Daphne Patai, currently a professor of Brazilian literature at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, spent ten years there with a joint appointment in Women’s Studies, which she has now discontinued. She is the author of articles and books in the fields of women’s studies, oral history, Brazilian literature, and utopian studies and most recently jointly authored with Noretta Koertge, Professing Feminism: Cautionary Tales from the Strange World of Women’s Studies. One can fairly say that as a one time feminist, she has now become a fierce critic of what she considers to be feminism’s excesses, particularly what she labels its "Sexual Harassment Industry (SHI)."

The large flaw in Professor Patai exploration is the conflation of two separate theses into one: one with some usefulness and the other completely false to my knowledge and experience.

Thesis #1 suggests that sexual harassment investigations which take into account primarily the complaints of persons not only arguing that they have been the victims of discrimination but also of words or behavior of a sexual nature that has made them feel discomfort may be encouraged to violate the due process and substantive rights of those against which their complaints are directed. She offers some examples of grave injustices that have been committed when alleged perpetrators of sexual harassment have themselves been victimized by complainants.

Thesis #2 maintains that there is a Sexual Harassment Industry (SHI) organized and maintained by radical feminists (lesbians) whose target is really (innocent) heterosexual interactions. These women hate men and are out to get them!

It is a shame that Patai has made this conflation which muddies issues and obscures her valid points — namely, that what makes one person uncomfortable may be welcomed by another and that we should not simply come down upon innocent erotically tinged interactions between consenting adults (or women old enough to handle mild sexual overtures) with a phalanx of deans, lawyers, faculty and student committees, the local sheriff and what have you.

I have personally seen both sides of this issue. As a Mellon House fellow years ago, I solaced Vassar students abused by Yalies, contemplated the rights and wrongs of student/faculty liaisons. The former could be dealt with along existing lines — rape was rape and the damage done to naive students by such was sometimes lasting and horrific. But in the mid sixties there was no neat and tidy way to deal with such events. It was up to the battered student to guide whatever the outcome would be with all the support that one could give.

Faculty/student liaisons were another matter. I personally find deeply offensive faculty exploitation of students who are prone to admire their faculty and to become involved in erotic relationships when encouraged to do so. There are faculty predators out there. Some of these were well known at Vassar and at least one was bounced by the then fiercely protective Sarah Blanding, President of Vassar, the year before I arrived there. Other relationships were, however, much more ambiguous. What to do with the student who slipped out her dorm window of an evening to reconnoiter with her attractive young ______instructor? Some of these happenings actually resulted in marriages in those days.

I still believe (in contrast to Patai) that students should be on moral grounds off limits — particularly for married faculty who sometimes use their teacher/student relationships to try out next year’s new model. However, I agree with Patai that such things are hard to legislate, enforce, punish. The local staff swore that Blanding used to give them an orientation lecture — "See, don’t touch.!" And she was a good lady who knew, I am sure, of the harm that could done to students by faculty’s sexual games.

Patia’s book has been around for a few years. I had not encountered mention of it previously, so I would gather that it did not get much play in this world of concerns. One has the sense that it was meant to be an in your face sort of thing. However, it does gross injustice to all the lesbians and radical feminists that I know. As some said to me in the intimacy of a faculty discussion of such things: "No, Ed, lesbians don’t hate men — they love women!" I took them at their word. And if any feminists express ire at men who abuse young women, I am with them all the way as the father of two daughters who have recently graduated from college. There ARE predators out there. In fact there are quite a few. I am all for the right sort of committees being in place at academic institutions for students to bring complaints of abuse — real or imagined.

Hopefully there will be more than simply naive administrative processes put in place to protect the due process rights of the accused and again, hopefully, we can minimize the resort to legal threats that can cut both ways and that too often compromise doing the right thing in such cases. Some of our academic institutions ARE notorious for covering up faculty abuses in order to protect their reputations and against damage suits by students who have been abused. I know of too many occasions when cover-ups have occurred in such institutions. Cover-ups are not unique to the military or to business organizations. They seem to be a part of contemporary American life in our litigious times.

So, B+ only for Patai for doing much research and reporting on sexual harassment. But a flat F for accusing her former feminist colleagues of orchestrating a sexual harassment industry directed against our romantic traditions. This is not so and it is as much libel to claim it as the defamation that Patai insists has been perpetrated against those who have been wrongly charged with sexual harassment on campus.

Edward Kent, who teaches social, political, and legal philosophy at Brooklyn College, CUNY, has been a member of the CUNY faculty seminar on Balancing the Curriculum (gender, race, class, and sexual orientation), the ACLU Church-State Advisory Committee, and the Columbia University Faculty Seminar on Human Rights. He served with his wife as a Mellon House Fellow at Vassar College, 1964-66.