Feminist Accused of Sexual Harassment (Public Planet Books) [Paperback]

Jane Gallop (Author)

Book Description

Series: Public Planet Books | Publication Date: April 16, 1997

Sexual harassment is an issue in which feminists are usually thought to be on the plaintiff’s side. But in 1993—amid considerable attention from the national academic community—Jane Gallop, a prominent feminist professor of literature, was accused of sexual harassment by two of her women graduate students. In Feminist Accused of Sexual Harassment, Gallop tells the story of how and why she was charged with sexual harassment and what resulted from the accusations. Weaving together memoir and theoretical reflections, Gallop uses her dramatic personal experience to offer a vivid analysis of current trends in sexual harassment policy and to pose difficult questions regarding teaching and sex, feminism and knowledge.
Comparing “still new” feminism—as she first encountered it in the early 1970s—with the more established academic discipline that women’s studies has become, Gallop makes a case for the intertwining of learning and pleasure. Refusing to acquiesce to an imperative of silence that surrounds such issues, Gallop acknowledges—and describes—her experiences with the eroticism of learning and teaching. She argues that antiharassment activism has turned away from the feminism that created it and suggests that accusations of harassment are taking aim at the inherent sexuality of professional and pedagogic activity rather than indicting discrimination based on gender—that antiharassment has been transformed into a sensationalist campaign against sexuality itself.
Feminist Accused of Sexual Harassment offers a direct and challenging perspective on the complex and charged issues surrounding the intersection of politics, sexuality, feminism, and power. Gallop’s story and her characteristically bold way of telling it will be compelling reading for anyone interested in these issues and particularly to anyone interested in the ways they pertain to the university.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In 1991, an English professor at a state university kissed one of her female graduate students. In 1993, she was accused of sexual harassment by that student and one other. The charges, painstakingly described in detail and nuance, were violations of college policy concerning sexual interaction between professors and students. What the author thinks makes these all-too-common events unusual is that she, the accused, is a feminist who has authored other books on feminist history and practice. She uses the particulars of her "case" to generalize about the place of sexuality in teaching and learning and the meanings of sexuality in feminism. Reading this long essay may leave readers with questions the author doesn't address: Where is the line between scholarship and autobiography, or simply self-indulgence? A "local, left leaning, countercultural weekly ran a wrap-up of the university investigation." This isn't exactly a media blitz, but three pages in this very short book are devoted to an analysis of the sidebar accompanying that article. Why not just reprint the thing and let readers decide for themselves what it says? The author seems to be arguing that teaching and feminism depend upon personal and sexual relations between teachers and students, power differential or not. But it's hard to say how much of this position is vindication and how much is scholarly and analytical. On the positive side, Gallop writes well, and here she is obviously writing about her favorite subject. (May) FYI: Helen Garner's The First Stone: Some Questions About Sex and Power (Forecasts, March 10) also looks at sexual harassment on campus.

Copyright 1997 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Gallop (English and comparative literature, Univ. of Wisconsin, Milwaukee) here attempts to address the harassment case brought against her in 1993 by two female students. She begins by tracing her own development as a feminist, an academic, and a woman but fails to sustain her argument that learning and erotics are intertwined on any of these bases. Her feminist thesis is perhaps the strongest but is seriously undermined by such facile and irresponsible statements as "[academic] conferences are also inevitably sexual...a good conference is likely to be an eroticized workplace." Only a few pages are devoted to the facts of the case; the reader is left puzzled as to its outcome. What could have been an original and enlightening discussion of a serious issue becomes a portrait of unprofessional behavior glibly sketched. Not recommended.?Barbara Ann Hutcheson, Greater Victoria P.L., B.C.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 112 pages
• Publisher: Duke University Press Books (April 16, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822319187
• ISBN-13: 978-0822319184
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #842,351 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Problematic, powerful, provocative, May 25, 2000

By 

Hugo Schwyzer (Pasadena, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Feminist Accused of Sexual Harassment (Public Planet Books) (Paperback)

This is a fascinating, jolting, unsettling book. Gallop makes a disturbingly persuasive (and entertaining) case for the essential harmlessness of sexual relationships between professors and students. Ultimately, I disagree with her thesis for reasons similar to those cited by the other reviewers -- despite her feminist credentials (which are first-rate), Gallop fails to see how the erotic nature of the power differential is a destructive one. It's not that she doesn't acknowledge the power imbalance between teachers and students -- she does -- but she suggests that the imbalance can be easily overcome by entering into consensual amorous relations. (As if once a student and a professor sleep together, all the elements of power are suddenly, uh, "stripped" away!) I am a young male college professor, and I see all too well the temptations in such relationships. But I believe sexual relationships with my students to be fundamentally unethical because if I do sleep with my students (as Gallop slept with hers), I am "trading on" my power, and viscerally reinforcing the notion that for young women sexuality is an appropriate means of getting what you want.

I am glad that most professors are not like Jane Gallop. I am grateful, however, that we HAVE Jane Gallop -- and I sense, whatever her ethics, that she truly must be a marvelous teacher. I reject her thesis, but I applaud her daring and recommend this book enthusiastically, especially to graduate students and younger faculty!

11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Provocative Appeal, December 26, 2001

By 

mp - See all my reviews

This review is from: Feminist Accused of Sexual Harassment (Public Planet Books) (Paperback)

Jane Gallop's 1997 tract, "Feminist Accused of Sexual Harrassment," is not meant to be an apology for her run in with academic and legal bureaucracies. The tract is not criticism nor critical theory as such. Instead, Gallop gives us an intensely personal overview and examination of her involvement in feminism, culturally and scholastically, since her exposure to the movement in the early 1970s. Gallop's writing is casual, even colloquial, and addresses the various socio-sexual facets of the student-professor relationship, and how they have changed between the early 70s and to-day.

In 1992, Gallop was served notice that she had been accused by two former students of hers of sexually harrassing them. As a feminist, Gallop discusses the initial strangeness in perception that this may generally cause: the fact that most harrassment cases are normally male to female, not female to male, or female to female. She looks at the history of the feminist movement and sexual harrassment as its legacy from the late 1980s and early 1990s. Gallop talks about her explicitly sexual relationships with her own professors as a student, and with students as a professor herself. Making clear that since she began dating her eventual husband, she has completely stopped having these explicit relationships with students, Gallop details the important ways that relationships between students and professors can yet be erotically-charged.

Gallop's defiance of the academic and professional establishment may come off looking like willing ignorance or wistful naivete, but an undercurrent of anger and disappointment runs throughout the tract. Gallop laments the apparent cold distance and rigid formality being fostered in the current environment of academia. She asks if it should be the province of decor and propriety to decide how professors influence students and how students (especially graduate students) select and respond to the professors who guide their development.

While there is in the tract some longing for the days of yore and this is, above all, the personal and intimate reflections of one person, it is important to remember that Gallop does not ask every reader to agree with her assessments or abide by her conclusions. Gallop makes quite clear at the outset that her goal in placing this work before the public is simply to encourage its readers to reexamine the erotics of education - for feminists to reconsider the initial projects of feminism - and for each reader to decide if and how they will allow their every move to be overdetermined by needlessly oversensitive bureaucratic and legal manipulations. "Feminist Accused of Sexual Harrassment" is meant to provoke thought and discussion - those who would levy judgments against Gallop without pondering her arguments or talking about them in some kind of community risk missing the point entirely.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It wouldn't have been published if written by a male teacher, October 19, 1997

By 

T. R Machan (Silverado, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Feminist Accused of Sexual Harassment (Public Planet Books) (Paperback)

Gallop's short book is a fascinating read of the consternations of an highly sexed woman trying to reconcile her nature with her profession. The book is a lucid yet torturous attempt to make it OK to infuse teaching with lots of hot sex. It is brought off by linking it all to feminism, which is supposed to make it OK to do what male professors would be fired for on the spot. Sure, Socrates merged eros with philosophy and most teachers get a charge out of lighting fires in the minds and souls of their students. But when explicit seduction takes over, things can get so messy that genuine professionals ought to restrain themselves more than Gallop has. Still, Gallop is dead right that much of the sexual harassment hoopla is about sex, not about harassment at all, and we are facing more of a puritanical trend than one of professionalism and decency with all the fuss about keeping sex out of college. All in all, this is a pretty good read.