Word: steinem
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...general, I want to go anywhere Gloria Steinem goes--right up to her recent op-ed piece in the New York Times in which she argued that even if all the allegations about the President turn out to be true, he is guilty not of sexual harassment but of simply making a few gross passes and each time dutifully taking no for an answer...
...Steinem forgot this: the law, at women's urging, has expanded so that even one pass, if egregious enough, can be legally actionable. Repeated efforts are not needed. The far better argument would be to admit that we, and the world, have changed since the Thomas hearings. For one thing, lots of men get it now. Women are heard loud and clear; one accusation alone can be ruinous...
...Gloria Steinem did not address this issue. Instead, she bent over backwards to exonerate Clinton--going so far as to claim, as so many naysayers of sexual harassment do, that the "power imbalance" was insignificant. She also drew sharp distinctions between the sexual harassment committed by Packwood and Thomas and Clinton's improprieties, because, she writes, Clinton has respected the "no means no; yes means yes" principle. He may have made "a gross, dumb and reckless pass at a supporter during a low point in her life," Steinem concludes, but he is not guilty of sexual harassment because he accepted...
...Steinem also makes a more convincing argument, although one that it is considerably harder to accept--at least for the young, inexperienced and idealistic--and one that she therefore spends less time developing. The real crux of Steinem's argument and the only persuasive aspect of it is simply an echo of the message of Jack Stanton: you've got to be a whore in order to change the world...
...even Gloria Steinem is a proponent of the Whore Principle, then is it something I and other young people should accept? The answer to that one still has to be, no. It's pragmatic, it's effective and it may damn well be true, but it's an insidious principle to believe in because it is capable of justifying just about anything in the name of social change...