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Katie Roiphe (born July 13, 1968) is an American author and journalist. She is best known as the author of the non-fiction book '' The Morning After: Fear, Sex and Feminism'' (1994). She is also the author of ''Last Night in Paradise: Sex and Morals at the Century's End'' (1997), and the 2007 study of writers and marriage, ''Uncommon Arrangements''. Her 2001 novel ''Still She Haunts Me'' is an imagining of the relationship between Charles Dodgson (known as
Lewis Carroll Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet and mathematician. His most notable works are ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865) and its sequel ...
) and
Alice Liddell Alice Pleasance Hargreaves (''née'' Liddell, ; 4 May 1852 – 16 November 1934), was an English woman who, in her childhood, was an acquaintance and photography subject of Lewis Carroll. One of the stories he told her during a boating trip bec ...
, the real-life model for Dodgson's ''
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (commonly ''Alice in Wonderland'') is an 1865 English novel by Lewis Carroll. It details the story of a young girl named Alice who falls through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creature ...
''. She is also known for allegedly planning to name the creator of the
Shitty Media Men Shitty Media Men was a crowdsourced Google spreadsheet created in October 2017 that collected allegations and rumors of sexual misconduct by about 70 men in the media industry, particularly in New York City. Moira Donegan, a former assistant edito ...
list in an article for Harper's magazine.


Background and education

Roiphe grew up in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, daughter of psychoanalyst Herman Roiphe and noted
feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
Anne (née Roth) Roiphe. She attended the all-female
Brearley School The Brearley School is an all-girls private school in New York City, located on the Upper East Side neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan. The school is divided into lower (kindergarten – grade 4), middle (grades 5–8) and upper (grades 9– ...
, received an AB from
Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...
/
Radcliffe College Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and functioned as the female coordinate institution for the all-male Harvard College. Considered founded in 1879, it was one of the Seven Sisters colleges and h ...
in 1990, and received a PhD in English Literature from
Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
in 1995. In 2001, Roiphe married attorney Harry Chernoff in a
Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""T ...
ceremony in Amagansett,
New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * ...
. They had one daughter, Violet; they separated in 2005 (the year Roiphe's father died), and later divorced. She subsequently had a son, Leo, and has defended being a single mother.


''The Morning After''

In her first book, ''The Morning After'', Roiphe argues that in many instances of supposed campus
date rape Date rape is a form of acquaintance rape and dating violence. The two phrases are often used interchangeably, but date rape specifically refers to a rape in which there has been some sort of romantic or potentially sexual relationship between ...
, women are responsible for their actions. "One of the questions used to define rape was: 'Have you had sexual intercourse when you didn't want to because a man gave you alcohol or drugs?' The phrasing raises the issue of agency. Why aren't college women responsible for their own intake of alcohol or drugs? A man may give her drugs, but she herself decides to take them. If we assume that women are not all helpless and naive, then they should be responsible for their choice to drink or take drugs. If a woman's 'judgment is impaired' and she has sex, it isn't always the man's fault; it isn't necessarily always rape." In the review for ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', Christopher Lehmann-Haupt praised the book, calling it a "Book of the Times" and stating, "It is courageous of Ms. Roiphe to speak out against the herd ideas that campus life typically encourages." Writing for ''
The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'', Katha Pollitt gave the book a negative review, calling it "a careless and irresponsible performance, poorly argued and full of misrepresentations, slapdash research, and gossip." Pollitt's review was in turn criticized by
Christina Hoff Sommers Christina Marie Hoff Sommers (born 1950) is an American author and philosopher. Specializing in ethics, she is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.Who Stole Feminism?'' (1994).Sommers, Christina Hoff. ''Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women''. Simon & Schuster, 1994. p. 214, 298. ''The Morning After'' received a positive response from
Camille Paglia Camille Anna Paglia (; born April 2, 1947) is an American feminist academic and social critic. Paglia has been a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, since 1984. She is critical of many aspects of modern cultur ...
, who called it "an eloquent, thoughtful, finely argued book that was savaged from coast to coast by shallow, dishonest feminist book reviewers".


Cultural criticism

Roiphe's second book was 1997's ''Last Night in Paradise: Sex and Morals at the Century's End''. She also began to contribute reviews and essays to '' Vogue'', '' Harper's'', ''
Slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliation (geology), foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcano, volcanic ash (volcanic), ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is t ...
'', ''
The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'', and ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
''. More recently, she had an essay featured in the anthology ''Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary: Reflections by Women Writers.'' In her essay, entitled "Elect Sister Frigidaire", Roiphe writes that Hillary Clinton is “in many ways the feminist dream incarnate, the opportunity made flesh, the words we whisper to little girls: ‘You can be president. You can do anything you want.’” Reviewing the book for ''The New York Times'',
Michiko Kakutani Michiko Kakutani (born January 9, 1955) is an American writer and retired literary critic, best known for reviewing books for '' The New York Times'' from 1983 to 2017. In that role, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1998. Early lif ...
noted that some of Roiphe's observations were in "stark contrast" to what Kakutani considered some of the "antifeminist" pieces in the collection. She has also written a novel based on the life of Lewis Carroll and his relationship with the real Alice, called ''Still She Haunts Me'', which was published in 2001. In 2007, Roiphe published ''Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Portraits of Married Life in London Literary Circles 1910-1939''. Donna Seaman, in the trade publication ''
Booklist ''Booklist'' is a publication of the American Library Association that provides critical reviews of books and audiovisual materials for all ages. ''Booklist''s primary audience consists of libraries, educators, and booksellers. The magazine is av ...
'', gave the book a starred review, writing, "Roiphe, inspired aesthetically and philosophically by the writings and lives of these social and artistic pioneers, offers sophisticated psychological, sexual, and social analysis, fashioning uncommonly affecting portraits of uncommon men and women." In ''The New York Times'', the editor and critic Tina Brown called it "the perfect bedside book for an age like our own, when everything is known and nothing is understood." In ''The New York Observer'', Alexandra Jacobs conceded "Katie haters will be sorry to hear that it’s very absorbing. The author has done something constructive, for a change, with her contempt for the contemporary age’s lily-livered female psyche..." Roiphe responded to some of her critics in an essay in ''
Slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliation (geology), foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcano, volcanic ash (volcanic), ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is t ...
'' including ''
Gawker ''Gawker'' is an American blog founded by Nick Denton and Elizabeth Spiers and based in New York City focusing on celebrities and the media industry. According to SimilarWeb, the site had over 23 million visits per month as of 2015. Founded in ...
''. In 2012, Roiphe published the essay collection ''In Praise of Messy Lives''. In ''The New York Times'', critic Dwight Garner praised the book, writing, "I’ve begun recommending it to people, particularly to would-be writers, explaining that Ms. Roiphe’s are how you want your essays to sound: lean and literate, not unlike Orwell’s, with a frightening ratio of velocity to torque....Among Ms. Roiphe’s gifts is one for brevity. She lingers long enough to make her points, and no longer. If I could condense my opinion of her new book onto a T-shirt, that Beefy-T would read: 'Team Roiphe.'"


Controversy

In January 2018, Twitter users spread the information that Roiphe planned to name the creator of the anonymous
Shitty Media Men Shitty Media Men was a crowdsourced Google spreadsheet created in October 2017 that collected allegations and rumors of sexual misconduct by about 70 men in the media industry, particularly in New York City. Moira Donegan, a former assistant edito ...
list, a private spreadsheet that later became public. The creator, Moira Donegan, outed herself preemptively in an essay for ''The Cut'' magazine.


Academic work

Roiphe is a professor at
New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, t ...
's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and the Director of the Cultural Reporting and Criticism Program.Katie Roiphe
. Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, New York University. Retrieved 28 February 2020.


Books

* '' The Morning After: Sex, Fear and Feminism on Campus'' (1994) , * ''Last Night in Paradise: Sex and Morals at the Century's End'' (1997) , * ''Still She Haunts Me'' (2001) , * ''Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Portraits of Married Life in London Literary Circles 1910-1939'' (2007) , * ''In Praise of Messy Lives'' (2012) , * ''The Violet Hour: Great Writers at the End'' (2016) , * ''The Power Notebooks'' (2020) ,


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Roiphe, Katie 1968 births Living people American women writers Jewish American writers Brearley School alumni Harvard University alumni New York University faculty Princeton University alumni Writers from New York City American women academics 21st-century American Jews 21st-century American women