The absurd consequences of such an approach were made abundantly clear in the Israeli media circus surrounding the case of Adam Shuv late last year. Shuv, a well-known journalist, was arrested in December 2007 after two women complained of sexual assault. One of the women, who slept with him and decided afterward that she had been taken advantage of, accused him of rape—a charge that was subsequently dropped as baseless. This did not, however, stop noted Israeli columnist Dana Spector from arguing, in a December 14 article in Yediot Aharonot, that the notion of “rape” should be expanded to include instances of the sort exemplified by Shuv. The “new rapist,” she opined, is someone who treats sex as a purely physical act and “does not see a real person in front of him—not before [sex], not after, and not when he calls a cab [to take her home]. And the new rape victim is maybe too trusting, maybe not too sure of herself, maybe even stays after [sex], and kisses him. But inside, she is a ticking time bomb, and one day she will emerge from her hiding place, point her finger at the man who didn’t look her in the eye, and testify [against him].”

Spector’s definition of the “new rape victim” illustrates the slippery slope down which the feminist claim of a rape crisis can lead. The problem is not only the creation of an atmosphere of fear surrounding all sexual relations. Such scare tactics also result in two other, seemingly opposite yet in fact inextricably linked problems: On the one hand, they cause some women to make accusations of sexual assault that in truth never occurred, which in turn denigrates the concept of rape altogether. And on the other hand, they lead many women to embrace a victimized status, since, as feminism has made all too clear, in today’s oppressive, sexist society, women have no choice but to serve as the object of male sexual desire and gratification.

 

Some feminist scholars, particularly in the United States, have recognized the deleterious effects of “victim feminism” on women’s self-image, and have spoken out loudly and eloquently against it. Naomi Wolf, for instance, stated in her 1994 work Fire with Fire that “Victim psychology is bad for women…. A person who identifies chiefly as a victim will do less well than someone who sees herself chiefly as powerful and effective. If a woman sees herself as a victim she becomes less competent, less happy, and even more likely to be victimized.” These sentiments have been echoed and expanded upon in the works of such feminists as Christina Hoff Sommers, Rene Denfield, Camille Paglia, and Roiphe, women who have courageously provided a long-overdue critique of feminism’s ideological excesses—even if, as a result, they are frequently denounced as “post-” or even “anti-feminist” by much of the mainstream movement.

Unfortunately, it is precisely the fear of such labels that keeps many feminist thinkers and activists from engaging in an honest debate of the movement’s flaws. Such was the case, for example, with Wolf herself, who made a surprising about-face in a 2004 article in the New York Times Magazine, in which she claimed that the literary scholar Harold Bloom sexually harassed her while she was a student at Yale. Explaining why she had decided finally to go public with her complaint, Wolf wrote that, after trying to reassure herself that steps had been taken in the ensuing decades to prevent sexual harassment from occurring on campus, she was forced to conclude that “the atmosphere of collusion that had helped to keep me quiet twenty years ago was still intact—as secretive as a Masonic lodge.”

While such an admission might have ensured her good standing within the feminist movement, most of the media weren’t buying it: “Wolf’s article confuses the issue rather than clarifies it. Her gaps and imprecision give fodder to skeptics who think sexual harassment charges are often just a form of hysteria,” wrote Meghan O’Rourke in Slate.com; Ann Applebaum warned in the Washington Post against the “exaggerated victimhood as embodied by Wolf”; and Celia Farber was exceptionally blunt in the New York Press, declaring that “once again, women were thrown back into their shackles as sexual beings first and foremost—by their would-be liberators, the feminist establishment.” (Emphasis in original.) It was feminism’s fatal wrong turn to take the victim road, Farber concluded, because down that road, “all accomplishments, all dreams, all voices, all identities are vanquished, in order to feed the victim fire. Even someone as successful as Naomi Wolf had to perform a final, ritualistic harakiri and throw herself on the pyre in order to assuage the raging gods of the victim cult.” Indeed, when membership in feminism’s ranks is conditioned on the willingness to embrace such a worldview, it is no wonder that a movement that should by all rights enjoy the support of all modern women has been rejected by an increasing number of them.

 

Unfortunately, “victim feminism” is still going strong, particularly in the academy. Its dominant presence there is especially troubling, given that women dwell in the ivory tower during the formative years of their lives. Nor is it coincidental: The view of women as helpless victims of systemic oppression is well suited to the intellectual outlook that reigns in the humanities today.

This outlook, which rests on post-Marxist and post-structuralist theories, holds that mankind is a passive object of oppressive and omnipotent systems of control. The outcome of such a fatalistic concept is all too evident in the exchange, in an August article in Maariv, between feminist journalist Billy Moscona-Lerman and “A.,” a doctoral candidate in sociology from the Hebrew University, whose online revelation of a consensual affair with a different professor in the department ignited the campus investigation into Eyal Ben-Ari’s actions. “Would you define yourself in the situation with this professor as a young student with absolute free will?” asked Moscona-Lerman. “Will is not an autonomous thing,” the student replied. “As a sociologist I cannot see myself as a rational, active subject with all the options in the world available to me. I am aware that I am answering to the dictates of social structures…. We not only lack complete autonomous will in these kinds of relationships [between students and professors], but in all social relationships…. In this affair as well, which was in theory consensual, there was an element of power relations.”

These sentiments, above which floats the spirit of Michel Foucault, illustrate the ease with which a “radical” worldview can devolve into a resigned acceptance of one’s helplessness. With the aid of a philosophy that denies the existence of an autonomous subject and sees sinister power relations lurking everywhere, the individual can easily, even understandably, absolve himself of all responsibility for his actions, and of others for theirs. Who, after all, would blame a robot for daring to act as it has been programmed to do?

Ultimately, however, the eagerness to don the victim’s mantle owes more to politics than to theory. Specifically, it draws its motivation from the radical politics that hold sway on many campuses and in many liberal arts departments, and whose agenda has substantial influence on the media, the law, and cultural institutions. This agenda takes as its goal the exposure and condemnation of the “crimes” committed by Western civilization and its offshoots against a roll call of victims: women, blacks, Palestinians and Sephardim (in Israel), homosexuals, and “others” of every possible kind. One frequently gets the impression that these groups are competing with each other for the title of “most victimized” by the ever-shrinking mainstream. We might even say they share a common motto: “I am a victim, therefore I am.”

And yet, even as these politics have adopted an increasingly radical tone, for all practical purposes, they have lost their sting. For if, as many of its proponents argue, reality is rotten to the core, and political action—indeed, action of any kind—can at most achieve minor cosmetic changes in the system, then the victim has no choice but to accept the inevitability of his situation—and, of course, to find seemingly endless sources of blame for his predicament. Sadly, in the final analysis, the sort of radical politics prevalent today are concerned not with fixing the world so much as with indicting it. So, too, we might say that radical feminism is concerned not so much with bettering the lives of women as with adding to their lineup of oppressors.

 

Sexual harassment and date rape happen. Men try to take advantage of their positions of power and influence in order to intimidate women into having sex with them—that’s a fact. It is entirely reasonable, then, to expect social institutions—such as the government, the courts, and the universities—to protect women from sexual abuse and set strict rules that will prohibit such occurrences.

But rules will only go so far. Much as we may wish to look to them to frame our relations, the fact remains that men and women are also sexual creatures, and sexuality is an ever-present aspect of their lives. Despite the most detailed and exacting of regulations, sexual harassment and exploitation will almost certainly continue to occur.

It is for this reason, then, that feminism must reconsider its recent message. If they truly wish to protect women, feminist activists must let go of the radical line that has been their driving force for the past few decades. Instead, they must begin to emphasize that ultimate responsibility for a woman’s defense rests with herself and that, moreover, women are not so intrinsically victimized as to lack the ability to stand up for themselves. Likewise, rather than insisting that “lack of resistance does not equal consent,” feminists must declare that women are responsible for expressing, clearly and immediately, their disinterest in unwanted sexual advances, and, if this disinterest is not heeded, for complaining, clearly and immediately, to the appropriate authorities. Crucially, this responsibility should not be presented as a burden. Rather, it is the province of the capable and the empowered. These are the qualities feminism should strive to promote in women, and not merely through “subversive” writing in academic journals, but in the real-life issues that confront and test them every day. What is needed is a feminism that brings the notions of dignity and autonomy back into its discourse, imbuing women with the self-respect and confidence necessary to act as dignified and autonomous beings. For this, our mothers fought to change the law. The least their daughters can do is take advantage of it.

 

Marla Braverman
October 12, 2008