NO TEA AND SYMPATHY?:

The Anxiety of His Influence: Naomi Wolf recalls a night from 20 years ago. She once wrote about it differently. (MEGHAN COX GURDON, February 27, 2004, Wall Street Journal)

In 1997, Ms. Wolf recounted the incident in her book "Promiscuities," albeit veiling the identity of the amorous professor. In the book she makes clear that students knew that "Dr. Johnson" occasionally would "elect" girls with the right aura. One Saturday night, by pre-arrangement, the professor came over to her apartment with her manuscript and a bottle. In thrilled expectation, she had put out flowers, lit candles and taken particular care to dress attractively. And over the course of the evening she got room-spinningly drunk--a detail that does not appear in the New York magazine piece.

It's not surprising that in "Promiscuities" she confesses to feelings of complicity in the brief hanky-panky that ensued. Yet in the New York magazine exposé, there is no acknowledgment of her inner excitement or her romantic preparations--there's just the frightened panting of a tender fawn chased by a big bad predator.

There's so much ugliness in this story, and in the publicizing of it, that it's difficult to know where to start. For one thing, Ms. Wolf's tale illustrates two impossibly contradictory strains in the feminist culture that she herself promotes. Women must be sexually shameless--meaning shame-free--and society should encourage female erotic exploration. Men, however, must observe a phenomenal degree of purity--in language, eye-movement, intentions and most definitely in the placing of heavy, boneless hands on women's thighs.

This reverse-Talibanism may make sense in the steamy atmosphere of a women's studies class, but it withers into absurdity in the fresh air of real life.

One doubts he'll resort to it, but this does offer Mr. Bloom the Marion Barry defense: "The [young lady in question] set me up."

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 27, 2004 5:06 PM