Topic: White WaterFeminism, RIP (Thanks Mr. President) - Editorial
Detroit News When feminists find themselves on the same side of an issue as pornographer Larry Flynt, it ought to cause them to do some soul-searching. Yet the comments of prominent feminist leaders about L’affaire Lewinsky remain utterly devoid of intellectual integrity. They seem more interested in keeping in office someone promising to promote their special interests — such as hiring quotas and government child care — than in their self-avowed principles.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the area of sexual harassment — the cause that feminists appear to be abandoning after they championed it for much of this decade.
There wasn’t more than a whisper of protest from organized feminists about the excesses of sexual harassment when a six-year-old boy in Lexington, N.C., was suspended from school for kissing a six-year-old girl. Yet Betty Friedan, matriarch of feminism, now blithely dismisses the president’s misdeeds with a subordinate more than half his age: “What’s the big deal?”
Meanwhile, Geraldine Ferraro, the 1984 Democratic vice-presidential presidential contender and a self-appointed champion of women’s rights, without any irony defends the president by observing: “A man is a man is a man.”
And Nina Burleigh, the former White House reporter for Time, in a round table with other female analysts, suggested she would gladly offer the president oral sex in return for “keeping abortion legal.” This displayed not just bad taste but ignorance of feminism’s original ideal: Women ought not to have to service men to obtain their rights.
Bill Clinton is not facing trial because he had sex with an intern, of course. He’s on trial for allegedly lying about it while under oath in a federal court and then obstructing investigators. But the reaction of feminists to the sexual aspect of the case is nonetheless telling. And perhaps the most dramatic transformation has been that of University of Michigan law professor Catherine MacKinnon — the inspiration behind much of the sexual harassment regulations and rulings.
Ms. MacKinnon’s views on sexual matters are well known. She argues that pornography constitutes violence against women and therefore ought to be banned. And the power difference between men and women renders the notion of consent meaningless, she has argued. As she was quoted in the Christian Science Monitor: “Consent is a myth; any sexual advance is harassment and a violation of the law.”
Yet soon after Monicagate broke, Ms. MacKinnon wrote in the New York Times that what President Clinton did to Ms. Lewinsky was not actionable because it was not “unwelcome” — in other words it was consensual and therefore not harassment.
Many rational people may agree with Ms. MacKinnon’s belated conclusion. But the fact that it took Bill Clinton to become a victim of their excesses before she made this distinction speaks volumes about the agenda of modern-day feminists. They no longer want equality. They want power — and, like the male “hierarchs” they often criticize, they are willing to go to considerable lengths to get it.
12/30/98
Editorial
No no no, they have it all wrong. It's because his blue eyes are so dreamy.