After Hill v. Thomas

The curtain has fallen on the drama of Anita Hill's charge of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas, but many questions remain. Some observers have predicted a chill in the daily social intercourse between men and women in the workplace and a surge of sexual harassment claims and lawsuits. We suspect there will be not a surge, but perhaps a spike on the charts, followed by a return to a level somewhere near the status quo before the Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Anita Hill to testify. What has permanently risen, however, is the level of apprehension many men feel about the issue of sexual harassment, and the level of concern many women feel not only about this issue, but also about their rights in the workplace, the ineffectualness of their representation in Congress, and the virulence of certain stereotypes about women that many men and women hold.

All over the country, men are asking, in tones ranging from sincerity to outrage, "What's all this coming to? Does this mean I can't compliment a colleague or ever ask a co-worker to dinner without fearing I'll be strung up on sexual harassment charges?"

Women don't share this consternation about the precise boundaries of sexual harassment. They are asking, "Why wasn't there even one woman on the Judiciary Committee? Why assume that quitting a job or refusing another good job is the proper option for women facing sexual harassment (this after several senators 'proved' that Anita Hill's job at Education was 'secure')? Are women who have not personally experienced sexual harassment really so judgmental of women who have? And, does Orrin Hatch really believe a man would have to be a 'complete pervert' to say the things Anita Hill alleges Clarence Thomas said to her?"

This last question brings us back to the question of boundaries, which should be addressed to relieve the anxiety of well-meaning men. Complimenting a woman, if it is not sexual in content, is not sexual harassment. "That's a great suit" is not sexual harassment; "You've got a really sexy walk" is. Asking a co-worker for a date is not sexual harassment until it becomes unwelcome after the invitee has declined.

For many women, however, the problem with distinctions like these, and with Senator Hatch's shock, is their lack of concern with the fundamentals of sexual harassment. Sexual harassment is much more common (and often much more severe) than the specifics of this case suggest, and the damage of sexual harassment is not contingent on whether the language used represents "normal" or "perverted" sexual content. We do realize that the good Senator may not be as naive as he appeared, and may have been protesting much to assert his own righteousness. Either way, the point that gets lost amidst the outrage is that sexual harassment is not primarily about compliments or flirting or sex; it is about a unilateral decision to use sexually-costumed language, images, and acts against the will and dignity of another person. Men who perpetrate sexual harassment are not so much perverts as they are immature, frighteningly insecure, hostile towards women, and probably afraid of them.

Here are a few more real-life examples of sexual harassment.

1. A middle-aged secretary regularly served coffee to her boss, a senior executive in a Fortune-500 company. She did not object to coffee service as part of her duties, but frequently when she approached her boss to place the coffee cup on his desk, he would lift a legal pad on his lap to reveal his exposed erection.
2. A young woman associate in a consulting firm announced to her assembled colleagues that she had secured a new client for the firm. A male associate "congratulated" her with the accusation that of course she had closed the deal by sleeping with the president of the new client company. When she complained to a partner that this had embarrassed her, he suggested the firm pay for the therapy she obviously needed.
3. A veteran civil servant with an impeccable performance record was promoted to work for a man who made advances and tried to touch her. When she refused him, he began a campaign that included leaving "sex toys" in her locker. When she filed a complaint, the campaign escalated to include vandalism of her personal property and physical abuse (hitting and shoving). When her boss's friends threatened her, she backed down.

The second example is not as terrible as the others, but the experience had a debilitating effect on the self-esteem of a young woman just starting out in her career. These three examples do not represent the extreme ends of the range of sexual harassment; they are just a sample of the hundreds of stories with which we are familiar. They demonstrate what anyone who looks honestly at sexual harassment realizes: all of it is damaging to women, demeaning to men and women, and destructive of the moral character and effectiveness of the organization in which it occurs.

The senators' "concern" about why Anita Hill did not file a complaint is ludicrous in light of the serious punishment many women receive when they do speak up. The senators' judgment of when women do or do not feel "secure" enough to leave a job is unsound. And the senators' assertion that a woman "should" consider leaving a job as a way of handling sexual harassment is a violation of our Constitution. It is analogous to saying to a Rosa Parks "why didn't you just take a different form of transportation? Why did you stay on that bus? Why didn't you just walk away?"

Barbara Hadsell, an attorney who recently won a sexual harassment case against the Long Beach, California Police Department, drew this analogy for us. Perhaps Senators Spector and Hatch would have said this to Rosa Parks. It was this same stripe of Senator who said to women after the Civil War, "It is too much to expect us to free the slaves and to give the vote to black male slaves and to black women slaves and to white women. You women need to be patient; we will compromise and give the vote to black male slaves, but not to women of any color."

The problem with this kind of compromise is that it not only disenfranchises women, but it also poisons the civil rights of the supposed beneficiaries of the compromise, whose enfranchised status then takes on a suspect, "undeserved" quality. The real tragedy of the "Anita Hill trial" (which is how many callers to DataLine referred, without noticing the irony of the description, to the hearings), is that the right of an American citizen to be free from sexual harassment was put in false opposition to the right of an American citizen to be free from racial discrimination. Rather than clarifying and strengthening the law, which is what happens in an honest clash of rights, the process diminished all.

DataLine wishes Mr. Thomas well in his new life, where we think his greatest difficulty may be one that has scarcely been mentioned: such a decisive and action-oriented man may be terribly frustrated in a job that is almost 100% contemplation. Still, we hope as things quiet down he will see that the story of the civil servant in the third example is not about some weak person wanting special treatment but a citizen whose rights were violated, and who needs Thomas to insist upon equal protection under the law.