by Chris Alexion, Copyright March 30, 2006, all rights reserved. 307 views
Definition, as has often been pointed out, is crucial. Like a football team that moves the sidelines and first downs when their opponents have the ball, manipulating the terms of the debate can greatly benefit the one doing the manipulating.
Gender issues are no exception, and ifeminist writer Wendy McElroy has some rough words for those feminists who use the issue of sexual harrassment as a power play. In a speech entitled "Scrapping NOW: Time to Redefine Feminism," McElroy digs past the rhetoric of the debate, challenging gender feminism's choice of words:
Let me begin by briefly defining what I mean by sexual harassment and by explaining where I stand on the issue. By sexual harassment I don't mean unwanted touching, grabbing or any other form of physical aggression. That's battery and assault and laws against them have been on the books for many years. All that was needed around 1980 was have those laws rigorously enforced.
Instead what happened was the creation of new laws and what one author calls the "sexual harassment industry." This industry gave a broader definition to the term sexual harassment and attempted to counter "a 'hostile working environment" in which women feel offended by the words and other non-violent behavior of co-workers." McElroy continues:
Sexual harassment is probably old feminism's greatest success story. Laws against sexual harassment now regulate every business and organization of any real size, as well as every university and college in North America. Government reaches into the private sector and regulates attitudes and words to an extent that would be unimaginable in the 1960s, even the '70s. Yet the term "sexual harassment" only entered our culture about twenty years ago.
I think it was one of the writers from the old Antithesis magazine who noted that government loves a good crisis. A crisis lets us poor sinners see our desparate need for the state. So when Enron goes down, it isn't because current laws aren't being enforced; it's because more laws are needed. When "hate crimes" increase, we're told that we need new anti-hate legislation. And when women are the victims of assault, a whole industry springs up.
Like McElroy, we need to "realize that the sexual harassment industry and the other institutions that have been constructed by radical feminism don't solve social problems…they create them."
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