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Anita Hill's Op-Ed about Trump and sexual harassment
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS ago Tuesday, amid a hotly contested political battle over a Supreme Court vacancy, I testified before Senate Judiciary Committee about the sexually harassing behavior of the nominee, Clarence Thomas. As being a target of harassment wasn’t bad enough, I was then victimized a second time by a smear campaign meant to protect the nomination. Stunningly, people wondered aloud why his behavior mattered in a hearing about his character and fitness. To its credit, the country eventually looked beyond politics and began a difficult conversation about sexual harassment and other workplace abuses women experience regularly.
This weekend, questions of a woman’s right to bodily integrity are again in the news. On Friday, the nation collectively recoiled upon watching Donald Trump lewdly boast to Billy Bush about being able to kiss, grope or “do anything” he wants to women. On one hand, the mere fact that this is considered newsworthy shows that we have come a long way since 1991. On the other hand, the fact that large swaths of Americans believe this to be even vaguely defensible is no different than what many women recount in their claims of sexual harassment and in some cases worse.
What I learned in 1991 is no less true today and no less important for people to understand: responses to sexual harassment and other forms of sexual violence must start with a belief that women matter as much as the powerful men they encounter at work or at school, whether those men are bosses or professors, colleagues or fellow students.
We must understand the harm that sexual harassment and sexual violence causes. Missing from the conversation this weekend, which focused almost exclusively on the character of the offender, was concern about the victims of sexual violence. At virtually every dinner table this weekend, people talked about what should happen to Donald Trump’s political ambitions. But little consideration was given to what impact the brutish behavior he claimed to have had on the women he victimized. How many of them talked about Arianne Zucker, the young woman in the leaked video who Bush cajoled into hugging the same two men who had just joked about forcibly kissing her? Did she know she was the butt of a sexual gag? Or did we wonder what happened to Nancy O’Dell, the woman who rejected Trump’s advances?
This weekend, questions of a woman’s right to bodily integrity are again in the news. On Friday, the nation collectively recoiled upon watching Donald Trump lewdly boast to Billy Bush about being able to kiss, grope or “do anything” he wants to women. On one hand, the mere fact that this is considered newsworthy shows that we have come a long way since 1991. On the other hand, the fact that large swaths of Americans believe this to be even vaguely defensible is no different than what many women recount in their claims of sexual harassment and in some cases worse.
What I learned in 1991 is no less true today and no less important for people to understand: responses to sexual harassment and other forms of sexual violence must start with a belief that women matter as much as the powerful men they encounter at work or at school, whether those men are bosses or professors, colleagues or fellow students.
We must understand the harm that sexual harassment and sexual violence causes. Missing from the conversation this weekend, which focused almost exclusively on the character of the offender, was concern about the victims of sexual violence. At virtually every dinner table this weekend, people talked about what should happen to Donald Trump’s political ambitions. But little consideration was given to what impact the brutish behavior he claimed to have had on the women he victimized. How many of them talked about Arianne Zucker, the young woman in the leaked video who Bush cajoled into hugging the same two men who had just joked about forcibly kissing her? Did she know she was the butt of a sexual gag? Or did we wonder what happened to Nancy O’Dell, the woman who rejected Trump’s advances?
Read the whole piece here:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/10/10/what-can-still-learn-from-sexual-harassment/jCF5rxYbFMgE3bOKR984pI/story.html
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