LENORE SKENAZY- FEAR AND LOATHING AT WELLESLEY
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304558804579376793890614128?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
A life-like statue of a guy sleepwalking in his underwear awakens a protest by campus feminists.
A realistic-looking statue of a sleepwalking schlub in his underpants has caused an outrage at Wellesley, a women’s college in Massachusetts near Boston. The students are so disturbed that they want him—I mean, it—gone.
Grab the smelling salts, ladies. This is not a prowler, it’s a piece of art.
That distinction doesn’t seem to matter to the 700 angry and aggrieved students, alumni and others who in recent days have signed a petition demanding the removal of artist Tony Matelli’s “Sleepwalker.” They say that, while inanimate, the male image is nonetheless a “trigger”—a catalyst capable of stirring up anything from memories of sexual assault to fear of strangers.
“Sleepwalker” on the campus of Wellesley College. Getty Images
“Wellesley should be a safe place for their students, not a triggering one,” wrote one petition-signer, as if the statue actually made the campus dangerous. That’s a brand-new way of looking at—and trying to legislate—the world. So I checked in with Robert Shibley, senior vice president at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, about the Wellesley panic. “It’s the idea that any kind of discomfort is a form of assault,” he noted.
Once we equate making people feel bad with actually attacking them, free expression is basically obsolete, since anything a person does, makes or says could be interpreted as abuse.
Lisa Fischman, director of the art museum on campus, wrote an open letter to students explaining that, to her, the Matelli statue depicts a vulnerable, pathetic stranger. (He’s sleepwalking in his skivvies in the snow, after all.) But to the petition-signers, her point of view is apparently not worthy. One wrote that Ms. Fischman’s letter, like the sculpture itself, “should occupy a less intrusive place.”
Yet another wrote: “A school endorsing the decision to expose its female students to this . . . violates civil rights laws.” I’ll stop quoting these petition-signers now—their words are triggering some of my own fears.
Since when is it a “civil right” not to feel disturbed by a piece of art? And who gets to decide which art we chuck? You don’t like the “Sleepwalker,” but I don’t like “Winged Victory.” It stirs scary thoughts of decapitation. Dear Louvre, please stash that headless gal in the attic.
Where does it stop? Cultural critic Jonathan Rauch coined the term “offendedness sweepstakes” to describe our present condition: We’ve gotten to the point where almost any group can declare almost anything unnerving or politically incorrect and demand its removal. These censors automatically win because anyone who demurs is criminally callous. That explains how, in October, some colleges in England banned the Robin Thicke song “Blurred Lines.” Students there claimed that this catchy tune I happily listen to with my own family somehow perpetuated “rape culture.”
While no one would ever deny the misery of real-life traumas like rape and assault, including the lingering trauma of flashing back on them, since when is it the job of a university to make sure its students never encounter material with unhappy associations? Art is a trigger.
Indeed, behind the “hide that thing!” demand lies the crippling new conviction that what doesn’t kill you makes you weaker. Like a patient with no white-blood cells left, the most minor exposure to a disturbing idea could send you into intensive care. The world must accommodate with sterility.
At last report the Wellesley administration, to its credit, had no plans to move the statue, which is scheduled to remain until July. But there’s a great irony in hearing that so many Wellesley students, espousing feminist rhetoric, want to be treated like Victorian maidens, too delicate to view a statue of a guy in his undies. It’s the opposite of feminism. Feminists fought a revolution to insist that grown women don’t need the kind of paternalistic protection that once kept them sheltered like little girls. Now that’s the very treatment the students are demanding for themselves.
Ms. Skenazy is a public speaker and the author of “Free-Range Kids” ( Wiley, 2010).
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