The Morning After (book)

The examples and perspective in this article may not include all significant viewpoints. Please improve the article or discuss the issue. (January 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The Morning After

Author	Katie Roiphe
Language	English
Subject	Date rape
Publisher	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date	1993
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (hardcover and paperback)
Pages	180
ISBN	0-316-75432-3
OCLC	27768540

The Morning After: Sex, Fear and Feminism on Campus, is a nonfiction book authored by Katie Roiphe. First released in 1993, the book discussed date rape and American feminism. Prior to its release, a portion of the book was published as an essay, “The Rape Crisis, or Is Dating Dangerous?” in the New York Times Magazine. In 1994, the book was reprinted with a new introduction along with a shortened title.

Within the introduction, Roiphe recognizes she is “writing against the grain” (pp xiv) and states her book is “devoted to the idea of women taking responsibility for their actions” (pp xiv). According to Roiphe, the “rape crisis feminism” has took feminism backwards. Stating “her generation of feminist has transformed the freeness of sex expression and exploration into fear.”^[1]

Within the book, she expresses the feminism during that time was preoccupied with women as victims along with sexual harassment and rape. She suggests this way of thinking will have women fearing all men to include friends and professors. She notes questionable statistics that “according to [a] survey, one in four college women is the victim of rape or attempted rape.”  Roiphe notes multiple universities supported this rhetoric and references multiple pamphlets distributed to students.^[1]

Roiphe has an entire chapter dedicated to “Taking Back the Night”, anti-rape marches. The chapter opens with Roiphe describing a “Take Back the Night” march during the month of April at Princeton University. She recounts various stories of participants sharing their personal accounts of rape. She states through the years the numbers of participants have increased to thousands. Along with noting that half of those present during that march were males.^[1]  

Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, writing for the New York Times, called The Morning After a “book of the times” and said, “it is courageous of Ms. Roiphe to speak out against the herd ideas that campus life typically encourages.”^[2] The Morning After received positive response from the critic Camile Paglia, who called it “an eloquent, thoughtful, finely argued book that was savaged from coast to coast by shallow, dishonest feminist book reviewers.”^[3] Additionally Cathy Young described the book in the Washington Post as “clearheaded, wry, disturbing look at the radical feminist obsession with sexual victimization.”^[4]Adding, “Katie Roiphe writes from the trenches of gender warfare.”^[4]

A criticism of the book is that it promotes victim-blaming.^[5] In 1993, a negative review by Katha Pollitt titled “Not Just Bad Sex” was published in The New Yorker.^[6] Pollitt’s review was in turn criticized by Christina Hoff Sommers in “Who Stole Feminism?” (1994).^[7] Naomi Klein wrote in the Global & Mail that “[Roiphe] employ[s] intellectual dishonesty, rhetorical distortion and cheap tricks” within her book.^[8]  

• Sexual Violence: Opposing Viewpoints (2013)

• Amazon.com "Search inside this book."
• The American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress excerpt adapted from The Morning After.

This article about a book on gender studies is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

• v
• t
• e