katie roiphe

[Liza Featherstone]

I was going to hold back on the grounds that I shouldn't waste any more
words on her, but willpower is a weak fluttery thing. Katie Roiphe became a
semi-famous anti-feminist in 1993 when she published first a NYT op-ed
piece, then a book (THe Morning After_, "arguing" -- if  either of those 
illogical and statistically warped screeds could be called an argument-- 
that date rape was a creation of hysterical puritanical campus feminists and
neurotic women who regretted consenting to bad sex. for this she was dubbed
very brave and maverick for not "towing the feminist line". then she wrote
another book a few years later (Last Night in Paradise) making the much more
interesting argument that middle-class heterosexual AIDS anxiety was
out-of-proportion to any actual threat and a metaphor for other kinds of
social anxieties. naturally no one paid much attention to that. but it was
just as well, since it was actually just as stupidly argued as her first
book -- she confusedly attacked sex ed in public schools and
government-funded public health campaigns for fomenting AIDS hysteria --
when obviously that's the last thing they do, since such programs barely
exist.

Perhaps some of the boys on the list can speak to her allure; it's always
eluded me and I don't think I need to get catty.

Liza


>>Speaking of right-wing women, Hitchens has a terrible weakness for the
>>ineffable anti-feminist, Katie "Gloria Steinem Has No Sense of Humor"
>>Roiphe. As does James Heartfield, who's been very quiet lately.
>
>Who doesn't?
>
>(who's Katie Roiphe?)