When Catharine MacKinnon walks on stage, you’re not entirely sure what to expect. At first glance, she appears a little grandmotherly, with gray hair piled high atop her head; however, as she begins to speak, her posture and locution allow her to assert herself, firmly, in front of a crowd of hundreds. And necessarily so. At her talk on sexuality and gender roles at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Wednesday night, she simply and thoroughly outlined the reasons for homophobia in America: the heterosexual male.

This is a bold statement, and one that needs explicating before it is understood fully. MacKinnon delivers just that. For a little background, sexual harassment in the workplace wasn’t legally recognized as wrong before Dr. MacKinnon entered the scene. For that, among countless other reasons, she’s one of the most well-known feminist lawyers in the world. And be warned, she’s got a fantastic sense of humor as well, with minimal legal jargon and a wit that comes out, unexpectedly, to break the crowd into raucous laughter.

In her talk, Mackinnon wholly explored gender roles and how they have shaped the general perception of how things “should” be. In our society, men are frequently considered aggressors, and women, the prey upon which the men are aggressing. Put more simply, men do the acting, and women are acted upon. Think about how pervasive this assumption is in everyday life: men pursue the “chase” to score a date. Men pay. Men make the first sexual move. And if it comes to that point, men are often in charge of sexual actions, while women are submissive, acted upon.

Females live in quest of male approval for survival. It has been politically imposed. It has become a rite. Dr. MacKinnon astutely points out that socially, one “becomes a man” when he has had sex with a woman, and one “becomes a woman” when a man has had sex with her. Of course, these are merely general social assumptions and not everyone fits into these roles, male or female.

MacKinnon argues that these ideas, and their social perverseness, are, of course, preposterous. They are there to maintain social statuses and distribute social roles in society. She refrains from falling into the ideologically naturalized trap of biological causes, relying instead upon the social construct of male dominance and the fear of anything disturbing that power.

When the talk turned to homosexuality, things got interesting. Why are men afraid of other gay men, she asked? Male dominance. Sex is thought of, consciously or not, as something that happens between two social unequals. It scares heterosexual men to know that in a male-male relationship, one man can act in the common “female role”—that a man can be acted upon and be subordinate.

So, why are men afraid of lesbians? Yet again, male dominance. Lesbians render the man irrelevant. Comedic Mackinnon moment: when speaking about lesbians in the bedroom, she referenced a common heterosexual question: “What…do you do?” This got a lot of laughs, in part because it rings socially true. What she means, of course, is that if women are usually acted upon, when there are two women (and no penis), who does the acting? Clearly the two don’t just lie there. So begins the fear of a dominant woman taking a man’s position (both socially and sexually).

Going further from MacKinnon’s point, this additionally explains the male fixation of “girl-on-girl” (let me point out the infantilization here) in both fantasy and pornography. This is the male reasserting himself as the dominant role in a relationship that is not defined, or even concerned with, him. In a frantic struggle powered by the fear of losing control, by commodifying lesbians as simply a tool of male sexual pleasure, men are attempting to force women back into the role of being acted upon.

What about bisexuals? They’re conditionally accepted both in the homosexual and heterosexual communities. Dr. MacKinnon joked that both sides are convinced bisexuals are “imminently about to return to the fold.” But it’s not that simple. A bisexual is not always a man acting as a gendered man or a woman acting as a gendered woman. There is a fluidity here that should be respected. The qualities that one seeks are irrespective of sex; happiness can be found on either front, and perhaps bisexuals are the least discriminatory out of everyone. They make sexuality less firmly attached to the social construct of gender.

Toward the end of her lecture, MacKinnon argued strongly for the idea of gender as a reference to masculine and feminine, rather than to the biological male and female. Does it bother anyone else when a questionnaire asks “Gender: M/F” instead of “Sex?” Because it bothers MacKinnon. Somewhat jokingly, but with a serious tone, she stated, “I think that’s a rather personal question.” Gender is a social word. Gender refers to how you act and feel. Sex is a biological word. In reference to this hypothetical gender questionnaire, MacKinnon discharged: Here? Now? In the workplace? At home? Today, one thing, tomorrow, who knows? Her point was that transcending gender roles can happen anytime. It doesn’t require a sex change operation or any sort of change in figure. One can feel differently gendered at any point in time.

In her talk at UNC-CH, Dr. MacKinnon outlined the ways in which lesbians, gay men, transsexuals, and queers in general are denied the full benefits that society accords to men because of the failure to conform to male dominance. True to her roots, many of these ideas and theories were also tied to feminist arguments. Homosexuality is still not accepted by society at large because it is seen to stand against sexuality between gender unequals. From this, legally, people’s rights are at stake. In terms of fixing society, we should be focused not on flipping gender roles, but in ending the hierarchy!

Nicole E and Tina H are both socially aware UNC students. Tina is an English major, and a damn good one. Listening to talks like these have reconstructed their world views, and they are thankful for that.