The Women's Freedom Network Newsletter November/December, 1998, Vol. 5, Number 6. Politicizing the Personal by Daphne Patai

I magine the following scenario: A coup against the president of the United States, aimed at deposing him, is led by a war-hero general who deplores the president's peaceful policies. In a desperate situation, the president discovers an unexpected means of bringing down his opponent: a cache of love letters written by the rebellious general to his mistress, evidence of an adulterous affair. Confronting the traitorous general, the president asks for his resignation. The general refuses, attacks the president for his weakness, and threatens to take his case to the people, via a television address. Imagine the president at his desk, looking down at the sheaf of love letters in a half-open drawer. Will he use them to blackmail his opponent? Coming to an unspoken decision, he shuts the drawer. He then fights his opponent on political grounds_and wins, thwarting the coup.

It may be remembered that this is the plot of the 1964 film Seven Days in May, based on the novel of the same title by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II. Today, of course, the serious charge of treason could be easily subsumed, and dealt with, by the more fashionable accusation of sexual impropriety. The love letters would be leaked to the media, the general discredited, and his cause with him.

In the thirty-five years since Seven Days in May, codes of behavior and the choice of political weaponry have undergone a profound change. But it is not generally understood that this change must be credited to_or blamed on_the success of feminism in promoting the notion that "the personal is political," and that boundaries between the private and public spheres must and should be effaced.

To grasp precisely what politicizing the personal can lead to, let's reverse the film's plot. Now the president is the one with the extramarital affair. His enemy, the sexually pure general, attempting a military takeover, gets hold of the president's letters to his mistress, an effective instrument for bringing him down. The reversal highlights what should by now be clear to us all: The "personal" is a very powerful weapon, but that tells us nothing about the "political" in the name of which it may be used.

Whose interests are served by dismantling the boundaries between public and private life? The answer appears to be: political opponents of every type, who find in this erosion a deadly assault weapon from which few are safe. We might wish that all people never behaved in a less than honorable manner but are we really ready for a society in which no one dares do anything wrong, in which bright light is focused on every single aspect of private life?

Of course, as we become more deeply embroiled in a political climate in which no private arena is safe from scrutiny, it's worthwhile recognizing that there is nothing new about men using women as weapons against other men. What is startling is the realization that feminism has had a major role in bringing this situation about. For it is feminism that has given us the concept of sexual harassment, without which the relations between men and women would not have become such dangerous territory. By now there is a substantial feminist literature that takes as axiomatic the notion that heterosexual behavior is how men keep women in an inferior position. This concept has proved so expansive that today, the expert literature informs us, sexual harassment can range from a look to rape. This is the same feminist framework that has led to the obsession with "power differentials," which in their extreme form enormously limit the range of permissible relationships and lead ultimately to the notion that women in a patriarchal society cannot give "informed consent" to heterosexual relations.

As we are now discovering, effacing the boundaries between the public and the private is a game anybody can play. As more and more charges and confessions flood the public sphere, it has become clear that few are immune; all people in the public eye can be brought to heel by fear of exposure.

There are, however, some other surprising beneficiaries to the merging of public and private spheres. In earlier times it was mostly women who bore the stigma of sexual misconduct. But now it is men who have to run scared. Not all women are wives, trying to keep their husbands in line.

Mistresses and girl friends may also benefit from the new dispensation, since they now control a man's fate far more than in the past.

But the harsh light of exposure doesn't usually stay put; it has a way of running amok, which in the long run can only mean that both men and women find their most private sexual impulses under assault. The attack on the private sphere in fact threatens everyone_except perhaps those bland folk who, devoid of personal habits that could ever be used against them, might rise to high public office on a platform of personal purity. This sort of rectitude may or may not be accompanied by any political talent_but if, indeed, "the personal is political," does it matter? Surely absence of political ideas and skills is of little consequence once we know that our politicians lead unblemished private lives, or perhaps have no private lives at all. But should we really assume that the best political leaders are those whose personal record is blameless, and who therefore have nothing to fear from the politicization of the most private and vulnerable arena of all_that of sexual desire?

Yet another group of beneficiaries of sexual policing are those feminists whose antagonism to men, and in particular to male sexuality, is generalized into an attack on all males and on women's relationships with them. For such heterophobes ever on the look-out for a suspicious word or gesture, sexual harassment law and the climate it has created are powerful new weapons to wield in their effort to place obstacles in the personal relations between men and women. Yet it cannot serve most adult women's interests to have men be afraid of involvement with them.

Ironically, it seems most improbable that the current demands for personal probity on the part of public figures will lead to a better world. Why? Because the type of vigilance necessary to ensure a life entirely free from reproach will create a social climate so unpleasant, and ultimately so repressive, that the cure will be much worse than the disease. Signs of precisely such a climate are everywhere around us, as politicians, employers, and even college presidents mouth platitudes about "power differentials," as if the new orthodoxy were beyond question.

This vigilantism should worry us all. When the private becomes public and the personal is seen as political, anyone can be targeted. As for the realms of actual politics and public life, these deteriorate into prurient squabbles and competition over moral one-upmanship. Just read any newspaper.