The first stone

In this gripping non-fiction narrative, Helen Garner delves into the causes and effects of police charges pressed against the Master of Ormond College by two female students who claimed he fondled them at a school function. Two overriding questions trouble Ms.

Garner throughout her investigations: why did these students choose to go to the police instead of having the matter settled through the school's private arbitration process, and why, when the Master was found innocent of these charges, was he terminated from his position?

The boldness of this searing piece of literary journalism and the resulting furor over its publication in her native Australia forced Garner to rethink her stance on the feminism she had fought so hard and so long to support. The obscured distinction between "sexual harassment" and "violence against women" is at the heart of this story, and we are drawn into it as Garner re-examines her own attitudes and experiences in the light of a powerful drama about men and women today.

Eventually, Garner is forced to admit that feminism has become another kind of political fundamentalism, often without a thoughtful and responsible examination of the facts behind media-driven stories. Why, she asks, do both feelings and compassion for the involved parties need to be sacrificed for a doctrinaire political agenda? Does searching for a more mature and ethical framework than was laid down in the rebellious excitement of the '60s mean betraying the "Cause"?

Garner asserts that women are not always victims, and the orthodoxy of what feminism has become stands in the way of real political and personal progress. Ultimately, The First Stone is a call for hard-line feminists to grow up and get conscious. It asks for a new kind of feminism based on the cultivation of an individual's power of self-expression, responsibility, and, indeed, exactly the kind of self-discovery her insightful narrative represents.