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Bookslut links to Naomi Wolf's article about Harold Bloom's "sexual encroachment" on her during her senior year at Yale. And yes, maybe she's right that, so many years after the fact, it's not necessary to dredge all this up. But I have to disagree.
I think Wolf's point is well-taken: despite the greater visibility and more intensive prosecution of such inappropriate acts, certain institutions still refuse to take these situations seriously. I know from my experience with Harvard, at the tender age of seventeen, that one of the most terrifying parts of such an experience is the realization that the administration you believed was charged with your safety is far more interested in protecting itself.
I was never in Wolf's shoes, never the target of such an incident, but I was close to someone who was, and my faith in (as I thought of them at the time) grown-ups, let alone Ivy League institutions, was irreversibly shaken. It's why I didn't really want to go to college, once I got home. It's why I did my undergrad work fifteen minutes from my parents' house. The impact of the experience faded with time, yes, but it doesn't surprise me at all that it still haunts Naomi Wolf.
Wolf is right to bring these issues to light, if only so that some other young, vulnerable person isn't scared into believing that he or she is the first to suffer in such a way. Or that, by some miracle, he or she will somehow be the last. It is every person's responsibility to speak up, for those who come after, and for themselves.
Posted by Hilary at February 23, 2004 11:51 PM