ELIZABETH FOX-GENOVESE
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Ms. Faulkner, "Knob, you don't belong here"? Since Ms. Faulkner was
indisputably a woman, one may safely assume that her lawyers would
pounce upon such utterances as clear evidence of sexual harassment. Yet
no explicitly sexual word would have been uttered. More to the point, the
charge that the "knob" does not belong at The Citadel was levied at ran–
dom at all first-year cadets, frequently several times in one day. So why did
Ms. Faulkner's claims to equality, notably her equal right as a woman to be
exposed to The Citadel's special form of discipline and abuse, not include
her responsibility equally to endure the taunts that she, like the rest of her
classmates, is demonstrably not fit
to
belong to the Corps?
My first point here is that co-educational environments almost
inevitably breed such ambiguities, which resourceful feminist activists have
been quick to label harassment. The evidence from West Point, although
carefully concealed, seems incontrovertible. Since the admission of
women, charges of sexual harassment have abounded, and more than sev–
enty-five percent of them are what I would call "soft" sexual harassment
along the lines of "knob, you don't belong here." Of course, they are
insulting to the dignity of the woman in question. And when they escalate
to the level of charges that the woman in question would never have
received a specific prize or honor or command had she not been a
woman-that she never could have won it in a free competition in which
raw ability alone counts-they may well be viewed as hurtful and even as
detrimental to the self-confidence of the woman in question. But at West
Point we are, after all, talking about the future officer corps of the United
States Army, and, at the risk of lacking in sensitivity, it is reasonable to
hope that the young egos of this elite would be steeling themselves to
withstand much greater challenges to their authority and personal dignity.
Sexual harassment policies depend upon some agreement about who
constitutes the reasonable woman, and contemporary experience confirms
that few concepts provoke more intense disagreement. The most salient
debate for our purposes is nonetheless the one that pits equity feminists
against gender feminists. Equity feminists, with considerable justification,
insist that women who seek equality should be prepared to shoulder its
burdens as well as its rewards. They do tend toward the view that few, if
any, substantive differences distinguish women from men, at least in the
arenas in which women claim an equal right to individual freedom and its
rewards. Gender feminists defend an otherwise more tenuous position,
although not because they differ from equity feminists about women's
right to the rewards of individual freedom. Their reservations apparently
concern the costs that the quest of individualism's rewards may reasonably
impose. And here, I confess, it would be easy for me to become very sharp.
For those of us who have indeed made our way through the snares and
