The One-Time Unwanted Sexual Advance
Laura Kipnis: “If power comes in more than one guise, you will not hear Wolf discuss it. Instead, we learn from her and others that unwanted sexual advances demean and disempower the recipient, and being unwanted, should never have happened in the first place. Brandishing the phrase is thus the first step in extinguishing the behavior, soon to be forever purged from the repertoire of human mating conduct. Just to be clear, we're not talking here about cases of ongoing unwanted sexual advances—or threats, or quid pro quo demands—otherwise known as "sexual harassment," which should be subject to the most severe punishment, including loss of livelihood, property seizure, and potential incarceration. Here we're speaking strictly of the one-time unwanted advance, as in the Wolf-Bloom contretemps.”
Kipnis says the unwanted sexual advance is a feminist issue because the advance came from someone in a higher position than the target. What follows that is an interesting discussion on sexuality as "low culture" and even how the phrase "unwanted sexual advance" implies that we can and do know what our desires are before they happen. Also, check out the last paragraph for how women can exert the power they have over men.
I heard about the Bloom-Wolf saga almost a month ago on Jay's weblog, linking to Camille Paglia's commentary of the incident.
Although unrelated to the Bloom incident, Naomi Wolf has been mentioned this weblog previously:
