Conference quark::mennotes-v1

695.0. "Two articles: Which view ?" by CSC32::S_HALL (Gol-lee Bob Howdy, Vern!) Tue Dec 10 1991 00:41

 
        (The following text is a transcription of an article
         published in Reason Magazine, January 1992 issue.  Reproduced
         here without permission.)
 
 
                        Crimes of The Head
        Feminist Legal Theory is Creating a Government Not
                        of Laws, But of Women.
 
                        by Michael Weiss
 
        Clarence Thomas was nearly denied a seat on the U.S. Supreme
        Court because a woman who worked for him a decade ago said he
        had asked her out and discussed dirty movies with her.  That's
        not the way the papers put it, of course.  In the press,
        Thomas stood accused of "sexual harassment."  By substituting
        that vague term for the specifics of Thomas's alleged behavior,
        reporters acknowledged a reality that became painfully clear
        during the days of the Senate hearings on Anita Hill's
        charges:  What was once merely obnoxious is now illegal.
 
        Catharine MacKinnon had a lot to do with that transformation.  As
        a feminist legal scholar, she formulated a theory of sexual
        harassment that was adopted by the Supreme Court in 1986:
        Sexual harassment need not involve physical contact, the threat
        of retaliation, or even an intent to harass.  It can consist
        merely of a "hostile" work environment, created by off-color
        jokes, nude pinups, inappropriate social interest or anything
        else that might offend a woman's sensibilities.  In this light,
        whether you think Anita Hill told the truth or not, Thomas's
        crime was all in her mind.
 
        During the hearings, MacKinnon, now a University of Michigan
        law professor, took to the op-ed pages and the TV talk shows --
        including "Today", "Donahue", "Nightline" and "Sonya Live" --
        to defend that standard and the ideas underlying it.  For the
        most part, she sounded quite moderate and reasonable, interested
        only in fairness and in vindicating the rights of working women.
        On "Nightline", for example, she conceded that simple
        miscommunication underlies many cases of sexual harassment.
        MacKinnon's mainstream status was reflected by a flattering 
        October 6 cover story in "The New York Times Magazine."  Later
        that month, Peter Jennings dubbed her "Person of the Week."
 
        But there is another side to Catharine MacKinnon.  Her writings
        and those of her allies confirm that  the campaign against
        sexual harassment represents a radical departure from
        traditional notions of justice.  Indeed, it is part of a broader
        attempt by feminist theorists to uproot fundamental legal
        principles that they view as perpetuating male domination of
        society.  Those principles include such ostensibly gender-neutral
        concepts as consent, reasonableness, individual rights and the
        presumption of innocence.  The declared goal of the feminist
        jurisprudes is to transform the law from an instrument of
        subjugation into a system based on a woman's perspective.
 
        So far they appear to be succeeding.  "Feminist legal theory
        is the most dynamic area of law today," writes Anastasia Toufexis
        in "Time".  "Feminist scholars have pioneered the concept of
        sexual harassment in the work place, catalyzed passage of rape 
        shield laws and expanded the principle of self-defense to cover
        battered women accused of killing abusive mates."
 
        Says Professor Cynthia F. Epstein of Stanford Law School,
        "Attorneys whose practice might be described as embracing or
        incorporating feminist jurisprudence have undoubtedly had a
        meaningful effect on modern law and public policy.  Along with
        feminist practitioners, the legal theorists have addressed and
        affected the spheres of family law, employment law, criminal
        law and first amendment law."  Professor Laurence Tribe of
        Harvard Law School is also enthusiatic: "Over the next quarter
        century feminist legal theory is likely to be the most fertile
        source of important insights in the law."
 
        What sort of insights does feminist jurisprudence offer?
        "The primary task of feminist scholars is to awaken women and men
        to the invidious ways in which patriarchy distorts all our lives,"
        writes Leslie Bender, a professor at Syracuse University College
        of Law.  Writing in "The Harvard Women's Law Journal", Janet Rifkin
        defines patriarchy (others prefer androcentrism or phallocentrism)
        as "any kind of group organization in which males hold dominant
        power and determine what part females shall and shall not play,
        and in which capacities are assigned to women are relegated
        generally to the mystical and aesthetic, and excluded from  the
        practical and political realms, these realms being regarded as
        separate and mutually exclusive."
 
        Although Rifkin's definition draws on the narrow, anthropological
        meaning of the term, feminist scholars also use patriarchy more
        generally to describe any society based on the male perspective.
        To overcome patriarchy, it is not enough to welcome women into
        the practical and political realms.  Rather, those realms must
        be remade based on the female perspective, as feminist theorists
        define it.
 
        The feminist jurisprudes seek to expose patriarchy as abstract,
        distanced, and repressive.  They want to replace it with a new
        paradigm reflecting the experience of women, one based on 
        context, relationship and particulars.  Female thinking, MacKinnon
        says, represents the "essential connectedness" of women, in
        contrast to the separateness of men.  From the female perspective,
        all things are connected; diametric opposition--between mind and
        body, nature and culture, self and other, good and evil, personal
        and political -- does not exist.
 
        Yet feminist legal theory is built on idea of a sharp male/female
        dichotomy.  Hence some feminist jurisprudes distinguish between
        artificial dichotomies--those that men perceive--and natural
        dichotomies--those that women perceive.  Other theorists, including
        MacKinnon, reject that approach.  No one has been able to 
        resolve the apparent contradiction between the idea that
        opposites are illusory  and the idea that male thinking and
        female thinking are fundamentally opposed, at least not in terms
        that make sense by the standards of logic--but perhaps that's the
        point.  Logic after all, is a male concept.
 
        In the feminist vision, "care," a connection notion, replaces
        "rights," a separateness notion.  "Male and female perceptions of
        value are not shared, and are perhaps  not even perceptible to 
        each other," writes Ann Scales of the University of New Mexico
        School of Law in the "Yale Law Journal."  (That is why, as we were
        reminded -ad nauseum- during the Thomas hearings, men "just don't
        get it.")  "In our current genderized realm, therefore, the 
        'rights-based' and 'care-based' ethics cannot be blended.  Those
        values cannot be content with multiplicity; they create the other
        and then devour it. Objectivity ignores context; reason is the
        opposite of emotion; rights preclude care."
 
        In the context of sexual harassment, "care" requires that the law
        cast its net wide.  Caring for women means protecting them not
        only from overt harassment but from feeling uncomfortable.  In
        formulating her theory of sexual harassment in the mid-'70s,
        MacKinnon eschewed the traditional legal remedies of tort and
        contract.  Although victims of sexual harassment could sue for
        assault and battery, intentional infliction of emotional stress,
        invasion of privacy, or intentional interference with a contract, 
        MacKinnon deemed those approaches unsatisfactory.  For one thing,
        under those remedies, a victim of sexual harassment could sue
        her employer only if she could show that he had authorized the
        harassment.
 
        More important, the standards that courts would use to determine
        whether any of those right violations had occurred would be based
        on the male perspective; male standards of behavior and male
        sensibilities would govern.  MacKinnon believed that the ideas of
        tort and contract were "conceptually inadequate"  because of the
        "social reality of men's sexual treatment of women."  Since the
        main condition for sexual harassment is the social, economic and
        poitical inequality of women, she argued, such actions are really
        a form of sex discrimination.  In 1978, the U.S. Court of
        Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit became the first
        appellate court to  accept the argument.
 
        In the 1986 case -Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson-, which
        MacKinnon helped argue, the Supreme Court adopted another aspect
        of her theory.  The court ruled that actions "sufficiently
        severe or pervasive" to create "a hostile or abusive work
        environment" violate the law even if unwelcome sexual demands
        are not linked to concrete employment benefits.  The Court also
        agreed with MacKinnon that "'voluntariness' in the sense of
        consent" is not a defense to a sexuyal harassment complaint.
        MacKinnon summed up the importance of -Vinson-: "What the 
        decision means is that we made this law up from the beginning,
        and now we've won."
 
        As shaped by MacKinnon, sexual-harassment law incorporates a key
        assumption of feminist jurisprudence:  Women are at a fundamental
        disadvantage in a male-dominated society.  Ibn MacKinnon's words,
        "Sexual harassment is the unwanted imposition of sexual requirements
        in the context of a relationship of unequal power."  More generally,
        a practice is discriminatory if it "participates iin the systemic
        social deprivation of one sex because of sex."
 
        Since the inequality of power between men and women is systemic,
        a woman's consent is never completely free.  Hence consent is
        not an acceptable defense against a charge of sexual harassment.
        The comments of Anita Hill's defenders reflected that understanding.
        In trying to explain why she did not file a complaint at the
        time of the alleged harassment, why she followed Clarence Thomas
        to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and why she 
        continued a friendly relationship with him for eight years, they
        cited a basic imbalance of power.
 
        During the hearings, Sen. Arlen Specter(R-Pa.) asked Judge
        Susan Hoerchner, who testified that Hill told her about Thomas's
        harassment in the early '80s, whether Hoerchner had considered
        advising Hill to come forward.  "No, Senator, I did not," she
        responded.  "I believe that the tremendous inequity in power between
        them would have been dispositive."
 
        Various commentators echoed the same theme.  "The Judiciary
        Committee's dismissal of Anita Hills' story is about men not
        understanding what it is like not to have power," wrote Marie
        C. Wilson, executive director of the Ms. Foundation for Women
        in "The New York Times."  "I'd like each man to think, think back
        to each and every sexual encounter and tell himslef he wasn't
        playing power politics, he wasn't under the influence of a 
        culture that says anything goes for men and women are the 
        objects of the game."
 
        Similarly, MacKinnon argues that the reality of women's
        powerlessness within the patriarchy means that almost all of
        what passes for consensual heterosexual sex is actually rape.
        "Men see rape as intercourse; feminism observes that men make 
        much intercourse rape," she writes.  "Combine this with the
        similarity between the patterns, rhythms, roles and emotions, 
        not to mention acts, which make up rape on the one hand, and
        intercourse on the other.  All this makes it difficult to 
        to sustain the customary distinctions between violence and
        sex....If 'no' can be taken as 'yes', how free can 'yes '
        be?....If sex is normally something men do to women, the issue is
        less whether there was force and more whether consent is a
        meaningful concept."
 
        That view of women's subjugation  within the patriarchy is crucial
        to the idea that a "hostile environment" is a form of sexual
        harassment.  While the feminist jurisprudes might concede that a
        man could suffer sexual harassment in the narrower sense--for
        example, if his boss said "Sleep with me or you're fired"--they
        would insist that only a woman can be the victim of sexual
        harassment in the form of a hostile enviroment.
 
        In the 1990 case of -Drinkwater v. Union Carbide Corp.-, the 
        U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit Court explained why:
        "In the quid pro quo cases, sexual harassment claims are
        equally available to men and women, but non-quid pro quo hostile
        environment cases depend on the underlying theory that
        '[w]omen's sexuality largely defines women as women in this
        society, so violations of it ar abuses of women as women.'
        ....The theory posits that there is a sexual power asymmetry
        between men and women and that, because men's sexuality does
        not define men as men in this society, a man's hostile
        environment claim, although theoretically possible, will be
        much harder to plead or prove."
 
        Sexual-harassment law thus discards the idea of equal protection:
        Given the same alleged behavior, a woman will find it much easier
        to prove a claim than a man.  The "hostile environment" approach
        also does away with the notion of intent.  It does not matter
        what the defendant intended to do, or even what he actually did.
        The crucial test is the "environment" his actions created--in
        other words, the subjective reaction of the complainant.
 
        But as former "Newsweek" editor Wiliam Broyles Jr. noted in a
        "New York Times" op-ed piece, "What is offensive to  one woman
        may be obnoxious, amusing or even endearing to another...Each
        woman makes her own law."  Such a standard sacrifices a basic
        principle of fairness: that proscribed behavior will must be
        defined clearly enough so that people know when they're breaking
        the law.  It establishes government not of laws but of women.
 
        Given the generous parameters of sexual harassment law, many
        women could make a plausible claim.  Indeed, by MacKinnon's 
        estimate, "around eighty-five percent of all women are, or
        have been, sexually harassed in the work force at some point."
        (In an October CBS News/"New York Times" poll, 40 percent of 
        the female respondents reported having suffered sexual harassment.)
        The feminist jurisprudes reject any attempt to constrain the 
        definition of harassment with traditional standards of
        reasonableness, which they say have a masculine bias.
 
        Accordingly, in 1991 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth
        Circuit threw out the "reasonable woman" test.  Judge Robert
        R. Beezer wrote: "We realize that there is a broad range of
        viewpoints among women as a group, but we believe that many
        women share common concerns which men do not necessarily share...
        ...Men, who are rarely victims of sexual assault, may view sexual 
        conduct in a vacuum without a full appreciation of the scial
        setting or the underlying threat of violence that a woman
        may perceive."
 
        The reasonable woman should not be confused, however, with
        actual women.  Last March a federal district court in 
        Jacksonville, Florida, applying the reasonable-woman
        standard, found a working environment at a shipyard abusive
        because of nude pinups on the walls and frequent sexual remarks
        and jokes. Although the plaintiff complained of sexual harassment,
        other female employees did not.  The hostile-environment
        approach means that harassment is defined by the reaction of the
        most sensitive womwn, even if she is the only one who takes
        offense.
 
        As both the Jacksonville and the Thomas cases suggest, the 
        feminist jurisprudes see pornography as  closely related to
        sexual harassment.  Together with  fellow feminist
        jurisprude Andrea Dworkin, MacKinnon hopes to take advantage
        of what she considers the law's growing willingness to see
        "a convergence of pornography and sexual harassment."  They
        hope that the concept of sexual harassment will help achieve the
        long-standing feminist goal of banning pornography.
 
        In 1983, the city of Minneapolis hired MacKinnon and Dworkin to
        draft a pornography code, unsupervised by the city attorney.
        The law they came up with  banned any "pornography" that
        degrades women.  It described a variety of degrading material,
        including cases in which " women's body parts...are exhibited
        such that women are reduced to their parts."  As examples of
        degrading pornography, MacKinnon, Dworkin and their supporters
        cited Rolling Stones album advertisements, French and Italian
        art films, and works by lesbian writers and avant-garde artists.
 
        Not surprisingly, given those examples, MacKinnon has little
        patience for concerns about protecting "non-degrading" sexual
        expression.  "The anxiety of the pornography/erotica question
        is:  What can we still have ?  The anxiety in that question is:
        If everything that abuses women and gets men hard is pornography,
        then what's left that can be sexually arousing ?  And the
        anxiety in that question is:  If you don't abuse women, maybe
        you don't get hard....Men getting hard is not my problem.  Women
        getting abused is my problem."
 
        In Dworkin's view, any material involving sexual intercourse
        would by definition be degrading to women. "Intercourse remains
        a means or the means of psychologically making a woman inferior,
        communicating to her cell by cell her own inferior status," she
        writes in her book "Intercourse."  "Physically the woman in 
        intercourse is a space inhabited, a literal territory occupied
        literally: occupied even if there has been no resistance; even if
        the occupied person said, 'Yes please, yes hurry, yes more.'"
        Intercourse, she declares, "is the pure, sterile, formal
        expression of men's contempt for women."  The fact that a woman
        might enjoy sex makes the act even more degrading.  Dworkin
        contends that material depicting women as enjoying sex is worse
        than the Nazis' treatment of the Jews: "The Jews didn't do it
        to themselves and they didn't orgasm...No one, not even Goebbels,
        said that the Jews liked it."
 
        MacKinnon and Dworkin's law created a new tort for women harmed
        by pornography.  In effect, the law allowed women to sue anyone
        in the porn business, broadly defined, for money damages or an
        injunction.  The law ruled out the defense "that the defendants
        did not know or intend that the materials were pornography or
        sex discrimination."  The ordinance was approved in Minneapolis
        and Indianapolis and narrowly defeated in Cambridge, Massachussetts.
        But it was eventually ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Court
        of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, a decision that was upheld
        by the Supreme Court.
 
        Now MacKinnon and Dworkin are working on a new law that explicitly
        defines pornography as a form of sexual harassment.  They hope
        that this version, since it employs a rationale for restricting
        speech that the Supreme Court has already accepted, will
        satisfy First Amendment concerns.  They plan to offer the
        model ordinance to the city of Minneapolis and to any other
        interested municipalities.
 
        In the campaign against pornography, as in the areas of sexual
        haraasment, campus speech codes, rape law and the battered
        woman defense, the feminist jurisprudes are working within the
        system, modifying it to mitigate the evils of the patriarchy.
        But as their rhetoric suggests, their ultimate aim is far more
        ambitious.  They do not want to tinker with the legal system;
        they want to overturn it.
 
        "Law is a potent force in perpetuating  patriarchy and controlling
        social and political organization," writes Syracuse University
        law professor Leslie Bender.  "Our legal system rest on an
        ethnocentric, androcentric, racist, Christian and class-based
        vision of reality and human nature, all of which makes it
        inherently flawed.  It is a system that resolves problems through
        male inquiries formulated from distanced, abstract and
        acontextual vantage points, while feminism emphasizes relationships,
        context, and factual particulars for resolving human problems."
 
        So women have to start over.  But there's a problem.  Reality
        itself, according to these theorists, has a sex bias that must be
        corrected.  "Feminist analysis begins with the principle that
        objective reality is a myth," the University of New Mexico's
        Ann Scales writes, "It recognies that patriarchal myths are
        projections of the male psyche."
 
        By rejecting not merely particular standards, but the idea of
        standards, not merely specific arguments, but the very method
        of argument, the feminist jurisprudes seem to have disarmed
        themselves in the battle against patriarchy.  "All of our norms
        and standards have been male," writes Bender.  "If we extract
        the male biases from our language, method, and structures,
        we will have nothing--no words, no concepts, no science, no
        methods, no law."
 
        If, as Bender claims, all is patriarchy, how can women hope to
        create an alternative ?  The answer, according to  the feminist
        jurisprudes, is that women can access an alternative reality,
        their reality, through "consciousness raising" (aka "C-R").
        C-R is a process, not unlike A.A. meetings or group therapy, in
        which women tell their stories to each other.  In C-R, writes
        DePaul University law professor Morrison Torrey, "experience
        becomes a legitimate source of knowledge."  By creating this
        knew knowledge, MacKinnon says, C-R "affirms the there both is and
        can be another reality for women."  In light of that reality,
        women can build a new system: "C-R clears a space in the world
        within which women can begin to move."
 
        There seems to be no room for men in that space.  If there
        are two realities, one for each sex, how can men and women
        coexist under the same legal system--or in the same society,
        for that matter ?  What is just for men is not just (if that
        term can even be used) for women.  Some radical feminists, 
        including Dworkin, therefore conclude that the only solution
        is sexual segregation--two societies, two legal systems, two
        civilizations.  MacKinnon does not address this issue directly,
        saying only that no answer can be found within the patriarchy.
 
        But the implications are profound.  For if men and women are so
        different that they cannot truly communicate with each other,
        cannot even live together without one sex oppressing the other,
        the project of feminist jurisprudence is doomed at the outset.
        Since the feminist jurisprudes cannot persuade men that their
        way is better, the struggle to end patriarchy is a pure power
        struggle--one that the feminist, according to their own premises,
        are destined to lose.  The reason for change--that men are more
        powerful in the current system--is the reason why things will
        remain the same.
 
        In truth, however, the success that the feminist jurisprudes 
        have so far enjoyed is based on their ability to use the very
        patriarchal tools they supposedly reject: legal concepts, moral
        reasoning, general principles, and so on.  If they have been
        able to change the law, it's because they have convinced men
        like Judge Robert Beezer, Sen. Ted Kennedy, and even
        Clarence Thomas--who fought for stronger measures against
        sexual harassment as chairman of the EEOC--that such changes make
        the law more just.  Despite the supposedly unbridgeable gulf
        between men and women, the reformers have managed to communicate
        quite effectively.
 
        To be sure, the feminist jurisprudes have weapons other than
        rational persuasion.  By creating new sex crimes and imbuing
        them with the graveness of rape, they strike terror in the
        hearts of politicians, managers, academics, and anyone else who
        might oppose them.  But they could not create those crimes without
        the collaboration of men as legislators, judges and voters. And
        that collaboration belies all the talk of male/female,
        connected/separate, rights-based/care-based dichotomoes.  Like 
        so many theorists who get involved in politics, the feminists
        jurisprudes seem to have abandoned their principles.
 
        (Author Michael Weiss is a fellow at the Texas Public Policy
         Institute and an articles editor at the "Texas Law Review." )

 
        ( The following article is reprinted here without
          permission from the December 9, 1991 issue of
          Forbes Magazine.  The "In My Opinion" column is 
          a guest editorial slot.)
 
                        Cultural Fascism
 
                      by Sarah J. McCarthy
 
        On the same day that Ted Kennedy asked forgiveness for
        his personal "shortcomings", he advocated slapping 
        lottery-size punitive damages on small-business owners
        who may be guilty of excessive flirting, or whose employees
        may be guilty of talking dirty.  Senator Kennedy expressed
        regrets that the new civil rights bill caps punitive
        damages for sexual harassment as high as $300,000 (depending
        on companyu size), and he promises to push for increases
        next year.  Note that the senators have voted to except
        themselves from punitive damages.
 
        I am the owner of a small restaurant/bar that employs 
        approximately 20 young males whose role models range from
        Axl Rose to John Belushi.  They work hard in a high-stress,
        fast-paced job in a hot kitchen and at times are guilty of
        colorful language.  They have also been overheard telling
        Pee Wee Herman jokes and listening to obnoxious rock lyrics.
        They have discussed pornography and they have flirted with
        waitresses.  One chef/manager has asked out a pretty blonde
        waitress probably 100 times in three years.  She seems to
        enjoy the game, but always says no.  Everyone calls everyone
        else "Honey"--int's a ritual, a way of softening what sound
        like barked orders: "I need the medium rare shish kebab NOW!"
 
        "Honey" doesn't mean the same thing here as it does in women's
        studies departments or at the EEOC.  The auto body shop down the
        street has pinups.  Perhaps under the vigilant eyes of the
        feminist political correctness gestapo we can reshape our
        employees' behavior so they act more like nerd from the
        Yale women's studies department.  The gestapo will not lack
        for potential informers seeking punitive damages and instant
        riches.
 
        With the Civil Rights Bill of 1991 we are witnessing the most
        organized and systematic assault on free speech and privacy
        since the McCarthy era.  The vagueness of the sexual harassment
        law, combined with our current litigation explosion, is a
        frightening prospect for small businesses.  We are now financially
        responsible for sexually offensive verbal behavior, even if
        we don't know it is occurring, under a law that provides no
        guidelines to define "offensive" and "harassment."  This is a
        cultural fascism unmatched since the Chinese communists
        outlawed hand-holding, decorative clothing and premarital sex.
 
        This law is detrimental even to the women it professes to help.
        I am a feminist, but the law has made me fearful of hiring
        women.  If one of our cooks or managers--or my husband or sons--
        offends someone, it could cost us $100,000 in punitive damages and 
        legal expenses.  There will be no insurance fund or stockholders
        or taxpayers to pick up the tab.
 
        When I was a feminist activist in the Seventies, we knew the dangers
        of a pedestal--it was said to be as confining as any other small
        place.  As we were revolted and outraged by the woman-hatred
        in violent pornography, we reminded each other that education,
        not laws, was the solution to our problems.  In Women Against
        Sexist Violence in Pornography and Media,  we were well aware
        of the danger of encroaching on the First Amendment.  Free speech,
        was, perhaps more than anything else, what made our country
        grow into a land of enlightenment and diversity.  The lesbians
        among us were aware that the same laws used to censor pornography
        could be used against them if their sexual expressions were
        deemed offensive.
 
        We admired powerful women writers such as Marge Piercy and poets
        like Robin Morgan who swoopedin from nowhere, writing break-your-
        chains poems about women swinging from crystal chandeliers like
        monkey vines and defecating in punch bowls.  Are we allowed to
        talk about these poems in the current American workplace ?
 
        The lawyers--the priom women and men who went to the politically
        correct law schools--believe with sophomoric arrogance that
        the solution to all the world's problems is tort litigation.
        We now have eternally compicated questions of sexual politics
        judged by  the shifting standards of the reasonable prude.
 
        To the leadership of the women's movement:  You do women a
        disservice.  You ladies--and I use that term intentionally--have
        trivialized the women's movement.  You have made us ladies
        again.  You have not considered the untintended effects of
        your sexual harassment law.  You are saying that too many things
        men say and do with each other are too rough-and-tumble for
        us.  Wielding the power of your $300,000 lawsuits, you are
        frightening managers into hiring men over women.  I know that I
        am so frightened.  You have installed a double pane of glass
        on the glass ceiling with the help of your white knight and
        protector, Senator Kennedy.
 
        You and your allies tried to  lynch Clarence Thomas.  You alienate
        your natural allies.  Men and women who wanted to work shoulder
        to shoulder with you are now looking over their shoulders.  You
        have made women into china dolls that if broken come with a
        $300,000 price tag.  The games, intrigue, nuances and fun of
        flirting have been made into a criminal activity.
 
        We women are not as delicate and powerless as you think.  We do
        not want victim status in the workplace.  Don't try to foist it
        on us.
 
        (Sarah McCarthy, a Pittsburgh restaurateur and writer, has been
         published in  "Humanist Magazine", "Midstream", "Learning" and
         several college textbook anthologies.  Her published articles
         include "Pornography, Rape and the Cult of Macho", and
         "Why Johnny Can't Disobey." )

    RE: .0  Steve Hall

    Ah, just as I suspected.  The feminists being described DO NOT STATE
    that they want separatist societies NOR the overthrow of the entire
    legal system (as it exists now.)

    The author of the article made these claims on his own (based on his
    own misinterpretations of the quotes provided.)

    re .0,.1
    
    To me these articles present the same view, but one with a harser
    presentation than the other.  I agree with the basic concept of both
    articles - if men and women are to be equal, then they must both be
    subject to the same set of laws;  and many things in society are trying
    to prevent that from happening.
    
    Rich

    RE: .3  Rich
    
    > I agree with the basic concept of both articles - if men and women are 
    > to be equal, then they must both be subject to the same set of laws;  
    > and many things in society are trying to prevent that from happening.
    
    Sexual harassment laws make both men and women subject to the same
    behavioral guidelines (eg, subject to the same set of laws.)
    
    Nothing in the law says that a person must be female to have a valid
    complaint of sexual harassment.

re .4

Please don't try to put words in my mouth.

The laws may be written gender free, but the interpretation (either a legal
interpretation by a court, or one by an interest group or a portion of the
media) sometimes aren't.

Rich

    	It elevates :-
    "Can I take you for a meal"
    "Yes. We can have coffee at my place after"
    
    into a basis for mutual charges of harassment when the couple break up
    later.
    
    	The insights one gets into U.S. culture in this notes file are
    fascinating.

Yep.  Sure makes me glad I don't live there.

    re.8:  
    
    His system is located in Toronto, so I'd guess that he lives
    somewhere in Ontario.
    
    					andrew

No, he's from Australia.  (Canberra, according to ELF - Gee, George, I thought
you were the ELF expert?)

				Steve

    <Gee, George, I thought you were the ELF expert?>
    
    If that was a jibe at George, it was misdirected. I think you should
    have been aiming at me.

    Gee, Steve. Didn't you take out a message and send it back to me for
    jibing you? Whats this crappie? A two side soward that is cutting with
    one side? 
    
    Certainly can dish it out, but cannot take much jibe back. 

    re 
    <sure makes me glad I don't live there>
    
    feeling is mutual, i'm sure

    Steve makes a pleasantly light remark, a funny remark, and we give him
    a hard time?

    <if that was a jibe at George>...
    
    if it wasn't a jibe at George then my remark is irrelevant

    
    he hit me first!
    
    no I didn't he did!
    
    did not!
    
    did too!
    
    I didn't!
    
    You did!
    
    Didn't!
    
    Did!
    
    Waaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!
    
    
    
    Sorry, couldn't resist