I’m waiting to check out at Publix. The headline on People magazine – Taking Down a Hollywood Predator – is surrounded by head shots of young actresses. Just below People is the Time Magazine Commemorative Edition. Hugh Hefner, in his burgundy bathrobe, leans forward with a tight smile.
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From Hollywood it’s spreading like slime– politicians, government officials, business leaders, academics. Women are shining a light on sexual harassment, and the nasty young and old men are deer in the headlights. Donald Trump, Bill O’Reilly – we barely hear about them any more – the stories are coming so fast and furious, tumbling over each other.
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I don’t know anything about the reality of Hollywood – I see them as a group of shined-up women and men, sometimes gifted actors, sometimes merely glossy. The casting couch – it was a casual joke. I think I both assumed it was true and didn’t believe it about any particular woman. I believed Hollywood was a land of casual sex and multiple marriages, where an actor’s sexual image was a costume designed by agents and studios, unrelated to his or her real life. Virgin, slut, stud (always heterosexual) – what did the market need this year?
images:theindependent.com, pinterest. playgirldlist.com
I do know about the reality I’ve lived, as a privileged white woman, prep school girl, hippie, lawyer, growing up in the middle of the sexual “revolution”and the second wave of feminism. I once taught feminist jurisprudence, and in 1989 wrote a long lecture on law and sex, focusing on rape and sexual harassment, then a new legal concept, though certainly not a new problem. After seventy years, I’m still puzzling over gender relations. I have wrestled with this essay, trying to pin down what I think. The whole subject makes me wonder.
I’ve only encountered sexual harassment second-hand, unless I count the urologist who asked me out after hearing about my sex life.
image:healthcare.utah.edu
At the legal aid retreat, the men had a poker game and asked the (female) secretaries to parade in front of them in a wet T-shirt contest. We women lawyers were furious when we heard about it. The men just laughed.
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Many years later, a young graduate student confided in me. She had stayed after the office Christmas party to help clean up, but fled when our boss, I’ll call him Peter, came into the kitchen naked. Apparently Peter believed the mere sight of his penis was sufficient seduction. It was too bizarre, and I might not have believed her had another woman, a professor, not told me a similar story. I reported it to the head of the organization. He was appalled, and called Peter on the carpet.
I’m proud that a few months later, when Peter told me someone had reported him – I don’t know if he was confiding in me as a friendly feminist or suspected I was the snitch – I told him. We were not so friendly after that. Perhaps the episode was noted in his personnel file, but it certainly didn’t stop his upward momentum; he rose to the top of the organization. I wonder if he’s shaking in his boots. I wonder why I don’t out him.
I don’t wonder why I myself was never harassed. Harassment involves unwelcome sexual advances. When I was young, they were rarely unwelcome; indeed, I was often the one advancing. I dressed to entice, and rarely refused an offer. Men’s desire made me feel powerful; I almost had notches on my headboard. (Whether I was fooling myself about what I was seeking is a different inquiry, and complicated.)
Don’t fish off the company pier is a fine rule, but sometimes the only people you meet are swimming in the company pond. A former colleague points out that I ignored the rule. He is now my husband, and an excellent fish indeed, But I never felt sexually pressured by co-workers.
image:canadianflyinfishing.com
I think this is due to my personality. For years I thought of myself as kind and tactful, guided by my mother’s saying: If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. Looking back, knowing myself much better, I realize that was a delusion. You could call me blunt, or you could call me a bitch. More than one man told me I was intimidating. I imagine they called me a ball-buster behind my back. I would have hated that then, but it amuses me now.
Do women who are harassed bring it on themselves, perhaps with their attire? I’ve heard this from men and women. The mixed messages begin when we are so young. Look pretty. Look sexy, but not too sexy. Newscasters are told to wear skirts so the audience can see their legs under the table. Katie Couric changed her appearance, trading pants for skirts and pumps for stilettos, when Diane Sawyer was slotted opposite her on a rival network.
At the law school, fall was recruiting season, and suddenly the halls were filled with carefully groomed young people in suits. But the women had seen the lawyers on TV – skirts to mid-thigh, cleavage peeking out from the neckline, stiletto heels – and dressed accordingly. We older women fretted, but the TV lawyers were more influential than we.
image:express.co.uk
Men still run things in business, entertainment, government, academia. The message? You must dress to attract us. We want to see your breasts and thighs, but if you show them, you can’t complain when we are overcome by our powerful male libido.
If I display it, does that give you license to touch it? To comment on it? Certainly not the former; I don’t know about the latter. But I think we all know that regardless of what we wear – knit sheath or boxy business suit, tight jeans or khaki coveralls, steel-toed workboots or stilettos -some men will see our mere female presence as an invitation.
It all makes me wonder. What does it signify that it is so common? If it’s how it’s always been, do we now hold men accountable for their behavior? Yes, we do; sexual harassment has been recognized as discrimination by the law for over thirty years, first by the EEOC, and then by the Supreme Court. Why do women wait so long to come forward? Oh please. Whose job was in jeopardy? Who feels shame about these episodes? Who gets blamed if she lets herself be pressured into a sexual relationship?
Scholar Catherine McKinnon, with many brave victims and their feminist lawyers, changed the legal environment in the eighties. The harassment and abuse continued. “When you’re a star you can grab em by the pussy,” said candidate Trump. Now a bunch of women, who were raised in and worked in a world where that was true, are saying en masse, No, you can’t. This part’s not for sale. My sexuality isn’t part of my job description.
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The powers that be in media, entertainment, politics, legislatures, are scrambling to distance themselves from this tawdry culture. Shocked, they are shocked. They compete to see who can deplore most forcefully, and the particular men who have been called out are being punished severely.
What I really wonder is, will it last? Is this a brief storm, or an earthquake which will change the topography? Social change, a movement – it surges forward, falls back, subsides, gathers strength, surges again. Do we gain ground?
The New York Times, once famously patriarchal, now has a gender editor, Jessica Bennett. She explores how we got here and queries whether this is a permanent change. Michael Kimmel, a sociologist, told her “There comes a tipping point when the ‘frame’ changes. One day, segregated water fountains seemed ‘normal’…It’s just how things were. Then they’re illegal, and a few years later you say, ‘Wow, how did we ever see that as O.K.?’” click
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I’ve lived seventy years in a world ruled by men, with rules of behavior enforced by men and women. My fifteen-year-old granddaughter has learned all these rules. She tells me what you must do to get and keep a boyfriend, and tells me who is a slut. Like all young people, she thinks her generation invented sex, and says, “Things are different now, Grandma.”
I worry that the frame will not change, that each new generation of women will be harmed by it, and not find the courage to resist until they reach middle age. Diana Nyad wrote an op-ed column recounting the trauma of her high school swimming coach’s continuous molestation: “And therein lies the call for our speaking up. We need to construct an accurate archive of these abuses. And we need to prepare coming generations to speak up in the moment, rather than be coerced into years of mute helplessness.” click
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Have we come a long way, Baby? And will we keep moving forward?