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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (37058)	3/5/1999 7:33:00 PM
From: DMaA	Respond to of 67261

Smile'n Pat Irelan - I swear some media expert must have coached her to NEVER stop smiling. Get a stop watch and time what fraction of her face time is spent smiling.

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (37058)	3/6/1999 12:16:00 AM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 67261

Claim to fame:The book "Sexual Personae", a look at the evolving views of sex and sex roles through literature and art. I have only read excerpts.

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (37058)	3/8/1999 11:35:00 AM
From: lorrie coey	Respond to of 67261

I missed the show...dern. I just can't care what NOW is doing. Pat Ireland is an interesting Woman...I wouldn't want to be in Her position. All She can do is "stay the course". At least She has the Oves to be fully present with the media and their hunk of meat. As for CP... An Open Letter To Camille Paglia In anticipation of the speech by the so-called "assassin of the feminist establishment" at UGA Sept. 23 Dear Camille: You and I both consider ourselves feminists. Even so, that leaves substantial room for disagreement. As a women's studies instructor and a feminist scholar, I probably fit into your category of "pallid, moralistic" campus feminists (your terminology) that you routinely attack in popular media. For me, you fit into that category of self-labeled feminists that have made careers out of critiquing what you call the "ideological excesses" of mainstream feminism. Indeed, I often wonder if you question how much of your fame is about the quality of your ideas and how much is about the media's inevitable attraction to a good catfight. Certainly, attacks on feminism are more interesting when they appear to emanate from other feminists, because they enable those old myths that women really can't get along and that they never really know what they want. Most importantly, however, they leave unexamined the degree to which the primary beneficiaries of such infighting are always feminism's enemies, who are delighted to have you doing their dirty work for them. That your latest attack on feminism appears in this month's Penthouse is powerful proof. Understand that I am not against dissent in the ranks of feminism. However, I am against your rhetorical device of depicting yourself as a lone voice of dissent fighting bravely against the totalitarian forces of academic feminists. This is a self-serving fiction on your part. First, you get far more space in mainstream media that the feminists you attack. Catharine MacKinnon has never been profiled in Vanity Fair, or interviewed comedian Tim Allen about men's oppression in Esquire. But you have. This means that you have a lot of opportunity to represent the views of feminists however you like. We rarely get the opportunity, as I have here, to answer back. You're no underdog, Camille. Second, you didn't invent feminist dissent. Your claim last year in the Chronicle of Higher Education that no academic feminists "dared to speak publicly about their discontent" until you published Sexual Personae in 1990 is patently untrue. The history of feminism over the last 150 years is a history of dissent, both internal and external. To assert that no feminist publicly aired her disagreement with the movement until 1990 is a blatant erasure of the contributions of feminists like Audre Lorde, for instance. The critique of feminism's racism and heterosexism by such women over the past quarter century has done far more to advance the movement's mission of social justice than anything you have ever said. Personally, I've seen plenty of dissent as a member of three different women's studies programs. I've also seen plenty of dissent at feminist conferences and in feminist publications. You're just not looking in the right places. But that would require that you actually function as a member of the academic community that you spend so much time critiquing. That community might actually question your credentials to speak with such authority about their shortcomings, something that the mainstream media has never done. As you depict women's studies in the Chronicle of Higher Education, it is dominated by a cadre of anti-sex moralists out of touch with "the wisdom of actual experience" in their preaching about relations between the sexes. I, and my students, are hardly anti-sex. However, I would venture to say that we are anti-sexual harassment and anti-sexual violence. We'd rather live in a world in which we do not have to fend off unwanted sexual attention in the workplace and in which we do not have to live our lives constantly aware of ourselves as sexual prey. You would probably reply that such an awareness is simply a product of the "victimology" that is preached in women's studies courses. Have you ever worked as a sexual assault counselor, Camille? I have. No one had to convince the women I counseled that they had been victimized. They had "the wisdom of actual experience." In Penthouse, you claim that "the proper mission of feminism is to encourage women to take personal responsibility and to defend themselves by word and deed against unwelcome advances without running to parental authority figures for help." Indeed, I agree that a primary function of women's studies is to provide students with the knowledge and tools that they can use to make their lives better. But one of those tools is the law, and to assert that women's use of statutes against sexual harassment and sexual assault infantilizes them is to deny their rights as citizens. The law exists to prosecute crimes. It recognizes, as you do not, that we live in a world in which the playing field is not yet equal. Your statement that "for every gross male harasser... there are sycophants who shamelessly use their sexual attractions to get ahead" is a perfect example. Even if it were true, those are not equal offenses. The former is an abuse of power; the latter is a ploy to obtain power. It may be unfair and foolish, but it's not exploitative and it's not illegal. As always, you oversimplify. That some women trade on their sexuality does not mean that no woman can be sexually victimized. That some women are sexually victimized does not deny all women their sexual agency. That women's studies is a project that recognizes the victimization of women does not mean that it teaches students to be victims. I believe that my students can understand the complexities of these issues in a way that you are unwilling to do. You should have more faith in them. Of course, if you had that faith, you would have no fame. Your refusal to understand what women's studies and "mainstream feminism" are all about is the precondition for your public existence. Without us to condemn, your celebrity would vanish. In your eyes, I'm sure that would be the greatest injustice of all. Sincerely, Bonnie J. Dow Dow teaches speech communication and women's studies at UGA. Paglia will speak at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 23, at Georgia Hall in UGA's Tate Student Center. Call 542-UNION for details.