THE CRYING GAME

By MARGARET CARLSON

DO YOU EVER GET THE FEELING THAT THE MEN IN THE WORLD MIGHT not care if the door closed and there were no women in the room? Ever suspect many men still think that when a woman argues a point she's being combative, while a man is being analytic; that women are motivated by emotions and the need to be loved, while men are driven by facts; that when a woman asks for a raise, if she has the temerity to do so, she is grasping, unlike male breadwinners, who are simply collecting their due?

Well, have I got validation for you. Several of the country's most powerful lawyers, in briefs and in oral argument before the Supreme Court last week, trotted out those stereotypes and more in a last-ditch attempt to save the 157-year-old, state-supported Virginia Military Institute as an all-male preserve. According to VMI's argument, women respond more naturally to an "ethic of care" than to an egalitarian "ethic of justice," and those few women who are confident need to go to a women's school to be "reminded" that female "leadership" carries "the hazard of being oppressive." In lower court, VMI had solicited the expert testimony of retired Harvard sociology professor David Riesman, who warned that a young woman's "aspirations" to marry are "still in the South very common," and that men still divide women into the "good girls and the bad girls"--and you know which kind would want to attend a single-sex school. Besides, noted Riesman, even "macho" women cry.

VMI also argued that a leadership program it set up at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Virginia, although separate, is entirely equal. A traditional women's school that features Apple Day and genteel residence halls with brass chandeliers, carpeting, cable TV and microwaves, Baldwin offers two hours of rotc a week for freshmen, but none of the character-building deprivation or bonding possibilities of barracks life. There is also no Bachelor of Science degree or alumni network similar to VMI's, which has always been touted as the key to cracking the Virginia establishment. Last week VMI put itself in the ridiculous position of lowballing its worth, pointing out that only one member of the Virginia general assembly was a grad and, in effect, questioning why any woman would want to go to such a dump.

Although the VMI ruling will also decide the pending Citadel lawsuit, this case has attracted far less attention because the plaintiff was the Bush Administration's Attorney General Richard Thornburgh, filing on behalf of an anonymous complainant under his civil rights authority. His weight and hair were not nearly so much fun to ridicule as the huffing and puffing Shannon Faulkner, whose dropping out to the cheers of cadets was carried live by CNN.

During oral argument, Deputy Solicitor General Paul Bender grabbed the rapt attention of the Justices when he harked back to a certain law school that refused to admit women, claiming they would run in tears from the lecture hall, unable to cope with the harsh Socratic method, the legal version of hazing. Five of the Justices recognized the school as their alma mater, Harvard Law School. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of the first women to get there, seemed to hold back a smile. VMI and the Citadel might want to start building those women's bathrooms now.