Katie Roiphe (who made her name by insisting that most victims of ‘date rape’ just had bad sex) is now arguing in Slate (you can find it) that we’ve all badly misunderstood the complexity of the McGinn story. In particular, she quotes lots of emails out of context, tells us she’s read much more, and asks us to trust her interpretation: that there really was a consensual if sometimes fraught romantic relationship.
Katie Roiphe is the same person who responded to sexual harassment accusations against Herman Cain by writing “After all these years, we are again debating the definition of unwanted sexual advances and parsing the question of whether a dirty joke in the office is a crime.” The accusations included this: “Sharon Bialek says Cain groped her and shoved her head towards his crotch with the words, “You want a job, don’t you?”
So, headline news: Noted sexual harassment-denier denies claims of sexual harassment. YAWN.
(But somebody should be looking into the privacy violations involved in showing those emails to a reporter.)
Feminist Philosophers 