OK, I'VE HAD IT. Turnabout is fair play and it's time for me, as a man, to yell back at all the feminists who've been cussing out my sex for the last two weeks.

I'm tired of hearing, as an editorial writer for The New York Times recently said, that all "men are pigs, and they like it that way."

And I don't like people assigning chauvinist characteristics to me on the basis of my disagreement with the feminist legal agenda.

Allow me to explain. Last week, I co-authored a dissent to The Crimson's staff editorial. The focus of the staff editorial was the sexual harassment charges which Professor Anita Hill made against (now Associate Justice) Clarence Thomas. The staff advised the U.S. Senate to reject Thomas's nomination to the Supreme Court.

In our dissent, we felt inclined to believe Thomas's story, and that we thought the evidence was against Hill's. But I certainly fail to see how Hill could have begun to plot against Thomas 10 years ago.

She may indeed be telling the truth. But to state, as many feminists have recently, that whether or not Anita Hill's story is true, it is good that she made the charge, smacks of the worst type of sexism possible. Even though some men are pigs, we should not all be tarred with the same brush.

Name-calling doesn't begin, however, to solve the legal question. The evidence in this case certainly left lingering doubts about who was telling the truth. I could not in good conscience have convicted Thomas in a court of law. And that led me to believe he should have the benefit of the doubt in the Senate.

But the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission thinks the standard of law in cases of sexual harassment should be "the state of mind of the woman." I find this a difficult and entangling legal standard. Even in contract law the standard includes the state of mind of both parties.

The EEOC and those feminists who back this subjective standard of harassment would like us to abandon a thousand years of Anglo-Saxon legal precedent. Such an abandonment will not end harassment. It will merely destroy the rule of law.

However, I recognize that there are particular difficulties with proving sexual harassment, and that these difficulties might warrant some deviation from the innocent-until-proven-guilty standard. But the current subjective standard is inevitably open to abuse. Like most who wish to recognize the rights of both plaintiff and accuser, I will remain skeptical of sexual harassment law and some sexual harassment charges until a more objective standard can be devised. And until then I will continue to give at least some benefit of the doubt to the accused, as I did in the case of Justice Thomas.

DOES THAT MAKE ME A PIG?

Allison B. Clark '92 thinks so. She wrote a letter condemning us as being, essentially, pigs. "The opinions expressed by these editors in discussing the credibility of Anita Hill's testimony force me to repeat the phrase that I have heard exasperated women say to men again and again this weekend: You just don't get it," Clark writes.

She goes on to elaborate what she claims to be the effects of our (presumed) views about women. In effect, she accuses us of objectifying women and thus allowing--and by extension, perpetrating--many abuses, including harassment. Attempting to hit close to home, Clark ends her litany of abuses by saying that "women are told that if they go to final clubs, they should expect to be physically harassed. Let's not make excuses for harassment simply because men are men."

After relating the evil things that men do to women and telling me I'm responsible for them, Clark goes on to relate two hypothetical situations resembling Hill's alleged harassment by Thomas. In the second, she posits a male worker harassed in the same way in which Hill says she was harassed by Thomas. "I suggest that this man would not speak out," she states.

Clark is not the only person railing against men. Since Nina Totenberg of National Public Radio first broke the Hill story, I've heard time and time again from women that "all men are pigs," that we "wouldn't understand, now, would you?" and, as Clark says, "You just don't get it."