Laura Kipnis on the State of #MeToo

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

The New Yorker

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4.3 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 5 February 2018

⏱️ 17 minutes

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Summary

Laura Kipnis is a professor at Northwestern University and a provocative feminist critic. Her book “Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus” states, “If this is feminism, it’s feminism hijacked by melodrama.” She has been accused of violating Title IX by creating a hostile environment for students to report harassment. Kipnis, who supports the movement, tells the staff writer Alexandra Schwartz that the grassroots power of public revelations is being hijacked by institutions in a power grab to control the lives of employees and students. The real feminist lesson of cases like Aziz Ansari’s much-discussed bad date, Kipnis thinks, is that women as well as men need to reflect on how they conduct themselves in heterosexual relationships.

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1:11.9	I'm Dorothy Wickend. On today's politics and more podcast, the New Yorker's
1:17.0	Alexandra Schwartz talks to the writer and academic Laura Kipness. Kipness has been critical
1:23.5	of contemporary feminism, but she thinks the Me Too movement has started an important conversation
1:28.9	about heterosexual relationships. Laura Kipnis is a professor at Northwestern University,
1:38.5	writing as a feminist about sex, culture, and power in our society. She's written provocatively about pornography and sex
1:46.6	scandals, and she's even written a book called Against Love. But Laura Kibniss's views have brought
1:52.2	her opposition with many other feminists on campus and off. She's written that sexual harassment
1:57.8	policies don't empower women or further the cause of equality
2:01.4	at all.
2:03.0	And after she wrote about a harassment charge at her own university, two students filed
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