Sunday, April 10, 2011

Sexual Harassment and the Loneliness of the Civil Libertarian Feminist

Highly recommended article -- Sexual Harassment and the Loneliness of the Civil Libertarian Feminist by Wendy Kaminer.

Just one small part:

Civil libertarian feminists have always been a political minority, but these days we seem on the verge of extinction. Reviewing the charges of sexual harassment underlying the Title IX complaint by a group of Yale students and alumnae, I can't find feminism -- at least not if feminism includes independence, liberty, and power for women. Instead I find femininity -- the assumption that women are incapable of fending for themselves in the marketplace of epithets or ideas, the belief that women are rendered helpless by misogynist speech and the sexist tantrums of their male peers.

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