin of 'woman'. She therefore develops a theory of consciousness that enforces what can count as 'women's' experience--anything that names sexual violation, indeed, sex itself as far as 'women' can be concerned. Feminist practice is the construction of this form of consciousness; that is, the self-knowledge of a self-who-is-not." (159)

To argue that MacKinnon is invalid or untrue makes me want to live in Haraway's world, because I can see at least that segment of MacKinnon's theory as reality, all around me. I see woman either gendered as 'not male' (which becomes vastly complicated when dissevered from reproduction) or constructed by and through male desire. 

Because, well, let's look at video games.  I won't  waste what I presume is your time trying to prove to you that female characters in videogames are sexualized. Even when they're badasses (such as Lara Croft) the vast majority (okay I make a sort of exception for Samus Aran) they are presented as sexual objects, often with gratuitous jiggle physics. More than that, the female gamer is often attacked via her sexuality--online she is sexually harassed, told to 'get laid', etc etc.  More even than that, and I feel odd linking to a Cracked article, but honestly, I find this not said better anywhere else: "These offers of anonymous sex don't derail the discussion -- they tie themselves to the train tracks and jam the point-train home with how accurately it hits the target. If you can't have a discussion about gender without declaring whether you'd rub your genitals on the other party, you can't have a discussion about gender. You are the problem being discussed."

That is to say, countering an argument that men have it easier than women by arguing that women can have sex any time they want deliberately constructs sexual access as the pinnacle of human worth that places women as superior because they have all of this sexual attention directed at them. Nowhere is the reverse vector--female sexual desire--a part of this economy.  More than that, it sets the a priori assumption that male sexual desire, especially male heterosexual desire, is the only avenue to social identity.

Pictures of women online are unsurprisingly (check reddit) subjected to a sort of 'hot or not' analysis, repeatedly rating women on their 'fuckability'. This turns out to be trickier to achieve than one thinks--a girl who appears 'too' sexually ready, 'too' desirous of gaining male attention, is scorned as a 'slut', because, well, let's face it, if it was easy to get this male currency, if it was a simple formula, all women would be 'rich' in it.  We...can't have that because that allows females too much 'power' so we have to create a schema in which the woman is never assured in her performance. 

Surrounded by a 'cyborg' world that ruthlessly judges female bodies by their appeal to the male gaze, when a high pitched voice on X Box Live opens you for propositions, it's hard NOT to feel the compulsion to create identity as an object of male desire.  Because this isn't simply setting up an imaginary non-victim, someone whom one might tenuously argue has taken the burden of the male gaze as part of a contract--the Sports Illustrated swimwear model, the stripper, the video game character who doesn't actually have feelings--this is 'normal' women.  And so, even more than just being surrounded by beautiful women being judged if they have--gasp--pores; these women are themselves susceptible to sexual judgment by their peers.

MacKinnon's wrong to say that culture creates the woman as a null-subject, constituted by her desirability to the male gaze? 

I don't know what world Haraway lives in, but I live, unfortunately, in MacKinnon's.  I can hope to move to Haraway's, but it seems that cyborg culture, internet culture, isn't ready to let go.

Now, is that all I am? Oh gosh, no.  But I find in many ways, that 'labour of self' is an act of resistance, an act of transgression, an assertion EVERY MOMENT that is not always a rebellion, against that culture.  As attuned as Haraway is to the idea of transgression and resistance, it seems the resistance I present, as I navigate the gendered seas, to assert an identity often at odds with societal norms....doesn't count.