“I am militant on this. Words must remain free.”
Playboy interview (May 1995)
Context: I believe in moderate sexual harassment guidelines. But you can't the Stalinist situation we have in America right now, where any neurotic woman can make any stupid charge and destroy a man's reputation. If there is evidence of false accusation, the accuser should be expelled. Similarly, a woman who falsely accuses a man of rape should be sent to jail. My definition of sexual harassment is specific. It is only sexual harassment — by a man or a woman — if it is quid pro quo. That is, if someone says, "You must do this or I'm going to do that" — for instance, fire you. And whereas touching is sexual harassment, speech is not. I am militant on this. Words must remain free. The solution to speech is that women must signal the level of their tolerance — women are all different. Some are very bawdy. … You must develop the verbal tools to counter offensive language. That s life. Feminism has created a privileged, white middle class of girls who claim they're victims because they want to preserve their bourgeois decorum and passivity.
