Songs of Innocence and Experience: Dominance Feminism in the University

SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE: DOMINANCE FEMINISM IN THE UNIVERSITY

Kathryn Abrams

Editor's note: This article is based on a book review of Roiphe's book is ultimately unsatisfying, for The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism on both stylistic and substantive reasons. Its narrative is Campus, by Katie Roiphe. Reprinted by permission of bathed in secondhand nostalgia for a golden age of the Yale Law Journal Company and Fred B. Rotham sexual revelry that Roiphe never witnessed. Its and Company from the Yale Law Journal, vol. 103, subtext that sexualized oppression ismainly a prob- pp. 1533-60. lem inside women's heads-is absurd outside the Roiphe describes and makes rarefied atmosphere Roiphe's Feminists have had notorious difficulty handling little sense within it. Its relentless portraits of shrill challenges from within our ranks. The "sex wars" campus leaders and their sulking, maladjusted fol- book voices the struggle, in which opponents of pornography and lowers will try the patience of all but the most advocates of sexual expression tarred each other generous feminist readers. Yet the book's larger mes- concerns of a with claims of false consciousness, produced linger- sage is one that feminists cannot afford to ignore. As ing hostilities. Mainstream feminists first decried the a student drawing on recent experience, Roiphe subset of race critique as freighting their efforts with "extra speaks from the vortex of the controversy. While baggage" and only slowly recognized that it exposed her rhetoric reflects the current taste for mocking feminists, women a dynamic of erasure within feminism itself. In the "political correctness," her concern with women's wake of the antagonism and wasted effort produced fear-filled abdication of the sexual realm has a more old enough to by those failures, some feminists have voiced an established pedigree. unsteady resolve: to give ear to the unorthodox in Roiphe's book voices the concerns of a subset of have participated feminism, to attempt to reconceive feminist efforts feminists, women old enough to have participated to dominate along pluralist lines. in the "sex wars" and young enough in the "sex wars" That resolve has been challenged by the emerg- "Generation X." These women worry about whether ing controversy over "date rape" on university cam- depictions of pervasive male aggression and coer- and young enough puses. Camille Paglia fired the first shot, charging cion imply female passivity and whether advocacy that campus rape policies resurrect parental protec- of expanded legal protection signals a return to to dominate tion, creating a generation of women unable to paternalism or undermines a woman's assertion of individual responsibility for her own direction and enjoy the "sizzle" of sex or protect themselves against "Generation X." its inevitable excesses. Paglia's scattershot cultural security. They want to fight against the oppression of indictment and adulation of a dark, immutable male women without surrendering their belief in the sexuality ("guess what, it's hot") confounded her present possibility of women's agency. The publica- message and made it difficult to gauge her target. Yet tion of Roiphe's book provides an occasion for femi- Paglia's challenge has been seconded in ways that nists who do not share her views to think seriously are more difficult to ignore. Writing in the New York about how to respond. Times Magazine, Katie Roiphe warned that exaggerated claims of date rape "betray feminism" by por- "DOWN BY LAW"? traying women as fragile, vulnerable, and unable to Feminists might begin by disaggregating the parts of negotiate the "libidinous jostle" of contemporary the negative imagery Roiphe invokes. One reason life without paternalistic rules and restrictions. With that women within the dominance framework are the publication of her book The Morning After: Sex, viewed by critics as passive or dependent is that they Fear, and Feminism on Campus, Roiphe adds to the rely on mechanisms provided by the state, the uni- date rape critique the voice of an author explicitly versity, or other institutions to challenge sexualized concerned about the future of feminism. injury. July 1994 13 We might ask, first, why the resort to state or preted. Most people interpret the actions of those other quasi-legal protections should connote depen- around them in light of stereotypes, which include dence, vulnerability, or passivity. In fact, recent not only stigmatizing caricatures but also shorthand memory offers potent counterexamples of groups explanations that help people assimilate complex whose resort to law was not associated with images of aggregations of facts. One factor that encourages the vulnerability or dependence. Black litigants in 1960s disparate imagery remarked above isthat the actions school desegregation suits were not viewed by ob- of the groups "blacks" and "women" tend to be inter- servers as "cowering" behind a wall of legal rights. preted according to different stereotypes. Women They were depicted as asserting themselves, claim- invoking legal protections may be characterized as ing their rights, and pressing strongly for the rectifi- dependent or vulnerable, because women, as a group, cation of injustices. Why are 1960s blacks (a group have often been characterized as vulnerable and that included women) and 1990s women (a group dependent. Moreover such characteristics have ex- that includes blacks) depicted in such different ways? plicitly been invoked, sometimes by women, in seek- One explanation may be that civil rights activists ing state intervention on their behalf. were prepared to rally, march, engage in nonviolent An additional piece of the puzzle-that ex- Black resistance, and expose themselves to considerable plains why black litigants have not been character- physical danger, in addition to litigating their cause. ized in that way, although some of them are women, litigants in Yet feminist activists also rely on methods other and female litigants have, although some of them than litigation; critiques of feminist rallies and edu- are black-is provided by the analysis of Kimberle 1960s school cational initiatives occupy much of Roiphe's book. Crenshaw. Crenshaw argues that cultural imagery Other factors seem to be at work in shaping contrast- relating to blacks reflects popular perceptions of desegregation ing images of the two overlapping groups. black men, whereas cultural imagery relating to One factor may be the mediating stereotypes women reflects popular perceptions of white women, suits were not through which the actions of each group are inter- thereby dichotomizing the relevant imagery in ways viewed by observers as "cowering"

behind a wall of legal rights. that would not be possible were the images to ad- with some women's experience of, or aspiration for, dress the experiences of black women. autonomy. Changing social views of government intervention may be a second factor shaping the diver- WOMEN'S VICTIMIZATION AND AUTONOMY gent perceptions of the resort to law. Black civil WOMEN'S rights litigants may have escaped characterization as But why is a given woman's experience of, or aspira- vulnerable or dependent because the government tion for, autonomy inconsistent with the recogni- protection invoked by litigation was not, at that tion of socially created obstacles that prevent many time, understood to imply dependence. A Reagan- women from addressing sexualized injury on an indi- era mobilization of public sentiment against Great vidual basis? When feminist theorists say that we Society programs has resulted in a reconcep- should permit women recourse to law without re- tualization of governmental protection; it is now quiring them to address offenders on their own, they more likely to be construed as conferring an un- are not necessarily saying that women are intrinsi- earned advantage or as connoting the dependent cally unable to resist acquaintance rape or speak straightforwardly to sexual harassers. It is important, character of the beneficiary. As the increasingly Ciov er- acrimonious debates over affirmative action and in light of critiques such as Roiphe's, to ask how to the detri- welfare reform have demonstrated, these images those positions have become confused, mental protection now impede African American men and women, as ment of feminist efforts at reform. on a group well as women of a variety of races. How the revelation of constraints is now more likely A third reason for the divergence in the images comes to be understood as a statement implicating that re- may be the unexamined assumption of a public- any given individual is the first question to be construed as private distinction. Exclusion from a school system quires attention. The confusion reflects, in part, a The decision is, according to this framework, a public wrong, misapprehension by feminism's critics. conferring an which makes (public) legal redress entirely appro- to authorize legal intervention in response to par- priate. However, sexualized injuries-particularly ticular acts may imply no statement whatsoever unearned those such as date rape and sexual harassment that about the acts' victims. Laws that make theft or occur between acquaintances-are thought to be assault a crime make no statement about the capac- advantage or as private wrongs. Despite the fact that they have been ity of victims and require nothing more than that rendered public by the creation of a legal claim, victims give evidence. Even laws that premise inter- connoting the some critics persist in seeing their prevention or vention in part on the difficulties faced by victims in rectification as a private matter, a matter of indi- effecting private resolution do not claim to describe dependent vidual responsibility. Thus the resort to legal means all members of the victim class. They may be based in such cases represents the failure of individual on the probability of barriers to individualized re- character of the responsibility-the woman's responsibility-to pre- sponse or the probability of barriers in the most they are not inconsistent with the vent or resolve the problem. serious cases. But benficiary. Feminist theory attempts to explain why reli- possibility of an assertive response by an individual ance on that distinction is inappropriate. It is short- victim, nor does the existence of such a response cast sighted to call a sexualized injury private when the doubt on a legislative scheme. creation of a legal claim acknowledges its social However, the connection between group-based consequences. Interactions in the "private" realm statements and individual inferences is not based are so critically shaped by influences that have their wholly on a misunderstanding. The emerging link origins in the "public"-from economic inequalities between dominance theory and the rhetoric of re- to institutional sanctions that reinforce gender role covery may also contribute to the confusion. A expectations-as to make a rigid boundary between recovery approach supplements the social-victim the two incoherent. That analysis explains why message of feminist theory with an emphasis on private responses may be unavailing and why the individual victimization. Its focus on individualized resort to law itself represents no failure. Yet it also response to injury, as Roiphe notes, can make the highlights a different aspect of the negative imagery experience of the victim central to participants' self- in question: a female victim so multiply compro- conceptions. Its suggestion that the world is full of "walking wounded" mised that she is unable to avert or address such who have not yet discovered injuries herself. It is an image that is inconsistent July 1994 15 their injuries creates a personal parallel to domi- realized under present circumstances. Other theo- nance feminism's political claim that practices such rists have rejected the notion of a universal, presocial as rape and spousal abuse are more pervasive than human nature in favor of a view emphasizing social most people suspect. construction. In their view, the most salient charac- Yet, contrary to Roiphe's suggestion, that con- teristics of people are forged in the limitless domain junction is neither the intentional product of domi- of the social, by singular or multiple structures of nance theorists nor the inevitable result of their oppression. Group-based characteristics and con- arguments. One can read reams of dominance theory straints are neither exceptional nor demeaning; they without encountering the rhetoric of recovery; even are, rather, predictable incidents of social construc- in Roiphe's critical exposition, MacKinnon prods tion. Such theorists, in general, seek to displace students toward concerted political action rather liberal precepts but may also endeavor to accommo- than self-absorption. If that merger has become a date them. Seeking partly to explain the possibility problem, it is more indicative of a reversible mistake of resistance under assumptions of social construc- in feminist strategy than a substantive flaw in the tion, some theorists have described in that context a theory of women's sexual victimization. limited human agency-the capacity to maneuver How the notion of constraints on women's within institutional or cultural constraints. Feminist ability to respond comes to be understood as an Those efforts at revision, modestly successful at "insult" is a more important question. Here a crucial the level of theory, have encountered greater barri- legal advocates do factor is the widespread assimilation of liberal pre- ers in the areas of law and popular discourse. Lay cepts. According to liberal theory, the qualities that critics of a dominance-based vision do not always not simply, or even are most distinctive and valuable in human beings understand the extent to which dichotomous as- are those that inhere by virtue of their universal sumptions about autonomy and incapacity affect primarily, advance human nature. Prime among them is autonomy, the their thinking or the fact that alternative assump- ability to direct one's life through the exercise of tions are possible. Those who understand their as- arguments about unencumbered choice. For those who have been sumptions in a more self-conscious way may cling to socialized to an incompletely reflective acceptance the notion of unencumbered choice, if not as a autonomy, social of such precepts, there is something doubly insulting present description, then as a statement of aspira- about being identified by apparently contingent, tion or an expression of potential. They may find construction, or nonuniversal, group-based qualities and being de- notions of partially compromised autonomy discour- scribed as unable to transcend the psychological or aging or see notions of a complex, divided self as the decentered economic constraints that those qualities impose on inaccessible and off-puting. autonomous self-direction. To be a woman con- In the legal context there are other problems. self. They seek strained by the incidents of a sexist society, in this Feminist legal advocates do not simply, or even view, is to suffer a kind of compromised personhood. primarily, advance arguments about autonomy, so- instead to win Addressing that argument has proved a difficult cial construction, or the decentered self. They seek task, as dominance feminists have been obliged to instead to win discrete legal battles. The latter goal discrete legal respond both to its underlying premises and to the may initially be furthered by accepting rather than complicating contexts in which they have been challenging the liberal assumptions of legal decision battles. applied. makers. That response has enjoyed the greatest success Feminists working in the area of spousal abuse, in the realm of political theory, where liberal pre- for example, chose to counter decision makers' cepts are subject to the clearest articulation and assumption that battered women exercise unencum- response. Dominance feminists and others have chal- bered choice by interposing images of unusual pas- lenged the notion of autonomy as the incident and sivity or incapacity (i.e., "learned helplessness"). measure of personhood from a range of different That strong account of compromised capacity did starting points. Theorists more sympathetic to lib- not challenge judges' assumption of autonomous eral premises have sought to integrate descriptions choice but highlighted the possibility of exceptions of partially compromised autonomy into liberal created by extreme circumstances. While the strat- theory, depicting unencumbered choice as a human egy was initially successful, it set in motion a series of potential that is only incompletely and differentially damaging dynamics. Battered women recoiled in confusion and denial from the images of exceptional 16 Cornell Law Forum passivity; judges who used such images in an excul- patory fashion in the context of battered women's self-defense began to use them punitively in related custody proceedings. When battered women's advocates offered more complex, less fully compromised images of their clients, judges heard unqualified images of incapacity. Their commitment to a dichotomous world of autonomous individuals and pathological exception, reinforced in some cases by the early arguments of battered women's advocates, made it hard to understand that advocates were interposing an unfamiliar image of human possibility. A related dynamic may play a role in the acquaintance rape debate. To counter the widespread belief that women exercise free choice in the context of sex with acquaintances, dominance feminists have stressed a pattern of cultural and institutional practices, culminating in the actual sexual encoun- ter, through which women's autonomy has been largely negated by male sexual coercion. Women's constraint, in this account, is no longer a narrow exception; it is, rather, part of a dichotomous depiction in which autonomy remains the norm, but women, as a class, are prevented from achieving it. The topsy-turvy social world of The Morning After be specific to the circumstances of a group, the Kathryn Abrams is a attests, in exaggerated form, to the responses that distance from a condition of unencumbered au- professor of law at the may be generated by that depiction. Although some tonomy is more widely shared. Finally, feminists will Comell Law School and women feel vindicated by the revelations of male need to address the features of the legal world that an associate professor in domination, others have begun to recoil from the make accounts of partially compromised autonomy Comell University's wholly compromised image of women they believe or complex, divided identities difficult to accommo- Program on Ethics and Public Life. it suggests. In addition, many participants, habitu- date or comprehend. As the larger task of concep- ated by their own dichotomous premises and by the tual transformation proceeds, however, feminists strong account of the domination of women, have must also respond to the need for a more practical become unable to discern the more qualified ac- education, particularly in the university setting. counts of both male and female agency that have sometimes been offered by feminist advocates. CONCLUSION Feminists must consider how to integrate the It would be wrong to view Roiphe as the primary more complex accounts of human nature and agency instigator of the kinds of inquiries outlined above. that have informed recent theoretical discussions At best, her narrative reiterates, in less nuanced into popular and legal debates. Although that task is form, critiques that were offered a decade ago by only now at its inception, it is possible to sketch its Ellen Willis, Joan Nestle, and others; at worst, it general outlines. It will require, first, mobilizing the reduces the vexed territory of contemporary women's appropriate imagery in describing the lives of women. lives to a problem of their own making. Yet seizing Contradiction and complexity, shifting combina- the attention of a politically complacent public, as tions of choice and restriction, will need to be de- we learned in the 'aftermath of Anita Hill's testi- picted in concrete terms that a range of audiences mony, is a large part of the battle. If Roiphe's book is can understand. The task will also require an inter- vivid and tendentious enough to bring those issues pretive framework that emphasizes that such com- before a wider public, even so flawed a work can plex, constrained images are not exceptional or make an important contribution. pathological; though the particular constraints may July 1994 17 411

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