 For MacKinnon, then, a desire for pornography and sexual violence is not an epiphenomenal symptom or side-effect of other material and social conditions that lie at the root of women’s subordinate position in society, as some other feminists are inclined to think. Rather, it is a central cause of the subordinate position of women in society. So long as there is pornography, MacKinnon thinks, women will remain subordinate and silenced.