To Air Controversial Topics Is to Brave the Line of Fire

Call it boyish naivete, but I cling to the fanciful notion that it’s still possible to have reasonable debate over controversial issues. What keeps that faint hope alive is that I hear from many people who don’t agree with me after they’ve read a particular column, and I’m heartened by how civil people are. We’re still some distance away from a complete breakdown in manners.

I’m interested in how complex and diverse societies arrive at consensus. That may be the kind of subject that puts most people to sleep, but as America gets increasingly Balkanized, I’d suggest that we all become more hip to it.

My optimism flagged last week.

I apparently made a grievous mistake in some circles by asking this question in last Sunday’s column: How does society grapple with events that offend some members of a group, but not others? I used two examples: a Sheriff’s Department officer hiring a stripper 2 1/2 years ago for a birthday party at a training facility, and Mission Viejo High School using a devil as its mascot.

The former incident offends many women, who find it sexist, and the latter offends many Christians, who find it blasphemous. I then made the eminently provable comment that it’s also true that many women aren’t offended by strippers, and that many Christians aren’t offended by using an impish devil as a school mascot.

Nowhere in the column did I take a position on the stripper incident, because that wasn’t what the column was about. Had I chosen to, I would have said a police facility is an inappropriate stage for a stripper. What I did, instead, was raise questions about how society should react to actions some find offensive, especially in cases where members of the same group--in that case, women--have different opinions.

I considered it a rather tame column, meant to provoke thought.

Imagine my surprise, then, to discover that the column was “a fascinating expose on how men rationalize their sexism and how it affects women’s lives.”

That, at least, was the reaction of Lisa McClanahan, head of the National Organization for Women chapter based in Newport Beach. She and I have never met, but she has special insight about me from that column.

She said I was “mad at women’s rights activists.” That will come as a shock to some male readers of this column, who gripe that I’m in cahoots with women’s groups.

McClanahan went on to say that my resentment of the activists “is always good for ducking responsibility for one’s reaction. This can happen when someone is confronted with their own immorality and how it contributes to the pain and suffering of others.

“Still,” she continued, “I felt a certain sadness at (your) unwillingness to confront (your) own demons and instead rant something akin to ‘I’m not like a Nazi sympathizer,’ ‘I’m not like a KKK sympathizer--sexism is different, isn’t it?’ ”

She pointed out that sexual harassment laws are written from a woman’s standpoint and not by men like me who, she asserted, “don’t mind if men sexually degrade and harass women in the workplace in order to avoid competing with them on their own merits.”

She concluded by suggesting that I made a “cowardly threat,” which I assume referred to the headline on the column--”Time to Go on the Offensive in an Age of Hurt Feelings.” (Incidentally, the headline was written by someone else.)

Another letter writer characterized the column as typical of a “hysterical reaction whenever men are shown in a bad light.” I invite open-minded readers with time on their hands to look up the column and find the hysteria.

Yet another writer said the column amounted to “attacking women” who have the courage to speak out and, although the letter writer doesn’t know me from a space invader, deduced that I have “some deep-seated fear of women and hold women in disdain.”

I had just about put these letters out of my mind when the Woodbridge High School incident surfaced late in the week. In some aspects, Woodbridge represented a textbook example of what I’d written about last Sunday--that is, an incident that offended some but was funny to others.

As at some other high schools, Woodbridge boys traditionally dress up as female cheerleaders for homecoming and spoof their routines. From what I heard, it sounds like the Woodbridge boys crossed the line into bad taste. After some faculty members protested, the student council junked the routine.

Too bad. Woodbridge student council leaders told our reporter that they junked the routine not because students were offended, but because they didn’t want the hassle.

Sadly, the students have already picked up on what too many adults have learned--that airing controversial issues will get you bombed by rhetorical terrorists who fire at will, whether they know what they’re talking about or not.

The unfortunate end result is that Woodbridge students banned the routine for the wrong reason.

They should have banned it because they had a change of heart about what’s sexist, not because they just wanted the issue to go away.