To the NY Times Magazine Editor ... /s Donald Morton

To the Editor:

In defending the sexual harassment committed by Stephen Dobyns against Ms. Jennifer Cotter, Francine Prose ("Bad Behavior," New York Times Magazine, November 26, 1995, pp. 34, 36), continues the “white-washing” campaign conducted by his supporters from the outset. On her view, those who see sexual harassment in Dobyns's behavior are just humorless extremists (guilty not merely of being “melodramatic” and of “badly overact[ing]" but of conducting a “witch hunt"), while she and his other allies are “reasonable” people with a good sense of humor. In other words, citizenship (regard for the other) is for her simply a matter of having a good sense of humor: one can be violent and unleash brutal power upon the powerless as long as one is able to maintain one's sense of humor. By this measure, members of Hitler's SS were all good citizens—they joked while torturing their victims. No streak of puritanism there! In Prose's world of parody and play, Dobyns is only guilty of “bad behavior” which consisted mainly in using “salty” language. She stresses the merely “linguistic” dimensions of the case: “The allegations," she remarks, “all concern language."

It is interesting to see Prose (a novelist) follow a familiar pattern of many opportunistic writers. On the one hand, they emphasize the power of words (usually their own) when it suits their personal interests—when, for instance, they apply for National Endowment of the Arts grants and argue that without words, civilization as we know it will end and that they—as the guardians of words—should be subsidized with public funds. On the other hand, they then turn around and minimize the socially damaging effects of language in order to save the reputations of themselves and their friends. This is exactly the argument of TV corporate executives who defend their saturation of the public airways with “sex and violence," with the very programs that Prose and her colleagues then point to (in a strikingly Victorian dialect) as the mark of moral and social decay. This blurring double logic is the foundation of the sexual politics of Francine Prose, who claims that the university policies that led to finding Dobyns guilty of sexual harassment are examples of "blurred” and “smudged” (not clear) logic! If words did not have powerful social and political effects, then political repression would never be aimed at intellectuals and artists who wield them (as recently in Nigeria)—and yet it is, and sometimes it is aimed at them first.

Donald Morton

(English Professor at Syracuse University)