symposium

In his Newsday column "Lunatic Feminists Arise on the Right," Robert Reno, an ardent supporter of the Supreme Court's ruling to protect girls from sexist language and hostile environments, rails against what he calls the new conservative "female TV gas bags" -- women he says who are "fetching, wall-to-wall right wing and blond to their roots, like Laura Ingraham and Monica Crowley," women he designates as "silly," "lunatic," "dumb" and "deeply snide." (You have to wonder what would happen to American womanhood without chivalrous defenders such as Reno.)

But these women, bad as they are, are just "irrelevant distractions" compared with the objects of Reno's real wrath -- Boston-based attorney and Independent Women's Forum, or IWF, member Jennifer Braceras, who wrote a Wall Street Journal article saying that for kids "a kiss on the cheek, a sexually suggestive remark, the persistent pursuit of a romantic relationship with someone who is not interested, even unwanted sexual touching, all may be normal parts of growing up when the individuals are peers."

"Who raised this woman?" Reno howls. "You'd never hear Phyllis Schlafly come out for kissing or touching in the classroom. She'd cane the whole lot of them."

"What a mouthful," he roars on, surmising that the IWF is a group of right-wing female renegades defending the rights of third-grade harassers. Her article, says Reno, "savages the Supreme Court decision that prohibits boorish little schoolboys from making repulsive pests of themselves by being sexually obnoxious to the girls in their class." The court decision "seems the least we can do for the girls who are going to grow up to run this country," he wails, "the way they have run more socially advanced nations." Reno glosses over the fact that these future presidents someday will have to compete with male candidates who have been toughened in wars such as in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf.

What Reno and other punitive-damage aficionados miss is that those of us who argue against lawsuits as the magic bullet for undesirable behaviors are not in favor of harassment but are concerned about the collateral damage caused by these penalties. The threat of financial annihilation via lawsuits is not the best environment in which freedom can thrive. Schools that could have their budget wiped out by a single child-against-child or employee-against-employee lawsuit would be pushed to go overboard in trying to control speech or behavior that could appear actionable to a creative trial lawyer.

"This is already the normal state of affairs in the workplace," says columnist John Leo. "Sexual-harassment law has given employers a powerful incentive to act in a defensive manner, warning workers against comments, gestures, office chitchat about the latest joke on a sitcom." Many schools already ban hand-holding, passing romantic notes and chasing members of the opposite sex during recess. One teacher's manual says that a child's comment of "You look nice" could be sexual harassment, depending on the "tone of voice" and "who else is around." ("You look nice" as sexual harassment! So much for the Land of the Free.) "Next year, kids will be suspended for behavior nobody's ever been suspended for," said Bruce Hunter of the American Association of School Administrators.