An article appeared on UWire today (Sexual assault speaker at U. New Mexico gets cold shoulder from athletes forced to attend) about and power that illustrates the often hypocritical nature of feminist discourse on power relationships. The topic was a sexual assault lecture at the University of New Mexico given by Jessica Weiner, who apparently makes a living doing this sort of thing.
The story made UWire because a large group of athletes were in the audience and were joking and laughing in part because they resented the fact that they were required to attend a lecture which they though would consist mainly of male bashing. The hypocrisy comes in Weiner’s theory of power. According to the UWire story, to illustrate power relationships, Weiner,
Lead[…] the students in a 10-second game of thumb wrestling, Weiner told them that they could get wishes for each win. The students then thumb wrestled with a fury, attempting to beat each other.
After the exercise, she explained the point was to defeat the other person because people want power and success. She said sometimes people see each other as people they can control or overpower, which is where confusion about sex begins.
It is interesting that Weiner sees competition as inherently about control and power, while ignoring the irony that she is lecturing to a captive audience forced to attend her speech by a large academic university which certainly has more power over its students than the thumb wrestlers have over each other.
This is typical of radical feminist, in particular, and Left-wing in general, critiques of power relationships — power is only questionable when its wielded by the other side (men, right wingers, fill in the scapegoat group of the month), whereas it is implicitly benevolent when wielded by feminists.
Source:
Sexual assault speaker at U. New Mexico gets cold shoulder from athletes forced to attend. Angela Williams, UWire Today, October 17, 2000. Originally published in University of New Mexico Daily Lobo, October 17, 2000.