This bold, beautifully wrought piece of investigative journalism presents the gripping story of a celebrated sexual harassment case brought by two female students against their college schoolmaster. Compelling and intimate, "The First Stone" challenges the blind orthodoxy of today's new breed of feminists and tells of the cost of party-line politics over the more complex matters of human relations.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
The First Stone is at once an account of one of Australia's most explosive sexual harassment cases and an investigation into soul of sexual politics. To provide the framework of her inquiry, Helen Garner uses the very public case of a University of Melbourne college master accused of sexual harassment by two of his students. After reading about the charge in the newspaper, Garner, a longtime feminist, impulsively wrote a letter of support to the accused man. The letter was made public and in the wake of much criticism over her support of the man, Garner set out to explore the women's claims. Along the way she uncovers issues that challenge her notions of feminism, political activism, gender relations, and power dynamics. With a journalist's eye for detail, Garner leads the reader into a riveting examination of the nature of sex and power in contemporary society.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
This 1995 Australian best seller is the story of a celebrated sexual harassment case. In investigating it, journalist Garner (Sisters, HarperCollins, 1994) concluded that the accusers shattered an innocent man's life. Two female students at a college in Melbourne reported that their schoolmaster had put a hand on one woman's breast and had made a lewd proposition to the other at a party. The courts exonerated the schoolmaster on the grounds of insufficient evidence, but he was forced to resign his position. The publication of this work in Australia resulted in a bitter controversy. Garner's search for the truth is presented in a series of vignettes, meditations, and interviews. The result is a plodding narrative written in Australian English that will sometimes confuse readers. A marginal choice for American readers.?Eva Lautemann, DeKalb Coll. Lib., Clarkston, Ga.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
What has become of feminism? The good, the bad, the grim?,
By A Customer
This review is from: The First Stone: Some Questions About Sex and Power (Hardcover)
One of those books you can't put down, and thus read from early afternoon 'till 3 the next morning.
A highly controversial Australian best seller, this is a personal account of the Author's attempt to discover the truth behind a claim of sexual harrassment. Two young, astute and attractive young women are the complainants, a quiet, genial (clumsy or innocent?) college warden approaching retirement the "victim".
Helen Garner, a feminist of the old school, questions the destructive bitterness the direction modern feminism has taken on this case, and further questions the portrayal of the young women in the case as "powerless" - the very opposite thing feminism should be doing, in her view.
What I can't put in words is the beautiful writing; the sympathetic, transcendent portrayal of the human condition with all its foibles.
You must read this book!
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Post-Structuralist Feminist ideology in the Campus",
By A Customer
This review is from: The First Stone: Some Questions About Sex and Power (Hardcover)
This book brilliantly reveals the perversion of feminist ideals and the highly destructive nature of gender-ideological warfare on campuses in Australia in the 1990s. It is a lucid piece of investigative writing that explores the highly complex world of gender politics and its miserable downfall in a country where public opinion has been motivated by default to sympathise with the woman in cases of sexual harassment as a result of stereotypical imagery of male aggression and dominance in the sexual environment. Most importantly, the book describes how incorrect and false these stereotypes can be. The First Stone illustrates the destruction of one man's life; his profession, his family, his reputation as a respected member of the academic community, all this despite his acquittal, due to the relentless attacks on his person for being identified as a cultural outsider (in the College he ran with great success and enthusiasm) by feminist interest groups hell bent at `getting back' at the class he is meant to represent. This is a highly recommended book by those who wish to understand the other side of the story.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The other side to modern feminism,
By Megami (Darwin, Australia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The First Stone: Some Questions About Sex and Power (Hardcover)
As a university undergradute in the 1990s, i can identify with many of the issues that Garner writes about in this book. There was a culture in Australian universities that harrassment was a big issue, and it did occassionally go overboard (the veiwpoint 'that every man is a potential rapist'is one i heard myself more than once)though i think the pendulum is starting to swing the other way again.
Garner is a good writer, and manages to take what could have been a very dry subject and bring it to life without making it a rant. There is enough of the personal in this to make it interesting, and the author is quite open in relating her biases. I do feel that occassionally she is a little too histrionic in her retelling of conversations with others, and the story does jump about a bit; but overall the reporting is top class. While things may have moved on in the gender wars in Australia to other battlefields, this book is still important, even if only as an exhibit in the history of Australian feminism. I know that there was a lot of debate generated when it was first published, and i know it made me think through many principles that i myself hold. I hope that other readers are also able to take away something from reading this well written book.
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