To the NY Times Magazine Editor ... /s Jennifer Cotter

To the Editor:

As the student who was sexually harassed by and lodged a formal grievance against Stephen Dobyns, I believe that your readers deserve something more than Francine Prose's trivializing remarks about the case (NYTM, Nov. 26). Like many post-feminists today who are dismissing contemporary feminism as a revival of Victorian norms and practices, Francine Prose's main point in her tirade defending Dobyns (whose two year suspension from Syracuse University includes three semesters WITH pay—essentially three semesters of “paid vacation"), is that for a woman to put forward an accusation of sexual harassment against a teacher who has “merely” thrown scotch in her face, gazed at and made comments about her breasts, and shouted sexist remarks at her, shows a very Victorian sense of morality. Just calling those struggling against sexual harassment “Victorian” is, for these post-feminists, in itself enough “evidence” to dismiss the case. However, like all post-feminists who evoke the Victorians to marginalize feminism, Ms. Prose's fundamental premise is itself Victorian and so by her own logic should not be taken seriously. For both Ms. Prose and the Victorians, sexuality (as in sexual harassment) is largely defined by genital contact (so that sexual harassment involves only those cases in which a threat has been made for making such contact possible for the pleasure of the harasser). This notion that sexuality (and therefore sexual harassment) is limited to sexual intercourse is manifested in Ms. Prose's refusal to acknowledge anything short of trading “good grades for sex” as sexual harassment.

This is, of course, a strictly Victorian notion of sexuality and one which has been vigorously contested by modern feminism. Sexuality is not equivalent to sexual intercourse and sexual harassment is not primarily about genital contact: it is about power. Whether verbal, visual, physical or a combination of these, sexual harassment is a manifestation of a much broader system of institutionalized sexism that permeates all levels of social being in the workplace and beyond, connected ultimately with economic social injustice. This is why the points Prose so casually dismisses as “hilarious” (charges concerning “the hostile workplace," “patterns of intimidation," etc.) are in fact the essence of sexual harassment. Like all post-feminists who have to declare their feminist credentials ("I think of myself as a feminist... I believed Anita Hill") while trying to suppress feminism, Ms. Prose is haunted by her own complicity in the very structures of power from which she formally distances herself.

Jennifer Cotter

(English Graduate Student at Pittsburgh University)