'DSK case exposes rift between feminists'

We have explained here how women's advocates do a disservice to rape victims by telling them that justice was not served in the DSK case.  Read our summary. I suspect any objective reader will agree.



Along the same lines, feminist Ludy Wadham writes for CNN:



". . . the Strauss-Kahn case has uncovered the divide, not between men and women so much as between old and new feminists. Old feminists, from Genevieve Clark to Erica Jong, believed that the goal was political and sexual freedom for women, not the political and sexual subordination of men.



"I cannot accept the idea that womanhood automatically implies victimhood, nor do I think that it is a desirable state of affairs when women see men as the enemy.



"The man-hating tirades of my female colleagues are nothing but puritanism in disguise and I suspect that our feminist forebears would be dismayed by the climate of inquisition that seems to dominate relations between men and women today." (Read the entire piece here)



Bravo!  Ms. Wadham isn't the first feminist to discuss the DSK case in an intelligent way, but hers is the bluntest criticism I've seen directed at other feminists.  It is criticism richly deserved. The "new" feminists she writes about have proven themselves too childish to have an adult discussion about a very complex, and very important, matter. They start and finish every discussion the same way: the male is guilty, period. If that sounds overly simplistic, then you haven't read our piece on DSK referenced above. That's exactly what they did.  On this basis, they have proven themselves unfit to be part of the public discourse on rape. (Even though this blog gives voice to the wrongly accused, we were careful to try not to prejudge the case. When Susan Brownmiller said she believed Ms. Diallo, we expressed our dismay about "believing" anyone when the facts weren't available to us.)



Persons of goodwill need to step up and insist that serious matters be discussed seriously, without the shrill, politicized, gender-divisive, knee jerk, and conclusory rhetoric.