Christopher Hitchens, Naomi Wolf, Rebecca Walker and others discuss feminism (1994)

welcome to our broadcast tonight an hour on the battle of the sexes when Lorena Bobbit made the unkindest cut of all it revealed the rage that was lurking beneath the surface of male and female relations some women hailed her as a hero men reacted with horror no one could remember the last time a woman had violated a man so completely why has the conflict on the sexual battlefield suddenly come out into the open and can the long fraud fears about date rape and harassment ever resolve themselves joining me now our best-selling author Naomi Wolf her new book is fire with fire the new female power and how it will change the 21st century Katie Roy Effie her book the morning after sex fear and feminism on campus caused a national stir with a new take on date rape Christopher Hitchens contributing editor for Vanity Fair Tad's friend contributing editor for Esquire and Rebecca Walter founder Walker founder of the feminist organization third wave welcome I want to go here from the broad in the general a sense of what's happening to some of the specific things and way it plays out and we've got a series of books here that you that you've written in newsstand and magazine pieces I start with you tab because of this piece it's coming out in the February Esquire in which you really look at where feminism now and reflect on some of the people sitting at this table what they are saying as well as some of the incidents that I talked about tell me where you think we are and what's happening you said rage and you're open and I think there is a lot of Rage out there Lorena Bobbitt is certainly example of it but I think one of the things I discovered when I was doing my piece was that the woman is this table particularly there is a sense that that rage may have gone too far and that the radical feminism of Catherine MacKinnon Andrea Dworkin sort of push the envelope where men were basically scurrying for the exits and that these women here that I've spoken with there's a sense that sex is not necessarily bad the men are not necessarily evil and that it's time to make put that message out there and to kind of bring the sexes together again Naomi I think it depends on what you do with that rage and I think a rage can be an incredibly healing an important force I mean that's where Katie and I differ immensely our definition of victim feminism for example I think it's very important to name the ways in which women have been put down harassed harmed raped but that as you say it's incredibly important not to use that knowledge to create an identity a victimization that blinds us to our strengths I think that men are in crisis right now for good reason and that feminism has got to stop demonizing all men as a gender on the basis of the crimes of some men and absolutely create account of pro sex Pro pleasure Pro errata sysm stance as well as a hold criminals accountable for sex crimes I think that men are in crisis because women are not sitting passively as the evil backlash hits us over the head where it's hard for us to understand the nature of our immense power but I believe that since the hill Thomas hearings we've seen a kind of spontaneous uprising among women in this country that is shifting the balance of the power between the sexes women have won a roster of legislative victories I call this the gender quake were in now patriarchy is being dismantled in little ways as well as big everything from women and children telling men's secrets all the way to victories like the Violence Against Women Act and a pro feminist president and I think the women have got to understand that men are digging their heels not because they are all evil misogynists but because no ruling class has ever yielded power voluntarily and I think women have in a way got to escalate their political inroads but at the same time have a feminism that is scrupulously fair and even compassionate to men so that as we dismantle the masculine Empire we don't create the kind of moral impasses of Kali lorina baba to heroin as if you know because someone's been a victim she can't also be an aggressor and so that's why a lot of fire with fire is an attack on that strand of feminism and is a minority strand that does exist that can't tell the difference between hating sexism and hating men targeting sexual assault and sort of painting all sexuality with the same dark brush Rebecca how do you come to where we are um I think what we're talking about is very interesting I think that what we're seeing now is um a more from an understanding of say the gender war which is male against female which is it's been previously defined to a real understanding of power and that really it's not about male against female and female against male even though I think there is a war being waged against women but I think that we're starting to understand with the help of black feminists like bell hooks and Gloria anzaldúa and certainly Naomi's book that the power imbalance is what's really crucial here and that is a power imbalance that we see between men and women between white people and people of color between straight people and and people who have different sexual orientations it's a difference between people who have accessed to privilege and power and people who don't or who have less can the place can the move to equality whatever that is can it be negotiated or does it have to be seized I think both I think that we're in the process of negotiating it and see you know I mean I think I was certainly one of the very few men I knew maybe the only one who had a new sympathy for the tempestuous and missus bobbitt because if you recall the first term statement that she made basically a poor woman fairly uneducated an immigrant to this country not very not very powerful not very well plugged in nor free will connect in very unhappy and lonely firstly when she makes to the police about the organ which she'd separated from mr. Bobbitt was that while it was attached to him it had been pretty much no good to her that as she put it he always finishes first and never cares about me in every way in other words it wasn't that she felt threatened or menaced by this settled and or cuddled or brutalized but but sort of let down by disappointed by I thought what more men should have paid more attention to that the Uniting way the way that no no I was she was in every sense apathetic and probably quite a nasty woman it seems to me but but as much reassured as everything else the only way that you can't get any sense out of this discussion is if you assume that um that she was wrong to say that in other words that women are asexual which is the assumption made it seems to a lot of the date-rape literature and a lot of the Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin type commentary that women are are basically not sexed and that they don't say this is where the reason why a lot of men abuse are driven to the right so to speak the sexual right it's because they always know that sexual right I mean where is the sex right I mean is in hating women and thinking that they'll plan to cut the things off or the attacks on feminism and all of that is that we're right here and the boring and the boring endless of Rush Limbaugh type joking about it that's catching on is that mental know that that's not true and that it's um hypocritical and they know that women would or they ought to know I would like to argue anyway that women would be the losers if the chaperone came back on campus and fortunate back is immediate um I've been trying to argue is that a lot of contemporary feminism certainly not not agree with you Naomi certainly not all of contemporary feminism but a lot of it does seem to emphasize a kind of female sexual vulnerability the idea that women are so always about to be violated always offended by someone's dirty joke and I think that this is and I think this is dangerous precisely because we are sort of promoting this idea of women as asexual things like the Antioch rules that you know got a lot of attention I just earlier this about maybe an illegal interest on the cover of the front page of the New York Times right which was basically a code of conduct saying that you have to ask permission at every stage of the sexual act and that is can I kiss you can I hold your hand can i unbutton your blouse and not just and I talk to students and not just the first time but you know at every sexual act and I think the problem with these rules is the idea that you know which is really some the idea first of all that women are unable to express themselves and communicate and also the idea that sex every set every sexual encounter is so dangerous that we really need this kind of protection and that's why don't you get oh that's that's it that's what most feminists are saying or that even those rules nor did what I was saying I know you called me a rape crisis feminist pointed out that there is in fact a rape crisis epidemic what my problem with the way you cast sort of all women who talk about sexual victimization as sort of prudish Puritans is that it seems to me that you're sometimes quite important argument with in many ways dovetails with fire some parts of fire with fire is founded on sand because you want to wish away the fact that there really is a rape crisis epidemic why did you make on it out we all got to wish it away I mean I'm not denying it's more I'm not saying there is a sexual assault epidemic and how do we acknowledge that fight it and claim that women are sexual agents sexually curious can be sexually objectifying that we are not Saints nor should we have to be just before we leave this antiag thing because I was as surprised as you were to to read on the front of the New York Times the words may I put my finger and I never expect you to read that on the front of the good old great times and I noticed that it followed instantly it was loose it was staged for after me I remove your bust yeah I no doubt they call it about you I don't wear theirs anyhow I thought to myself there are at least three things wrong with this one is from the male point of view it's insulting because you have to do all the work on this assumption from the female well if you think it's insulting was it means the men also had to do all the talking and third and let's see if we can say this on the ER or not it seemed to me that it had and not accidentally it had abolished the clitoris there was no there was no say again it was engine let me put it like this then the clitoris had been alighted in this now I can't believe that that's the next thing because if you mention that you mentioned that women are in some sense keenly motivated to sex themselves and that's the thing I think Antioch is as reluctant to face as the absolutely southern it mean to say a couple thing go ahead Katie no I was gonna say I mean obviously we can all you can ante I can say Antiochus sort of an extreme I mean this is not the representation of sex on campus but the reason I think it's interesting is because this is an extreme that captures something of the spirit of the times it captures something of and you talk to students on campuses and they really are you know sort of talking about sex in these kind of terms and talking about consent and Association tons of times right and the idea that men are the sort of sexual aggressive animals and all men are potential rapists and and by the way it's not a sign at signs at Columbia saying advertising and take back the night March saying too many penises got away and you know and this is Columbia University and and I think that that idea said you see what I just think oh please I've been on college campuses at the same time that you've been I think we both are around the same year and the women that I talked to that are my friends that gone to school with me don't say things like that when we talk about sex we talk about what we want we talk about the orgasm we talk about clitoris we talk about you know we talk about all the different ways that we can get pleasure we talk about how we should broaden our vocabulary around pleasure and I think that as a direct result of the rape crisis feminists that you identify and that in raising our awareness about the reality of rape and date rape we have come become more empowered about how we can negotiate that relationship you know as opposed to being less empowered one side let me make one point your we haven't gotten your point about in the new view that you have bate about despre is there is the risk of what with respect to women I think that there is the risk and and I'm not denying that rape exists that that someone can be raped by someone right now I do not deny it I think you're gonna you're not reading carefully oh I don't really hear there's a rape crisis but I do think rape exists rape is obviously problem rape crisis yeah maybe if I just finish my point and then we can argue against it um we identical so it's like family brother are you very foreign invasion which is the reason I interrupted male okay so question if there's a danger in projecting in what in the images were projecting about women in the language that we're talking about this to seventeen year olds and eighteen year olds as they come to the university and as an example you know I said I don't think we should be teaching every eighteen-year-old as they enter University that one in four women will be the victim of rape or attempted rape before they graduate from the University before the age of twenty-one will be the time it's one in four have experienced before at the age of right well will be and have dinner's ready see buddy seriously along with a call to town we can we can I mean I don't I don't agree me not in your wake I think that the assumptions behind those numbers are what I'm questioning and I'm and I'm pointing out and I and I believe those numbers are seriously flawed for the reasons that we may or may not want to get into the technical details but I do think that the problem is that what we're teaching my point is that we're teaching women that you know they need to be worried when they go out on a date that all men are potential rapists that that there's a danger in projecting this idea me tonight and I quoted the American College Health Association standard pamphlet which says when someone starts to offend you on their women's side of the column when someone starts to offend you tell them firmly and early now this is what they're telling women and I compared this in an early piece I wrote to a Victorian guide to conduct and I really think that you hear these sort of echoes of a sort of either Victorian or a 1950s idea about men who just want sex or sort of pushing and pushing and women resist to have inherited feminism that is kind of the dark mirror of the bright mirror of feminism of the 70s it's true that in the eighties theories that make pretty important sense on paper like Andrew Dworkin see Catherine MacKinnon theories about male dominance and female subordination socially and that difference being made sexy that that translated in a way that's caused a lot of damage to feminist discussion about sexuality all sex is rape all men are rapists I remember growing up in a feminism that was about pleasure desire expansiveness this very much informed by the gay and lesbian movement in which an army of lovers cannot feel and I was going to say to you I think that our take on eroticism and our understanding that we've got to bring back joy and delight and I've been wailed on this but fun into feminist struggle and that pleasure doesn't diminish the seriousness of political advancement but intensifies it that that's a generational thing we want we were younger were daughters of a lot of the second wave feminists and because of their critique of a dark side of sexuality I think we're free to say you know go girl right right but I also think that for me historically the mentors that I've had in feminism bell hooks Gloria Steinem Alice Walker my mother include have not been afraid of their sexual power have not been calm on the contrary have embraced pleasure have said exactly what you just said how did the idea develop the idea developed that they didn't because to read you and to have read Ted's piece it is this notion that I that I read is that now in the 90s women who are feminism who are feminists who believe that that who believed all of the sort of most of the movement forward of feminism found it necessary to say in 1993 to accept this and to look at how women have been victimized is not to say that we are very much sexual beings and we have and want a very healthy sexual pleasure and and equality and for the CIC your view is retrogressive in a way to tell you the truth because you're still letting men decide what gets done I think that what women have to do is how am i letting I'm just curious how am i letting men decide what gets done well then it's it it's like you know a bad a bad night losing control or whatever you know just brush it off when I mean let's face it it's not feminists who have created this anxiety it's AIDS it's viruses I could sleep right off right Isaac Knight many things are real because rape is real I mean rape is defined in most days let's let's not have an argument we're arguing against a straw man that decides me I mean I'm not what a defensive patient - yes yeah cause it seems to me once I'm not trying to gallant believe me um gallant it becomes you a Christian as well he's getting on you stupid um and indeed my decade was as must be only too painfully obvious the sixties when uh when feminism began and I remember being it i pleasantly are not perfectly where well I know freaking Mary Wollstonecraft good yes I hear that but for people around this table I think you said that's where it began here um so you allowed my my um please your point is yes um what I remember was violently resisting all of us different ways the idea that the university could be in loco parentis as it wants to go and so the universe to play the role of your of your life parents and if you had a beef against another student of any kind it was considered kind of babyish to want to go to the dean the entire time and complain about your feelings but now it seems to me that not just on sexual matters but on quite a lot of other things lumped under heading of correct attitude everyone in the university seems to want to have more authority over themselves so we have more complaints procedures to have noir therapy and more litigation and I would say for heaven's sake there's enough of all that in the wider society as it is and you can't justify this by reference to microorganisms I'm sorry to say it's not not viruses that are making people behave this way it's it's a regression to Infanta lism that's going on and I think it's a real shame crying so what morally I thought she made that point excellently in the in the books ability for actions and I think that that's the sort of not to do that you suggesting put you makes women be perceived as we go that's powerful yeah I mean I think it's sort of insulting to say that no one argues with you about that I still think that we've got to take the image of a woman a sexual agent a step further and and say that we should own our dark side too I mean one of the things if something is thinking that I attack and I think it's sort of an interesting dialogue with some of the things you're saying is that feminism in the in the 80s in some ways cast all men is brutal rapacious peace all women is innocent angels and what this does is it creates a feminism in which women don't own their dark side and in some sense don't own their power and I just want to say I think we have to own that we can be just as aggressive and territorial and sexually exploitive as men in fire with fire I talk about how there are pornographic magazines aimed at heterosexual women Britain in Austria that are out selling pant house there's a sex industry burgeoning aimed at women and there was all that say it says that we are not better than men and we have to junk a feminism of sexual superiority and this explains why so many a female sexual superiority this explains why a lot of women are alienated from feminism it seems to me I traveled around the country asking why it is that about twice as many women it passionately doors equality as they're willing to call themselves feminists and one reason is they perceive that the conversation which used to be about women and men as equals is now sometimes cast as female moral superiority and fragility and helplessness and male evil and brutality and this one makes a lot of women do you believe that that was that was the was that once a was being said in some of the books that were written during the eighties whether it was a beauty or whether it was I take responsibility in a way for being part of well-being look the 80s were a dark time for feminists and women and generally did have to be very black and white and to shout in order to get hurt at all and I think that the PM is stressed women's victimization all of that is true women absolutely are systematically victimized but if I were going to add a coda to it I would also look at women's agency creativity curiosity and in fire with fire I look at not just how half-empty the glasses which is what feminist discourse has been doing the 80s but also at the fact that it's now have full enough for us to begin to tip the balance of power between the sexes two things I need to say here I don't want this just to be a discussion about feminism I want to really to may I want to go beyond that and and with that as part of the values that we're talking about but the subject matter here is where are we in terms of the conflict between men and women putting summative there's one context for that and on specifically point to the piece that you wrote and and bring that forward and back to the center of the table that's the one thing I was thinking is interesting I think women I think men liberal men are put in a sort of liberal enlightenment footing sort of odd position of being sort of feeling guilty and saying yes those are all good points we agree and feeling like well you know I apologize for that frat guy you know I feel bad and but it's sort of it sort of you feel like you're in a reactive vision I think most of the women here would feel more sort of spiritually connected with women who was being carried upstairs at a frat party at a college than the men here would feel laquifa I would feel with that guy who's carrying her upstairs and so you're sort of you're sort of placed in an opposition of feeling like gee I know I didn't do it wasn't me and I apologize and I won't you know I think you can be much more effective than that satisfying may say so I mean I don't think I know any any guy worthy of the name so to speak who hasn't at one time or other in his life said to another guy you've heard her you heard the lady leave her alone shut up move on you know I mean that's part of what it means to be a man is to be able to do that and I don't therefore I think and by the way can I mention a piece over instance everyone else is plugging this don't go away I vote piece coming up soon about the work of a feminist author who isn't here but who I admire very much called Elisabeth Fox University and she's reviewed you in trenches and she could say oh she says one of the reasons why so many women are not describing themselves these days is because it's not relevant to them because the struggle for existence women at the moment is quite grim and it's usually centered on very important fact of bringing up children not only can you not get hold of a kid without a man but you you very hard have a very hard time bringing one up without a guy and many of these women I think of the working class so I can use another phrase that I've ever heard on TV like clitoris and penis and so um working class working class don't you know I've been here they they see the feminism is something that maybe is bad-mouthing their brothers and their husbands and their fathers and other hard working guys who they know and quite nice this is all kinda complaint also a lot of african-american feminists who say that white middle-class feminism has been cast as women against men and that's why I think our generation of feminists is very interested in saying this is not a gender struggle of women against men this is about women and men against gender and let me just ask this question to all of you are we on the wrong track here if we look at the the Bobbitt case and we look at it's all kinds of things are we wrong to say there seems to be in the 1990s a conflict between men and women death grip I mean we're in I believe we're in a civil war but it's not just a war against women it certainly is a war against women it's also a war against men and masculine privilege and that's why I think that feminist feminism has to start being so scrupulously fair I see that the world of men is dividing into two groups the egalitarians like you guys who know that a new age is dawning and you're working at it and the patriarchal is like Rush Limbaugh who are digging in their heels understandably because equality for women really does mean that men lose some status lose some money to hardly rush limbaugh's patriarchal I'm sorry a conscious all right I don't want to make fried rice more than something that's already either you want to jump in on this because I really want to find out if there is a rage which you're saying a death grip how does it play itself out and and are we making too much of Lorena Bobbitt and what happened in that particular instance when there are all kinds of examples of people who have been mutilated before especially women came along and she's a perfect symbol and I think that's why people are met you know she sort of performed this act which was so kind of metaphorically Laden and that's why people are interested but I think the truth in this is that anger and I I'm sort of shocked because the anger of women the anger of women against men and also I think the reaction what's also interesting that this is the reaction of men you know and I think this is what naomi was sort of getting at it the reaction of men who are also getting angry and I think that we have people and we have playwrights like David Mamet who I think probably been the most eloquent in at least in Oh Leon is sort of expressing that anger expressing anger that now and I think I mean I've gotten I'm sort of interested because I've gotten letters from men who are in prisons and I've gotten letters from Wall Street bankers and letters from professors and they all come down to sort of be the same letter which is amazing because they're different languages but what they're saying is you know it's not okay to be masculine anymore like how am I supposed to be a man it's okay for women to wear lipstick and flirt and have power lunches and be strong but men do not have those options because let me come back to ten because you went out and sampled all these people that you talked to and something some lesbians and feminist and and combinations of all of the things and it would seem to come out of that peace for me was was not sort of a rage against men but an assertion of sexuality agree with crazy point I think in the sense that yes it was assertion of female sexuality and and in some sense the dark side the only time that was my point well we should be welcoming I think men Matic men are welcome I think Christopher and I would probably both welcome that I think the reason you're not hearing a lot of male voices in this discussion is that there's no male an acquittal there's oh yeah well huh there's no man leave that man there is no man sitting around in the woods market alone and drama and meeting their chests into a dress but that's not a register but if I just wait just wait a few seconds that that's the next thing that's gonna happen well we've been franchising infantilizing I was talking about yeah he's gonna happen men will say what if women can go to the Dean if they feel they've been felt up or whatever I'm gonna start complaining - everyone's gonna start being a German man will one member want to share in the intervention hood business it will be unstoppable and completely negative very boring does the victim business is that what I mean we do this is about sexual empowerment and sexual agency and economic empowerment why do we is is all that you are saying why is it necessarily lead us to a giant conflict between men and women I'm I hope that I'm leading us out of giant conflict between minutes who's leading us into a conflict between men and women powers damn women are dismantling male power and privilege and no one will give me examples so many terms over the world okay and lesbians Manning the male power struct and how does that play it out because so many men are used to only certain certain sexual well we're used to having straight white privileged men in positions of power all across the board the inquest cultural power political power economic power now all the different movements are really encouraging people to take and claim their own power as a person of color as a woman as lesbian as a transgender person I mean there is no longer a kind of monolith and and okay let me just understand I'm help me okay and okay I wish no let me make the whole of it so alright so across the board in the sweep of history over the last a period of time the 21st century and I in the 20th century the sweep of history and feminism is the most important movement the women's movement most important movement that we've all felt has Bret has witnessed a gaining of power by women in the workplace a lot of other places and part of that process has led to grabbing power from men all right working it and working from power and therefore now it's reached the sexual arena yes certainly I mean look at one thing that patriarchy has rested on is women and children keeping men's secrets and recently with the victims rights movement survivors of sexual abuse for better or worse this is very contentious are telling the secrets of men and with that ruling the balance of power shifts they need a hilt Clarence Thomas who shifted the balance of power all the things that used to be okay for men to do are now not so okay and this creates essentially light harassment and things like that sure but these are things that many men grew up thinking was a normal way to behave I would say that you know in your book things like a sexual assault which used to be a part of the dating process not questioned are now being questioned and there's a counter reaction against that I think your book may be part of it but that there's a sense of crisis a sense of privilege being lost a lost Empire now I think this is especially escalate in the last two years since the Hilton and you're coming along and others are coming along to say listen this as it reaches the bedroom as it reaches this male female sexuality coming together that women are saying what women are saying us to we want we like it we want it we can not use that but we want to negotiate the sexual contract from a position of strength and I think that a lot of new feminists or sort of recent leads urges resurgent members are saying we don't want to just be perceived as helpless passive victims we want to account for our victimization but we also want to say we are curious we are sexual and this is part of our potency and this is part of our humanity and we don't have to split apart I think we're I think women are sick related to what a powerful sexual power is and I think that anywhere from what my mother was on talking about with you last month genital mutilation is a great example of the extreme of of a culture or the patriarchy or trying to restrict women's sexual power and that when you cut off a woman's genitals when you cut off her access to her sexuality whether that's through genital mutilation or any of the forms that we know it then you are cutting off one source of her power which is the exact reason that there was such I think I don't think Glee is too strong a word to use in the Lorena Bobbitt case because it was finally turning it around and saying oh we're cutting off the man's power and I think that was something that when I went at friends of mine female friend of mine would say but be gleeful with me about that and I said it's a terrible thing you know it's an awful crime how could you he then said and they would make exactly that point it's been happening for centuries in huge numbers and you've ignored it I was like well which is all the more reason I think for victims who are starting to clean power to look and be accountable for their own retributive impulses because the most dangerous people in the world are victims who think they can do no harm and who become powerful without creating a moral a sense of both angelic in the demonic and human nature and female nature's why don't fund it is easy just be as if I was a category as you do and I can't say we let stealing but I'm obviously in the cash we were straight white male straight white male person right it's why people start talking about how about the power that this gives me that I begin to wonder if slightly too much of a compliment isn't being paid rather is when some women talk about the penis is a sort of noisy engine or cruise missiles well I wonder where they get this idea but I do think there is and the reason why many I will speak for what I think many male straight pipe types do fear is that there must be some relationship between this empowerment talk that they keep hearing and potency there's got to be some hidden subliminal connection some latent connection there's got to be the thing so they back off a bit so if we began to say oh I will you know someone said that this whole thing has two parts one women are saying I'm going to enjoy sex and I'm gonna enjoy sex on my own terms I'm going to make demands and you're saying when that takes place therefore it affects it goes to the heart of male performance male potency and the villain for temptation is then going to be dead of self-pity you'll say well actually no I don't not all that powerful and sometimes I don't feel all that potent alright and these are the male organs he'll say is actually rather capricious vulnerable and why are you both are sort of a relishing and reveling in the fact that he's talking about the male performance and male potency we don't bond rebellion women don't you want this all going to be in good shape that's what I'm saying about testosterone I'm sorry to say none of us could be here oh well that's very Pagliacci I mean I don't think that you know milk or not rebellion has oh yes oh I'll give you no I hope other fun integrating selfishly but I mean different well yeah I do think I just don't have to be can you'll probably or indeed me to say it's a truism that I'm making animal rights point basically I mean we are we are an animal species we are programmed to reproduce men particularly program to in seminary they can't help it that's just as well really because without testosterone in erections and other things of the sort none of us would be here now I think that rather as you pulled me up by saying them being there was feminism before the 60s I'm quite ready to acknowledge I think that point was understood Kamille palea well when I should agree to that but I wouldn't say that you know I mean that's her isn't her point that you know that push of the testosterone is what built great civilizations I think that the relationship between the sexes I think the communities cultures I mean I think there are so many other elements to the to the creation of civilization into our world as we know a lot of imitating civilization out of their own ear on consciousness erotic drives but I think that you're very brave and honest and I would like to see more of this in the 90s is a little synthesis aren't you saying also that part of what women's sexuality is also beyond enjoying sex and saying we're going to have it on some of our own terms you're also saying that women engage in things that being a feminist forbid you to talk about before in terms of certain kinds of fantasies and a whole richness of sexual I do say that in fire with fire I talk about how even though I have been a public feminist now for a few years one of the reasons I wrote this book which in some way offends certain orthodoxies of some feminist discourse is that I was uncomfortable not being able to tell all the truth about my life and all the truth about my life isn't as prescriptively mutual and liberated as you know some people want to imagine sexual relations to be all I mean is just as you say I say we have an animal nature you know I for sexual passion have done sort of abject things and so of man and and you know so does any human being and I think that we've got to stop having these sort of artemus like demands for sort of sexual exemplar enos and start to have some compassion and even some sort of liberated enjoyment of the fact that we it is not so straightforward and that the desire to give and be given to own to possess to yield is a very much part of the dance between I mean I think I think it's great that you're saying this and I and I think it's great that you sort of you know complicated your position since since you wrote the beauty myth I I have I mean I think that this this idea that men are also vulnerable and that women are also aggressive and that we all have these sort of passionate feelings and that everybody's sort of confused especially when they're seventeen that this should be I mean it's strange because we say these things and they sort of seem like a revelation I mean it sort of seems like if you know the MTA it seems like this we should be thinking but this is common sense like men are vulnerable women are also aggressive women do have sexual desires some men don't always just want to have sex and women sometimes also have an exit some men do you want love and some women don't and a radical huh this is this is a radical position which you know and certainly when I when I read that that part of fire with fire like you know I mean I think this is great and then I and I think that this does for whatever reason you know and something that I've been trying to write to is something that needs to be said and needs please allow me then let's also notice that I mean you were talking about why should men fear this and just as you said it is a deeply sort of submerged part of female consciousness which is filled with desire and filled with creativity is starting to emerge and this has always been terrifying to men all the more reason to create a feminism that is about dialogue and mutual respect instead of that polarized I'd say two things ought to be said one is for on the part of women is that to do all the things which the point you make is that you can be a feminist on the one hand and to still have all of this notion of sexual pleasure on the other and it doesn't have to in a relationship with a man and it doesn't have to they don't have to be contradictory and men have to understand that they can in fact explore new ways of and participate in this with even women being initiating and being aggressive and all of that without it somehow being an assault on their maleness and manhood and that's where we need to go in if that's true then we ought not have this conflict that you talk about the rage and saying it will be comfortable you need not be a war in other words nature is dialectical right and if you marry a man and a woman you don't get a synthesis of male and female unless you get either boil right right and for this reason the powers gonna come right back blowing look we're sorry no no no put face born I come right back to imagine I'm happy to yield but I was really gonna say that what I was said about Elizabeth folks Gianna basis-point about all the men that they have to be in a woman's life apart from sexually and the number of masculine roles that men can play for women holds true conversely I mean men have platonic girlfriends who they like they have mothers they have sisters daughters even things like that their relationship with women is always going to be extremely complicated we you can't reduce it to a conflict of interest Rebecca well I'm just going to think we're talking about about women coming into more sexual empowerment I think you know and I think we are changing the texts and I think that's what's very important as I look at this playboy on the table yeah I think about about this rolling stone and that rolling stone I think about the ways in which we are educated to be erotic with one another and the ways in which we are taught through our education through our families through pornography through stories through everything that we see in here how to be sexual with one another and I think that it's wonderful for us to talk about being able to to partake of gender roles and of power roles in our sexual relationships but we also have to think about how can we change the things that we are being taught in such a way that we can Arata sighs and this is something that Gloria Steinem talks about a Rotter sighs equality how can we start to add ourselves to the debate in such a way that these things these images what we see what we learn all change I'm not talking about censorship I'm not talking about you know doing away with with with power differentiation I'm talking about consciously trying to add new stories other stories of mutuality education right now is male objectification well tell me about that well I know both Christopher and I have been approached to do Calvin Klein commercials marky-mark Wow it's come to this yes it it go ahead mark mark mark American bus stops and uh and videos with Madonna objectifying men and and that's sort of the next phase which may not be actually any better I mean it may be I think it's part of interesting feeling so under siege I mean equal judge there's no difference than this yeah I mean if you had Marky Marky Marky Mark were on that she I think objectification sucks to be stupid word and I'm fed up with it I think it's being overused like empowerment when I look at that picture if you want to hold it up again yeah I've got it I receive another prophet discovered what I see there is not just a social object though undoubtedly she is an object everyone else's is an object to everyone else yeah but I also see a subject um I mean it's a choose a great subject sex is a great subject right women are with male conversation a tremendous subject I'm told the same is true the other way around you know he's rejecting in other words if people talk a bit less about themselves and how the personal is political the whole area of contestation is all to do with their own psyche and their own needs and threads and feelings now and a bit more about Society how much are the others I think we might get on a lot better at the same time I mean men have a have compared women to perfect ideals this was a subject of theirs might leave waiting to be taken minutes right but but the point is that when women are comparing men to perfect ideals now looking at Marky Mark's grabbing his crotch and so on this is yet another way in which a male arena of privilege never been contested let's say they agree let's not underestimate that men have always I mean the idea that men should be strong that men should be physically strong that men shouldn't show their feelings I mean men have always had certain kind of perfect ideals which in their own way sort of repress them I'm sure what's what cheetah males that man men are starting to set ideals for instance of male beauty and they now have some economic power to have that actually means something and so now the power relation of woman scoping out Marky Mark and saying whoa check that out it's going to make the man next to her watching television feel the kind of insecurity that heretofore only women have tell them nobody was stepping up Marky Mark fed all people I've seen scoping I'm walking about like all the purchases of Playgirl or men oh don't be fooled I get such as this man seems to me that men have set the standards for males I think those are mr. mark for that women I mean the princess Camille Palio to bring her back up again to guess that the traditional male stereotype of men they should be a strong red butler who takes women by force because they really want is correct so it's confusing for men to hear that on the one hand and then you hear the other hand to hear from radical feminists that entire your entire gender role is a social construct and then in fact there is no difference between men and women do you oh this is I'm gonna know and yes when I ask I'm sorry I'm seeing men rope toward a new they're trying to find a new image of masculinity that is a responsive and nurturing but not wimpy I'm seeing a whole spate of fatherhood films in which they're very powerful male characters like Clint Eastwood are sort of taught how to love and nurture children relate to women is that does that relate to the kind of groping the dark that some men are trying to shed rigid armatures of masculinity and find something that's sort of a little better something other than baying in the woods yeah I mean I talk to Clint right before I came on he said exactly that and he said brother he said yes you and I together Oh thinking I know knows wrong funny I think I think this is an interesting point but I I don't know why that's such a hard conflict to do for most of us it depends on how much I trust my god I sound old-fashioned I mean and crusty too but just lightly used to be an argument you know among feminists but can it be true the story of arrow was written by a woman you must have will have this arguments and when I read it I think it's very clear was written by a woman but I think was written by a woman with men in mind some women will admit we might even ask you since letting Google hangout having rape fantasies that aren't completely pleasure less but that's up to them it doesn't mean that it doesn't it doesn't mean but they're entitled to do that it may it may be pleasure also nice to imagine being ravished well know it but it doesn't that doesn't mean anyone has the right to jump out while you're trying to get the groceries home in Manhattan I do know that part of the reason women have this fantasies is that Hollywood puts a glamour eyes sexxxy raping one movie out of eight so little girls grow up not seeing images that you know dissolve met women who know how much gives the movie yeah you think it's just naturally I would I be I have been told by women who trust me another one yeah okay yeah they do have such anybody's working and I think it would be insulting to me to say oh I see you have this fantasy you've been watching too many movies that would be an incredible thing but there'll be very poor reward for a woman revealing her her intimate thoughts to you wouldn't it excuse of being questioned I just think it's obvious that when women have hot erotic images of female desire and mutuality they respond to those just as if all they ever get to see or glamorized rape scenes that's how they imagined sexuality same with men but there's gotta be some part of the human being that's not that's not just the media I mean it's not just that we see this image of Cindy Crawford it goes right into our minds and we have to I know I I do think that men we probably have fantasies of yielding themselves and ravishment and being overtaken and swept away if they had access to those images too I think that that's part of the human desire yeah from a doorway were you asking what what makes it so hard for men to to reconstruct themselves I think is that what you were saying yeah I think it's really the seed that masculinity as we've defined it up and done wise the alternative went versus being well it's the seat of your power I think I mean I think that most male power comes from being in control being superior over all of the other different people who are under and to and to have a movement a male movement that would force men to sort of abandon that falsely constructed notion of superiority would really be painful for a lot of men very difficult and I think that that is really a problem yeah I think that God what does that feel like to lose an empire went exactly as an English person as you say it can be a tremendous relief I've heard this man really yeah speaking of English I feel it I understand what I understand the metaphor well I wasn't suggesting that it's that I mean you might not know and what my friends are significant was read some of the new feminism say just that that it's a relief to imagine that I'm sort of strong women are sort of helping to dismantle that the own onus of having to do all of this I think the way it's gonna work is that women are going to mean wanting to we're talking about earlier about whether it's being seized or negotiated I think sees basically is the way it's gonna work I mean you see I think mr. Ontario strong men always like strong women I mean don't you think that's time I think that's all it's not enough I'm not invariable you think that's a cliche well I think what does that mean I think when you're saying strong men boys like strong women I don't know I don't think strong men have anything to fear from wrong women and and and somehow there is not in emasculation or a castration or whatever term you want to use from aggression by women being aggressive women being honest women being all that saying I want that I wonder we kind of Owen president long ago we would have had women CEOs I mean if what if men really appreciated own it's it's wrong in the sense that you mean it which i think is self-confident right as opposed to strong any sort of insecure I'm talking exactas you know very few men who are who are sort of confidently strong in themselves and don't need to feel stronger than in order to be strong that's acknowledgement to live with someone who's really an equal demands a lot of consciousness and responsibility from women and men too and I acknowledge a fire with fire that sometimes when I'm tired or worn or out or having low self-esteem or whatever I can imagine fantasizing the same kinds of idiotic fantasies of you know being fed we might you go be fed by the opposite gender that men imagine when they think of Cindy Crawford on her knees or should the same gender by the same time thank you you absolutely I'm not founded by the Clinton but since we're on the subject you know it's a matter of I'm the brains neither Clint he's little but there's a detect there is no tragic story about how they met which is told by her we're just there in the library mmm Lowell I believe and she gets up and walks over to this guy bill as it happens and says if you're gonna keep looking at me like that it's time you knew my name the story about her eyes that I've heard that I like right I didn't do nothing well you know when you think of and when you think of what you know it should be that way what is now going on in the libraries and campuses of this country where many women are so sitting on opposite sides of the city looking at each other sort of juvenile I'm glad you know energy and the far more common thing that I see and I've been like 40 colleges in the last year is campuses where no one has ever heard of date rape is something that is not right colleges where you know mentioned this it's a vested interest on college campuses cover up sex crimes against women because that's the last thing parents want to hear about and you've got to address that economic incentive to play it down it's so much more common to hear about you know the gang rape and that when the woman tried to press charges she was hounded off campus than to hear about the I think quite rarified situation well I mean you know the pamphlets that I'm quoting are the American College Health Association pamphlets which are given to every you know which are in every Health Center in every University and I came back the night works and I'm revitalizing the people that you're talking about I think that when I got those pamphlets my freshman year at Yale College I sort of briefly read them and thought oh how interesting I mean I didn't follow them as doctrine I didn't get all worked up about you know but I see students or I see stay you know I mean there's their students who are embracing these ideas I mean the play which I quote called calling it rape which was written by a Harvard student based on you know where she starts out with it to his coy mistress the Andrew Marvell poem as a poem about gate rape and verbal coercion and that this stuff is this stuff is in Student News no ways and Asik is you think the advantage of that definition of rape and harassment think that many people do disagree with me first of all there's there's definitely people are disagreeing with me with not about that point no one's interested in seeing expanding of legal definitions of rape or sexual assault but I do think that it's important to teach young women that saying a sexual no is 1/2 saying a sexual yes is the other half and I think I'm sort of we're probably all in the same boat what you don't just remove that do you know I don't I do think that we have to be careful when we teach people about issues like rape and sexual harassment that we aren't doing is teaching women about their vulnerability and teaching men that they are aggressive in teaching women to and this is precisely what I think you're talking about in your book also is teaching women not to form an identity especially a sexual identity around the idea of being victimized and I think we asked you about that is this is really what you know this is really what I'm saying and I've been distorted in it well I hear you I still think it's important to account for women's real victimization but here's here's one example the women at Brown University write the names of alleged date rape that's on the wall you might say and I don't want to put words in your mouth come on girls get a grip get a grip I would say that writing the name of an alleged attacker in a private feminine space where it's not fair to him it doesn't do anything the and that these are the elite young women of the country is stopping at victim feminism stead of moving on to power feminism which is take over the university put your tuition into escrow March etc until you get decent fair honorable sexual harassment and date reprieve ins procedures that are open and clear no I don't know whether I think those names in the bathroom are gonna mean anything I don't know what you think about it Columbia where they put they put pote you know posters with men's names publicly all over the campus ah you know who are alleged rapist there's a very important counterpoint to that which it which offends a lot of civil libertarians of all genders which is not the redefinition of rape the redefinition of evidence and the idea also that you can be accused by someone whose name you don't know right that's problematic I think the anonymity of the one even though it corresponds to the to the proclamation of the other you can be accused by an anonymous person that's that's against we're dealing with it's against the Constitution really acknowledging the reality here which is that in survey after survey we're hearing things like you know 51% of college men say that they would rape a woman if they could get away with it 41% of women 52% of men say that it's okay to rape a young Highschool it's okay to rape woman if she got him excited the study that your slippery statistics it's that it's that Disraeli quote you know there are three kind of lies lies damned lies and statistics okay that's not gonna lie here I'm sorry you haven't read the the primary sources it seems there's masses and masses of evidence about this fellow you just found it it's smut look it's smart to say that women should not create an identity out of their victimization it is absolutely right on target and we both say this in different ways I stayed in fire with fire that there's it's more socially acceptable for women to seek power through victim status than by saying give me money give me status given a recognition give me sexuality but I still think that we can't build our castles on the sand we have to acknowledge that women let me just come back to tad one more time in this particle that I read in Esquire is coming out there that I've been tell me where when you left that having read this having talked to a lot of people including some people here at this table I mean where were we going and you use this term do me feminism and I mean we you also talk to a lot of lesbians you talk to them you knew and a lot of people who looked at the gay lifestyle and you incorporate a lot of this where did you leave it and where are we going and what was your sense of it well I think somewhat remember the last to interrupt I remember the last the last point you made into peace as I remember it was it you know the was a reference back to Lorena Bobbitt saying yeah that's a thing the man that I did a lot of what other women wanted it to stay attached to most I think saying man prefers attached and then the good news I felt talking with people like Naomi and Rebecca and Katie was that a lot women do too right I think to reiterate some of what I said the beginning there the the sort of the anger and the dark side has pushed things out to where we have the Antioch and we have Ted Kennedy putting a bill through the Center for kindergarten sobbing kindergarten arrest and that that pendulum has swung but I think the pendulum is just so beginning to go back to be a somewhere bridge to the oddity anger on the dark side had to do with the what the extension of where feminist thought was going in the 1980s yeah I think the sort of radical feminist idea uh that too grossly oversimplify that sex is bad and men or evil and sex and pornography makes them that way to sort of grossly a minority yeah no it has been blown up in video but not a minority it wasn't by much not by us and here is my dream right we've gone over this but I want to just come back one more time what happened to make people realize the need to write this kind of book out last time this title will be mentioned in this book by with fire after 10 it's an epi what what caused those who to recognize this that delayed to the do me feminism and you're one of them so just quickly I'm not sure what Dimmie feminism do made do amazed really what we use in the article on right weird roomie family do many fun yeah your do oh okay I'm glad to know our agent you know you're present at the birth of a new phrase I see that for me um writing and becoming a sort of a out feminist had to do with hearing so much again and again that young women were not identifying with feminism and feeling that that kind of alienation from a movement which has transformed their lives in ways that many of them don't even recognize and that can further alienate them from activism or thoughts or ideas that could enhance the quality of their lives made me really want to try to bridge it somehow to try to understand where they were coming from to try to put the put the feminism together with their lives okay relevant amount of time I thank you all let me just mention Katie's book is called the morning after sex fear and feminism on campus and they Omi's book is called fire with fire the new female power and how will change the 21st century Tadgh article coming out in Esquire your coming out in Vanity Fair at some point they're in and third waves is Rebecca's organization and I'll be here next time thank you for joining us see you next time

Channel: Manufacturing Intellect

Views: 190,819

Rating: 4.8851991 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: Or1_13OZhh0

Length: 54min 41sec (3281 seconds)

Published: Tue May 24 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/MinervaNow]

Hitchens’ career is the best example in the world of the perils of contrarianism, but here’s one of my favorite statements of his:

Since this often seems to come up in discussions of the radical style, I'll mention one other gleaning from my voyages. Beware of Identity politics. I'll rephrase that: have nothing to do with identity politics. I remember very well the first time I heard the saying "The Personal Is Political." It began as a sort of reaction to defeats and downturns that followed 1968: a consolation prize, as you might say, for people who had missed that year. I knew in my bones that a truly Bad Idea had entered the discourse. Nor was I wrong. People began to stand up at meetings and orate about how they 'felt', not about what or how they thought, and about who they were rather than what (if anything) they had done or stood for. It became the replication in even less interesting form of the narcissism of the small difference, because each identity group begat its sub-groups and "specificities." This tendency has often been satirised—the overweight caucus of the Cherokee transgender disabled lesbian faction demands a hearing on its needs—but never satirised enough. You have to have seen it really happen. From a way of being radical it very swiftly became a way of being reactionary; the Clarence Thomas hearings demonstrated this to all but the most dense and boring and selfish, but then, it was the dense and boring and selfish who had always seen identity politics as their big chance.” —Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian

[u/champflame]

I don't agree with everything Hitchens said, and he was often quite an ass, but he was undoubtedly one of the best polemicists of our time.

[u/EmotionsAreGay]

This whole video is a tremendous time capsule. So many unwittingly foreshadowing lines. Notable include Katie Roiphie hitting the nail on the head of campus sex crime obsession, Naomi Wolf warning against 'victimhood feminism' which is now ascendant, Charlie Rose commenting on sexual harassment, radical affirmative consent demands being written off as fringe whackos, and Hitchens warning against campus kangaroo courts where the accused aren't told the name of their accuser or given the presumption of innocence.

I'm struck by how long this stuff has been brewing. Every point makes perfect sense in the context of today, yet are talked about with a freedom and alacrity that would be impossible today.

edit* Watching it again because it's so damned interesting. Naomi Wolf: "no one is going to disagree with you that expanding the definition of rape and harassment is a bad idea." Quaint.

edit* Another crazy moment is when Naomi Wolf talks about women writing names of alleged date rapists on bathroom walls at Brown. This is remarkably similar to the 'shitty media men list' that was such a MeeToo lynchpin. And guess who was recently entangled in reporting on the woman behind said list? None other than Katie Roiphe. It comes full circle. Seriously the dramatic irony in this video is unbelievable.

[u/neutralpoliticsbot]

that first statement by Naomi Wolf would probably cause feminist riots today. How could it go so backwards in so few years.

[u/AldoPeck]

26:00 mark

[u/Vwar]

Actually the first two MRA texts were written in the early 20th century. By a Marxist, interestingly enough.

The Fraud of Feminism by E. Belfort Bax at Marxists.org.

The Legal Subjugation of Men

Notably neither of these works are included on wikipedia's "Anti-Feminism" page, nor is GK Chesterton's "What's wrong with the world," nor are any of the later Marxist critiques of patriarchy hypothesis. "Anti-Feminism" is characterized strictly as a right wing phenomenon.

Like Bax, Chesterton claimed that even in the early 20th century, women were already more powerful than men ("When I think of the power of woman, my knees knock under me.") Female anti-suffragettes, of which there were many, made a similar claim. One of their pamphlets argued that women already occupied a "higher sphere" than men. In 1903, Susan B. Anthony noted in a private letter that women -- not men -- were the "primary obstacle" to female suffrage. Here's historian Lindy Beige in a short video titled "Woman-power in the past." And here's an interesting paper on the subject Female forms of power and the myth of male dominance.

One of Bax's criticisms of early feminism, which remains as true as ever, is that feminists sought the rights of men but not the responsibilities, and indeed were fiercely protective of policies that institutionally privileged women and girls. He also noted their constant appeals to chivalry, supposedly a "patriarchal" concept:

“Chivalry, as understood by Modern Sentimental Feminism, means unlimited licence for women in their relations with men, and unlimited coercion for men in their relations with women. To men all duties and no rights, to women all rights and no duties, is the basic principle underlying Modern Feminism, Suffragism, and the bastard chivalry it is so fond of invoking. The most insistent female shrieker for equality between the sexes among Political Feminists, it is interesting to observe, will, in most cases, on occasion be found an equally insistent advocate of the claims of Sentimental Feminism, based on modern metamorphosed notions of chivalry. It never seems to strike anyone that the muscular weakness of woman has been forged by Modern Feminists into an abominable weapon of tyranny."

Part of the problem of recognizing female power and privilege is that it is often paradoxical in nature: it derives in part from the illusion of weakness. Feminists are happy to exploit this.

[u/jongbag]

This isn't being mentioned, but everything Naomi Wolf is saying is incredible too. Perfect nuance of the situation that applies equally today.

[u/dubtonn]

Lol Chaz with the straight-faced "Lorena Bobbitt made the cruelest cut of all..." in the intro