Assertiveness training
Attorney Alan Dershowitz is encouraging more females-including his daughter, Ella-to develop ”chutzpah,” the Yiddish word for assertiveness that Dershowitz defines as ”a willingness to put yourself out there, demand what is due.” If you don`t have it, don`t worry. It can be acquired, Dershowitz says. See
Chutzpah is a characteristic that women were told not to have, are not supposed to have-and need more of, says a Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz, whose new book is-what else?-”Chutzpah” (Little, Brown, $22.95).
The book revolves around the need for Jews to have more chutzpah (a Yiddish word for assertiveness, that is)-the same chutzpah, says Dershowitz, that all minority groups (minority in the sense of power, not numbers) also need.
”I think we`re seeing an emergence of chutzpah among women now,” he says.
Forget the ”bad” chutzpah of arrogance and extreme aggression;
Dershowitz, who has been accused of having a lot of chutzpah himself, puts it in a good light, defining it as ”a willingness to put yourself out there, demand what is due, to speak what you feel, to defy tradition, to challenge authority, to raise eyebrows.”
Don`t worry if you don`t have chutzpah now. You can learn.
”It`s an acquired characteristic,” Dershowitz says. ”You`re born. You look around and say, `What am I entitled to here? Who`s depriving me of my rights?` ”
Dershowitz notes that it is tempting, when a minority has won a degree of acceptance, to worry about rocking the boat.
”Every group that is struggling with its identity and power has this terrible dilemma about accepting toleration,” he says, ”where you act like you`re a guest in somebody else`s home.”
That`s where chutzpah comes in, he says, when you must affirm, ”No, this is not a white male Christian country, this is country for all of us. Women have the same status as men, Jews as Christians, blacks as whites. There is no difference.”
Being assertive and demanding one`s due can evoke criticism, something many women have a hard time handling.
”On the one hand, if you dish it out, you`ve got to learn how to take it,” says Dershowitz, no stranger to the word. ”You try to build a tough exterior, and it never, ever works.”
But fear of criticism never holds him back.
”Quite the opposite,” says the lawyer who has taken on some of the most unpopular criminal cases of our time, including those of Claus von Bulow, Jonathan Pollard and Leona Helmsley.
”I realize I`m going to get the criticism anyway, so I might as well do what is right.”
One example is hotel magnate Leona Helmsley, whom Dershowitz credits with having a lot of chutzpah.
”It`s so clear that a good part of the reason Leona Helmsley is so maligned is that she`s a woman who acts like a man,” says Dershowtiz.
”She`s a tough lady; she has all the characteristics that in a man result in great admiration and in a woman result in enormous denigration. If she were a man, she would be very much admired as being tough, successful, devoted to her spouse and taking no nonsense.
”She always fights back. In a woman that`s regarded as somehow out-of-character.” (As of this writing, Helmsley is awaiting the results of the appeal of her conviction on federal tax-fraud charges.)
Dershowitz is a supporter of newspaper sections devoted to women. The media are mostly white male; sometimes the media have a hard time
understanding how things impact on women, he says. So it`s important for women to seize control over at least a part of the media, he says.
”I think every movement for equality has gone through a kind of separatism, whether it`s separate schools, clubs, newspapers,” he says.
”It`s a very important part of emergence into the mainstream.
”The goal eventually is not to need a women`s section of the newspaper because women`s news will be as important as men`s news.
”For the same reason, while I am totally opposed to `men only` clubs on campus, I am not totally opposed to `women only` clubs on campus. I am totally opposed to `whites only` clubs on campus; I am not opposed to `blacks only`
clubs on campus. I think these are transitional psychological and political needs that we as white males have no right to oppose. There`s an enormous difference between the majority excluding the minority and the minority trying to build themselves up to the point of equality.”
Dershowitz says that, if there is going to be a backlash against feminism, it`s going to take an incredible amount of chutzpah to fight it. Sitting in the living room of his Cambridge home and watching his 16-month-old daughter, Ella, play nearby, he says that he hopes she will have chutzpah.
”I hope that women can learn something from both the positive and negative experiences of how Jews have adapted to America,” he says. ”Jewish immigrant experience has been largely successful, but we failed our most important test. We failed our test in the 1930s and 1940s during the Holocaust.
”Everybody should learn a lesson from that failure: You don`t influence the world by remaining silent. Passivity is not conducive to survival in this world. You`ve got to speak out; you`ve got to fight back.”
