Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus

by Laura Kipnis

Hardcover, 2017

Status

Checked out

Publication

Harper (2017), 256 pages

Description

A Wall Street Journal Best Book of 2017 From a highly regarded feminist cultural critic and professor comes a polemic arguing that the stifling sense of sexual danger sweeping American campuses doesn't empower women, it impedes the fight for gender equality. Feminism is broken, argues Laura Kipnis, if anyone thinks the sexual hysteria overtaking American campuses is a sign of gender progress. A committed feminist, Kipnis was surprised to find herself the object of a protest march by student activists at her university for writing an essay about sexual paranoia on campus. Next she was brought up on Title IX complaints for creating a "hostile environment." Defying confidentiality strictures, she wrote a whistleblowing essay about the ensuing seventy-two-day investigation, which propelled her to the center of national debates over free speech, "safe spaces," and the vast federal overreach of Title IX. In the process she uncovered an astonishing netherworld of accused professors and students, campus witch hunts, rigged investigations, and Title IX officers run amuck. Drawing on interviews and internal documents, Unwanted Advances demonstrates the chilling effect of this new sexual McCarthyism on intellectual freedom. Without minimizing the seriousness of campus assault, Kipnis argues for more honesty about the sexual realities and ambivalences hidden behind the notion of "rape culture." Instead, regulation is replacing education, and women's hard-won right to be treated as consenting adults is being repealed by well-meaning bureaucrats. Unwanted Advances is a risk-taking, often darkly funny interrogation of feminist paternalism, the covert sexual conservatism of hook-up culture, and the institutionalized backlash of holding men alone responsible for mutually drunken sex. It's not just compulsively readable, it will change the national conversation.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member steve02476
Really enjoyed reading this book, Kipnis is a great writer, and I tend to agree with her on the topics in the book. I'm not 100% convinced she's telling (or even knows) the "whole story" about the events in the book. But I suspect she's basically on target.

Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

2017

Physical description

245 p.; 5.5 inches

ISBN

0062657860 / 9780062657862
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