A L S O+T O D A Y

Turning the tables on Starr
By Murray Waas and Jonathan Broder
Attorney General Janet Reno considers investigating key Whitewater witness David Hale

Republicans to Ken Starr: Ugh!
By David Corn
Now that Paula Jones has gone, all the Republicans have left against President Clinton is a 20-year-old land deal. They are not thrilled

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T A B L E++T A L K

Parents who do their kids' homework: Know any? Are you one of them? Discuss in the Mothers area of Table Talk

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R E C E N T L Y

Second Thoughts: Nice Guys
By Sallie Tisdale
In the wake of the Arkansas schoolyard killings, a mother ponders guns, children, and the adults who bring them together
(04/02/98)

Straight-laced sisters
By Lori Leibovich
Liberal journalist Elinor Burkett met the enemy -- conservative women -- and found that they were, well, a lot like her
(04/01/98)

Drama Queen Candidates
Gum-chewing kissers, egomaniacal cheaters, line-dropping Olympic losers ... and the women who endured them
(03/31/98)

Making sense of Jonesboro
By Lori Leibovich
Harvard psychiatrist Alvin Poussaint talks about what makes children kill
(03/30/98)

Hey hey, ho ho, the matriarchy's got to go
By Lori Leibovich
Gloria Steinem unleashes exciting news about young feminism. Not!
(03/27/98)

ARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

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WOMEN BEWARE WOMEN | PAGE 2 OF 2

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The theme of women betraying other women plays itself out on the political level as well as the personal. In an astonishing tour de force of hypocrisy, Gloria Steinem argued on the op-ed page of the New York Times that even if Willey were telling the absolute truth and the president fondled her breast and pressed her hand on his erect penis against her will while she was asking for a job, he was simply "taking no for an answer." According to Steinem, Clinton's behavior in that narrow corridor was that of a perfect gentleman. This change of heart on Steinem's part, this complete retreat from her own shrill rhetoric of female victimization, tells us something about the mood in the country. Another prominent feminist, Susan Faludi, who rode to "Backlash" fame on Anita Hill's Ann Taylor jacket tails, wrote a diatribe against Lewinsky, Jones and Gennifer Flowers in the New York Observer titled "Let's Separate the Women from the Girls." Even the die-hard Ms. magazine feminists, the "a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle" feminists, the feminists who have made their entire living off of the concept of sisterhood, are not supporting the female players in Washington's unfolding drama.

This abandonment on the part of many feminists of their former selves, of everything they've said and done over the past 10 years, mirrors an undeniable trend in the country at large: Women are not supporting any of the women who have come forward to say that they have been involved with, molested, fondled, propositioned or assaulted by Clinton. The polls have consistently showed a lack of female sympathy and identification.

This represents a marked change from the sexual harassment craze of the early '90s. Remember the "I believe Anita Hill" buttons? Remember when it seemed like the whole nation was in the grip of a fanatical, almost sinister sisterhood? The unspoken ending of "I believe Anita Hill" was "because she is a woman." To a large portion of the female population, Hill seemed to represent All Women. But try to imagine schoolchildren wearing "I believe Paula Jones" or "I believe Monica Lewinsky" or "I believe Gennifer Flowers" buttons pinned to their knapsacks. You can't. And it's not because we don't believe them, it's because we don't want to be associated with them. We don't, in the end, want to take their side.

The truth is that women have always betrayed each other for men, for other women, for the more popular girl in the playground or simply for the hell of it. Perhaps it was our expectation that they wouldn't that was irrational. Perhaps it was the shimmering sisterhood of the early '90s -- when women united against Clarence Thomas and the entire male population of sexual predators -- that was illusory. Perhaps the war between the sexes was an artificial war, with artificial sides. Women stood by Hill because it was fashionable, because it was what they were told to do by the front page of the New York Times and by their friends -- and they don't stand by Willey, and they didn't stand by Jones, for much the same reason. There is no instinctive sympathy, no instinctive bond. Even at the height of feminist togetherness in this country, there was always an undercurrent of exclusion, a subtext of if you don't toe the party line you can't belong to our sisterhood.

But this is nothing new. Shakespeare wrote eloquently on the drama of female closeness and betrayal: The whole plot of "Othello" rests on Desdemona's lady in waiting stealing her handkerchief to spark Othello's jealousy, and in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," Hermia says to her childhood friend Helena, "And will you rent our ancient love asunder,/to join with men in scorning your poor friend?/It is not friendly, 'tis not maidenly./Our sex as well as I may chide you for it,/Though I alone do feel the injury."

Despite the propaganda of sisterhood put forward by feminists, there is, buried deep inside all of us, repressed and struggled against, a kind of competitiveness that can lead to betrayal. Part of why we despise Linda Tripp, why we regard her as such a demon, is not because she is so freakish, such an anomaly, but because she is so close. We have almost all experienced intimacy and betrayal, we have almost all felt the peculiar pain of a friendship gone wrong, and that is why we hate the mousy blond former White House official so passionately. Our offices, classrooms, movie theaters, restaurants, banks, bars, bedrooms, parks, hospitals, art galleries and museums are filled with Linda Tripps.
SALON | April 3, 1998

Katie Roiphe is the author of "Last Night in Paradise: Sex and Morals at the Century's End" and "The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism." Her last piece for Salon was on Kathleen Willey.