To the NY Times Magazine Editor ... /s Adam Katz, Ph.D.

To the Editor:

Francine Prose, in her commentary on the Steven Dobyns sexual harassment case unwittingly proves the point that many of us here who worked to publicize the case stressed: that conservative views on the nature of “free expression” go hand in hand with regressive attitudes toward gender equality. Those who see “free expression” as a “spontaneous” expression of the “self” can hardly be expected to be concerned with the issue of an environment which systematically maintains gender inequality—and which does so so thoroughly that explicit threats or punishments (the “quid pro quo” that, for Prose, makes sexual harassment “objective") are not necessary.

The problem is, one man's “free expression” is another women's “hostile environment." How? To take one example, alluded to by Prose: when a professor informs one of his students that she could use a good f---, sexual hierarchies and intimidation are introduced into the workings of the class, and does more to suppress “free expression” then Prose's so-called “witch-hunts” because students are made aware of the type of “answer" which is ready for them if they step over one of the “subjective” lines drawn by the professor.

Whatever she says, Prose is not interested in gender or any other kind of equality—that is why the “reputation” of a “distinguished poet and novelist” is so much more important to her than the “subjective” complaints of those who are treated as sexual objects in the classroom on a daily basis. For her, oppression is ultimately a “bad break," or a “fact of life," as is clear from her own experience of sexual harassment that wasn't really sexual harassment. This is of course a very convenient view for the privileged to hold. And, despite her commitment to “objectivity” (from someone who thinks her testimony on Dobyns' “character should out-weigh over a dozen witnesses), she "gleefully” distorts crucial facts of the Dobyns case—most significantly when she claims that he was suspended without pay for two years. In fact, this victim of a “witch hunt” was suspended with pay for a year and a half, losing only one semester of his salary, and thus with the rest of his suspension being in effect a paid vacation.

And, finally, despite her use of the favorite “anti-PC” scare tactice—insinuating [sic.] that a sustained commitment to real equality is a threat to “free expression"—it is in fact those who wish to de-politicize pedagogy, in the name of “free expression," “free inquiry," and the like who reduce oppression to a “private matter" and who thereby do the most to suppress discussion of the structural conditions enabling gender, class and other oppressions to continue. In other words, it is not a question of whether we “fudge” what Prose takes to be “natural” and "objective” lines between “private suffereing” [sic.] and “public transgressions"—rather, the issue is the need to draw a very firm line between political positions which seek to contest all forms of oppression and inequality and those which prefer to maintain the “freedom” to subjugate.

Adam Katz, Ph.D.

(Syracuse University Alumnus)