{"id":9714,"date":"2010-03-12T08:34:39","date_gmt":"2010-03-12T15:34:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=9714"},"modified":"2010-03-12T08:34:39","modified_gmt":"2010-03-12T15:34:39","slug":"reader-i-married-her","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=9714","title":{"rendered":"Reader, I Married Her"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tony Judt, a well-known historian, has written an engaging essay called “Girls! Girls! Girls!”<\/a> for NYRBlog<\/a>, The New York Review of Books <\/em>blog, about how our stance towards sexual behavior on (and, by implication, off) campus has changed over the years. I don’t agree with everything he says–and he would probably say it’s because I am a product of my (and his) times–but what he says is thought-provoking. Here are some snippets, which, taken out of context, may lose some of the irony that informs them in the original:<\/p>\n

Shortly after I took office [in 1992 as chair of NYU’s History Department], a second-year graduate student came by. A former professional ballerina interested in Eastern Europe, she had been encouraged to work with me. I was not teaching that semester, so could have advised her to return another time. Instead, I invited her in. After a closed-door discussion of Hungarian economic reforms, I suggested a course of independent study\u2014beginning the following evening at a local restaurant. A few sessions later, in a fit of bravado, I invited her to the premiere of Oleanna<\/em>\u2014David Mamet\u2019s lame dramatization of sexual harassment on a college campus.<\/p>\n

How to explain such self-destructive behavior? What delusional universe was mine, to suppose that I alone could pass untouched by the punitive prudery of the hour\u2014that the bell of sexual correctness would not toll for me? I knew my Foucault as well as anyone and was familiar with Firestone, Millett, Brownmiller, Faludi, e tutte quante<\/em>. To say that the girl had irresistible eyes and that my intentions were\u2026unclear would avail me nothing. My excuse? Please Sir, I\u2019m from the \u201960s.<\/em><\/p>\n

***<\/em><\/p>\n

[T]he anxieties of contemporary sexual relations offer occasional comic relief. When I was Humanities dean at NYU, a promising young professor was accused of improper advances by a graduate student in his department. He had apparently followed her into a supply closet and declared his feelings. Confronted, the professor confessed all, begging me not to tell his wife. My sympathies were divided: the young man had behaved foolishly, but there was no question of intimidation nor had he offered to trade grades for favors. All the same, he was censured. Indeed, his career was ruined\u2014the department later denied him tenure because no women would take his courses. Meanwhile, his \u201cvictim\u201d was offered the usual counseling.<\/p>\n

Some years later, I was called to the Office of the University Lawyer. Would I serve as a witness for the defense in a case against NYU being brought by that same young woman? Note, the lawyer warned me: \u201cshe\u201d is really a \u201che\u201d and is suing the university for failing to take seriously \u201cher\u201d needs as a transvestite. We shall fight the case but must not be thought insensitive.<\/p>\n

So I appeared in Manhattan Supreme Court to explain the complexities of academic harassment to a bemused jury of plumbers and housewives. The student\u2019s lawyer pressed hard: \u201cWere you not prejudiced against my client because of her transgendered identity preference?\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t see how I could have been,\u201d I replied. \u201cI thought she was a woman\u2014isn\u2019t that what she wanted me to think?\u201d The university won the case.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Here as in so many other arenas, we have taken the \u201960s altogether too seriously. Sexuality (or gender) is just as distorting when we fixate upon it as when we deny it. Substituting gender (or \u201crace\u201d or \u201cethnicity\u201d or \u201cme\u201d) for social class or income category could only have occurred to people for whom politics was a recreational avocation, a projection of self onto the world at large.<\/p>\n

Why should everything be about \u201cme\u201d? Are my fixations of significance to the Republic? Do my particular needs by definition speak to broader concerns? What on earth does it mean to say that \u201cthe personal is political\u201d? If everything is \u201cpolitical,\u201d then nothing is. I am reminded of Gertrude Stein\u2019s Oxford lecture on contemporary literature. \u201cWhat about the woman question?\u201d someone asked. Stein\u2019s reply should be emblazoned on every college notice board from Boston to Berkeley: \u201cNot everything can be about everything.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Full disclosure: One reason this piece engages me as much as it does, is that I have the same response as Judt to the question he poses at the end of his post:<\/p>\n

So how did I elude the harassment police, who surely were on my tail as I surreptitiously dated my bright-eyed ballerina?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Except in my case she was a dark-haired and compellingly dark-eyed woman from Iran. And I have made the answer my title.<\/p>\n

Cross-posted on It’s All Connected.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tony Judt, a well-known historian, has written an engaging essay called “Girls! Girls! Girls!” for NYRBlog, The New York Review of Books blog, about how our stance towards sexual behavior on (and, by implication, off) campus has changed over the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,31,34,134],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-feminism-sexism-etc","category-gender-and-the-body","category-sex"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9714\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}