Good Conflict

The world is consumed by violent fights and hostile disagreements. SARAH SCHULMAN sees a way out of them.

- By Molly Fischer

Sarah Schulman is a playwright, an author, and a queer activist. She is also a professor of creative writing, and once, a number of years ago, she learned that a male graduate student maintained a blog where he wrote about his crush on her. He wrote that he was in love with her; he wrote that he wanted to fuck her; he wrote about her appearance in a way that made her feel bad. She told her colleagues what was happening, and their response was unanimous: He was “stalking” her. They advised Schulman to report him to a supervisor.

She considered this. She was uncomfortable with what was happening, and she wanted it to stop. But she was also uncomfortable with her colleagues’ advice. “I realized that the more I saw myself as being victimized by this person, the more support I had from my colleagues,” Schulman told me. “They would wrap me in the comfort of their protection. And I found this very disturbing. Because no one said to me, ‘Why don’t you ask him what he thinks is going on?’ ”

In her mind, stalking meant something like “when your ex-husband is in front of your house with a gun.” She wasn’t frightened of her student; she was disconcerted. “Stalking is a real thing, and people lose their lives to stalking,” Schulman said. What she had on her hands was not that: It was a situation in which “somebody is feeling something and another person feels uncomfortable about it. That is often called stalking, but it’s not stalking.” She decided to call her student and talk to him about it.