Heterophobia: Sexual Harassment and the Politics of Purity

by Daphne Patai

Book Overview

What does it mean to be a feminist today? Should women require special legislation to protect them from sexual harassment? Daphne Patai's controversial look at the nation's current epidemic of sexual harassment charges answers these questions and illuminates complex ideological struggles within contemporary feminism. By investigating the ongoing attempts to regulate sexual conduct, Heterophobia argues that women's pursuit of a "comfortable"...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0847689875
• ISBN13: 9780847689873
• Release Date: October 1998
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Superb

This book is like a breath of fresh air. With devastating precision, Patai sweeps away all the platitudes surrounding discussion of sexual harassment. She shows that due process is often deemed irrelevant after someone is accused of sexual harassment, that definitions of what constitutes "unwelcome behavior" are generally kept deliberately vague, that attempts to curb behavior are often fuelled by resentment and vindictiveness, and that the desire to control other people (put in motion by claims about power imbalances) is, at bottom, impossible to appease, let alone to achieve. The cure is far worse than the disease, as she usefully reminds us.Unfortunately, the very people who need to read this book will probably take one look at the title and run a mile. This is a real shame, because Patai's book is extremely thoughtful and deserves very careful consideration by men and women alike, whether pro- or antifeminist.

About Time!

This was an extremely valuable book that exposes the sexual harassment industry for what it is- a self-serving, dangerous bureaucracy, backed by heavy-handed governmental policies, that routinely runs roughshod over the rights of the accused. I read this book after a close colleague, an almost asexual, thoughtful man who is the exact antithesis of a sexual harasser, was accused of SH and subject to endless investigation. He was accused by a female underling who didn't even bother to come up with a single instance when the accused man even mentioned sex, even in the most tangential way. The effects have been devastating nonetheless. Trying to come to grips with what happened to this unfortunate man, I stumbled upon Dr. Patai's book. Frighteningly, I learned that the definition of SH is expanding so widely that even complimenting a female subordinate for a good paper, or a good term report (by a student) is now among the events that can lead to an SH charge! This is just one of countless ways that the SH industry is trampling the rights of accused, encouraging ever more charges, and destroying careers.I don't agree with everything Patai says. She is weakest when she goes beyond the empirical reality of the current situation and tries to explain it as a feminist conspriracy. None of this takes away from her exposure of the disturbing truth behind the SH industry.Read this book. Stop these people!

A huge help!

A close academic colleague of mine, the absolute antithesis of a sexual harasser, was recently accused by his graduate student trainee of 2 years. While none of the charges remotely resembled classic sexual harassment (there was never a single charge that the topic of "sex" came up directly or indirectly, and no hostile work environment), his accuser set extremely reputation-damaging wheels in motion simply by couching her complaint in those terms. My friend has spent thousands of dollars in his legal defense and the investigation has gone on for nearly a year. He has become deeply depressed and his productivity has been all but demolished. I grappled with the implications. How can a malicious student, unhappy with some other aspect of her interaction with her mentor or perhaps some other aspect of her life, wreak so much damage to a great guy with no fear of any adverse consequence to her? Is this normal practice in America in the 1990s, or an aberration?Dr Patai's work was a godsend in terms of helping me, and now my colleague, to understand what has happened. Sadly, this event is in no way an aberration. Accusers face absolutely no adverse consequence for making false or frivilous charges, but the alleged harassers are routinely denied anything resembling due process. I won't try to reproduce all of the incredible insights that Dr. Patai brought to the table, but the key things I learned include the following:1. The manuals, websites, and literature on SH endlessly encourage the filing of claims, with nary more than a passing nod to the rights of the accused.2. ANY male (professor, student, whatever) who has ANY interaction with female students is at risk. The "victim" gets to decide whether an offense has occurred and the bureaucracy grinds into high gear to verify that the offense occurred. 3. The system is maddeningly one-sided. It promotes the filing of trivial charges in countless ways, supports an industry of pseudo-experts, and makes it almost impossible for the accused to recover their damaged careers and legal expenses.I think that this sad state of affairs will cause huge injustices (Dr. Patai shows it already has) but ultimately makes people incredibly cynical about SH allegations, while weakening the perception of women as adult, independent-minded people. I know of faculty members (male and female) who now are starting to quietly refuse to serve as mentors for female students. The imbalance of power is outrageous.On the down side, Dr. Patai gets overheated and overly tendentious and repetitive at times. This does not detract significantly from the incredible service she has done by writing this extremely valuable book!

The Truth Hurts

This was a very provocative inside look at the virulent misandry that has infected a great deal of American academia. When a boy is frightened to ask a girl to a school dance for fear of being accused of sexual harassment, something is WRONG.

A calm and relentless expose of Sexual Harassment Industry

Daphne Patai's credentials as a feminist scholar were established some time ago by her work in Brazilian literature. More recently she has felt duty-bound by the same motivations to turn her attention to the imbecility and squalor of the flourishing Sexual Harassment Industry. The result is a lucid, systematic, concise, and explicit description of its animating ideology, contradictions, self-indulgence, flagrant injustices and extravagant goofiness. In this connection it should be noted that Prof. Patai can be quite harsh: she quotes them. There is not better book on the subject now available.