Unspeakable: A feminist ethic of speech by Betty McLellan (PDF)

Betty McLellan

This is a book about speech and the silencing of speech; about who gets to speak and who does not; about who is listened to and who is ignored. Betty McLellan insists that, if this prized democratic principle is to have continuing credibility, free speech must be free for all.

Written from the perspective of feminist ethics, Unspeakable focuses on how women are silenced in every nation on earth: through violence, subordination and exclusion. The author's hope is that radical feminism will continue to be a “feminism of dissent” and that radical, political feminists will continue speaking against the silence.

Be assured that Betty McLellan has not been silenced by the dynamics and forces she describes so cogently in this rethinking of the last — what is it?– nearly forty years of women moving. Recasting debates old and new through the lens of ethics, she marches straight into many a dreary and painful corner, illuminating in the process a true arc of women speaking out against subordination. Anyone who may have wondered where the women’s movement went need look no further. Treasure this undying, undaunted voice.

— Catharine A. MacKinnon, Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School