Many people reacted with glee, witnessing the excruciating embarrassment of Naomi Wolf as her book was debunked on live radio last week. The forthcoming Outrages: Sex, Censorship and the Criminalization of Love deals with the persecution of homosexuality and emerging gay identity in Victorian England. It leans heavily on a number of criminal prosecutions of men who had sex with men, resulting in a sentence of “death recorded.” In her literal reading, Wolf thought these words meant the men had been executed when in fact it meant the opposite—they had been spared execution by the judge.
The academic world cringed. “I feel like half the hidden curriculum of any decent graduate program involves inculcating a deep and abiding terror of ever having this happen to you,” tweeted sociologist Kieran Healy.
But in addition to those wincing in commiseration or rejoicing at her comeuppance, many critics also jumped on the fact that Wolf is not trained as a historian; the book is from her doctoral work in English at Oxford. The polemicist and activist, although credentialed in her own right, was out of her lane. Was that her personal failing, or a reflection of shifting norms within her discipline? To the right-wing critics of academic English—long frustrated by its theoretical heterodoxy and political ambitions—the story was the perfect hook: a “crusading lefty being hoisted on her own progressive petard,” as Rod Dreher wrote at The American Conservative.
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