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PARTISAN REVIEW
thickets of a world in which women were less than welcome, do tend to
value highly the ability to succeed by virtue of one's talents, determina–
tion, and sheer hard work. We may even be inclined to lose patience with
those who insist that the odds are so heavily stacked against them that the
world must be coerced into greater sensitivity and friendliness to their spe–
cific needs. And, at our less charitable, we may well be tempted to retort,
as our grandmothers before us might have:
'~If
you can't stand the heat, get
out of the kitchen."
From the perspective of the freedom of our society as a whole,
r
believe our position has considerable merit. The imposition of speech and
sexual harassment codes that aim only to protect the self-proclaimed weak
from the allegedly powerful, not to mention the army of bureaucrats
whose livelihood depends upon our purported need to be instructed and
workshopped to death, assuredly curtails individual freedom and personal
responsibility. The climate that nurtures such programs invites all of us to
blame someone else for our every fail ure to attain a desired goal. If women
are indeed so vulnerable as to need all this protection, then why do they
expose themselves to situations in which they cannot be sure they will be
safe from offensive jokes, indelicate stories, and an occasional remark about
their appearance or competence? The short answer is that most women,
who have children to support or a family income to contribute to, have lit–
tle choice. And the more energetically a woman seeks to secure and hold
the job that will pay her the best, the more likely she is to find herself
working cheek to jowl with men, some of whom may resent her presence.
To complicate matters further, the workplace frequently offers women
their best opportunity to meet a man whom they might wish to date or
even, eventually, marry. And we all know that failed romances, not
to
men–
tion rebuffed advances, constitute emotional tinderboxes of the highest
order. Thus, for one reason or another (and there are more than I have enu–
merated) , most women find it difficult simply to leave their femaleness at
home. So most of us, in one way or another, confront our male co-work–
ers as both workers, who deserve and should want, equal treatment, and as
women, whose sexuality exposes them to specific risks for which they may
legitimately want some consideration.
If the gender feminists were only asking that society acknowledge the
claims-however defined-of women's potential sexual vulnerability and
lesser physical strength, they might have more of a case than I have thus far
allowed them. As I understand them, they do not. To the contrary, they
apparently yield nothing to the equity feminists in their insistence upon
women's right to equality. Indeed, they differ only in how that equality is
to be acquired and sustained. Given my limited patience for what I con–
sider fallacious or illogical reasoning, I may do their position something
