A Prominent Feminist Professor Was #MeToo'd By A Gay Male Student Named Nimrod In A Wild Tale Full Of Sexual Curveballs
NY Times- The case seems like a familiar story turned on its head: Avital Ronell, a world-renowned female professor of German and Comparative Literature at New York University, was found responsible for sexually harassing a male former graduate student, Nimrod Reitman.
In the Title IX final report, excerpts of which were obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Reitman said that she had sexually harassed him for three years, and shared dozens of emails in which she referred to him as “my most adored one,” “Sweet cuddly Baby,” “cock-er spaniel,” and “my astounding and beautiful Nimrod.”
Mr. Reitman, who is now 34 and is a visiting fellow at Harvard, says that Professor Ronell kissed and touched him repeatedly, slept in his bed with him, required him to lie in her bed, held his hand, texted, emailed and called him constantly, and refused to work with him if he did not reciprocate. Mr. Reitman is gay and is now married to a man; Professor Ronell is a lesbian.
The world of academia is full of steamy, sweater-vest-tearing, tweed-skirt-hoisting liaisons in study rooms buried deep within the stacks of libraries. These nerds simply do not know how to broach the idea of boning, so it all gets bottled up until two equally sexually repressed bookworms can’t handle their shit anymore and their hormones boil over. Professors and grad students have been knocking boots since Plato and Socrates 69’d in a meadow, probably. I wasn’t there but it seems likely.
As to our story, we have Professor Avital Ronell:
A renowned professor of German and Comparative Literature at NYU, Ronell is clearly not afraid to play the naughty teacher. That picture is from her department faculty page on the NYU website. She chose that as her profile picture! It says so much: she’s wearing sunglasses and a sun hat while reading Goethe indoors because we all know how lascivious Goethe can be, am I right, fellow enthusiasts of Weimar Classicism?! Don’t want a colleague recognizing you with that pornography in your hands!
Goethe was known as a proponent of pederasty, from the Greek paiderastia, meaning “love of boys.” It’s when an older man has sex with a younger boy. At the risk of tenuously connecting dots, you might say that Ronell, who is 66 and a lesbian, found her boy in Nimrod, who was less than half her age at the time of their bizarre, possibly non-consensual tryst.
Let’s get in to some of the lurid details of this strange relationship:
The problems began, according to Mr. Reitman, in the spring of 2012, before he officially started school. Professor Ronell invited him to stay with her in Paris for a few days. The day he arrived, she asked him to read poetry to her in her bedroom while she took an afternoon nap, he said.
“That was already a red flag to me,” said Mr. Reitman. “But I also thought, O.K., you’re here. Better not make a scene.”
Then, he said, she pulled him into her bed.
“She put my hands onto her breasts, and was pressing herself — her buttocks — onto my crotch,” he said. “She was kissing me, kissing my hands, kissing my torso.” That evening, a similar scene played out again, he said.
Alright Nimrod, I have my doubts. Call me a feminist, but if you accept an invitation from your MUCH older professor to stay with her in Paris, and you KNOW she loves Goethe… you’re kind of asking for a torso smooching. Paris is the most romantic city on earth, where sexuality runs fluid like the Seine. As a fellow Harvard man, I want to defend you, but you’re also called Nimrod, which I genuinely thought was an insult and not an actual name. So be it– I stand with the feminists.
Ronell had this to say in her defense:
Professor Ronell, 66, denied any harassment. “Our communications — which Reitman now claims constituted sexual harassment — were between two adults, a gay man and a queer woman, who share an Israeli heritage, as well as a penchant for florid and campy communications arising from our common academic backgrounds and sensibilities,” she wrote in a statement to The New York Times. “These communications were repeatedly invited, responded to and encouraged by him over a period of three years.”
YOWZA. What a statement! I gotta dust off the cobwebs and kick my brain back into Harvard gear just to unpack that paragraph. Our communications were between two adults, one gay and one queer, who share an Israeli heritage, as well as a penchant for florid and campy communications arising from our common academic backgrounds and sensibilities”!!!!!!!
Honestly, that might be my favorite sexual harassment defense I’ve ever seen. Imagine if Harvey Weinstein had come up with that shit? Dude would be floating free in some infinity pool on a giant inflatable pelican, sipping mai tais while a ladyboy rubs coconut oil on his belly. For those of you who don’t speak genius, let me translate what she said: “he likes dudes, I like chicks. We both have family from Israel (boo, goooo Hamas!) and we like flirting in a totally effeminate way because we read German fiction from an era when men could bone young boys in broad daylight and nobody cared.”
I’m convinced. Professor Ronell, I’m in your corner. And if you’re looking for another young Harvard boy on whom to exercise Goethe-based fantasies, I’m your man. Or woman. Whatever you want, really. Just give me a decent grade.
PS- I left out a lot of details from Nimrod’s side that would have hurt my argument. Felt like the right thing to do. Sorry Nimrod.