King Agrees With Concept of 'Neutral Tolerance' For Ideas

Author: Kevin King

Herbert Marcuse strikes back! For those of you scratching your heads right now, wondering what I mean, allow me the time to briefly explain who this man was and what he stood for.

Herbert Marcuse, a social critic and philosophical writer of the "New Left" in the 1960s, wrote an essay titled "Repressive Tolerance" in which he argued that neutral tolerance for ideas in America, in fact, amounted to a highly selective tolerance which benefited only those who held power in society. According to Marcuse, as long as society was held captive by institutionalized and pervasive social inequality, "neutral" tolerance would serve the furtherance of such inequalities.

In order to remedy this problem associated with "neutral" tolerance (e.g. the idea that the same rules should apply to everyone), Marcuse proposed a new form of tolerance that was "intolerant towards the protagonists of the repressive [e.g. "neutral"] status quo," while at the same time supporting propagation of information "slanted in the opposite direction" in order to achieve "liberation" of society from its heretofore entrenched and repressive interests. Put differently, Marcuse's view of tolerance was a zero-sum game that sought to reduce the freedoms of one group in order to enhance those of another, all in the name of undoing historical wrongs.

I began this piece with the statement "Marcuse strikes back" because I believe that precisely the sort of logic outlined above was emphatically advocated on multiple occasions in last week's Opinions section. The series of letters written in response to my earlier editorial presented a range of viewpoints and arguments that would take several pages to respond to individually and completely. Rather than trying such a feat, I have chosen to attempt to recast my initial argument in a way that may be more clear, and in which a response to some of last week's points might be made.

What I meant to say in my editorial two weeks ago basically boils down to two or three points. First, I object to what I perceive as means of communication which antagonize males. Second, I affirm the right of even the most offensive speaker to communicate his or her message without fear of reprisal. And third, I believe that feminist causes on campus would be more successful if efforts towards gender unity were substituted for angry, divisive rhetoric ("one pissed off feminist," for example).

What I failed to emphasize strongly enough in the editorial was my point that consistency conveys responsibility, which in turn enables progress. To apply this to the present case of rape awareness posters (again, with whose end goals I agree), I believe that the inconsistency or hypocrisy of a select few is undermining the work of the remainder of those advocates on campus. The hypocritical actions to which I refer are those of a handful of advocates who constantly threaten reprisal towards others who incite women through words, while endeavoring to incite men through words of their own. By no means do I intend to say that all (or even most) feminist advocates are guilty of this brand of hypocrisy, only a select few, who, again, seem to be ruining the project for the rest.

In response to these arguments, various writers have suggested that my insistence on consistency amounted to "prejudice," gross "irresponsibility," "frothing at the mouth," etc. Without going any further into the ad hominem nature of several of the responses, I should say that the most interesting and substantive argument I came across was the idea that the joint impact of rape and its normalization in society on women has been so great that care need not be taken to follow established rules of debate and civility in attempting to combat either problem.

For those of you reading this while firing up your word processor to write a forceful rebuttal, I want to make it very clear that it is this argument, and only this argument with which I disagree. No argument, no issue, nothing at all is so privileged or important as to fall outside the boundaries of civil discourse. The quest to stop rape, as beneficial as it may be, has no talismanic immunity to rules governing what practices of communication are and are not tolerated (e.g. use of double standards and situational ethics).

I accept and understand in full (or perhaps as well as I could without experiencing it myself) the discomfort and disenchantment which must accompany having such an inhumane act visited upon one's self — though Samantha Severin '02 put it better than I ever could when she said that it is "one of the most physically and emotionally painful things that anyone can live (or not live) through." I am personally very pleased to see an increase in awareness of this fact in the minds of so many Middlebury students, however indirect my assistance in bringing that about may have been. Rape does happen, and we should all have a share in doing something about that.

The question of how we do something about it, however, is where my criticism has always been directed. By suggesting that being a "man-bashing, rally-attending, feminist monster" is merely an acceptable lifestyle choice, Andaleeb Choudhury '03 erects a Marcusean principle whereby those on one side of a debate are licensed to fight freestyle, while those on the other are forced to fight by Marquis of Queensbury rules. Reverse the genders or races and one will soon see the error in Choudhury's assertion: one surely is not permitted to make the "lifestyle choice" to bash African-Americans or Jews. Why should men be any different? Severin's point that she "hopes that those posters make men squirm" provides a second demonstration of Marcusean ethics, which seek, in this case, to privilege feminist communication at the expense of males on campus.

In sum, as natural as it may seem to fight a horrible problem with horrible tactics, to counter aggression with aggression, these things cannot be permitted, even in response to rape. Though the Herbert Marcuses' among us might say "fairness can only be achieved through temporary unfairness," we all have the privilege of quality education to inform us otherwise. A proper response to the crime of rape or its normalization is certainly not to go out and commit a different crime: that of hypocrisy, gender-based harassment, or ideological intimidation. My idea of such a "proper response:" consistent speech and action, for which groups individuals are willing to take personal responsibility, and through which such groups can reasonably expect progress.

I am indebted to Allan Kors and Harvey Silverglate's text "The Shadow University" for my understanding of Marcuse as well as some of the quotations included in this piece.