Date: Fri, 4 Mar 1994 10:50:47 -0500 From: lars@heineken.dbcc.com (Lars Bader) To: safe@MIT.EDU Subject: LA Times editorial Los Angeles Times, Wed March 2 1994, page B7 (editorial page) Feminism Sells Women Short Rather than being prepared to deal effectively with life, women are being taught to whine and sue. by Judith Sherven Feminist Marianne Walters desires a "world where one might never need to fear harassment." Rather than a worldly, professional woman, she sounds like a small, innocent child dreaming of perfection to keep away the night demons. Sexual harassment cannot ever be eradicated because much of it exists through the interpretive eye of the beholder. Confusion and miscommunication between men and women is a reality to be learned about and negotiated rather than wished away. Current radical feminist rhetoric like Walters' undermines the goal of equal rights and responsibilities for women in favor of the romantic and narcissistic ideal of a perfect, stress-free world- for women. In this disempowering fantasy, women do not have to grow up or become responsible for themselves. That leaves men the only responsible people on the planet. Instead of insisting that women achieve their potential, the makers of these child's-world fantasies encourage women to blame men and and society for all their difficulties. They teach women to look to Big Daddy Government and Great Mama National Organization for Women to solve all their problems. Any woman who aspires to personal power or success should be outraged at this fragile-pansy propaganda. Yet there are few voices willing to risk the righteous judgement of the feminist elite. Think of it: Feminist leaders, purportedly women of thought and consequence, treating themselves and their fellow women like overgrown baby dolls who can neither think for themselves nor prevail against all-powerful men. For example, current politically correct dogma insists that if two adults get drunk and have consensual sex, only the man should be held accountable for the consequences. As a woman and a clinical psychologist for 15 years, I am deeply afraid for my sex. Women's leaders today are teaching victimhood as the primary identity for all women and powerlessness as strength. I have heard feminist attorney and radio talk-show personality Gloria Allred stretch the bounds of credibility by repeatedly asserting that "women do not lie." She has no difficulty, however, pronouncing men as liars, potential rapists and women-haters. More hysteria is evident when a college professor feels "sexually abused" by having a Goya nude hanging in her classroom, and another woman sues for sexual harassment because a male colleague brings her roses. Women are undone by admiring looks and feel enraged and abused by complimentary whistles on the street. One would think that women never told dirty jokes. Are women nothing more than retrograde Victorians? The denial of women's flaws and faults is pathological. It keeps women ignorant of their complicity in their own victimization. It provides no preparation for living in the real world in which bad things happen. Discomfort, obstacles, and misfortune cannot be avoided, no matter how innocent women pretend to be. The fact is that life is an unfolding mystery and it happens to all of us. The tragedy is that today's women, rather than being prepared to cope more effectively and pwerfully with life's adversities, are being told to whine and sue because they have experienced some of life's troubles. I am not talking about rape or any other crime that was on the books prior to political-correctness thought control. I am talking about the expectation that a woman should be able to "never fear sexual harassment." That is absurd, just as moronic as it would be for men to imagine that they could never feel manipulated by a woman. Clearly, women's movement leaders fail to understand that in their demand for innocence they place the responsibility for women's comfort and safety solely in the hands of men. As a result, women are being educated to see themselves as ever more dependent and helpless. It is frightening to see females portraited as unable to cope in the real world of mena and women, penises and vaginas, desire and attraction. We fought so hard to be sexually and socially liberated. Is this squeamishness what feminism has wrought? [Judith Sherven is a clinical psychologist in West Los Angeles who is writing a book on women and victimization.]