considers the issues raised by Katie Roiphe's book 'The Morning After'. KATIE ROIPHE has been heralded by Camille Paglia, Andrew Neil and Living Marxism as the new star of post-feminist politics.
The Morning After, is seen as stunning critique of the feminist orthodoxy on rape and the liberal consensus of But after all the hype, Roiphe's 'unflinching look at today's sexual politics' doesn't live up to expectations.
In place of analysis, is a story tale narrative, peopled by shallow college kids who have walked straight out of novels by Bret Easton Ellis and the like.
Roiphe's overly impressionistic snapshot of American campus politics simply can't answer the interesting and important questions she raises when she says:
'By viewing rape as encompassing more than the use or threat of physical violence to coerce someone into sex, rape-crisis feminists reinforce traditional views about the fragility of the female body and will'.
Roiphe is right to argue for definitions which don't collapse the distinction between consensual heterosexual sex and rape.
She not only takes on radical feminists who view all intercourse as rape but also more mainstream feminists who question consent as a meaningful concept when women have less power than men. Roiphe correctly argues that if feminism is to fight for women to exercise choice in other areas of their lives, then consent has to be considered a meaningful concept in relation to sex too, notwithstanding power inequalities.
To 'maintain an idea of rape' says Roiphe 'we need to reserve it for instances of physical violence or the threat of physical violence'. Yet in the very next sentence she contrasts 'real' rape by a knife wielding stranger with 'bogus' rape by a former boyfriend.
This has nothing to do with the threat of violence (the aggression or otherwise of the "former boyfriend' is unspecified in Roiphe's example) and everything to do with longstanding definitions of rape based on the relationship of the attacker to the victim.
Does Roiphe really believe a former boyfriend cannot commit 'real' rape, involving the use or threat of physical violence? Or that it is not possible to have consensual sex with a 'stranger'?
Of course not. But in her desire to discredit the feminist orthodoxy, she comes close to endorsing the view that rape is a crime committed only by strangers.
If personal experience of sexual violence defines relations between men and women, and if the dominance of men over women is universal, then it follows that definitions of sexual violence must be inclusive of all women's experience.
Roiphe correctly rejects the notion of rape as the central mechanism of women's oppression, yet fails to give any alternative explanation. Her chief culprit seems to be the attitude of women themselves.
Roiphe accuses the rapecrisis feminists not only of damaging the women's movement, but, since women's oppression is a product of women's attitudes, of causing women's oppression by promoting a view of women as victims.
Roiphe sees the rape-crisis movement as part of American therapy culture, with 'take back the night' being 'march as therapy'.
Yet her own view is simply the other side of self-help — you too could be a powerful lawyer, doctor or executive career woman if only you didn't see yourself as a victim.
Of course women's oppression is not the result of the acceptance of the womens's passive status. We cannot throw off our shackles simply by the power of positive thinking.
Thirty years of gains are being eroded by the offensive of right wing governments in Britain and America. This has inevitably reduced the power of women, and divided men and women.
It is not, as Roiphe believes, that political correctness, the anti-pomography lobby and rape-crisis feminism are significant causes of the worsening position of women. But they do pose a For over ten years they have been placed centre stage of the feminist agenda, dividing and weakening the women's movement, and pushing other issues to the sidelines.
Like Roiphe, I believe that some feminisms are better than others. What we need is a mass women's movement which fights all attacks waged against women; which doesn't prioritise the issue of sexual violence on the spurious basis that rape is the cause, rather than a manifestation, of women's oppression; and one which has a notion of sexual freedom which includes the right to say yes as well as the right to say no.
This means taking on the dominant position of the anti-pornography and rapecrisis feminists. But what we don't need in their place is Roiphe's individualistic, "power' feminism, which says women's oppression is a state of mind and that it's all the fault of pc.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 58 12 March 1994, Page 14 Janet Dunn, Thomas