Outrage at Statue of Sleepwalker

Once we equate making people feel bad with actually attacking them, free expression is basically obsolete, since anything a person does, makes or says could be interpreted as abuse...

Since when is it a "civil right" not to feel disturbed by a piece of art? And who gets to decide which art we chuck? You don't like the "Sleepwalker," but I don't like "Winged Victory." It stirs scary thoughts of decapitation. Dear Louvre, please stash that headless gal in the attic.

Where does it stop? Cultural critic Jonathan Rauch coined the term "offendedness sweepstakes" to describe our present condition: We've gotten to the point where almost any group can declare almost anything unnerving or politically incorrect and demand its removal. These censors automatically win because anyone who demurs is criminally callous. That explains how, in October, some colleges in England banned the Robin Thicke song "Blurred Lines." Students there claimed that this catchy tune I happily listen to with my own family somehow perpetuated "rape culture."

While no one would ever deny the misery of real-life traumas like rape and assault, including the lingering trauma of flashing back on them, since when is it the job of a university to make sure its students never encounter material with unhappy associations? Art is a trigger....

At last report the Wellesley administration, to its credit, had no plans to move the statue, which is scheduled to remain until July. But there's a great irony in hearing that so many Wellesley students, espousing feminist rhetoric, want to be treated like Victorian maidens, too delicate to view a statue of a guy in his undies. It's the opposite of feminism. Feminists fought a revolution to insist that grown women don't need the kind of paternalistic protection that once kept them sheltered like little girls. Now that's the very treatment the students are demanding for themselves.