I don’t agree with much of this by Laura Kipnis – for instance, I have trouble being that casual about university teacher-student sexual relationships – but I think her article, “Sexual paranoia strikes academe” in The Chronicle of Higher Education is raising some worthwhile questions about vulnerability and power.
Reading this article it strikes me that the over-simplification of sexual abuse/assault/harassment means that victims are only victims if they are ‘good people’ and conversely, abusers can only be that if they’re ‘bad people’. Realistically, both are ordinary people and there’s vulnerability all over the place. And ok, the woman in this situation might have forgotten that the man is also vulnerable. But he has forgotten that the woman he desires in a fairly objectifying way is actually a human, like him.
What struck me most, hearing the story, was how incapacitated this woman had felt, despite her advanced degree and accomplishments. The reason, I think, was that she imagined she was the only vulnerable one in the situation. But look at the editor: He was married, with a midlevel job in the scandal-averse world of corporate publishing. It simply wasn’t the case that he had all the power in the situation or nothing to lose. He may have been an occluded jerk, but he was also a fairly human-sized one.
So that’s an example of a real-world situation, postgraduation. Somehow I don’t see the publishing industry instituting codes banning unhappily married editors from going goopy over authors, though even with such a ban, will any set of regulations ever prevent affective misunderstandings and erotic crossed signals, compounded by power differentials, compounded further by subjective levels of vulnerability?
blue milk 
“The melodramatic imagination’s obsession with helpless victims and powerful predators” – See more at: http://m.chronicle.com/article/Sexual-Paranoia/190351#sthash.q0YVrysK.dpuf
Ugh. I was in an abusive relationship and I finally feel like the national conversation around domestic violence is validating my experience and doing good; I am being heard. The word ‘melodramatic’ just casts me straight back to the time when I thought no one would believe me, and my abuser told me I was over-reacting, too emotional, it was all in my head. I’m appalled and threatened by her opinion.
On the topic of people who abuse as ordinary: it really didn’t feel like it to me. It still doesn’t. It feels like there is this core of insanity in him that is just not ordinary. Yes, he has his weaknesses and once I know how to get to him, then I have a certain amount of power… But the solution to the problem of abuse is not simply for the victim to understand their own power or their abusers weaknesses. That’s not even the beginning to ending abuse – it’s just the easiest bit to get to, because culturally we are familiar with and comfortable with with telling women to fix the problem/work harder.
I’m less sure that any professor can force an unwilling student to drink, especially to the point of passing out. With what power? What sorts of repercussions can there possibly be if the student refuses? – See more at: http://m.chronicle.com/article/Sexual-Paranoia/190351#sthash.roZZoDsm.dpuf
I don’t think Laura Kipness understands intimate partner abuse in the slightest. Lucky for her that she is not aquainted with it; bad for the rest of us that she has a public forum for her ignorance.
Honestly, she protests and waxes lyrical like a person who is mad at being forced to give up their power. I’ve heard this speech before, so confidently declaring ‘but you don’t need protection from me! In fact you’re the one with the power, if anyone needs protection, it’s me!’