Heterophobia: Sexual Harrassment and the Future of Feminism by Daphne Patai

When reading such a brilliant, well researched, well considered book, as Heterophobia: Sexual Harrassment and the Future of Feminism by Daphne Patai, it is sadly true that radical feminism, that perverse ideology and those who generate the increasingly proven false fear monger ing statistics of women’s study, simply will not expose themselves to such a work. When Hoff-Summers wrote ‘Who stole Feminism’ she was ahead of her time noting then that women’s liberation and the suffragette movement had no relationship to the modern male bashing anti humanity ‘feminism’ of this day.

Daphne Patai has done a remarkable job of exposing the Sexual Harrassment Industry critiquing the ever expanding domain of ‘Sexual Harrassment’ and the financial and influential rewards of promotion of this very lucrative and powerful position.  Throughout her book she points to the irony of the ‘apparently powerless victims’ gaining incredible victory after victory in a matter of a very few years.  Sexual Harrassment claims have become the ‘new whiplash industry ‘. Instead of ambulance chasing lawyers there are now countless hoards of social activist warriors ready to descend like locusts on the ‘accused’ whether innocent or otherwise.  She points to Andrea Dworkins claim that ‘millions of men want a woman at work to suck their cock’ which were it to be considered of any other group would be the lowest of hate speech. Imagine saying that black men want black women at work solely for oral sex. It all works only if one accepts the under pinning feminist ideology as stated by Catherine MacKinnon author of the 1979 highly influential Sexual Harrassment of Working Women. ‘Sexual Harrassment ....eroticizes women’s subordination....It acts out and deepens the powerlessness of women as a a gender, as women. ‘

What is deceitful is that there is no mention of the traditional sexual ‘power’ of women over men and the many ways they use this power to achieve upward mobility and success.  The other most successful writer in the Sexual Harrassment Industry has produced a work that simply never addresses the ‘innocent’ and ‘false accused’. Indeed the insanity of this industry is to argue that women ‘don’t lie about sex’.  This claim is as ludicrous as to say Nazi’s  would never gas Jews yet it’s exists throughout the Sexual Harrassment Industry.  Patai argues this is because the underlying purpose of the Sexual Harrassment Industry is creation of money, jobs and essentially the destruction of male and female relationships by increasing beurocratic barriers mostly orchestrated by quasi legal administrative bodies fearing principally for their own positions and unwilling to risk saying no to a sterile movement. Better to outlaw ‘hugging’ and accept that despite the usual argument of ‘power’ male students obviously sexually harass female teachers because it’s not about anything more than destruction of the heterosexual relationships.  

She moves through each of the major cases  in the history of the Sexual Harrassment Industry’s increasing destruction of freedom of speech and expression and increasing power victories while claiming victimship.  She identifies the misuse of language to create a propagandistic halcyon cry  of ‘the skies falling’ ‘every woman has been a victim of rape’ to generate class size and industry influence.  She notes that there is never a discussion of what is ‘trivial’ versus ‘serious’ and everything from even the ‘male gaze’ in a public space  is considered traumatic and ‘very serious Harrassment.’  She shows how increasingly the words ‘Sexual Harrassment’ are replaced by ‘discomfort’ and that the language is manipulated routinely implying objectivity to a purely subjective and utterly biased fiction.  Discussing the industrial growth of the Sexual Harrassment Industry she states that it would be ‘refreshingly honest if feminists were to say, ‘tough you men had a good run for your money, now we’’ve got the winning hand’ . Instead feminists dress up their game in utopian jargon and greater justice......as many critics have pointed out....were extreme feminist causes to succeed it would be just another instance of one abusive group being replaced by another.’

She quotes Jeffry Rosen’s comment that MacKinnon has ‘nearly won the war to transform Title VII from a law that bans sex discrimination to a law that bans sexual expression’.  To get more of the ‘pie’ the Sexual Harrassment Industry have moved from the rare reprehensible historic workplace event to what others have described as a full fledge attack on ‘toxic masculinity’ as it appears in any aspect of society, and the key to understanding this is that ‘all masculinity’ is ‘toxic’.  

Farley discussed in contrast the upward mobility of women such as Elizabeth Ray, who was employed by Congressman Wilbur Hays for a job which she was unqualified for, and that these endless examples ‘testify to the ways in which women have always been able to use their sexuality as a means of upward mobility.’ By contrast she points out that the ‘power of the charge of Sexual Harrassment is, at the present moment, enormous. It can unleash formdable institutional forces against an alleged harrasser often with a complete absence of due process.’  She points to the suicides of those innoscents who are falsely accused and how the feminists consider their loss and death as acceptable. Like any radical ideologues the  feminists will use whatever means to achieve their ‘justified ends’.  

‘Victime of Sexual Harrassment (no matter how trivial) gain the status of ‘survivors’ tantamount to those who have suffered ‘brutal assault, torture, or persecution’. ‘ Not to be outdone she writes, psychology has jumped on the bandwagon providing endless counselling for those ‘grieving’ their experiences.  

She speaks also about the ‘Sexual Harrassment vigilantism’ that has extended in it’s attempt to ‘ban, or otherwise regulate consensual relationships between individuals who occupy ‘hierarchically ‘ distinct positions relative to one another.  According to MacKinnon ‘economic power is to Sexual Harrassment as physical force is to rape’.  However in the expanding domain of the Sexual Harrassment Industry, ‘asymmetrical relationships’  have moved to include ‘symmetrical relationships’ and even forgive ‘female professors who are sexually harrassed by students’ as evidenced in the male students negative ‘assessment’ of the  professor’s teaching. There is no question that the teacher may be lousy but now the student, if male , is sexually harassing her. .

She critiques the highly dubious Bernice R. Sandler and Robert J. Shop Sexual Harrassment on Campus, a Guide for Administrations, Faculty, and Students for it’s ‘bizarre propensity for reconceptualizing personal relationships largely in terms of power. ‘. In detail she points out it’s outrageous contradictions and actual abuse of statistics such that were it any other area of study it would be wholly disqualified from academic inclusion.  

She quotes sociologist Joel Best’s useful analytical model for ‘claims-makers and their techniques’, Best having studied the construction of victimization in the American life over the past decades.  Applied to the Sexual Harrassment Industry it’s extremely revealing and the patterns it exposes are profoundly disturbing.  I remember a psychologist I met decades ago who said the industry of America was ‘victims and caregivers’.  Best goes far beyond this to show how easily a ‘crisis’ of ‘victimization’ can be ‘created’ and those promoting it can receive powerful rewards regardless of the damage done to the society and individual. The elastic definition of ‘sexual harrassment’ and the ‘female antagonism towards’ men and the underlying antipathy towards heterosexuality are just the beginning.

Reading this amazing book and work of great scholarship I’m aware of it’s place alongside other works that discuss the ‘death culture’ of the west, abortion and euthanasia culture and Marxist hatred for the family.  It’s amazing in it’s detail and balanced discussion of what might well be described as the mental health epidemic of our day.   It’s significance is that it’s writing was at ground zero. 

Daphne Patai is an American Scholar , born 1943 in Jerusalem, Professor in the Department of Languages, Literature and Cultures at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. 

Heterophobia: Sexual Harrassment and Future of Feminism (American Intellectual Culture) 

Publisher rowman and Littlefield 1998