@ — Friday, November 1, 1991 — North Shore News Faith flows in: feminism and facts don’t mix FEMINISM HAS attained the status usually reserved only for revealed religion: the facts don’t matter. Look at the raging aftermath of the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas encounter. Or whatever it was. No one can state with finality what actually happened. No one’ ever will — unless some day a time machine is invented that can recreate any event, even the hid- den. So, in the absence of fact, faith has flowed in. After Prof. Hill’s sensational testimony to the U.S. judiciary committee, Americans were asked: Whom do you believe? Clarence Thomas was believed, two to one. Thus all democrat- ically-tested questions can be reduced to something like a pain-killer commercial: “Two out of every three doctors recom- mend...” A New York Times poll found that, among women who were asked, a plurality in every age, in- come and educational sector believed Judge Thomas more than they believed Prof. Hill. That would seem to settle it, you'd think. Trevor Lautens | GARDEN OF BIASES Aha, but if you think that, you fensive ideological line. Which was: Broaden the issue. Use the high profile that the Anita Hill testimony provided to put points on the board about sexual harassment by males. Whether Hill was accurate or not was yesterday’s story. Its usefulness today is exploiting it as a means of waving forward other women who will tell their stories about being assaulted, date-raped, or even — and here is 44 .A New York Times poll found that, among women who were asked, a plurality in every age, income and educational sector believed Judge Thomas more than they believed Prof. Hill. 99 undersestimate the ingenuity of the powerful feminist lobby, and its ability to move the yardsticks forward even when the referee of public opinion has called a penalty against it. (Hmmm, how could I extend this metaphor? A penalty for illegal interference? Or = —- roughing? Or perhaps too long in the huddle? Remind me to work on this.) Instead of reddeniag and main- taining a discreet silence for a while, the far-left feminists who lead the movement did an end run around the issue. (There, | knew I could extend the metaphor.) ‘How? By the means used by every radical movement: changing the rules of the game. Or, more accu- rately, by taking Anita Hill off the field and sending in their of- the masterpiece of edging forward toward the goalposts — redefining ‘harassment to include repeated requests for a date. Incredible, Ah, but making the incredible credible — accepted as the new ’ baseline for conventional wisdom — is exactly what the new sexual bigotry is all about. (Gay ‘‘mar- riage’’ is another sterling exam- ple.) For what adult heterosexual male hasn't, at some time or other, asked a female out for a date more than once? Well, maybe about 3%: mates who at age 17 asked a female-type girl for a date once, was accepted, then asked her once to marry him, was accepted again, and they wed a month later and lived happily ever after without further ques- For more information about the federal government’s proposals for constitutional reform, call toll-free: I-800-56/-li88 Deaf or hearing impaired call: 1-800-567-1992 crry-top) Canada Shaping Canada’s Future Togetiver tions. Otherwise, every fairly normal male has experienced at least once or twice the age-old phenomenon of espying a female who, for reasons perhaps known only to the god of love himself, attracted him. Whose ties, if any, he discreetly tried to determine. Whose reciprocal interest he tried, with hope, to identify. And whose willingness, with beating heart and terrifying fear of rejection and a cheery frozen fake-casual smile on his less- than-film-star face, he then elic- ited with some really, really origi- nal request like: ‘‘Would you like to go to a movie Saturday night, heh heh?”’ Yes, fans of human nature and chroniclers of human pain, that’s actually how it’s done. And such fans (and chroniclers) know equally well what happens. The female in question may bat her eyes twice and say ‘“Yes.”” Or she may look at him like the top grad at boot camp and say: “Get lost, jerk."’ Or possibly respond: ‘Sure, can I bring my husband and six children with me?” (The latter usually signals that the male has inadequately done his ground- work.) But there are many other responses. There are, for instance, a million variants — or, more ac- curately, a million ways of reading — the seemingly simple reply: “Sorry, I’m busy that evening.”’ And the interpretation of those few words increases exponentially if she adds: ‘‘Maybe some other night, though.’ She may say that because she’s too soft-hearted to see a grown man cry. (Especially when the tears trickle down into the corners of his still-frozen smile.) She may say it because she’s had only two sessions of ag- gressiveness class. Still learning. And then again she may say it because she’s busy Saturday night. And is praying like hell that this man, whose less-than-perf