Feminist Accused of Sexual Harassment

Public Planet Books

by Jane Gallop

Sexual harassment is an issue in which feminists are usually thought to be on the plaintiff’s side. But in 1993—amid considerable attention from the national academic community—Jane Gallop, a prominent feminist professor of literature, was accused of sexual harassment by two of her women graduate students. In Feminist Accused of Sexual Harassment , Gallop tells the story of how and why she was charged with sexual harassment and what resulted from the accusations. Weaving together memoir and theoretical reflections, Gallop uses her dramatic personal experience to offer a vivid analysis of current trends in sexual harassment policy and to pose difficult questions regarding teaching and sex, feminism and knowledge.
Comparing “still new” feminism—as she first encountered it in the early 1970s—with the more established academic discipline that women’s studies has become, Gallop makes a case for the intertwining of learning and pleasure. Refusing to acquiesce to an imperative of silence that surrounds such issues, Gallop acknowledges—and describes—her experiences with the eroticism of learning and teaching. She argues that antiharassment activism has turned away from the feminism that created it and suggests that accusations of harassment are taking aim at the inherent sexuality of professional and pedagogic activity rather than indicting discrimination based on gender—that antiharassment has been transformed into a sensationalist campaign against sexuality itself.
Feminist Accused of Sexual Harassment offers a direct and challenging perspective on the complex and charged issues surrounding the intersection of politics, sexuality, feminism, and power. Gallop’s story and her characteristically bold way of telling it will be compelling reading for anyone interested in these issues and particularly to anyone interested in the ways they pertain to the university.

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Gender, Grad School, Education

112 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1997

About the author

Jane Gallop is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin -- Milwaukee, where she has taught since 1990. Before that, she was Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Humanities at Rice University, where she founded the Women's Studies program. At the beginning of her career, she taught in the French Department at Miami University in Ohio (she earned a PhD in French Literature in 1976). She is the author of nine books, and nearly a hundred articles. She has written on a wide range of topics: psychoanalysis, especially the work of Jacques Lacan; French feminism; psychoanalysis and feminism; the Marquis de Sade; feminist literary criticism; pedagogy; sexual harassment; photography; queer theory; close reading. While the topics vary, her writing can be understood as the consistent application of a close reading method to theoretical texts. She has been teaching this close reading of theory to her students for the past 40 years.

Reviews

[Matthew Molinaro]

girl what???????

came across this bc I was revisiting gallop and some of her writing on close reading for methodology stuff

girl...look, you sleeping with students is none of my business, but it's one thing to twist a conception of feminism IN YOUR FAVOUR and another to suggest you had no agency in this (were merely passive). there's also no engagement with ethics but I digress.

the argument is essentially well we're human so you can't ban student/prof relationships...

so much structural critique is lost here, there's a weird relationship to the institution that gallop has that is just completely incoherent and ridiculous for women of colour, disabled scholars, queer and trans scholars, and poor/working-class scholars.

"hEy i'M jUsT a fReUdIaN tHiS iS sUbLiMaTeD sExUaL dEsIrE"

if we want to talk about a pedagogy of erotics, read bell hooks!

[St Fu · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the kind of book one can read in a morning. Indeed, some sexual coupling take longer. It was pleasurable to read (to continue the analogy.) And yet, I want to argue with her thesis.

I appreciate how sexuality was an important part of her education. I would not want to take it away from her. And yet, should those not free enough or not hot enough be discriminated against in school? Perhaps we are already discriminating against those who are not smart enough, and studies show that being better looking gives you an advantage in employment so this issue will not go away.

Jane explains that she won't sleep with students now because she is in a committed relationship. Presumably it would be disruptive to her relationship if she did. (Is this hurting her effectiveness as a teacher? ) That's because sexuality is potentially disruptive (as is education). But people need protection from disruption as well. That's why there are rules.

Rules are for everyone. If I argue that I went through a red light because I was the only car for miles around, my ticket would not be dismissed. Rules are meant to handle the general case and not the specific. I think the rules against student/faculty sex do more good than harm. I didn't do a study. I'm just guessing. Yes, the thinking and ways of talking about this subject are muddled--or at least were until this book clarified them.

Jane invokes Freud to argue that sexuality is in all relationships. I will invoke Freud to say that conscious consent can hide unconscious lack of consent. The presence of a power differential makes it all the more complicated. In practice, I'm sure that sex between students and teachers continues despite the rules and when it works for the best, no one files any complaints about it.

Jane argues that there should be no limits to knowledge at a university, but there will always be the limits of time and space. That's why choosing to research a particular topic means passing on other topics. Perhaps considering who is hurt by particular intellectual pursuits is a valid consideration in making such a decision.

I think Jane's complainants reframed their relationships after the fact. What seemed like connection now looked like undue influence or worse seen in this new light. Many relationships get reframed afterwards. Love is blind. Hindsight is 20 20.

The situation has gotten even more complicated in the succeeding years. It's time Jane wrote a new book!

[Roslyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this to be a very thoughtful and well-argued essay that posits a clear distinction between sexual harassment and sexuality per se. Three cheers for Gallop as an enthusiastic teacher who finds the joy of sexual frisson in the pursuit of knowledge.

[Keith · Rating 1 out of 5]

A pitiful attempt to justify sexual harassment.

[Joshua · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a person who has never really felt comfortable with "victim feminism," I found much here that was thought provoking and relevant to many of the current sticky-wicket issues plaguing the current wave of "women and gender studies" students and professionals.

[Eleanor D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Suffers from the author’s overintellectualization of her sexual preferences, but read ironically yields such entertaining quotes as “conferences are also inevitably sexual” and “Distinguished professors do it pedagogically.”

[Simon]

I'm sort of puzzled I haven't seen references to this book in some of the current go-round of the apparently perennial issue of faculty-student relations.

[Ezgi · Rating 1 out of 5]

creepy

[avie aves · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was just 100 pages of a professor attempting to justify fucking (or having otherwise inappropriate relations with) her grad students, crossing professional boundaries, and then getting upset when she receives the consequences of these actions. She twists common feminist talking points into strawman arguments to the point where she sounds almost satirical. She constantly reiterates that her and her students’ desires are completely and totally integral to (and also result from) the academic experience and the pursuit of knowledge, and insinuates that to restrict this behavior (or to not develop unprofessional relationships with students at all) is somehow a limitation on her academic, personal, and sexual freedom as a feminist. She is incredibly self absorbed, blatantly lacks self awareness or accountability, and holds an excruciatingly privileged outlook that things should be the way she wants them to be simply because she thinks they should be. And she is consistently, absolutely STYMIED at why anyone would find her unprofessional behavior offensive, creepy, or inappropriate. This woman genuinely talks as if her and her actions should be free from scrutiny simply because she “didn’t mean it like that”, and because apparently in the 70s it was sexy and feminist to blur the lines of professionalism between teachers and students and everyone was fucking all the time. Don’t know why she would think that applying 70s feminist attitudes/expectations to the 90s would be without error, when feminism had drastically changed and a new generation of feminists were cultivating the new feminist climate. She was just very hard to empathize with overall and I found myself getting frustrated with her weird entitled ass quite often. I also annotated the fuck out of this out of sheer hatred, because so many of her takes were absolutely awful that I was arguing with her in the margins. What a letdown of a read.

How hard is it to just not fuck your students man

[Sharad Pandian · Rating 4 out of 5]

"All of the confrontations around my conference pitted feminist against feminist. While specifics and players varied — the conference topic changed; the protesters might be faculty, or administrators, or students — the positions were absolutely consistent. These positions play out a debate intrinsic to feminism, a crucial dialectic that repeats itself across feminism's history.

On the one hand, feminism is about the oppression of women. Women are not treated fairly in the world, and feminism attempts to remedy that: feminism thus necessarily speaks of women's misfortune. If women were not disadvantaged and disempowered, there would be no need for feminism.

On the other hand, feminism is about women's potential. If feminism could envision only women's lack of power, it would be a recipe for hopelessness rather than a dream that energizes us to change our lives and make the world better for women. Thus, feminism must speak of women's possibilities. If women were always and everywhere completely downtrodden, there would never have been any feminism.

This is the double foundation of feminism. While not in theory contradictory, these two perspectives do tend to be experienced as contradictory. It seems difficult to think of women as both disadvantaged and forceful at one and the same time. Feminists are likely to take up one of these positions and cling to it to the exclusion of the other.

And so feminism continually finds itself splitting into opposing camps. One of these sides focuses on women's oppression; the other prefers to talk of women's liberation. Across the history of feminism, specifics and players vary, but the positions are consistent." (69-70)

[Regan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got up this morning, I read a book. That felt nice.

Granted, it's a book I needed to read for one of my midterm essays, but it was ALSO just a decent little book. The little is important, because it's really not a huge book. 100 pages, straightforward storyline, well written.

Honestly, I'd probably read this book even if it WASN'T tied to a class. Gallop writes a clear piece, very human, about her own adventures in being accused of sexual harrassment in the early 90s.

There's a LOT of food for thought: what IS sexual harassment, what does it mean to be a feminist accused of the same, what does it mean when you learn that you DO connect sexualness and teaching even though you don't have sex with your students, what if you DO have sex with your students - is it somehow worse if you're a woman than if you're a man, etc.

So I liked it. I would even recommend it. Additionally, it was useful, so huzzah.

[kitapvelaleler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jane Gallop, iki öğrencisi tarafından cinsel tacizle suçlanıyor ve bunun üzerine cinsel taciz tanımı ile ilgili derin bir sorgulama yapıyor kitapta. Özellikle yazarın öğretmen-öğrenci ilişkilerine dair bakış açısını kişisel olarak kabul edilebilir bulmadım ancak farklı bakış açılarını, bir durumun farklı yanlarını görmenin gerekliliğine inanıyorum. Kitabı bir kendini aklama çabası olarak da görebilirsiniz, cinsel tacizle ilgili farklı bakış açısı sunan bir inceleme olarak da ancak konu üzerine düşünelecek çok şeye yer verilmesi açısından okunası bir eser.

[Madison Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four stars for being so thought-provoking, not because I share all of her opinions. Jane Gallop is the intellectual that Camille Paglia thinks she is. I’m not sure that all of her conclusions are airtight, but her arguments are challenging in a good way. She’s someone is really like to have coffee with so I can challenge her right back. I’m glad this is in my permanent library.

[Gian Luigi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is challenging book that pushes the reader to analyze in a new way the power differentials involved in gendered relations.

[review to be edited further later on]

[Christian Balistreri · Rating 1 out of 5]

Uncomfortable

[Mel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this for class. The content is really messed up but it’s definitely captivating.

[Özgül]

liberating and surprisingly soothing.