Who-Stole-Feminism.-How-Women-Have-Betrayed-Women

28 WHO STOLE FEMINISM?of the Dutch naturalist Antonin Van Leeuwenhoek when he looked forthe first time at a drop of water through the microscope he had inventedand saw there a teeming predatory jungle.This, for example, is what Professor Susan McClary, a musicologist atthe University of Minnesota, tells us to listen for in Beethoven's NinthSymphony: "The point of recapitulation in the first movement of theNinth is one of the most horrifying moments in music, as the carefullyprepared cadence is frustrated, damming up energy which finally explodesin the throttling, murderous rage of a rapist incapable of attainingrelease." 25McClary also directs us to be alert to themes of male masturbationin the music of Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler.The "gender war" requires a constant flow of horror stories showingwomen that male perfidy and female humiliation are everywhere. Thegender feminists who expose these evils for us often argue that whatappears innocent to the untrained perception is in fact degrading towomen. They highlight the pain this causes to those feminists who aresufficiently aware of what is really going on.Addressing the Scripps College graduating class of 1992, Naomi Wolftold of an incident from her own commencement exercises when she wasgraduated from Yale eight years before. Dick Cavett, the speaker, hadmade the experience a "graduation from hell." 26Cavett, himself a Yalealumnus, had opened his address with an anecdote about his undergraduatedays: "When I was an undergraduate . . . the women went to Vassar.At Vassar they had nude photographs taken of the women in gym classto check their posture. One year the photos were stolen, and turned upfor sale in New Haven's red light district. . . . The photos found no buyers."According to Ms. Wolf, the moment was devastating. "There wewere, silent in our black gowns, our tassels, our brand-new shoes. Wedared not break the silence. . . . That afternoon, several hundred menwere confirmed in the power of a powerful institution. But many of thewomen felt the shame of the powerless: the choking silence, the complicity,the helplessness." 27Never mind that Ms. Wolf was addressing someof the most privileged young women in the country. The remainder ofher speech was devoted to giving them suggestions for the "survival kit"they would need in the hostile male world they were about to enter.Is it possible that the Yale women were so stricken by Cavett's tastelessjoke? Did the Scripps women really need a survival kit? If these privilegedyoung women are really so fragile, what could Wolfs survival kit do forthem anyway? (It seems that Cavett discombobulated Wolf even morethan she realized. In a letter to the Times, Cavett pointed out that thoughWolf had called him "the speaker" at her commencement, he spoke not