XPost: school.general, alt.politics.clinton, ba.motss   
   XPost: soc.men   
   From: deplorable.redneck@nytimes.com   
      
   Sexually charged emails. Allegations of unwanted kissing and   
   touching. A letter in which powerful people leap to the defense   
   of the accused.   
      
   As Zoe Greenberg points out at the New York Times, the story   
   sounds a lot like those we’ve been hearing since the current   
   #MeToo movement began. But the players are different: In this   
   case, the accused is feminist scholar Avital Ronell, and the   
   person reporting harassment is a male former graduate student,   
   Nimrod Reitman.   
      
   Reitman, now a visiting fellow at Harvard studying the drawings   
   of Sigmund Freud, says Ronell, a professor of German and   
   comparative literature at New York University, subjected him to   
   sexual harassment, sexual assault, and stalking while she was   
   his academic adviser. In May, a Title IX investigation found her   
   responsible for harassment, though not the other charges, and   
   she’s been suspended. Now a group of scholars, including   
   renowned gender theorist Judith Butler, have written a letter   
   arguing that she is the victim of a “malicious campaign” by   
   Reitman.   
      
   Ronell is not the only woman to be accused of sexual misconduct   
   since the rise of #MeToo last fall. While male perpetrators can   
   enjoy special protection from consequences by virtue of their   
   gender, reports of female sexual harassers are a reminder that   
   people of all genders are capable of abusing their power.   
      
   Ronell’s case has all the hallmarks of a #MeToo story   
   Though Reitman filed his Title IX claim before the rise of   
   #MeToo, and says he was not inspired by the movement, his report   
   has much in common with the stories that survivors — many of   
   them women — have been telling since last fall.   
      
   Ronell’s behavior started in 2012, Reitman says, when she   
   invited him to stay with her in Paris. There, he says she asked   
   him to read to her while she took a nap, then pressed herself   
   against him, put his hands on her breasts, and kissed him. The   
   next day, he says he told her, “what happened yesterday was not   
   O.K. You’re my adviser.” But the advances continued, with   
   groping, unwanted kissing, and emails calling him “my most   
   adored one” and “cock-er spaniel.”   
      
   Reitman says he put up with this behavior because Ronell had   
   power over him as his adviser, Greenberg reports. He also says   
   that when he did complain to Ronell about her harassment, she   
   retaliated by sabotaging his job prospects. Graduate students   
   can be especially vulnerable to harassment by their advisers,   
   who often wield enormous control over the direction of their   
   careers.   
      
   Ronell’s response to the allegations also echoes those of other   
   powerful people — many of them men — accused as part of #MeToo.   
   She has asked why Reitman didn’t speak up if he was   
   uncomfortable, and argued that he was just upset because of his   
   intellectual inferiority: “His main dilemma was the incoherency   
   in his writing, and lack of a recognizable argument,” she said   
   in an interview that was part of the Title IX process.   
      
   Ronell also says her emails to Reitman were welcome at the time.   
   Noting that Reitman is gay and she is queer, she told the Times   
   the two shared “a penchant for florid and campy communications   
   arising from our common academic backgrounds and sensibilities.”   
      
   Finally, the letter written in Ronell’s defense is reminiscent   
   of those written on behalf of men accused of sexual misconduct,   
   from Al Franken to Junot Díaz. The signatories — including   
   Butler, philosopher Slavoj Zizek, and literary theorist Gayatri   
   Chakravorty Spivak — acknowledge that they have not actually   
   been able to read the confidential documentation of the Title IX   
   case. Nonetheless, they write:   
      
   we deplore the damage that this legal proceeding causes her, and   
   seek to register in clear terms our objection to any judgment   
   against her. We hold that the allegations against her do not   
   constitute actual evidence, but rather support the view that   
   malicious intention has animated and sustained this legal   
   nightmare.   
      
   Women can abuse their power too   
   Ronell is one of a few women publicly accused of sexual   
   misconduct since the rise of #MeToo last October. Cristina   
   García, a California state Assembly member, is the subject of   
   multiple reports of groping or unwanted advances. In May, an   
   investigation found that “the most egregious allegations could   
   not be substantiated,” according to the Los Angeles Times, but   
   Garcia has been removed from all legislative committees and has   
      
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