Catharine MacKinnon depicts a society caught in a vicious hypocrisy, in which the law of equality and the law of freedom of speech are on a collision course. Equality laws, which are beginning to address harms to the powerless through speech, conflict with older laws of free expression, which effectively protect the speech of racists and pornographers, and do nothing for their victims.

'Only Words' exposes the role of speech in perpetuating inequality and envisions the role of quality in speech. MacKinnon shows that as long as discriminatory practices are protected as free speech, and the law silences and denies the voices of abused women, equality will be only a word.

'Her larger arguments, ablaze with all her characteristic fury about sexuality and violence, about the relationship between racism and misogyny, about vulnerability and voicelessness, are of pressing urgency'

MARINA WARNER, 'Independent on Sunday'

'An eloquent plea to move beyond the prejudiced limitations of current doctrine'

BERNARD WILLIAMS, 'London Review of Books'

'Those of us who have on liberal grounds heavily criticised our own law as too restrictive and anti-libertarian must now consider the position afresh in the light of these new arguments'

NEIL MACCORMICK, 'Times Literary Supplement'

'MacKinnon fuses legal theory, disturbing case histories, and emotive analogies, with realistic analysis of our different society and idealistic visions for the future, the whole is impressive.'

NATASHA WALTER, 'Independent'