Spring 2000
Volume 26, Number 3

Speaking against policies prohibiting teacher-student sex and expressing a great deal of skepticism about sexual harassment policies as well, Ann Pellegrini, the third contributor to the Critical Inquiry discussion ("Pedagogy's Turn: Observations on Students, Teachers, and Transference-Love," Critical Inquiry 25 [Spring 1999]: 617Ð25), suggests that even to call attention to power in policies on sexual harassment and teacher-student sex serves to render a female student's consent meaningless. Pellegrini builds her case around the following statements in the 1990 University of Wisconsin policy on sexual harassment (which is no longer in effect):

"The respect and trust accorded the instructor by the student, as well as the power exercised by the instructor . . ., greatly diminish the student's actual freedom of choice concerning an amorous or sexual relationship. . . . All instructors . . . should understand that there are substantial risks in even an apparently consenting relationship where a power differential exists." [P. 619]

Pellegrini quotes a line from another policy, italicizing it: "'This can be so even if a student has accepted the conduct, does not show signs of being harassed, or fails to file a formal complaint of harassment'" (p. 619). Pellegrini makes her argument largely by scoffing at the opposition. "Beware the signs of consent," she mocks through paraphrase; "they can be misleading. Beware the self-reporting of students; theirs are not trustworthy accounts" (p. 619). Pellegrini maintains that the language in the policy denies agency to women altogether. But this "argument" amounts to a caricature of the feminist position supporting sexual harassment policies. Very few of the many feminists who have written to problematize and qualify the issue of consent (following thinkers like Gramsci and other Marxist theorists who have shown how power works precisely through securing the supposedly freely given consent of the governed) have held that the notion of consent is utterly meaningless. Pellegrini must work hard to turn the qualified language of the policies into absolutes.

Tania Modleski is the Florence R. Scott Professor of English at the University of Southern California and the author of several books, including Feminism without Women: Culture and Criticism in a Postfeminist Age (1991) and, most recently, Old Wives' Tales and Other Women's Stories (1998).