From: rooney@cheshire.oxy.edu (Michael Sean Rooney)
Subject: Re: Paglia (was: Cross-Writing)
Summary: Making the obvious clear
Organization: Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA 90041 USA.
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 12:07:11 GMT

In article <1993Jan11.034153.13866@eff.org> mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin) writes:
>In article <1993Jan11.024416.29407@cheshire.oxy.edu> rooney@cheshire.oxy.edu (Michael Sean Rooney) writes:
>
>>	I just don't understand your position.  How is placing the
>>onus of responsibility on the woman as potential rape target (i.e., 
>>as potential *victim*) in any way empowering?  Rather, it seems the
>>very source of women's victimization.
>
>Oh, it's far more empowering to characterize women as a child-like class
>of individuals who have no responsibility for the situations in which they
>find themselves? Shall we rank them under the law with children and
>the insane?
>

	Really, Mike, it ill-becomes you to attempt to label me
with positions I do not hold.  Your comment does help me understand
what the Paglian position is, however indirectly.  Apparently she
(and you) believe that the prevailing feminist orthodoxy circa date
rape holds women "as a child-like class..." capable of no wrong --
am I getting this down right?  And that the woman who goes upstairs 
with that frat boy (I believe this is one of Paglia's examples) is
an irresponsible idiot if she expects nothing more than stimulating
literary discussion will happen? 

	As I see it, there are two ways in which Paglia's argument
can be plausibly read.  Is the date rape victim in some sense culpable
for the rape by behavior -- e.g., is "she led me on" a legitimate
defense?  Or is Paglia merely making the "common sense" observation
that women, given empirical tendencies, should be cautious about the
possibilities of violence?  I don't think she's arguing the latter,
in light of her extensive ramblings about innate male aggressiveness,
and if she were, her point would not only be trivial but hardly in
conflict with mainstream feminism.

	So if her comments are to be significant in any way, Paglia
has to be making some sort of normative claim about women's responsibility 
for (date) rape.  One plausible way to read her remarks is in a lurid
scenario.  To wit: suppose a woman behaves in a highly sexually
provocative manner and is then raped.  Is the rape any more "justifiable"?
Is the man any less morally reprehensible?  Given the tenor and content
of Paglia's remarks about innate male sexual aggression, it would seem
that she would answer both these questions affirmatively.  (I doubt
she would unconditionally, at least in public, but I am arguing her
position is consistent with these sentiments.)  If she answers negatively,
then her points are trivial, as above.  If she answers positively, she's
excusing the rapist through biological determinism ("couldn't help himself
because she turned him on") and *blaming the victim*.  Are car thiefs
any less culpable because the car owner didn't use a wheel-locking Club?
Should the non-Club-using victim of theft be viewed as an irresponsible
idiot, looked at with public suspicion, mocked in the press, thought of 
as a less credible witness?  I don't think so.


        
>Paglia's point is about *date rape* (go back and look at the quote,
>please). She's saying that when women go out on dates, they're at some
>risk, and they should recognize that this risk is there. 
>

	Men can behave in a sexually suggestive manner (generally)
without fear of reprise -- indeed, sometimes, to societal approval.
Yet this is not the case for women.  Many suggest that this is a double
standard enforced by an unjust threat of male violence, and that
women should be free to behave as suggestively as they will.  Paglia
certainly thinks that this threat of male violence is innate and
only partially deterrable: I think this is a bogus legitimation of
sexism, cheerfully perpetuating the stereotypes of masculinity and
femininity which I have no reason to believe are non-contingent.  

	On the other hand, she might merely be counseling caution
about dangerous empirical situations.  But this is hardly new, and
hardly worth reading from a source as tendentious as Paglia.

Cordially,

Michael S. Rooney

"The positivist attitude conceals the problems of world constitution.
 The meaning of knowledge itself becomes irrational -- in the name of
 rigorous knowledge.  In this way the naive idea that knowledge describes
 reality becomes prevalent."

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