Notice the title: Was this a clear-cut case of sexual harassment?
Already set up to put Colin at fault because he is a privileged, white male who should have been aware of the incredible nuances of power presented in the relationships. Lest you be led astray: Roiphe does not understand power.
Let's dig into the ending part of the post
Quote:Should a man, even an arrogant man, lose tenure and a long, lustrous career over what was probably a blundering excess of attachment, a burst of infatuated blindness? His mistake was that he was romanticizing what was happening, was carried away by an idea, by a feeling, and did not take the sensible or professional steps.
Nice way of framing the question and also reinforcing artificial demarcations between humans with a weak attempt at appealing to professionalism.
Quote:The sexual harassment script is so vivid in our minds that to a certain extent it doesn’t matter if events technically unfolded according to it; one can feel the writers of the original Chronicle of Higher Education article, and the New York Times piece, rushing past the details of the story, which are murky at best, to the meaty and wonderful generalizations.
Of course, with the obligatory nods that most will have reading it, as if they came to the conclusion that people who hear of sexual harassment really care about the victims. No, she is admitting that people aren't interested in the victim, the accused or the truth by the overarching narrative of male oppression of female victims and the desire to fire up the torches and gird themselves with pitchforks to take down people with "unearned power" (a very dangerous phrase, indeed).
Quote:One bright, ambitious young philosopher I met at a party says it doesn’t matter if there was a warm consensual romantic relationship. He said the problem of sexual harassment is so rife in philosophy that it is good for someone to be strung up and an example to be made. He went on to explain that Colin is precisely the kind of abrasive, arrogant man who would do something like this, and used as an example the title of his memoir, The Making of a Philosopher, which he viewed as a sign that Colin is narcissistic and full of himself. (I have by this point in my reporting absorbed that many people think powerful, arrogant men should be punished, though I myself like a powerful, arrogant man.)
Really the money quote of the article that even mentions the word I am so fond of using: narcissism.
First, consider the young philosopher. Of course, he admits to no statistics but wholeheartedly agrees sexual harassment is so rampant in philosophy that even the innocent need to be made an example of.
They should take all the bigots, all the racists, all the feminists.....
This young man is simply using the white-hot black & white rhetoric surrounding sexual harassment to express his own insecurities about his ability to compete with superior minds and admitting that he doesn't know how to think, but only what to think. As such, men like this will spend their living justifying the status quo - inventing arguments that bolster outrageous feminist claims, justifying this and arguing for that not because he believes an objective review of the evidence warrants that, but because he is nothing more than a vessel for his indoctrination.
Further, accusing Colin of being narcissistic? Sure, Colin admits to something like that when he describes his life as a character in the novel in the piece, but he does need to accuse of him of that. The sentence that Roiphe pens next explains why:
Quote:I have by this point in my reporting absorbed that many people think powerful, arrogant men should be punished, though I myself like a powerful, arrogant man
This is the most important line in the essay.
Our society teaches us that authority figures and bad people are only those that hold power. Take a look at the modern education system with regards to bullying. Do administrators and teachers actively encourage young kids to stand up for each other? Think about it, this system can only result children learning that bad kids exercise power over one another (intervening in other's lives) and only authority figures can step in clean up disputes between equals. See the problem?
Our society has transformed from one where men and women of high character, refinement and class were lauded (they obeyed the rules) to one where we worship those who pursue the heights of human achievement. Sure, there can be narcissism without greatness, but there can be no greatness without narcissism.
However, this situation is incredibly unstable as worship is heaped on the high achievers, but the many pretenders to the throne are left out in the cold. As Roiphe states, many people (egalitarians, power & privilege left-wingers, feminists) hate those at the top as they see themselves as personally entitled to those positions, but don't have the will, gumption and talent to ascend to those lofty positions.
So they cling to privilege analyses, advance arguments that the things white men earn and achieve were far easier for them to achieve because they were white and male. White men who aren't at the top will always be highly skeptical of that, simply because you don't rise to the top unless you either worked for it or lucked into it. Why do you think so many women congregate in Hollywood or shit sites like Jezebel? There really ain't much female talent there and it is all politicking and luck to get the coveted spots.
Women like Roiphe, however, are in a terrible place. Powerful, arrogant men have been highly attractive to women since the dawn of time. How can you simultaneously hate what you are hypnotically attracted to?
You can and it is part and parcel of our narcissistic society that is further splintering apart and more and more defenses (irony, nihilism and rage) are being erected to combat the complete and utter destruction of the person. Women like her pick men to whom they are not all that attracted to because they fear the terror of personal attachment to a sexy man. They have sex with men they find sexually attractive and leave it at that because it allows to them experience the rush of sexual attraction without any of the attachment.
I can't remember the member here, but he noted (at Dalrocks?) that a tell-tale sign a woman isn't actually into you is that she wants to be your girlfriend. You can tell a woman who is really into you because she is interested primarily in sex. Bingo. Women get to hide behind the social construct that men are the commitment-phobes, but really fear of commitment is a female fear for many obvious reasons. Divorce issues aside, men stand to gain the most from marriage because they cannot get sex, female attention outside marriage, as women focus their energies on sexually attractive men.
Reconsidering Roiphe, the palpable resentment with which she perceives the men she is sexually attracted to is a mirror to the anger
the beta directs at women. It means that positive relations between men and women are necessarily curtailed in ways that further atomize the individual and further contribute to the destruction of an American's inner life.
It should be noted that women like Roiphe are highly over-represented in media.
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Philosopher Colin McGinn falsely accused of sexual harassment
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