Discussion List for campus-based and allied personnel working to end gender-based violence on campus.

["Foubert, John" <>]

SAPC Folks,

Libel is to knowingly make a false statement in writing about someone to 
cause intentional harm against their reputation.  My statement about Mr. 
O'Reilly on this list serve was not intended to harm his reputation, and was 
purposefully worded in a manner such as to state that I was uncertain of what 
had happened - that my memory was not clear.  I did not want to state 
something as if it were a fact when I was not sure about it.  I was not sure, 
so I stated that I wasn't.  My point was only a recollection that something 
along the lines of a sexual harassment case occurred not long ago.  I didn't 
then nor do I now recall details of a case I heard about through news media 
accounts - that may or may not be anywhere near accurate particularly given 
that they are rival networks.  For the record though, I am one who believes 
the victim.  My statement was a guess about something that might have 
happened, not a statement about what did happen.  There is a difference.

Also, I would object to Bill Clinton keynoting such an event.  I think our 
movement was far too silent and not nearly as supportive when it should have 
been when Juanita Broddrick came forward with what I believe to be a very 
convincing accusation of rape against him (I shouldn't even have to say it 
was very convincing of course, but I will for the sake of this discussion).  
I also think that we have done a poor job of explaining to people the nature 
of sexual harassment, and that when the boss, in a workplace, has oral sex 
with an intern, in the workplace, this type of behavior is inappropriate.

I think Andrea Dworkin's thoughts on the matter are highly thought provoking:

Are You Listening, Hillary? President Rape Is Who He Is
by Andrea Dworkin

[Copyright (c) 2007 by The Estate of Andrea Dworkin]

Note from John Stoltenberg, May 25, 2007: At the age of 52, Andrea was 
drug-raped in a hotel in Paris. For the next six years, until she died April 
9, 2005, she struggled to recover.

Andrea disclosed some details of that rape in a 1,700-word article published 
in The New Statesman June 5, 2000 ("The day I was drugged and raped"). She 
had been writing a longer piece about the experience, a text I thought she 
never finished because she never showed it to me.

After her death I found the text on her computer. I could not bring myself to 
read it until recently, and when I did I realized it is a completed work, a 
24,000-word autobiographical essay as crafted as any of her best writing, and 
dated with finality, August 30, 1999. She never made changes in the text file 
after that. It was done. She showed it to no one. She made no attempt to have 
it published.

Andrea designated me her literary executor, a responsibility that now 
includes deciding whether she meant for that manuscript to be published 
posthumously. I honestly do not yet know. But I believe that the following 
excerpt is a passage she would have wanted to be read now, if she were alive,

Andrea, who in life identified deeply with other abused women, here 
identifies with Juanita Broddrick--a name that may be unfamiliar to many. 
Christopher Hitchens, in the paperback edition of his 1999 book about Bill 
Clinton titled No One Left to Lie To, has a chapter entitled "Is There a 
Rapist in the White House?" Like Hitchens, Andrea believed that there was, 
and that Juanita Broddrick was one of Bill Clinton's victims.

Written nearly eight years ago (and originally untitled), these words of 
Andrea's at last go out into the world, where, I am aware, they will take on 
prescient new relevance in light of Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy. 
To the best of my knowledge, that is what Andrea would have wanted, because 
she considered Hillary Clinton responsible for enabling a serial abuser of 
women.--John Stoltenberg, Washington, DC


ARE YOU LISTENING, HILLARY? PRESIDENT RAPE IS WHO HE IS

I did vote for Clinton the first time. They really got me with his anti-war 
stuff. ... [A] few days before the election ... I heard on the radio that 
Bush was saying Clinton had come near to committing treason by demonstrating 
against the War and going on a trip to Russia when he was in college. That 
pushed me over to Clinton. But the second time, no. He had thrown women off 
of welfare and how were they going to live? ...

We all know that female impotence expresses itself as pity. Ayn Rand thought 
it was altruism but it wasn't. Someone looks at you with hang-dog eyes or 
bites his lip like Clinton, pretends to show empathy while ice water flows in 
his blood, the filthy pig. President Rape is who he is. Proud President Rape. 
Everyone turned from Juanita Broddrick. Everyone looked away. Every asshole 
blinked. It's pretty fucking brilliant to use force after the fuck, as he did 
with most of the others I know about, intimidate them, have them threatened, 
destroy their reputations, say they're lying or stalkers or a little mentally 
unhinged, having delusions of grandeur as if being fucked or mauled or 
harassed by him was something one dreamed of.... Always easier to blame the 
woman. Are you listening, Hillary? So much easier to be angry with them 
rather than with him. Have I got your attention, Hillary? You decide these 
women, every last one of them, are pieces of shit and he's the shinola. More 
than anyone you know how cold and premeditating the bastard is. When did your 
heart die? ... I'd be sick to think I had become as corrupt as you. How many 
women have you helped him hurt by protecting him and knocking out the 
opposition? Two political parties, one neo-fascist and the other neo-rapist. 
Or is it proto-rapist? You and I were girls together and now it's this: I'm 
nouvelle raped and you defend a rapist through which you defend rape through 
which you think the women, not the rapist, are the problem. Maybe women are 
just fucking stupid, you and me babe. I'm glad you're not president or on the 
Supreme Court. You are a running dog collaborator. You take the side of the 
rapist, not the raped. And Juanita B. did not lie in her affidavit, just for 
the record, Hill. She said under oath that they didn't have sexual relations. 
They didn't. She confessed to lying because she had a consciousness of not 
wanting to tell the truth, of covering something up. He raped her, she didn't 
have sexual relations with him, she didn't lie and I am so fucking tired of 
the media that can't even think that obvious thing through. Report it a 
thousand times but don't think about it once.
...
I'm really tired of women who don't care. ... Hillary's best friend, the new 
feminism, no one's a victim here, it's so embarrassing when a woman's raped, 
it's so declasse, it's annoying, the wrong time of the day, the wrong day of 
the week, not during office hours, the woman can barely keep herself 
together, she might collapse emotionally, which would be messy, or make 
emotional demands, which would be unpleasant, or you might have to think that 
it could have happened to you if it happened to her but it didn't happen to 
you so it doesn't have to be your problem, you don't need to get near the 
mess of it, the disaster of it, the desperation of it. Just cut her loose and 
let her die.

...
Feminists pretend we're on top of all this, as if we've done something about 
it. We roll the ball up the hill and a fucking rapist pushes it back down and 
we roll it up again and another rapist slams it down. But never admit not 
being in control, all polished and shiny, just keep smiling in public, the 
women on top of everything, and when will a woman be president of the United 
States? Oh, soon, don't worry. And what difference will it make? Oh, don't 
worry. We'll get it because we have to have it, even if it's a cookie-cutter 
Hillary married to ex-president Rape. I think the toleration of rape has 
gotten easier, I think President Rape had an impact, I think it takes all 
everyone's energy to ignore Juanita Broddrick, I think the pornography makes 
men callous and numbs women to real pain, I think everything's worse with 
everyone congratulating themselves that everything's better. Everyone knows 
what to say but no one knows what to do and they all still really think that 
women cause themselves to be raped, if they won't say it about all women they 
will say it about each individual woman.

Andrea Dworkin's last book, Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist 
Militant, and the twentieth-anniversary edition of her book Intercourse are 
published by Basic Books.


**************************************
John D. Foubert, Ph.D., LLC
Associate Professor and Program Coordinator
College Student Development Master's Degree Program
Oklahoma State University
School of Educational Studies
314 Willard Hall
Stillwater, OK 74078
(405) 744-1480
(405) 744-7758 fax