Humorless feminist Naomi Wolf is probably not laughing her head off about a piece on Slate.com that suggests that some ‘unwanted sexual advances’ can be deflected with humor.


Note to humorless feminists: Slate author Laura Kipnis is not talking about ongoing sexual harassment or any serious form of sexual behavior that should merit grave consequences.
 
Kipnis is writing about the kind of sexual harassment charge Naomi Wolf lodged, twenty years after it was said to have taken place, in a recent New York magazine article that accused now 73-year-old Shakespeare guru Harold Bloom of having put his hand on her thigh.


The bestselling author and former Gore sartorial consultant claims that the incident has had a lifelong impact on her. 
 
Writes Kipnis:
 
 ‘In the right hands, such narratives can be great material for comic or satirical treatment: Look how obtuse humans can be in the throes of desire! What optimists we are about our charms and physical allures! But typically, those deploying this particular coinage find nothing remotely funny in such situations. Forget bumbling pathos or social ineptitude’in these accounts, it’s all trauma, all the time.’


But that’s not all. Kipnis compares the Princeton celebrity feminist to a famed non-Ivy League damsel-in-distress:


‘Public charges brought years after the event,’ writes Kipnis, ‘a one-time advance by a prominent man, lasting injury to the female recipient’where have we heard this story before? Oh right, from Paula Jones. Like then-Gov. Clinton, professor Bloom took the “No” in stride and backed off. Were there any professional repercussions for these non-receptive advance recipients? No, in either case. So why are such advances regarded as a feminist issue? Because, according to Wolf and Jones, when the advance-maker professionally outranks the recipient, this is an abuse of power. Wolf also says this one-time advance by Bloom caused her grades to drop, caused her faith in herself and her work to plummet; it devastated her sense of being valuable to Yale as anything but a sex object, and it corrupted her entire educational experience.’


Being compared to Paula Jones? Now, that should really traumatize Naomi.


And it’s all the better coming from PC pill Laura Kipnis.


(In addition to being available on Slate, the article is on the indispensable Arts and Letters Daily.)