“In a patriarchal society all heterosexual intercourse is rape because women, as a group, are not strong enough to give meaningful consent.”

—  Catharine A. MacKinnon

These words were quoted by the conservative writer Cal Thomas as coming from Professing Feminism, a book by Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge which he mistakenly ascribed to Catharine MacKinnon.

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/mackinno.htm

The actual passage in that book are the authors' characterization of MacKinnon's views rather than a direct quotation: And Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon have long argued that in a patriarchal society all heterosexual intercourse is rape because women, as a group, are not in a strong enough social position to give meaningful consent—an assault on individual female autonomy uncannily reminiscent of old arguments for why women should not have political rights.


Instead MacKinnon argues that heterosexuality "institutionalizes male sexual dominance and female sexual submission" (1982) and that "Sexual access is regularly forced or pressured or routinized beyond denial" (1991).
Misattributed

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Catharine A. MacKinnon photo
Catharine A. MacKinnon 28
American feminist and legal activist 1946

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