Iron-Jawed Angel or Shrinking Violet?

If the story's true, then Harold Bloom's a common variety of pig, and Naomi Wolf is a self-dramatizing twit. I agree with Anne Appelbaum's take in today's Post:

But in the end, what is most extraordinary about Wolf is the way in which she has voluntarily stripped herself of her achievements and her status, and reduced herself to a victim, nothing more. The implication here is that women are psychologically weak: One hand on the thigh, and they never get over it. The implication is also that women are naive, and powerless as well: Even Yale undergraduates are not savvy enough to avoid late-night encounters with male professors whose romantic intentions don't interest them.

The larger implications are for the movement that used to be called "feminism." Twenty years of fame, money, success, happy marriage and the children she has described in her books -- and Naomi Wolf, one of my generation's leading feminists, is still obsessed with her own exaggerated victimhood? It's not an ideology I'd want younger women to follow.

Posted by Gene Healy on Wednesday, February 25, 2004 at 4:10 PM

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