By Kath Gelber
The release of Helen Garner's The First Stone earlier this year hit a nerve. The book ostensibly described, in fictional terms, the case of a master at a Melbourne University college accused of sexually harassing two students. In both establishment and alternative circles, discussion has been heated about the implications of the book.
Garner has defended herself vehemently against claims that she has sold feminism out, and in the process has received accolades and almost unprecedented publicity from establishment circles.
Her critics have focused on a number of different issues — the nominally central issue in the book itself, sexual harassment; gaps between the existence of legislation supposed to assure women's equal rights and the realisation of that equality; Garner's negative construction of today's young feminists; and how, all intentions aside, the arguments in her book fit neatly into the general backlash against feminism we are experiencing today.
The publicity given to The First Stone rivals, and in fact probably surpasses, that accorded to other feminist texts of the '90s, including Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth in 1992, and Susan Faludi's Backlash, published in 1991. Although these publications all claim to be contributing in a positive way to the debates within feminism, there are important differences between them.
The Beauty Myth comprehensively and clearly argued that, in lieu of more obvious means of intimidation, control and oppression, contemporary sexist society maintains the subordination of women through more subtle means, including the tyranny of image.
The Beauty Myth contributed in a constructive way to feminism because it acknowledged that women still constitute an oppressed group in society. By detailing some of the methods of oppression, it empowered women to struggle for change.
Susan Faludi's Backlash is another in the genre. Its title coined the term which has now become shorthand for current ideological and material attacks on the gains won by second wave feminism. Faludi detailed these attacks, and her book became an essential feminist resource.
Garner, by comparison, has launched an attack on feminism. In The First Stone, she constructs her version of the '90s young feminist, who is "punitive", asserts a "victim feminism" and resorts immediately and inappropriately to legal recourse when harassed.
In defence of her position at the recent Sydney Institute Larry Adler lecture, she elaborated. She dislikes "this determination to cling to victimhood at any cost" and bemoans that "feminism has a tendency to calcify, to narrow and harden into fundamentalism". Feminism has, in her eyes, become a "concrete bunker".
This caricature represents a deliberate misrepresentation of a varied, dynamic and heterogeneous movement.
Victim feminism
Garner has, however, picked up on some real issues.
There is a stream within contemporary feminism which views men's aggression as virtually inevitable and biologically driven. This view places women at all times at risk of sexual assault and violence. Its logic is that all acts of aggression by men against women constitute part of this broader picture of men as aggressor and women as victim.
Any individual expression of assault, intimidation or violence against women is therefore treated as part of that broader picture. In this way, unacceptable but relatively minor incidents of sexual harassment are viewed with as much horror as incidents of gross sexual assault. They all confirm the view of men as uncontrollable lumps of testosterone-driven sexual aggression, and women as their victims.
This outlook has been jargonised into the term "victim feminism", which Garner uses in The First Stone. US author, Camille Paglia, is also well-known for her criticisms of it.
A valid criticism can be made of this outlook on a number of grounds. First, it theorises and predicts behaviour between men and women on the basis of biological determinism, thereby subverting the potential for any solution to the problem of male violence.
Secondly, victim feminism places women in the disempowering position of continually fearing acts of male aggression. While most women experience some lack of freedom due to this fear, victim feminism enlarges the fear to the point where it is disabling. It is disempowering to be always at risk of male aggression, with few means of redress.
Thirdly, victim feminism denies the potential for a broad, inclusive movement taking up women's issues more generally — such a movement provided the origins of feminism itself — to raise awareness about issues of violence among both men and women, and thereby change people's attitudes towards what is considered acceptable behaviour. It denies the potential of a mass movement led by women, working in alliance with men, to achieve change.
Legislation
Another complaint by Garner in The First Stone is that the young women who experienced sexual harassment sought redress too soon, and inappropriately, in the legal system. She wonders why they didn't just take on the "responsibility of learning to handle the effects, on men, of [their] beauty and [their] erotic style of self-presentation". This is problematic on a number of levels.
First, it misunderstands the power relationship between the two young undergraduate students and a master of their residential college. One of the achievements of feminism has been to expose often hidden inequalities of power. To say that the situation faced by the young women was one only of a sexual nature is to ignore the bigger issues. The master of the college was older, and able to exert influence over the women's residence at the college and, in one case, enrolment at the university.
Secondly, to say that the young women should not have taken their case to the police and courts is to deny women access to the very policies and legislation which the women's movement has fought for. While legislative reform is not sufficient to eradicate the oppression of women, important reforms have been won by the women's movement as a means of alleviating and highlighting some problems. Equal opportunity legislation is under attack because it means that employers have to pay women more than they would otherwise.
The use of legislation affirms that sexual harassment is unacceptable behaviour and can act as a deterrent against future instances of that behaviour.
It is probably true that, had the college handled the case differently from the beginning, the young women involved might not have been forced to take their complaints to the police. However, fault in this case rests with the way the complaints were handled by the college, rather than with the women involved.
What feminism needs
An open discussion regarding the shortcomings of "victim feminism" or the limitations of legislative reform would be welcome and constructive for feminism. This, however, is not what Garner has produced.
The result for Garner is that her book can be — and is being — read by anti-feminists as fuel for the backlash fire. The public discussion surrounding The First Stone has focused on her criticisms of "feminism" per se, and has allowed feminism as an entire movement to be ridiculed for what it is not.
Summed up, the focus of establishment opinion in the wake of her book has been to deride feminism.
Much has been left out of the debate, not least of which is the recognition that women today still are oppressed. Garner fails to engage with one of the fundamental problems for feminism today — to take the struggle for women's liberation beyond legislative reform and on to more lasting change.
It is true on a certain level that women have achieved equality. On a purely formal, legalistic level, there are many areas in which it is illegal to discriminate openly against women. It is illegal not to employ a woman on the basis of her sex, it is illegal not to pay women equal wages for equal work, it is illegal to sack someone for being pregnant.
In concrete terms, however, full equality between men and women is far from being achieved. Many fundamental issues remain unaddressed. Women's dependence on men within the family unit, and their responsibility for unpaid care of children, the sick and the elderly remain key issues. Women still do not have full reproductive rights.
An active, dynamic women's movement is still needed to address these fundamental questions. The ideological backlash against feminism tries to convince women that formal equality is enough, that equal pay legislation means equality. Feminists know this is a lie. Garner's arguments contribute to that lie.