Friday, March 05, 2004
Crying “Wolf!”
I met Naomi Wolf once, chatted briefly. I found her to be a typical, harmless, self-congratulatory snob. Her latest stunt, calling out Harry Bloom for a hand on the thigh 20 years ago – after she invited the guy to her undergraduate apartment “to go over her manuscript”? – Forgive me Naomi, but if you can’t see the “come up and see my etchings” in that you are tragically naïve and should not be advising young women on anything. Hell, it’s practically the man’s responsibility at that point to make the first move.
Wolf’s best known book, “The Beauty Myth” is, of course, irony manifest – as no one would have cared a jot about her musings had she not herself traded on her own sex appeal. She’s nearly an anti-antifeminist – a celebrity feminist uncelebratable by feminists due her continual willingness to court male opinion through her personal beauty and later highly sexualized writing (“Promiscuities”), yet unable to be condemned by the same audience due to the awareness she has brought to many feminists causes, a primordial Ally McBeal sans neurosis, yet still clumsily unaware of her own duplicity.
Now, much like an aged beauty queen’s reminiscence, Wolf dug her tiara of victimhood out of that Yale box in the attic, brushed it off and thought of old times. “Ah,” she says, sitting in the dusty light, setting the crown lightly upon her auburn tresses. “I was so relevant then.”
In the words of my 9 year-old niece, who is nobody’s victim, “Whatever, Mom.”
For the recap:
Wolf’s opening salvo
Responsa from the Grande Dames:
Highlights:
Camille Paglia: “It really smacks of the Salem witch-hunts and all the accompanying hysteria. It really grates on me that Naomi Wolf for her entire life has been batting her eyes and bobbing her boobs in the face of men and made a profession out of courting male attention."
Julie Burchill: “I think Paglia is a frustrated, jealous bitch, whose star is very much on the wane and who has always wanted to fuck Wolf. And, of course, she could barely pull a skunk without money changing hands, she's so disgusting. And that's my considered opinion on the matter.”
Lynne Segal: “I would see Wolf's revelations about Harold Bloom and sexual harassment as a response to the backlash against feminism. Feminism is always attacked for being too extreme, and one of the ways it has been attacked is by people saying that "feminists were always crying wolf", that women exaggerate the extent of sexual harassment. That may be one reason Wolf has said this now - to counter that type of anti-feminist rhetoric.”
“Bloom is such a big, powerful figure that I'm sure he has very little to worry about. He loves to attack feminists; he is one of the leaders of the backlash against feminism and the feminist readings of the canon. He is a conservative influence trying to preserve the world as it was, before minority groups had a voice. For Bloom to seem fair game to Wolf is quid pro quo.”
Elizabeth Wurtzel: “I'm not sure why [Wolf] would come out with these revelations now. Most of the stuff Wolf writes about doesn't seem crazy. She doesn't seem like a bitter person.”
“There is this kind of thing that you can be young and attractive and flirtatious. You can act like this, and then the person in power is not supposed to respond. It’s the Clinton thing, like he was supposed to say: “Y’know Monica, you’re lovely but...” But you can’t be flirtatious and expect people not to react. That's really the catch.”
“A lot of people find Wolf extremely irritating. And there is something irritating about her. But, generally, everything she does seems to make sense. Every once in a while she’ll do something silly. Like she got herself mixed up in the stupid Al Gore campaign. But the truth is she does things that are worthwhile. Bloom was, I think, Paglia’s mentor. Paglia can't stand Wolf. She’s had a bee in her bonnet about [Wolf] from day one. She thinks she’s really prissy and one of those girls who aren't any fun. The thing is, Paglia is consistently crazy.”
Andrea Dworkin: “I’m certain Wolf is telling the truth. She would never lie. She and I are not allies. We are not friends. I dislike everything she has ever written. But she would not lie or exaggerate, especially not about a matter of sexual harassment. She has done her time in a rape counseling service – she knows what women go through when they come out with allegations of sexual harassment, the backlash they experience.”
“I don't know Bloom. I respect him. I respect his work. But I don't doubt that Wolf is telling the truth.”
Jenni Murray: “I would have thought that someone with such a mouth on her would have said something at the time. It’s only 20 years ago – people were discussing issues of sexual harassment then. We’re not talking about the dark ages. And I think we’ve moved on now – we’re not delicate little flowers who sit in the corner and say, “Isn't it terrible what happened to me?” So I don't have much patience with [Wolf] doing this, I’m afraid. I’ve always thought she was a sensible, solid young woman, who wrote well. I certainly don’t believe that because she's pretty she should not have an opinion. But young women need strong role models who don’t portray themselves as victims.”
Marcelle d'Argy Smith: “When The Beauty Myth came out, it wasn't new thinking. But done by a dazzlingly attractive girl, it was a big thing. Wolf is the Nigella Lawson of the feminist world. So much of the publicity was to do with her stunning good looks, despite the unoriginality of the book.
“I find it extraordinary she should make these allegations 20 years later. The rules of sexual harassment were different then. When I started working in an office, the managing director took me out to lunch. I was sitting next to him, and he put his hand on my thigh and said, ‘I hope you are going to be very happy working here.’ But the rules were different then. He was just a jovial flirt.”
“So I think she has done us no favors. I think she sounds ludicrous. I thought she was going to say he put his tongue down her throat or something. Man puts hand on thigh: well, wow! I think to make these allegations now is cruel, self-serving and unnecessary. If she was outraged at the time, it’s not as if she was a woman without ammunition.”
And the Best overall treatment, the reliable Anne A. from The Washington Post:
'I Am Victim'
By Anne Applebaum
Wednesday, February 25, 2004; Page A25
“Sometimes in the course of a great American debate there
comes a moment when the big battle guns fall silent, the
pundits run out of breath, and -- unexpectedly -- the long,
bitter argument suddenly turns into farce. In the past two
decades, this nation has lived through the spectacle of
Anita Hill accusing Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment;
the destruction of the career of Sen. Bob Packwood; the ugly
drama of Paula Jones, her lawyers and the president; and, as
a result, the creation of multiple university and workplace
"codes of sexual conduct," which no one dares defy. But now
it's as if none of that ever happened: In an extraordinary,
several-thousand-word article in New York magazine, Naomi
Wolf, the celebrated feminist writer, has just accused
Harold Bloom, the celebrated literary scholar, of having put
his hand on her thigh at Yale University 20 years ago.
But Wolf's article is not merely about that event (a secret
that she "can't bear to carry around anymore"). The article
is also about the lasting damage that this single experience
has wrought on a woman who has since written a number of
bestsellers, given hundreds of lectures, been featured on
dozens of talk shows and photographed in various glamorous
poses, including a smiling, self-confident head shot on New
York magazine's Web site this week. Not that she mentions
her achievements. On the contrary, she implies that this
terrible experience left a lasting mark on her academic and
professional career: "I was spiraling downward; I had gotten
a C-, a D, and an F . . . . My confidence shaken, I failed in
my effort to win the Rhodes Scholarship."
She also implies that she never recovered academically,
which isn't quite the case. I was her contemporary, and
happen to remember some of her achievements. But although I
scoured the article, I could find no reference to the fact
that Wolf did eventually win a Rhodes Scholarship, thanks,
in part, to a recommendation letter written by Bloom. Or
that, while in England, she began writing "The Beauty Myth,"
the first of those bestsellers.
Indeed, Wolf not only never mentions any of this, she seems
to want us to believe that none of it matters -- and that
deep down inside she is still a quivering 19-year-old whose
single experience with a man she describes as a "vortex of
power and intellectual charisma," had "devastated my sense
of being valuable to Yale as a student, rather than as a
pawn of powerful men." She was not exactly emotionally
traumatized, she writes (and seems sorry that this avenue of
legal argument isn't open to her) but her "educational
experience was corrupted." And, somehow, that allows her to
equate her experience with that of children harassed by
Catholic priests or female cadets raped by fellow soldiers.
She, and they, are all victims of "systemic corruption."
Now, there are a number of surprising elements to Wolf's
article, all of which deserve more intense scrutiny. One is
her bizarre description of her attempts to get bewildered
university bureaucrats to do something -- she doesn't know
what -- long after the statute of limitations has run out.
Another is her account of the hand-on-thigh event itself,
which seems to have taken place late at night in her
apartment, where Bloom had come at her invitation. A third
is her apparent lack of awareness of the long debate about
sexual harassment itself, and of the way it has radically
changed the atmosphere on campuses and in offices, in both
positive and negative ways.
But in the end, what is most extraordinary about Wolf is the
way in which she has voluntarily stripped herself of her
achievements and her status, and reduced herself to a
victim, nothing more. The implication here is that women are
psychologically weak: One hand on the thigh, and they never
get over it. The implication is also that women are naive,
and powerless as well: Even Yale undergraduates are not
savvy enough to avoid late-night encounters with male
professors whose romantic intentions don't interest them.
The larger implications are for the movement that used to be
called "feminism." Twenty years of fame, money, success,
happy marriage and the children she has described in her
books -- and Naomi Wolf, one of my generation's leading
feminists, is still obsessed with her own exaggerated
victimhood? It's not an ideology I'd want younger women to
follow.”
Amen, sister.
Comments: ozymandias_1@hotmail.com
I met Naomi Wolf once, chatted briefly. I found her to be a typical, harmless, self-congratulatory snob. Her latest stunt, calling out Harry Bloom for a hand on the thigh 20 years ago – after she invited the guy to her undergraduate apartment “to go over her manuscript”? – Forgive me Naomi, but if you can’t see the “come up and see my etchings” in that you are tragically naïve and should not be advising young women on anything. Hell, it’s practically the man’s responsibility at that point to make the first move.
Wolf’s best known book, “The Beauty Myth” is, of course, irony manifest – as no one would have cared a jot about her musings had she not herself traded on her own sex appeal. She’s nearly an anti-antifeminist – a celebrity feminist uncelebratable by feminists due her continual willingness to court male opinion through her personal beauty and later highly sexualized writing (“Promiscuities”), yet unable to be condemned by the same audience due to the awareness she has brought to many feminists causes, a primordial Ally McBeal sans neurosis, yet still clumsily unaware of her own duplicity.
Now, much like an aged beauty queen’s reminiscence, Wolf dug her tiara of victimhood out of that Yale box in the attic, brushed it off and thought of old times. “Ah,” she says, sitting in the dusty light, setting the crown lightly upon her auburn tresses. “I was so relevant then.”
In the words of my 9 year-old niece, who is nobody’s victim, “Whatever, Mom.”
For the recap:
Wolf’s opening salvo
Responsa from the Grande Dames:
Highlights:
Camille Paglia: “It really smacks of the Salem witch-hunts and all the accompanying hysteria. It really grates on me that Naomi Wolf for her entire life has been batting her eyes and bobbing her boobs in the face of men and made a profession out of courting male attention."
Julie Burchill: “I think Paglia is a frustrated, jealous bitch, whose star is very much on the wane and who has always wanted to fuck Wolf. And, of course, she could barely pull a skunk without money changing hands, she's so disgusting. And that's my considered opinion on the matter.”
Lynne Segal: “I would see Wolf's revelations about Harold Bloom and sexual harassment as a response to the backlash against feminism. Feminism is always attacked for being too extreme, and one of the ways it has been attacked is by people saying that "feminists were always crying wolf", that women exaggerate the extent of sexual harassment. That may be one reason Wolf has said this now - to counter that type of anti-feminist rhetoric.”
“Bloom is such a big, powerful figure that I'm sure he has very little to worry about. He loves to attack feminists; he is one of the leaders of the backlash against feminism and the feminist readings of the canon. He is a conservative influence trying to preserve the world as it was, before minority groups had a voice. For Bloom to seem fair game to Wolf is quid pro quo.”
Elizabeth Wurtzel: “I'm not sure why [Wolf] would come out with these revelations now. Most of the stuff Wolf writes about doesn't seem crazy. She doesn't seem like a bitter person.”
“There is this kind of thing that you can be young and attractive and flirtatious. You can act like this, and then the person in power is not supposed to respond. It’s the Clinton thing, like he was supposed to say: “Y’know Monica, you’re lovely but...” But you can’t be flirtatious and expect people not to react. That's really the catch.”
“A lot of people find Wolf extremely irritating. And there is something irritating about her. But, generally, everything she does seems to make sense. Every once in a while she’ll do something silly. Like she got herself mixed up in the stupid Al Gore campaign. But the truth is she does things that are worthwhile. Bloom was, I think, Paglia’s mentor. Paglia can't stand Wolf. She’s had a bee in her bonnet about [Wolf] from day one. She thinks she’s really prissy and one of those girls who aren't any fun. The thing is, Paglia is consistently crazy.”
Andrea Dworkin: “I’m certain Wolf is telling the truth. She would never lie. She and I are not allies. We are not friends. I dislike everything she has ever written. But she would not lie or exaggerate, especially not about a matter of sexual harassment. She has done her time in a rape counseling service – she knows what women go through when they come out with allegations of sexual harassment, the backlash they experience.”
“I don't know Bloom. I respect him. I respect his work. But I don't doubt that Wolf is telling the truth.”
Jenni Murray: “I would have thought that someone with such a mouth on her would have said something at the time. It’s only 20 years ago – people were discussing issues of sexual harassment then. We’re not talking about the dark ages. And I think we’ve moved on now – we’re not delicate little flowers who sit in the corner and say, “Isn't it terrible what happened to me?” So I don't have much patience with [Wolf] doing this, I’m afraid. I’ve always thought she was a sensible, solid young woman, who wrote well. I certainly don’t believe that because she's pretty she should not have an opinion. But young women need strong role models who don’t portray themselves as victims.”
Marcelle d'Argy Smith: “When The Beauty Myth came out, it wasn't new thinking. But done by a dazzlingly attractive girl, it was a big thing. Wolf is the Nigella Lawson of the feminist world. So much of the publicity was to do with her stunning good looks, despite the unoriginality of the book.
“I find it extraordinary she should make these allegations 20 years later. The rules of sexual harassment were different then. When I started working in an office, the managing director took me out to lunch. I was sitting next to him, and he put his hand on my thigh and said, ‘I hope you are going to be very happy working here.’ But the rules were different then. He was just a jovial flirt.”
“So I think she has done us no favors. I think she sounds ludicrous. I thought she was going to say he put his tongue down her throat or something. Man puts hand on thigh: well, wow! I think to make these allegations now is cruel, self-serving and unnecessary. If she was outraged at the time, it’s not as if she was a woman without ammunition.”
And the Best overall treatment, the reliable Anne A. from The Washington Post:
'I Am Victim'
By Anne Applebaum
Wednesday, February 25, 2004; Page A25
“Sometimes in the course of a great American debate there
comes a moment when the big battle guns fall silent, the
pundits run out of breath, and -- unexpectedly -- the long,
bitter argument suddenly turns into farce. In the past two
decades, this nation has lived through the spectacle of
Anita Hill accusing Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment;
the destruction of the career of Sen. Bob Packwood; the ugly
drama of Paula Jones, her lawyers and the president; and, as
a result, the creation of multiple university and workplace
"codes of sexual conduct," which no one dares defy. But now
it's as if none of that ever happened: In an extraordinary,
several-thousand-word article in New York magazine, Naomi
Wolf, the celebrated feminist writer, has just accused
Harold Bloom, the celebrated literary scholar, of having put
his hand on her thigh at Yale University 20 years ago.
But Wolf's article is not merely about that event (a secret
that she "can't bear to carry around anymore"). The article
is also about the lasting damage that this single experience
has wrought on a woman who has since written a number of
bestsellers, given hundreds of lectures, been featured on
dozens of talk shows and photographed in various glamorous
poses, including a smiling, self-confident head shot on New
York magazine's Web site this week. Not that she mentions
her achievements. On the contrary, she implies that this
terrible experience left a lasting mark on her academic and
professional career: "I was spiraling downward; I had gotten
a C-, a D, and an F . . . . My confidence shaken, I failed in
my effort to win the Rhodes Scholarship."
She also implies that she never recovered academically,
which isn't quite the case. I was her contemporary, and
happen to remember some of her achievements. But although I
scoured the article, I could find no reference to the fact
that Wolf did eventually win a Rhodes Scholarship, thanks,
in part, to a recommendation letter written by Bloom. Or
that, while in England, she began writing "The Beauty Myth,"
the first of those bestsellers.
Indeed, Wolf not only never mentions any of this, she seems
to want us to believe that none of it matters -- and that
deep down inside she is still a quivering 19-year-old whose
single experience with a man she describes as a "vortex of
power and intellectual charisma," had "devastated my sense
of being valuable to Yale as a student, rather than as a
pawn of powerful men." She was not exactly emotionally
traumatized, she writes (and seems sorry that this avenue of
legal argument isn't open to her) but her "educational
experience was corrupted." And, somehow, that allows her to
equate her experience with that of children harassed by
Catholic priests or female cadets raped by fellow soldiers.
She, and they, are all victims of "systemic corruption."
Now, there are a number of surprising elements to Wolf's
article, all of which deserve more intense scrutiny. One is
her bizarre description of her attempts to get bewildered
university bureaucrats to do something -- she doesn't know
what -- long after the statute of limitations has run out.
Another is her account of the hand-on-thigh event itself,
which seems to have taken place late at night in her
apartment, where Bloom had come at her invitation. A third
is her apparent lack of awareness of the long debate about
sexual harassment itself, and of the way it has radically
changed the atmosphere on campuses and in offices, in both
positive and negative ways.
But in the end, what is most extraordinary about Wolf is the
way in which she has voluntarily stripped herself of her
achievements and her status, and reduced herself to a
victim, nothing more. The implication here is that women are
psychologically weak: One hand on the thigh, and they never
get over it. The implication is also that women are naive,
and powerless as well: Even Yale undergraduates are not
savvy enough to avoid late-night encounters with male
professors whose romantic intentions don't interest them.
The larger implications are for the movement that used to be
called "feminism." Twenty years of fame, money, success,
happy marriage and the children she has described in her
books -- and Naomi Wolf, one of my generation's leading
feminists, is still obsessed with her own exaggerated
victimhood? It's not an ideology I'd want younger women to
follow.”
Amen, sister.
Comments: ozymandias_1@hotmail.com
