Abstract
My choice to prepare a paper on this topic, a paper that is, as my sub-title implies, very tentative, has its source in several events, conversations, and readings, a few of which I shall first recount. First of all, as is evident, there has been a great deal more public discussion of sexual harassment during the 1990’s than in the past. This is in part the result of new laws and of some efforts at stricter enforcement of laws, but of course these developments themselves are a function of changing social behaviors; I shall not devote much attention to legal issues in this paper. I first became aware of the new era into which we were entering when I attended a talk, perhaps ten years ago, given by Linda Pratt, who was then incoming vice-president and later became national president of the American Association of University Professors, in which she recounted an incident of which she had become aware. A male teacher of voice at a Midwestern institution had, in the course of giving instruction concerning the correct way to breathe when singing, touched the ribs of a male student, who then proceeded to bring a charge of sexual harassment against the teacher. The latter, widely and probably accurately considered to be gay, and long held in low esteem by the school administration, was offered the choice of either resigning quietly or enduring an extended public hearing in which he would undoubtedly have been subjected to great ridicule and unfavorable publicity. He resigned, losing his livelihood and benefits.
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References
In Kierkegaard in Post/Modernity,ed. Martin J. Matu§tík and Merold Westphal (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 18–42. I refer to Lewis Gordon’s comment, which he incorporated into a commentary given at the same meetings, in footnote 44, [p.] 41.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel E. Barnes ( New York: Philosophical Library, 1956 ), 364–79.
Seren Kierkegaard, diary entry of August 24, 1849. See Howard V. and Edna H. Hong, eds., Soren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, vol. 6 (Bloomington and Lon-don: Indiana University Press, 1978), 191. The reference is to Book II, line 3 of Vergil’s Aeneid.
Diary entries 128 (1843, undated) and #181 (1844, undated).
t should also be remembered that Simone de Beauvoir, writing on this topic only a few years later after, one presumes, extensive discussion of it with Sartre, explores the phenomenon of “The Woman in Love” in Chapter 23 of The Second Sex,as well as in many other texts. But her depiction of this stereotype in this chapter comes close, it must be admitted, to the extreme of sacrifice to which I shall refer at the end of this paper.
This is my way of summarizing his position in “Sartre’s Debts to Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard in Post/Modernity.
Translator’s footnote, Being and Nothingness,390. “The feminine,” she says, “sounds more natural in English.”
Cf. the famous article by Margery L. Collins and Christine Pierce, “Holes and Slime: Sexism in Sartre’s Psychoanalysis,” in Women and Philosophy: Toward a Theory of Liberation, ed. Carol C. Gould and Marx W. Wartofsky ( New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1976 ), 112–27.
Marcel Mauss, The Gift; Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. Ian Cunnison ( New York: Norton, 1967 ).
Jean-Paul Sartre, Cahiers pour une morale (Paris: Gallimard, 1983), 515: “l’Enfer des passions (décrit in E. N.).”
See Donald W. Mitchell, Spirituality and Emptiness ( New York: Paulist Press, 1991 ).
Zijiang Ding, “An Examination of the Concept of Socio-Political Deviation” ( Ph.D. diss., Purdue University, 1989 ).
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discours sur l’Origine de l’Inégalité parmi les Hommes ( Paris: Classiques Gamier, 1954 ), 78.
Judith P. Butler, Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987 ).
Andrea Nye, “Philosophy: A Woman’s Thoughts or a Man’s Discipline? The Letters of Abelard and Heloise,” Hypatia 7, no. 3 (Summer 1992): 1–22.
Ibid., 8.
See, for example, the Purdue University Executive Memorandum No. C-33, which states: “Sexual harassment is any unwelcome sexual advance, request for sexual favors, or other written, verbal, or physical conduct of a sexual nature when…” Three conditions are then stipulated (p. 3). This is fairly typical language, I believe.
See, for example, Sandra Lee Bartky, Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression ( New York: Routledge, 1990 ), 45–62.
Ambivalence concerning sacrifice abounds in the literature of contemporary feminist ethics. One example of such ambivalence is Virginia Held, Feminist Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), especially 82–87.
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France ( Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987 ), 66.
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McBride, W.L. (2000). Sexual Harassment, Seduction, and Mutual Respect: An Attempt at Sorting it Out. In: Fisher, L., Embree, L. (eds) Feminist Phenomenology. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 40. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9488-2_14
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