Dating Don'ts and Don'ts -- 
A Handy Checklist for the Politically Correct 90's

Here, just in time for spring, is a list of things that are now against 
the rules, according to the the sex-and-dating police. Read -- and 
memorize -- this information to avoid lawsuits, dismissal from work, 
expulsion from school -- or worse!

LIP-LICKING, TEETH-LICKING, AND PROVOCATIVE EATING.
All these (and more) are on a list of "unacceptable gestures and behaviors" 
distributed at the University of Maryland at College Park.

STANDING TOO CLOSE.
Standing too close is one of a long list of "sexually harassing behaviors" 
that Susan Strauss and Pamela Espeland caution us "have been reported in U.S. 
high schools."  (Others are MAKING "VERBAL COMMENTS ABOUT CLOTHING" and 
"WEARING AN OBSCENE HAT.")

ATTENDING PERFORMANCES OF "ROMEO AND JULIET."
London school official Jane Hardman-Brown refused to take her students to see 
"Romeo and Juliet" on the grounds that it was a "blatantly heterosexual love 
story."  (It's not clear whether Hardman-Brown wants the play rewritten to 
celebrate alternative lifestyles, or would prefer to have it banned altogether.)

EXCESSIVE EYE-CONTACT.
University of Toronto chemistry professor Richard Hummel was recently prosecuted 
for "prolonged staring" at a female student.

INSUFFICIENT EYE-CONTACT.
A handbook published at Barnard College in New York warns male professors who fail 
to make sufficient eye-contact with their female students that their conduct is 
"contributing to a biased atmosphere in the classroom" which may cause women to 
"feel discouraged and/or physically threatened."

RECEPTIVE NON-INITIATION.
If a woman makes a pass at her male boss, and her boss responds, he (not she) is 
guilty of sexual harassment, according to Hunter College professor Sue Rosenberg 
Zalk.  Zalk's term for this underpublicized offense: "receptive non-initiation."

FORGETTING A WOMAN'S NAME.
A report issued by a committee at the University of Pennsylvania lists "women's 
names not remembered" as a pernicious form of sexual discrimination.

PUBLIC DISPLAYS OF AFFECTION.
The Minnesota Department of Education discourages "displays of affection in hallways" 
on the grounds that such displays "may offend others" and are "heterosexist."

HAMBURGERS.
Jeremy Rifkin, author of Beyond Beef, notes that "the statistics linking  domestic 
violence and quarrels over beef are both revealing and compelling."

SELF-DEPRECATING HUMOR.
And finally this, from Robin Morgan, former editor of Ms.:  If a man's "self-
deprecating humor" leads a woman to initiate sex with him, then that man is -- 
in a "radical feminist" sense of the term -- guilty of assault.