The Dartmouth community tries to cultivate an atmosphere conducive to education. It offers an objective, liberal program constructed with a sense of maturity and equanimity suited to such learning. That was before Inner Bitch rolled off an unwitting printing press and started tormenting this guiltless town with a torrent of bitter rage. Now we must endure her payload of literary swill repugnant to an institution honed to liberal sensitivity and intellectual progress.
Apparently last term's issue of Spare Rib did not sufficiently shock the sexist insensitivity out of the male power structure. The new magazine presents another indictment of the boorish frat boy and his nefarious fraternity system within the context of a phallic fixation. This, the brilliant product of Dartmouth talent? The threat of castration does not strike me as a worthwhile contribution to gainful gender politics.
Angry frustration alone describes the multi-faceted personality of the "inner bitch," her volatile disposition predictably disturbing her rational senses. Violent, ruthless, militant - and supposedly deserving of respect. If fraternity row will not respond to the woman with intellect then it will quail before the bitch with scissors. Dartmouth has certainly placed itself on the cutting edge with this thoughtful solution to sexism.
In the publication there are some serious, powerful accounts of horrible incidents of sexual molestation. But the authors of these few moving pieces should lament their misfortune, appearing in a journal with such an ill-conceived theme. Any woman shallow enough to find herself edified by most of the vacuous claptrap within the magazine is beyond the help of any rational effort to promote gender sensitivity, let alone a women's studies department.
The statement of purpose at the beginning explains that the intention of the journal is to assist women in developing a "healthy and happy inner bitch," some internal, belligerent beast that acts as keeper of her violent primal impulses. In light of this, it is somewhat mysterious why the fraternity houses on campus received a healthy stack of issues.
Most of the writing indeed stokes the fires, but does little more. The reader is bombarded with blind rage, encountering ideas no more profound than castration and a Macintosh program to make your computer menstruate. The film and book review section does nothing for the credibility of the magazine, suggesting that its critics failed to discover one piece of feminist or lesbian film or literature which was poorly done.
The publication confounds the reader with its relentless conception of the guilty, despicable male, the perpetrator of abysmal atrocity. Such narrow thinking - such simple images - could only be attributed to the hooting male construction worker type which the magazine attacks so fervently. The writing indicates that good sense is a secondary consideration behind emotional potency. Although the idea of penile dismemberment is not intelligent or productive, it does have an effective visceral quality to it.
After some therapeutic counseling, the "inner bitch" may eventually have something to contribute in the way of progress for everyone's benefit. If she harnesses her fury and acquires the insight of a more dispassionate perspective, she can conquer any problem without the shears and the attitude.
