September 22, 2018 • 58 mins
The allegations of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is reminiscent of Anita Hill's testimony in 1991. A & B revisit this case and some of the similarities.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Bridget and this is Annie, and you're
listening to stuff Mom never told you. Quick trigger warning.
Today we're talking about Brett Kavanall, uh nominee for the
Supreme Court, which talking about apparently needs a trigger warning.
(00:28):
We're talking about allegations against him attempted rape. So if
that's something that is difficult for you to hear about,
that is what we're talking about today. Yeah, and we
did an episode on Brett Kavanall a couple of weeks ago,
depending on when you're listening to this and his confirmation hearing,
and we said we would update you if there was
any new info, and surprise, there's new info. He might
(00:52):
be a creep, that's right. Psychology professor Christine blaisie Ford
came forward with a very disturbing allegation that happened when
are both teens in Maryland. She alleges that Kavanaugh and
a friend, both quote stumbling drunk, pushed her into a
bedroom onto a bed where rock music was playing with
the volume turned way up. The post description follows while
(01:15):
his friend watched, She said Kavanaugh hindered to a bed
on her back and groped her over her clothes, grinding
his body against hers. I'm clumsily attempting to pull off
her one piece bathing suit and the clothing she wore
over it. When she tried to scream, she said, he
put his hand over her mouth. Ord told the Post
that both boys were laughing maniacally during the alleged assault,
(01:36):
and that she feared that Kavanaugh might inadvertedly kill me.
It ended when the drunken friend pounced on Kavanaugh and her,
which sent them tumbling, allowing her to escape and lock
herself in a bathroom. Ford also produced notes from couples
therapy session as corroboration of her account. Quote. The therapist notes,
(01:58):
portions of which were provided by Ford and viewed by
The Washington Post, do not mention Kevinaugh's name, but say
she reported that she was attacked by students quote from
an elitist boys school who went on to become highly
respected in high ranking members of society in Washington. In
a statement to the Post, Kavanaugh said quote, I categorically
and unequivocally deny this allegation. I did not do this
(02:20):
back in high school or at any time. It's also
worth noting that the friend that she says was in
the room with him. Mark Judge said he has no
memory of the attack, but it's also as of this
recording refusing to testify, and he might have heard. Soon
after these allegations surfaced, Senate Republicans issued a letter signed
by sixty five women vouching for his character. I mean,
(02:43):
I always carry around a letter of sixty five people
who I didn't write. You know, we decided have to
have it. That's like a standard thing you have in
your wallet, like, oh, here's a letter of all the
people that I never attacked, just so that you have
it for your records. That's a normal thing to be
able to produce at a moment's notice. That's what I've
been told. There is a ton more to this story,
(03:05):
which we will revisit in a full episode, but the
parallels to Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas are stark. Anita
Hill testified before the U. S. Senate that then Supreme
Court nominee Clarence Thomas sexually harassed her when they worked
together in a piece for The New York Times. Hill
rights The phrase they just don't get it became a
(03:28):
popular way of describing senators reaction to sexual violence. With
years of hindsight, mounds of evidence of the prevalence and
harm that sexual violence causes individuals and our institutions, as
well as a Senate with more women than ever. Not
getting it isn't an option for our elected representatives in
our senators must get it right. I completely agree Anita
(03:51):
hill Um. I think what's happening is at the very
least troubling, right, Like, obviously this is something that that
needs more scrutiny. Obviously this is something you know, it
brings up the question of whether or not this person
is fit to hold public office. I have to say,
I have been really kind of shocked by a lot
(04:13):
of the conversations happening where folks are saying, oh, well,
you know, I wouldn't want to be held accountable for
things I did when I was a teenager. And I think,
you know, we we spend so much time teaching boys
and young men that their behavior matters, and that how
you treat people matters, and that you know, no means no,
and all of this. I can't help but wonder how
(04:35):
much work is being undone by these grown successful men
going on TV and saying whatever you do in high
school doesn't make a difference if you if you attempt
to write somebody in high school, you can still you know,
still hold one of the most powerful offices in the land. Right. Um.
(04:55):
I've heard a lot of disturbing conversations around it as well,
and I've heard a lot of well, no, there's no
other blemishes on his record that we can find, so
just this one time that's okay, like giving it sort
of a pass, which it's it's not okay. And if
(05:16):
this is a job interview and this is a really
powerful position, then I think we need to take it
seriously and get to the bottom of it. So I
personally do not agree that it has no it has
no bearing on his ability to lead now. But even
if that's even if that is how I felt, which
I don't, if he lied about it, if he's lying
(05:39):
about it now, that certainly matters for someone trying to
be oh, I don't know, a Supreme Court judge. And
if you agree, if you think, yeah, this is something
that deserves more scrutiny, We have more questions. We need
a better investigation on what's going on. You know what
you can do, Call your senator, Call your senator, Call
your senator. We hammered this home and in our first
(06:02):
Cabinal episode, and we're doing it again. You know, this
is so important. There are so many things that are
at stake with this nominee that it's important that we
that we know what's going on and that we are
making our voices heard. So please call your senator. You
can do so by calling two O two two to
four three one to one. That's two oh two two
(06:26):
to four three one two one. And you know what,
because I live in Washington, d C. I don't even
have a senator to call. So you're doing me a
personal favor by by calling your senator on my behalf
or not on my behalf, but call your senator for
those of us who live in d C who can't
call their senator. So please do this as a personal favor,
(06:48):
and in the meantime, enjoy this classic episode on Anita Hill.
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You. From House topporks
dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Christen,
(07:08):
I'm Caroline and Caroline. Even though we're talking today about
something that happened in one it's timely because HBO's Confirmation
hits screens April sixt in which Carrie Washington is starring
as Anita Hill. That's right, she also produced it. It's
(07:29):
an important story to tell. It's an absolutely important story
to tell. And some of you may have already seen,
as I did, the documentary Anita Speaking Truth to Power,
which is all about Anita hills testimony regarding sexual harassment
by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas during Thomas's confirmation hearings. Yeah,
(07:52):
and it's it was pretty surprising to a lot of
people that this documentary came out because Anita Hill is
so famous private, famously private, he said, a contradiction, um,
but Hill said that she felt it was time to
revisit this and for people to understand who I am
and who that is is someone who really helped change
(08:16):
this country's legal and political landscape. Although, as we talked
about in our last episode, the term sexual harassment had
been coined in the mid seventies, it really wasn't until
this massive televised spectacle of a of a hearing that
the entire country, and importantly a lot of women started
(08:36):
talking to each other about the issue of sexual harassment. Yeah,
and so if you haven't gone back and listened to
our previous episode on the legal history of sexual harassment.
We highly recommend that you do that. Um. But Caroline,
I was wondering if you remember this happening, because I do,
(08:58):
and the way that we're framing the issue today in
this podcast studio is much different than the way the
hearing was framed when I was a kid in a
very conservative home. Um, from what I can piece together
from my memory, I mean, I remember her sitting there,
I remember her, seeing her in her blue suit. I'm
(09:21):
sure we were not allowed to watch like the actual
hearing because she was talking about things like breasts and penises. Um.
But I remember her being seen in my home or
described in my home as really the enemy. No, I
don't remember it at all, Honestly. I I know I
(09:43):
have like this vague, lizard brain like knowledge that it happened, um,
But I was not aware of it. If my parents
watched anything about it. It was on the nightly news,
and I just have no recollection. And you were busy
watching Murphy Brown. I was super busy watching Murphy Brown
and Designing Women and the Cosby Show well, and so
(10:06):
when I watched that documentary Anita Speaking Truth to Power
a few months ago, I started crying. Caroline not kidding
because it feels so long ago, and yet it is not.
Oh it's not. And you know, the the nineties are
having such a heyday right now. Um, it's like everything
is nineties nostalgia. And yeah, I saw a picture of
(10:29):
Rihanna wearing a choker. Back. Everyone's wearing chokers. I should
pull out the my my handmade chokers from high school.
Oh wait, no, I shouldn't. Um, but watching it made
me want to reach through the internet and shake it
by its lapels and say, we need to remember this thing,
(10:50):
this chapter in our not so long ago history. Because
the way she was treated sitting before an all male
Senate Judiciary committee, which included Veep Joe Biden. Um, it was.
It was horrifying. It was a horrifying thing to witness.
And I think every single woman listening should absolutely watch it.
(11:13):
I mean, watch Carrie Washington's confirmation because she's fabulous and
support her, but go back and actually watch the hearing itself. Yeah. Absolutely.
I mean there are definitely clips online, their transcripts, you
can access this information. And it's so important too, because
these fourteen white male senators were essentially performing the disbelief
(11:38):
of women. Do you know what I mean? Like they
were they were performing how so many men felt and
feel about women who claim any type of sexual misconduct
in the workplace. Well, they were performing that and performing
the hyper sexualization of women of color. Correct. So I mean,
(12:01):
that's why I think it's so important. Read the transcript, yes,
if you want more details, but you gotta see it
because the optics of it are just stunning. So let's
set the scene, shall we. Let's go back to July
when I was going through my wind suit phase. Oh
my god, me too. Were they neon? Yes, yes, of
(12:24):
course they were. I had so many, so many win seas. Okay, anyway, right,
So in July ninety one, when kristin I were win
suiting it up and swish swishing down the hallway, President
Bush the first nominated forty three year old conservative African
American judge Clarence Thomas to replace Justice Third Good Marshal
(12:44):
to the Supreme Court amid what was then a super
conservative political climate. And they figured that while Clarence Thomas
was way more conservative than Third Good Marshal, uh, he
would at least maintain the racial makeup of the court.
But the pinpoint Georgia Natives conservative bent. I mean, and
that is conservative with what's bigger than a capital CEE,
(13:07):
like a massive Washington monument size from the illuminated Bibles
that monks did. That's a huge sea. Yes, one of those,
one of those large monk sees conservative. It upset a
lot of groups. I mean, you had the double A
c P. The National Bar Association and the Urban League
(13:27):
fearing his views on affirmative action. They were worried that
it would reverse the progress of the Civil rights era
because he was so not for affirmative action. The National
Organization for Women worried that he would rule against legal abortion,
and the legal community at large was concerned about his experience.
(13:47):
He had less than two years of experience as a
federal judge. But still the nomination heads to the Senate
Judiciary committees confirmation hearings, which go relatively smoothly, but they
ended a high which sends the nomination to the full
Senate without a clear recommendation. And at this point, although
(14:07):
like he didn't get a glowing recommendation because it was
a tie and a lot of people didn't like him. Uh,
it was still pretty smooth sailing. Until things take a turn,
And in October of nine, Anita Hill, who was the
University of Oklahoma's first tenured black law professor, came forward,
(14:28):
so to speak. She didn't really come forward, but we'll
tackle that in a minute. She said that Thomas had
sexually harassed her when he was her boss at both
the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights in eighty
two and at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in nineteen two.
In nineteen eight three, but let's back up a second,
(14:51):
how did she even end up before the Senate if
she didn't technically really kind of come forward on her own.
So she actually submitted a confident Hill statement to the
Senate Judiciary Committee saying that Thomas had harassed or ten
years earlier when they were both single. The FBI, per usual,
(15:11):
investigated the report, found it to be inconclusive, and the
committee decided not to act on it. But then it
became clear that members of various senators staffs approached Anita
Hill about her report, rather than what would later be
alleged that Hill approached senators attempting to smear Clarence Thomas,
(15:32):
And in fact, she remained silent publicly until just two
days before the full Senate was set to confirm Thomas,
when someone leaked the statement to journalists, and that happened
on October six, and NPR and Newsday broke the story.
And once it broke, Anita Hill famously said, I felt
(15:54):
I had to tell the truth. I could not keep silent.
And so you have a lot of different groups, including
a lot of women's and feminist groups, in addition to
Senate Democrats helping pressure a testimony into being, and so
Hi'll get summoned to testify live on TV, delaying the
confirmation hearings, and those harassment hearings began just a couple
(16:16):
of days later on October eleventh, with Thomas's opening statements,
which journalists noted were bitter to the point that people
thought he might withdraw his candidacy, followed then by eight
hours of Anita Hill's testimony. And I want to say
that it was a pretty big deal that they convinced
the you know, the Senate to air it live on
(16:38):
television because they did not want it to be a
closed hearing. Yeah, and I mean sort of off on
a tangent, but that very decision within usher in our
era of like celebrity, giant paparazzi type of tabloid trials
as we then would see in ninety five with O. J. Simpson. Yeah,
so with her testimony, Anita Hill's testimony, it was a
(17:02):
massive spectacle. There's really no other way to describe it.
She was grilled and prodded for eight hours by a
panel of fourteen white male senators, including all all Joe Biden,
but she never lost her cool, asserting that she's not
making a formal sexual harassment claim and that she did
(17:23):
not ask to testify. And Time magazine even painted her
as cool as a cucumber, prim delicate, quiet and serious.
And I mean if anyone saw Cecil Richards, you know,
planned parenthood testimonies before the Senate, and even Hillary Clinton
has been Ghazi testimonies, I mean, those two things were
(17:44):
nothing compared to what Anita Hill sat through. Oh I know.
But it is interesting that Time magazine article came out
about a year after hearings, and they were sort of
going back and forth trying to I don't know what
they were trying to do. They were trying to paint
a picture looking back of how the hearings had gone,
and they were sort of The only way I can
(18:06):
picture it is like a cat with a ball of yarn,
like batting back and forth, the ideas of like, who's lying,
someone's lying? How could it be her? She was so
quiet and prim and serious, But how could it be him?
He's a big deal judge. And it's like, oh my god,
that's sickening. And I get and they did a great
(18:27):
job of breaking down what happened in the hearing, but
still it's like, oh good, just another notch in our
culture of not believing women. Well, and that's also why
I so fervidly argue that everyone needs to watch that
testimony because when I did see like the Benghazi and
planned parenthood hearings, flashbacks came of Anita Hill, because it's
(18:51):
like it's the same thing, especially when it came to
Cecil Richards and planned parenthood of mostly men. By that point,
um challenging the veracity of what women say about their
own bodies, right right, exactly. Well, so let's get into
the allegations. Hill said in her report that Thomas talked
(19:14):
about pornographic films and other materials, and good Old Committee
Chairman Joe Biden asked her, I'm not sure I don't
know why. I mean, I guess for details, but he
specifically requested to know what the most embarrassing encounter was,
and she said it was during Thomas's discussion of a
particular porn actor who had a really large penis, who
(19:36):
went by the name of Long Dong Silver and Senator
Oran Hatch, who would prove to be one of Hill's
most aggressive interrogators over the course of her testimony, dug
up a federal appeals court decisions citing an obscene photo
of a character by that name, and so he tried
(19:57):
to discredit her by saying, no, no, no, you heard
it in this eight case. You didn't hear it from
Clarence Thomas. Yeah, um, and He'll also talked about how
Clarence Thomas would brag about his own sexual prowess the
size of his own penis, and the most famous, slash
infamous moment came when Hill recounted Clarence Thomas reaching for
(20:19):
a can of coke when they worked together and asking
who has put pubic hair on my coke? And oor
in Hatch again one of the most aggressive interrogators, as
you put it, Caroline said that she simply stole that
story from the Exorcist, which features the line there seems
to be an alien pubic hair in my gin. And
(20:42):
I just want to know whether or in Hatch was
like that much of an Exorcist buff to be able to, like,
you know, pull that out of his hat so quickly,
or if that was an interns job regardless, I was
actually jeless. I was trying to picture the same thing
about like how how do you send an intern on
that on that kick? Like do you just have an
intern who works for who's like that's a line similar
(21:04):
to one in the Exorcist, like someone who's like really
plugged into pop culture? Because Google didn't exist back then,
No Goog. Maybe the interns name was Google. I don't know.
But the last telling Straw was her last encounter with
Thomas as an e e o C employee. So she
says that Thomas had been asking her out. He'd asked
her out about ten times, but she declined, saying that
(21:26):
dating a supervisor was inappropriate, and so her last day
at the e o C before taking a position at
Oral Roberts University, uh Anita Hill said that Thomas invited
her to a restaurant afterwork, assuring her that dinner was
a professional courtesy only sounds all right, it's a way
to see me off. I'm leaving for another job. But
(21:48):
that last straw he'll said was he made a comment
I vividly remember. He said that if I ever told
anyone of his behavior, that it would ruin his career.
And honestly, aside from a handful, just a couple of people,
she really didn't tell anyone now, And of course that
made her immediately suspect to the Judiciary Committee. And I
(22:10):
should say that not all of the senators were out
to get her, but I mean it was nonetheless a
very hostile room. Um. And in response to that, she said, listen,
I was afraid of coming forward. She reported feeling vulnerable, humiliated,
and frustrated. I mean talking about humiliation. I mean she
(22:32):
had to repeat so many times, Caroline, that pubic care story.
It is mind boggling. Um. She said, at one point,
it wasn't as though it happened every day, but I
went to work during certain periods knowing that it might happen.
And that goes to that e o C definition of
sexual harassment, where it happens frequently enough that it's creating
(22:54):
a hostile work environment, and she was afraid of the
repercussions if if she spoke out. Yeah, she was afraid
that she'd be overlooked for work assignments, could lose her job,
might not be able to find another political job at
all in the Reagan administration if she kept turning her
superior down. And this had very real physical consequences. The
(23:14):
anxiety that she felt dealing with all of this humiliation
and frustration contributed directly to her having to go to
the hospital for stomach pains, which is something we talked
about in our last episode on sexual harassment that so
often victims of trauma and or sexual harassment end up
with these very real manifestations of the anxiety and pain
(23:35):
their feeling. And that Time magazine article that I referenced
earlier after the hearing, uh, they were wondering like, oh,
maybe we should believe her after all, because they wrote
given the detail and consistency of her testimony, it was
almost inconceivable that Hill, rather than describing her own experiences,
was fabricating the portrait of a sexual harassment victim. Duh.
(23:58):
Of course she wasn't making it up. And as she
herself said, I have nothing to gain here. This has
been disruptive of my life, and I've taken a number
of personal risks. And she even reported being threatened at
the time and beyond the testimony, and she went on
to say, I have not gained anything except knowing that
I came forward and did what I felt that I
(24:19):
had an obligation to do. That was to tell the truth. Yeah,
I mean, there was absolutely nothing in this or Anita Hill,
But what about witnesses, what about other women, because surely
Anita Hill wasn't the only one this happened to, or
if she was, isn't that so suspect? Well, the thing is,
(24:40):
other women did come forward, but we never really heard
about it. I mean, some came forward to support hills
claims that she had previously complained to them, you know,
in private, of sexual harassment at the time of the incidents.
And some came forward though, to complain of their own
incidents of harassment. So why don't we know so much
(25:02):
about these other women? Caroline? Well, I mean they were
they were stifled by the Judiciary committee. Uh. One of
the most famous examples of this is the journalist Angela Right,
who was a really fascinating character in her own right,
didn't mean to do that. That's also her last name.
But Wright had worked with Thomas at the e o
(25:23):
C as well and shared similar accounts with Senate investigators,
like like the ones that Hill had shared, but Joe
Biden lifted her subpoena because she wasn't considered credible. So
basically you had Democrats and Republicans who were afraid of
Right testifying because they were worried it would cream or chaos.
(25:47):
They were worried that it would doom Thomas's nomination. Right
had been fired and or quit from like two other jobs,
and basically she stood up for herself in those scenarios
with not so great bossa is. But the committee was like, oh,
that just goes to show she's unstable. But basically what
(26:07):
led Angela Right into this situation, uh, was the fact
that she was horrified that Hill was being called hysterical
and that senators were saying, oh, there's no problem, it's
not like Hill was touched. So Right talks to her
higher ups at her newspaper, The Charlotte Observer and says,
(26:27):
I want to pin a column. I want to write
about this. This is what I was hired to do.
I'm going to do it, but she hadn't even published
it yet when the Senate Committee called and they were like,
we're very interested to know what's going to be in
your column, and Right ended up going to d C.
(26:48):
She sits in her lawyer's office for three days waiting
to be called, and behind the scenes what was going
on as Republicans and Democrats were working together to basically
be like, nah, we are not calling her, and I
mean Right would have and and Biden admits this Right
would have shifted the tone of the whole thing. And
(27:08):
she said, I believe her, Anita, because he did it
to me. And even a coworker Rights backed up her
account that Thomas had pressured her to date him, had
commented on Right's appearance and had asked what size rights
breasts were. And then you have Sakari Hardnett, who was
Thomas's ex assistant, who wrote to the Judiciary Committee quote,
(27:32):
if you were young, black female and reasonably attractive, you
knew full well you were being inspected and auditioned as
a female by Thomas. And that which reading this today
in sten like, obviously that is sexual harassment up down
in sideways, But that also reflects that that kind of
(27:56):
assumption that yes, okay, this is going to happen to you.
If you're pretty enough, you're gonna get hit on. But
it also reflects all of the retro office advice that
we talked about in our previous episode on the legal
history of sexual harassment, where you know, women writing to
other women would say, you know what, be pretty form,
It's okay, it's it's a compliment. He's just paying you
a compliment. Well, so, while you had these women in
(28:18):
the wings who had been waiting to support Anita Hill
but weren't called, you also had many who were against her,
some reported conflicting stories to weaken her credibility. Thomas had
a much larger number of witnesses at his disposal to
benefit his case rather than Anita Hills. But you also
have the fact that the committee ignored evidence regarding Thomas's
(28:41):
habitual use of pornography, although the habit was later documented
by so many others, including former girlfriend Lillian McEwen, and
so Lilian McEwen becomes an important character in this case
because Thomas's defenders cited his relationship with her in order
to deflo at Hill's accusations, how could he be doing this.
(29:02):
He's in this long term relationship with this lovely Lilian
woman and she didn't testify again because of Biden. He
limited female witnesses to those who had a professional relationship
only with Thomas, which is a laugh because he's actually
her asked them, so it's not all professional. Well, and
as McEwen would later describe it, she said, he was
(29:25):
always actively watching the women he worked with to see
if they could be potential partners. So you got some
grooming going on. She called it a hobby of his,
and saying that he asked one woman her bra s
eyes at one point, saying how he was obsessed with
porn and would talk about what he had seen in
magazines and films if there was something worth noting, which
(29:45):
sounds a lot like what Anita Hill was saying and
speaking of x as though we should also note that
um one of Anita Hill's ex boyfriends, attorney John Carr, said,
Oh yeah, I mean I remember her talking to me
in confidence about this. But he was so nervous for
her when he found out that she was going to
(30:07):
have to testify, because he knew the climate and he
knew what she was up against. Yeah, she was not
facing a sympathetic crowd. Oh and also in retrospect to
the owner of the porn video rental store that Thomas
would frequent because again pre Google, pre YouTube, uh said, Oh,
if I had known how things would have turned out,
(30:29):
I would have testified too. I saw him all the
time in there. Mm hmm, Yeah, I'm making my disapproving
emoji face. Uh. Well, so we've we've heard a lot
from Anita Hill, We've heard from Angela, right, what about
what about Thomas? How did he respond? Well, he did
(30:50):
not mince words. So Thomas's response to Anita hills accusations
was none to please, to put it incredibly mildly. Uh.
He first said that he felt shocked, surprised, hurt, and
enormously saddened upon hearing about Hill his accusations, and he
went on to of course deny that he'd ever asked
(31:12):
her out, instead claiming just to be a nice guy,
just a friend willing to help her out. And then
he famously called the hearings a high tech lynching for
uppity blacks, and then writing about this not too long after,
Time magazine reporters say that basically, you felt the whole
rooms still as soon as he says that, because he
(31:37):
is sort of throwing down the gauntlet around racism. Oh, absolutely,
I mean, And he threw in another lynching reference in
his relatively short testimony too. He said, no job is
worth what I've been through, No job, no horror in
my life has been so debilitating. And he goes on
to say, I will not provide the rope for my
(32:00):
own lynching. These are the most intimate parts of my
privacy and they will remain just that private. Yeah, I mean.
He went on lamenting about the testimony, how it had
drawn out his nomination, how I brought so much scrutiny
from the press. He said the process was robbing him
of something he could never get back, and it needed
(32:21):
to stop quote for the benefit of future nominees. He
also vacillated between saying he'd rather take an assassin's bullet
to this kind of living hell, and yet would rather
die than withdraw. But really, the point, he repeatedly hammered,
was that this was a racially motivated attack and on
(32:41):
on behalf of Hill, but also that it was that
she was some sort of operative on behalf of the
Democrats and he said, I cannot shake off these accusations
because they played to the worst stereotypes we have about
black men in this country. And if I remember correctly, Caroline,
in his autobiography, Clarence Thomas, you know, of course, writes
(33:04):
about how angry he will always remain about this incident
and about Anita Hill. And he said that his response
to learning that he had in fact been confirmed was quote,
whoopie damn do mm hmm. Sounds really excited. I wonder
if that has anything to do with the fact that
he's spoken from the bench twice in a decade. Anyway,
(33:26):
in the meantime, as this is happening, you see the
Senate Judiciary Committee attempt again and again too discredit and
delegitimize Anita hills testimony because of saying over and over again,
you know the old thing of like, well, how could
(33:46):
you even put yourself in this place? It goes back
to the standard for those old rape laws, where it's
like if you did not violently protest, if someone didn't
hear you screaming rape throughout the town square, then it
just couldn't have happened. So the first question they wanted
to know was, well, why did you follow him from
the Department of Education too? Very ironically the E E
(34:07):
O C. Yeah, And she answered by saying that she
thought by this point the sexual overtures which had so
troubled me, had ended. And secondly, like we had said earlier,
she was really worried that Reagan might phase out the
Education Department, and so she was worried about losing a job. Um.
And then they said, you know, if he's still harassing
you at the E O C, why did you remain
(34:28):
in contact with him after he left? And her answer
to that was, well, I might as well remain cordial
rather than burning bridges and cutting off all ties, since
I didn't work with him anymore and no longer felt threatened.
And of course they then pressed, why didn't you cut ties?
Why didn't you know? Why didn't you burn those bridges?
And she said, if I had done that, I would
(34:50):
have had to explain this whole situation that I've come
forward with today, because remember she didn't she didn't want
to publicize it. Yeah. And so as a result of
all of this so called evidence against her, Senator Arlen
Specter produced an affidavit from John Doggett, a Yale, classmate
of Clarence Thomas's and an acquaintance of Anita Hills and
(35:14):
dogg It. In this affidavit claimed that Hill had cornered
him at a party about leading her on, and he
referred to her ideas about romance between them as fantasies,
to which, of course, Anita Hill responded, I did not
at any time have any fantasy about romance with him.
But all of this was Senator Specter's way of trying
(35:34):
to paint her as just simply unstable. I mean this
woman again, hyper sexualization of women of color. I mean
she she just wanted a sexual attention. Yeah, And I
mean Spector hammered her on details, minute details of her
story changing. He questioned how valid her memories of events
from eight to ten years earlier were. In his example,
(35:55):
he said that when you spoke to the FBI in September,
you said you told just one friend about the harassment.
Now you have to witnesses lined up to testify that
you'd complained at the time. And she basically said, listen,
you have to take this testimony and the statement as
a whole. And of course there is no motivations, she
said to show i'd make up something like this. I mean,
(36:16):
I can hardly tell you what happened eight to ten
days ago, Caroline, much less eight to ten years. Um.
But one thing that's really important for us to highlight
is the gender and racial aspects of this, of how
it ties into the angry black women's stereotypes and concerns
(36:38):
about coming across that way, um. Women simply being seen
as outside of the norm in general, even back not
so long ago, and Biden himself even framed it as
part of quote a fundamental power struggle going on in
this country between women and men, making it. It's making
(36:59):
it a whole like he's she said thing when it
should not have been at all. Well, yeah, and as
many articles have gone on to point out, it should
have been a he said, they said. But um, when
you are looking at this in terms of outsiders perspectives,
people who are watching this hearing happened, so many women
saw their own experiences echoed in Hills experience, and so
(37:23):
many men were watching their fears about women making unsubstantiated
but damaging claims playing out of course, unsubstantiated in this
case being in air quotes. Um. And although angela right
for instance, back then took issue with how black men
were being portrayed in the press. She said she was
(37:44):
insulted that Thomas was considered the best African American for
the job. If they're gonna, like try to maintain the
racial balance of the court, they can at least find
a better, more qualified guy, someone who doesn't have this
sexually predatory repassed. Yeah. I mean, And the thing is, like,
Thomas was absolutely right about the stereotypes of black men
(38:08):
in this country, but he was using that to play
against like stereotypes about women and to discredit her. And
but if we put gender aside, the African American community
at the time largely stood behind Thomas. I mean to
a lot of people, Anita Hill, a black woman coming
(38:28):
forward to testify against a black man, I felt like betrayal. Yeah. Yeah,
it goes against the idea of solidarity, standing with your community.
What Angela Wright said about you know, I hate how
black men are portrayed in the press. I don't want
to have another takedown campaign of a black man. But
(38:49):
there are better people for this role. And Anita Hill
in the documentary would say I had a gender and
he had a race, And she explained it to Slates
Dollia Lithwick by saying that you have to keep in
mind that in Washington, d c. There was a great
deal of entitlement that went along with being male, and
(39:10):
they didn't take it into account, and instead they portrayed
him as an African American who could use the lynching
metaphor to his advantage. In other words, this is performance absolutely.
And meanwhile, though, you know, Lithwick asked Hill how it
felt to hide her anger, because you know, we have
the whole stereotype about the angry black woman which has
(39:34):
been used historically to marginalize women's intelligence and credibility. So
she has to mask all of that, whereas Thomas is
able to use his as a way to exert power.
And Hill said, quote, I don't use my anger as
a strategy. And I think that that's what he was doing.
(39:55):
That was a strategy. I don't even know how real
it was. Yeah, and then you have you know, we've
mentioned this already. You mentioned it earlier, Christian about going
back to early rape laws about women needing to uh,
they have to perform their anger, pain fear. They've got
to run screaming through the town to prove that they
(40:16):
were raped. And this gets at the root of what
Democratic Arizona Senator Dynas d Coccini said in that twenty
four documentary when he said that when women are harassed,
they ought to get angry and they ought to raise hell.
And Anita Hill is like, uh, excuse me what she says.
People can't tell us how we respond to our own problems.
(40:38):
They shouldn't say because she didn't act the way I
would have acted, it must not be true. You're supposed
to bang on the table. But she said, had I
done what d Concini said, then I would have been
caricatured in a different way. I mean absolutely. They were
already trying to paint her as hysterical and that only
would have played into that as well. But the thing is,
(41:01):
even after Thomas was confirmed, the gender discrediting efforts did
not stop. And this is where we have to talk
about an odious man, an odious writer named David Brock
and a book he wrote soon after the confirmation hearings
called The Real Anita Hill, and it was part of
(41:24):
a right wing smear campaign that continued after Thomas had
taken his seat at the bench to portray Hill as
a man hater, a crusading leftist, and a feminist zealot,
along with being a spurned woman bent on revenge. So
the things that they would highlight where how this woman's
(41:45):
never been married, she doesn't have kids, she's ambitious in
her career. What is her deal? She must be unhinged
not to mention she is a woman of color. What
is she doing in here? She just got into this
position Asian thanks to affirmative action, and now she's, you know,
inca hoots with feminist lawyer Katherine McKinnon to unleash some
(42:08):
kind of feminist campaign on this country. And we're not
going to stand for it. This feminist campaign to make
men act like human beings unthinkable. Oh and we have
to mention the most famous slash infamous. I feel like
this whole thing is famous slash infamous, this phrase that
Brock used and then was repeated. It feels like every
(42:31):
single review and even retrospective on the book The Real
and Anita Hill, in which he described her as quote
a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty. Yeah,
I mean it really His book really served to frame
the discourse for years, years and years until he came
(42:51):
out and apologized and said he had twisted the truth
at the behest of Republican politicians. I mean, but the
damage was already done. I Mean. The wildest thing to
me about all of this is how when that book
came out, reviewer after reviewer considered it almost like a
(43:12):
masterpiece of journalism. Um Deirdre English wrote a pretty in
depth analysis of the book and the reviews that it
had gotten in the nation in and she said the
only the only reviewer and commentator on it was op
ed columnists for The Times Anna Quinlan, who raised the
(43:35):
red flag, saying like, uh, there's some underlying bias that's
pretty evident in Broxhole argument, and it seems like he's
distorting some assumptions. But even she said that he had
unearthed some compelling contradictions. But listen to this, Caroline. This
will this will get your blood boiling, if it isn't already.
(43:55):
In response to this book over in Newsweek, George Hill
wrote at Anita Hill was not a victim of sexual harassment,
but of quote the system of racial preferences that put
her on a track too fast for her abilities and
made her fluent in the rhetoric of victimization. What but
(44:17):
you know what, I see a lot of that tone
reflected in a lot of internet common today. Oh yeah,
you you're just reveling in being a victim. Don't play
the victim? Yeah? Why why do liberals or feminists or
trans people or whoever you are, Why do you just
want to be the victim? Well? And even in uh
(44:40):
a Newsweek article on this that we read that came
out a couple of years ago, even then, it spent
so much time focusing on like how she looked and
called her childless. At one point, it's like, seriously, are
we still are we really focusing on her uterus? We are? Yeah,
we are. Because Hill herself has said that she feels
(45:02):
that that part of her identity, being a single woman
who doesn't have children, really really colored how people viewed her,
the lens through which people viewed her, and she says
it still does, which is why again it's another part
of why she wants to talk about it now. Yeah,
I mean, And even these contemporary articles that we read
(45:25):
for this podcast would usually circle back to her relationship status,
being like, and it turns out she's still not married,
but don't worry, she has been in a committed, happy,
monogamous relationship with a with an insurance salesman for a
number of years. It's like fine, yeah, It's like the
subtext is still there. And almost immediately though Hill's testimony
(45:50):
had amazing ripple effects. Gloria Steinham, speaking to Newsweek, said
that when Hill was not believed, the feeling was that
this would cause fewer people to report sexual harassment, But
what happened was the reverse. Because she had opened up
the subject, women began to talk to each other and
discovered that this had happened to many other women. So
(46:11):
it turned out to be a huge national teaching on
sexual harassment. And sure enough, according to e o C filings,
sexual harassment cases in the wake of her testimony more
than doubled from just over six thousand and nine to
just over fifteen thousand in nine. And over that same
(46:32):
period you also see awards to victims under federal laws
nearly quadrupling from seven point seven million dollars to twenty
seven point eight million dollars. So, even though we clearly
in still have deeply entrenched attitudes that allow sexual harassment
to continue, clearly, in just that short period, women are
(46:52):
starting to be heard. Yeah, I mean. And as another
part of the silver lining to this horrific spect to call,
you have more women in government. When the hearing took place,
just two women were in the Senate, and of course
none of whom were sitting in front of Hill that day.
But in Nino you have what has been deemed the
(47:16):
Year of the Woman, which has been credited to fall
out from those hearings, which drove a record number of
women to run for office, and women won four new
Senate seats plus one incumbent reelection, and twenty four new
House seats. Yeah, so clearly making a positive dent. Clearly
(47:38):
women are like, oh no, oh no, this isn't gonna
happen again. Yeah, I mean. And also once you have
those women in Congress, you also have more laws being
passed tightening up sexual harassment you know, protections and also
um sexual harassment protections within the government, like for government
(47:59):
employees that were not previously there. Well, so spoiler, I
guess at this point, in case you weren't aware, Clarence
Thomas was confirmed. WHOOPI damn do WHIPTI damn do as
he said, uh, and he was approved by a narrow
margin fifty eight. So you know, even though all those
(48:19):
Republicans and Democrats were in cahoots to suppress women's testimony, uh,
still wasn't very popular. But like Kristen said earlier, you know,
he never let go of that anger. And in that
two thousand seven autobiography he referred to Hill as my
most traitorous adversary. But Caroline, I've got a drop a
(48:40):
fact that I learned in the process of researching this
podcast which blew my mind, which cites like, how, of course,
how much he would hate Hill and consider her his
most traitorous adversary considering that one of his buds is
a rush Limbaugh, he who coined the term feminazi, He
(49:01):
officiated Clarence Thomas did Rush Limbaughs third now dissolved marriage. Yes,
Caroline's eyes a huge y'all. Oh, I hate it. Yeah,
But enough with those guys. What happened to Hill? What
happened to Anita Hill? Well, she had grand plans to
(49:25):
just go back to her previously quiet and private life
at the University of Oklahoma teaching commercial law. But unfortunately,
I guess life had other things in the cards because
she didn't stay there long. Probably not because life had
other things in the cards. It probably had more to
do with the death threats she was receiving in addition
to facing a push from conservative lawmakers to fire her
(49:46):
despite the fact you know, she hadum tenure ah and
while she didn't want to return a commercial law and contracts.
So many people were clamoring at this point to understand
sexual harassment and related laws that she's kept her focus
on it. And now she's a professor of social policy,
law and women's Studies at Brandeis University. And she says
(50:07):
that women still come up to her with like tears
in their eyes, treating her like a celebrity, I mean,
which she is to a to a certain degree, but
just saying thank you for what you did. Oh, I mean,
such a heroine absolutely um And Gloria Steinum has said
that some senators since then have you know, kind of
come back and approached feminist leaders asking like what can
(50:31):
they do to kind of rectify that wrong that was
committed And Steinham just suggested, apologize, just apologize for it.
But they've not know they haven't. And in a really
weird twist, and this kicks off the documentary, Thomas's current wife, Jenny,
(50:53):
who was not on the scene during the hearings, left
Anita Hill a bizarre voice message edge at seven thirty
in the morning on a Saturday on her work phone, saying,
I would love you to consider an apology sometime and
some full explanation of what you did with my husband.
(51:13):
So give it some thought and certainly pray about this
and come to understand why you did what you did. Okay,
have a good day. And the wild thing is that
she was making that phone call not in like two
or three, that was in and I mean, and she,
you know, invokes this prayer rhetoric and stuff. And Hill
(51:34):
herself is a devoted Christian, you know, it's not It's
not a thing of like Anita Hill being a heathen um.
But Hill, of course was stunned by it and simply
turned the voicemail over to law enforcement authorities. She was
not going to call Jinny Thomas back up and have
(51:54):
a little heart to heart. And writing about this for
The New Yorker, Jeffrey Tuban said, virtually all the evidence
that has emerged since the hearings corroborates Hill's version of events,
and this, of course makes Jenny Thomas's phone call to
Hill all the more puzzling, and speaking of evidence that
has emerged, you know, corroborating Hill's testimony, I do want
(52:17):
to recommend the book Strange Justice, The Selling of Clarence
Thomas by Jane Meyer and Jill Abramson, because there's was
the book that really, you know, kind of through Brock's
the quote unquote real Anita Hill to the wayside and journalistically,
you know, revealed what was going on with the case.
(52:39):
Imagine that journalistically, well, so you know, everybody wants to know,
like are you are you vengeful? Rageful? Like do you
throw darts at pictures of Clarence Thomas's face as I would? Um?
But Anita Hill has told many reporter I mean, of
(53:00):
course I'm angry. I'm angry with him, I'm angry with
the Senators. I'm probably less angry than I was ten
years ago, but it's still there. And she talks about
how bit by bit you let go of anger, and
she says, for me, the best way to do that
is to think about what my contribution can be to
make sure this doesn't happen to other people. She said
that the larger goal is both gender equality and racial equality,
(53:23):
because both racism and sexism contributed to my being victimized.
But I don't want to walk around being angry all
the time. It's not constructive. And so not only did
she speak truth the power she has been walking her talk.
She's doing exactly that, And what she really wanted to
accomplish with that most recent documentary was for young women
(53:47):
to know that history and also to know that she's okay.
I mean her parents who were so old at the time,
they sat there watching this whole thing go down. She was,
you know, one of was it. It was more than
a dozen children, like grew up in poverty. I mean,
she worked her way into you know, that tenured professorship. Um.
(54:11):
So she also wants to shed light on the fact
though that, like we have emphasized so many times, this
is not an issue that was just frozen in time. Yeah,
that we still have so much to accomplish, And she
said that she basically looks at it from the perspective of,
you know, it took a lot of brave women for
us to get where we are, but we have not
(54:32):
fixed the problem. All we've done is acknowledge it. Well, Caroline,
I do feel good that we have you know, answered
Anita Hills call to spread this history to young women
and to all of the people listening to this podcast,
because it's something that we all need to know about.
(54:52):
Absolutely and listeners, now, I want to hear from you.
What are your thoughts about it? I mean, does this
experience resonate with things that you've experienced before. Mom Stuff
at house sul works dot Com is our email address.
You can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or
messages on Facebook. And we've got a couple of messages
to share with you right now. I have one here
(55:16):
from Michelle. She says, I just wanted to send through
an email thanking you for your recent podcast interviewing Emily
Airies from bost Up. The first five minutes of the
podcast put a name to the roller custer of emotions
that I've been feeling for the last twelve months. Three
years ago, I packed up, left my family and friends
and moved to the opposite side of the country for what,
on paper was a great job. I've always prided myself
(55:38):
on being upbeat, enthusiastic and passionate about my work. However,
by the time I reached the end of last year,
I was a mess of exhaustion, anxiety, and cynicism. I
started obsessing over the simplest tasks at work, lost all motivation,
and spent countless nights awake, obsessing over the smallest details
from the day. I had stopped exercising and socializing and
was feeling isolated. I knew that my job was the
(56:00):
source of these feelings, but felt caught in a cycle
that I couldn't get out of. At the beginning of
this year, I realized that something had to give, and
I started considering a career change, but never felt quite
brave enough to take the next step. The same day
that I listen to your podcast, I finally worked up
the courage to submit an application for that job I've
always wanted. While it may amount to nothing, thanks to
(56:21):
your podcast, the next step doesn't seem quite as big
as it once did. Well, thanks, Michelle and good luck.
I've got a letter here from Alicia about our sexist
emoji episode, which, by the way, y'all, we've been getting
so much great feedback on that and so many great
favorite emojis, She writes. A year and a half ago,
I was painting a paint by number type mural in
(56:43):
my bedroom wall and needed something to listen to while
I worked. I was late to the podcast scene, so
I asked around for recommendations, and my mom recommended your podcast,
and I've been working on listening to every episode since then.
High five red Mom. When I listened to your sexist
emojis episode, it reminded me of a night this past December.
My sister and I were home for the holidays, and
(57:04):
one evening, we were sitting with my mom on her
bed looking at all new emojis from the recent update.
We joked that there needed to be a female version
of the egg plant emoji, and we spent the next
fifteen minutes scrolling through the list looking for an acceptable
vulva representation. Again cool mom, alert um. Anyway, our top
two favorites are the taco and the side by side
(57:27):
pieces of sushi slash sashimi. To be honest, I'm still
a little fuzzy on exactly when the egg plant emoji
should be used, but I've been known to send my
husband the sashimi to indicate that I'm interested in some
BANKI banky. Oh my gosh, Alicia, thank you so much,
and thank you for introducing me to my new favorite emoji.
(57:51):
And listeners. You can send your letters to mom seven
house at works dot com and for links all of
our social media as well as all of our blogs,
videos and podcasts with our sources. So you can learn
more about the incredible Anita Hill, head on over to
stuff Mom Never Told You dot com or more on
this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
(58:13):
Works dot com
Hey, this is Bridget and this is Annie, and you're
listening to stuff Mom never told you. Quick trigger warning.
Today we're talking about Brett Kavanall, uh nominee for the
Supreme Court, which talking about apparently needs a trigger warning.
(00:28):
We're talking about allegations against him attempted rape. So if
that's something that is difficult for you to hear about,
that is what we're talking about today. Yeah, and we
did an episode on Brett Kavanall a couple of weeks ago,
depending on when you're listening to this and his confirmation hearing,
and we said we would update you if there was
any new info, and surprise, there's new info. He might
(00:52):
be a creep, that's right. Psychology professor Christine blaisie Ford
came forward with a very disturbing allegation that happened when
are both teens in Maryland. She alleges that Kavanaugh and
a friend, both quote stumbling drunk, pushed her into a
bedroom onto a bed where rock music was playing with
the volume turned way up. The post description follows while
(01:15):
his friend watched, She said Kavanaugh hindered to a bed
on her back and groped her over her clothes, grinding
his body against hers. I'm clumsily attempting to pull off
her one piece bathing suit and the clothing she wore
over it. When she tried to scream, she said, he
put his hand over her mouth. Ord told the Post
that both boys were laughing maniacally during the alleged assault,
(01:36):
and that she feared that Kavanaugh might inadvertedly kill me.
It ended when the drunken friend pounced on Kavanaugh and her,
which sent them tumbling, allowing her to escape and lock
herself in a bathroom. Ford also produced notes from couples
therapy session as corroboration of her account. Quote. The therapist notes,
(01:58):
portions of which were provided by Ford and viewed by
The Washington Post, do not mention Kevinaugh's name, but say
she reported that she was attacked by students quote from
an elitist boys school who went on to become highly
respected in high ranking members of society in Washington. In
a statement to the Post, Kavanaugh said quote, I categorically
and unequivocally deny this allegation. I did not do this
(02:20):
back in high school or at any time. It's also
worth noting that the friend that she says was in
the room with him. Mark Judge said he has no
memory of the attack, but it's also as of this
recording refusing to testify, and he might have heard. Soon
after these allegations surfaced, Senate Republicans issued a letter signed
by sixty five women vouching for his character. I mean,
(02:43):
I always carry around a letter of sixty five people
who I didn't write. You know, we decided have to
have it. That's like a standard thing you have in
your wallet, like, oh, here's a letter of all the
people that I never attacked, just so that you have
it for your records. That's a normal thing to be
able to produce at a moment's notice. That's what I've
been told. There is a ton more to this story,
(03:05):
which we will revisit in a full episode, but the
parallels to Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas are stark. Anita
Hill testified before the U. S. Senate that then Supreme
Court nominee Clarence Thomas sexually harassed her when they worked
together in a piece for The New York Times. Hill
rights The phrase they just don't get it became a
(03:28):
popular way of describing senators reaction to sexual violence. With
years of hindsight, mounds of evidence of the prevalence and
harm that sexual violence causes individuals and our institutions, as
well as a Senate with more women than ever. Not
getting it isn't an option for our elected representatives in
our senators must get it right. I completely agree Anita
(03:51):
hill Um. I think what's happening is at the very
least troubling, right, Like, obviously this is something that that
needs more scrutiny. Obviously this is something you know, it
brings up the question of whether or not this person
is fit to hold public office. I have to say,
I have been really kind of shocked by a lot
(04:13):
of the conversations happening where folks are saying, oh, well,
you know, I wouldn't want to be held accountable for
things I did when I was a teenager. And I think,
you know, we we spend so much time teaching boys
and young men that their behavior matters, and that how
you treat people matters, and that you know, no means no,
and all of this. I can't help but wonder how
(04:35):
much work is being undone by these grown successful men
going on TV and saying whatever you do in high
school doesn't make a difference if you if you attempt
to write somebody in high school, you can still you know,
still hold one of the most powerful offices in the land. Right. Um.
(04:55):
I've heard a lot of disturbing conversations around it as well,
and I've heard a lot of well, no, there's no
other blemishes on his record that we can find, so
just this one time that's okay, like giving it sort
of a pass, which it's it's not okay. And if
(05:16):
this is a job interview and this is a really
powerful position, then I think we need to take it
seriously and get to the bottom of it. So I
personally do not agree that it has no it has
no bearing on his ability to lead now. But even
if that's even if that is how I felt, which
I don't, if he lied about it, if he's lying
(05:39):
about it now, that certainly matters for someone trying to
be oh, I don't know, a Supreme Court judge. And
if you agree, if you think, yeah, this is something
that deserves more scrutiny, We have more questions. We need
a better investigation on what's going on. You know what
you can do, Call your senator, Call your senator, Call
your senator. We hammered this home and in our first
(06:02):
Cabinal episode, and we're doing it again. You know, this
is so important. There are so many things that are
at stake with this nominee that it's important that we
that we know what's going on and that we are
making our voices heard. So please call your senator. You
can do so by calling two O two two to
four three one to one. That's two oh two two
(06:26):
to four three one two one. And you know what,
because I live in Washington, d C. I don't even
have a senator to call. So you're doing me a
personal favor by by calling your senator on my behalf
or not on my behalf, but call your senator for
those of us who live in d C who can't
call their senator. So please do this as a personal favor,
(06:48):
and in the meantime, enjoy this classic episode on Anita Hill.
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You. From House topporks
dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Christen,
(07:08):
I'm Caroline and Caroline. Even though we're talking today about
something that happened in one it's timely because HBO's Confirmation
hits screens April sixt in which Carrie Washington is starring
as Anita Hill. That's right, she also produced it. It's
(07:29):
an important story to tell. It's an absolutely important story
to tell. And some of you may have already seen,
as I did, the documentary Anita Speaking Truth to Power,
which is all about Anita hills testimony regarding sexual harassment
by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas during Thomas's confirmation hearings. Yeah,
(07:52):
and it's it was pretty surprising to a lot of
people that this documentary came out because Anita Hill is
so famous private, famously private, he said, a contradiction, um,
but Hill said that she felt it was time to
revisit this and for people to understand who I am
and who that is is someone who really helped change
(08:16):
this country's legal and political landscape. Although, as we talked
about in our last episode, the term sexual harassment had
been coined in the mid seventies, it really wasn't until
this massive televised spectacle of a of a hearing that
the entire country, and importantly a lot of women started
(08:36):
talking to each other about the issue of sexual harassment. Yeah,
and so if you haven't gone back and listened to
our previous episode on the legal history of sexual harassment.
We highly recommend that you do that. Um. But Caroline,
I was wondering if you remember this happening, because I do,
(08:58):
and the way that we're framing the issue today in
this podcast studio is much different than the way the
hearing was framed when I was a kid in a
very conservative home. Um, from what I can piece together
from my memory, I mean, I remember her sitting there,
I remember her, seeing her in her blue suit. I'm
(09:21):
sure we were not allowed to watch like the actual
hearing because she was talking about things like breasts and penises. Um.
But I remember her being seen in my home or
described in my home as really the enemy. No, I
don't remember it at all, Honestly. I I know I
(09:43):
have like this vague, lizard brain like knowledge that it happened, um,
But I was not aware of it. If my parents
watched anything about it. It was on the nightly news,
and I just have no recollection. And you were busy
watching Murphy Brown. I was super busy watching Murphy Brown
and Designing Women and the Cosby Show well, and so
(10:06):
when I watched that documentary Anita Speaking Truth to Power
a few months ago, I started crying. Caroline not kidding
because it feels so long ago, and yet it is not.
Oh it's not. And you know, the the nineties are
having such a heyday right now. Um, it's like everything
is nineties nostalgia. And yeah, I saw a picture of
(10:29):
Rihanna wearing a choker. Back. Everyone's wearing chokers. I should
pull out the my my handmade chokers from high school.
Oh wait, no, I shouldn't. Um, but watching it made
me want to reach through the internet and shake it
by its lapels and say, we need to remember this thing,
(10:50):
this chapter in our not so long ago history. Because
the way she was treated sitting before an all male
Senate Judiciary committee, which included Veep Joe Biden. Um, it was.
It was horrifying. It was a horrifying thing to witness.
And I think every single woman listening should absolutely watch it.
(11:13):
I mean, watch Carrie Washington's confirmation because she's fabulous and
support her, but go back and actually watch the hearing itself. Yeah. Absolutely.
I mean there are definitely clips online, their transcripts, you
can access this information. And it's so important too, because
these fourteen white male senators were essentially performing the disbelief
(11:38):
of women. Do you know what I mean? Like they
were they were performing how so many men felt and
feel about women who claim any type of sexual misconduct
in the workplace. Well, they were performing that and performing
the hyper sexualization of women of color. Correct. So I mean,
(12:01):
that's why I think it's so important. Read the transcript, yes,
if you want more details, but you gotta see it
because the optics of it are just stunning. So let's
set the scene, shall we. Let's go back to July
when I was going through my wind suit phase. Oh
my god, me too. Were they neon? Yes, yes, of
(12:24):
course they were. I had so many, so many win seas. Okay, anyway, right,
So in July ninety one, when kristin I were win
suiting it up and swish swishing down the hallway, President
Bush the first nominated forty three year old conservative African
American judge Clarence Thomas to replace Justice Third Good Marshal
(12:44):
to the Supreme Court amid what was then a super
conservative political climate. And they figured that while Clarence Thomas
was way more conservative than Third Good Marshal, uh, he
would at least maintain the racial makeup of the court.
But the pinpoint Georgia Natives conservative bent. I mean, and
that is conservative with what's bigger than a capital CEE,
(13:07):
like a massive Washington monument size from the illuminated Bibles
that monks did. That's a huge sea. Yes, one of those,
one of those large monk sees conservative. It upset a
lot of groups. I mean, you had the double A
c P. The National Bar Association and the Urban League
(13:27):
fearing his views on affirmative action. They were worried that
it would reverse the progress of the Civil rights era
because he was so not for affirmative action. The National
Organization for Women worried that he would rule against legal abortion,
and the legal community at large was concerned about his experience.
(13:47):
He had less than two years of experience as a
federal judge. But still the nomination heads to the Senate
Judiciary committees confirmation hearings, which go relatively smoothly, but they
ended a high which sends the nomination to the full
Senate without a clear recommendation. And at this point, although
(14:07):
like he didn't get a glowing recommendation because it was
a tie and a lot of people didn't like him. Uh,
it was still pretty smooth sailing. Until things take a turn,
And in October of nine, Anita Hill, who was the
University of Oklahoma's first tenured black law professor, came forward,
(14:28):
so to speak. She didn't really come forward, but we'll
tackle that in a minute. She said that Thomas had
sexually harassed her when he was her boss at both
the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights in eighty
two and at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in nineteen two.
In nineteen eight three, but let's back up a second,
(14:51):
how did she even end up before the Senate if
she didn't technically really kind of come forward on her own.
So she actually submitted a confident Hill statement to the
Senate Judiciary Committee saying that Thomas had harassed or ten
years earlier when they were both single. The FBI, per usual,
(15:11):
investigated the report, found it to be inconclusive, and the
committee decided not to act on it. But then it
became clear that members of various senators staffs approached Anita
Hill about her report, rather than what would later be
alleged that Hill approached senators attempting to smear Clarence Thomas,
(15:32):
And in fact, she remained silent publicly until just two
days before the full Senate was set to confirm Thomas,
when someone leaked the statement to journalists, and that happened
on October six, and NPR and Newsday broke the story.
And once it broke, Anita Hill famously said, I felt
(15:54):
I had to tell the truth. I could not keep silent.
And so you have a lot of different groups, including
a lot of women's and feminist groups, in addition to
Senate Democrats helping pressure a testimony into being, and so
Hi'll get summoned to testify live on TV, delaying the
confirmation hearings, and those harassment hearings began just a couple
(16:16):
of days later on October eleventh, with Thomas's opening statements,
which journalists noted were bitter to the point that people
thought he might withdraw his candidacy, followed then by eight
hours of Anita Hill's testimony. And I want to say
that it was a pretty big deal that they convinced
the you know, the Senate to air it live on
(16:38):
television because they did not want it to be a
closed hearing. Yeah, and I mean sort of off on
a tangent, but that very decision within usher in our
era of like celebrity, giant paparazzi type of tabloid trials
as we then would see in ninety five with O. J. Simpson. Yeah,
so with her testimony, Anita Hill's testimony, it was a
(17:02):
massive spectacle. There's really no other way to describe it.
She was grilled and prodded for eight hours by a
panel of fourteen white male senators, including all all Joe Biden,
but she never lost her cool, asserting that she's not
making a formal sexual harassment claim and that she did
(17:23):
not ask to testify. And Time magazine even painted her
as cool as a cucumber, prim delicate, quiet and serious.
And I mean if anyone saw Cecil Richards, you know,
planned parenthood testimonies before the Senate, and even Hillary Clinton
has been Ghazi testimonies, I mean, those two things were
(17:44):
nothing compared to what Anita Hill sat through. Oh I know.
But it is interesting that Time magazine article came out
about a year after hearings, and they were sort of
going back and forth trying to I don't know what
they were trying to do. They were trying to paint
a picture looking back of how the hearings had gone,
and they were sort of The only way I can
(18:06):
picture it is like a cat with a ball of yarn,
like batting back and forth, the ideas of like, who's lying,
someone's lying? How could it be her? She was so
quiet and prim and serious, But how could it be him?
He's a big deal judge. And it's like, oh my god,
that's sickening. And I get and they did a great
(18:27):
job of breaking down what happened in the hearing, but
still it's like, oh good, just another notch in our
culture of not believing women. Well, and that's also why
I so fervidly argue that everyone needs to watch that
testimony because when I did see like the Benghazi and
planned parenthood hearings, flashbacks came of Anita Hill, because it's
(18:51):
like it's the same thing, especially when it came to
Cecil Richards and planned parenthood of mostly men. By that point,
um challenging the veracity of what women say about their
own bodies, right right, exactly. Well, so let's get into
the allegations. Hill said in her report that Thomas talked
(19:14):
about pornographic films and other materials, and good Old Committee
Chairman Joe Biden asked her, I'm not sure I don't
know why. I mean, I guess for details, but he
specifically requested to know what the most embarrassing encounter was,
and she said it was during Thomas's discussion of a
particular porn actor who had a really large penis, who
(19:36):
went by the name of Long Dong Silver and Senator
Oran Hatch, who would prove to be one of Hill's
most aggressive interrogators over the course of her testimony, dug
up a federal appeals court decisions citing an obscene photo
of a character by that name, and so he tried
(19:57):
to discredit her by saying, no, no, no, you heard
it in this eight case. You didn't hear it from
Clarence Thomas. Yeah, um, and He'll also talked about how
Clarence Thomas would brag about his own sexual prowess the
size of his own penis, and the most famous, slash
infamous moment came when Hill recounted Clarence Thomas reaching for
(20:19):
a can of coke when they worked together and asking
who has put pubic hair on my coke? And oor
in Hatch again one of the most aggressive interrogators, as
you put it, Caroline said that she simply stole that
story from the Exorcist, which features the line there seems
to be an alien pubic hair in my gin. And
(20:42):
I just want to know whether or in Hatch was
like that much of an Exorcist buff to be able to, like,
you know, pull that out of his hat so quickly,
or if that was an interns job regardless, I was
actually jeless. I was trying to picture the same thing
about like how how do you send an intern on
that on that kick? Like do you just have an
intern who works for who's like that's a line similar
(21:04):
to one in the Exorcist, like someone who's like really
plugged into pop culture? Because Google didn't exist back then,
No Goog. Maybe the interns name was Google. I don't know.
But the last telling Straw was her last encounter with
Thomas as an e e o C employee. So she
says that Thomas had been asking her out. He'd asked
her out about ten times, but she declined, saying that
(21:26):
dating a supervisor was inappropriate, and so her last day
at the e o C before taking a position at
Oral Roberts University, uh Anita Hill said that Thomas invited
her to a restaurant afterwork, assuring her that dinner was
a professional courtesy only sounds all right, it's a way
to see me off. I'm leaving for another job. But
(21:48):
that last straw he'll said was he made a comment
I vividly remember. He said that if I ever told
anyone of his behavior, that it would ruin his career.
And honestly, aside from a handful, just a couple of people,
she really didn't tell anyone now, And of course that
made her immediately suspect to the Judiciary Committee. And I
(22:10):
should say that not all of the senators were out
to get her, but I mean it was nonetheless a
very hostile room. Um. And in response to that, she said, listen,
I was afraid of coming forward. She reported feeling vulnerable, humiliated,
and frustrated. I mean talking about humiliation. I mean she
(22:32):
had to repeat so many times, Caroline, that pubic care story.
It is mind boggling. Um. She said, at one point,
it wasn't as though it happened every day, but I
went to work during certain periods knowing that it might happen.
And that goes to that e o C definition of
sexual harassment, where it happens frequently enough that it's creating
(22:54):
a hostile work environment, and she was afraid of the
repercussions if if she spoke out. Yeah, she was afraid
that she'd be overlooked for work assignments, could lose her job,
might not be able to find another political job at
all in the Reagan administration if she kept turning her
superior down. And this had very real physical consequences. The
(23:14):
anxiety that she felt dealing with all of this humiliation
and frustration contributed directly to her having to go to
the hospital for stomach pains, which is something we talked
about in our last episode on sexual harassment that so
often victims of trauma and or sexual harassment end up
with these very real manifestations of the anxiety and pain
(23:35):
their feeling. And that Time magazine article that I referenced
earlier after the hearing, uh, they were wondering like, oh,
maybe we should believe her after all, because they wrote
given the detail and consistency of her testimony, it was
almost inconceivable that Hill, rather than describing her own experiences,
was fabricating the portrait of a sexual harassment victim. Duh.
(23:58):
Of course she wasn't making it up. And as she
herself said, I have nothing to gain here. This has
been disruptive of my life, and I've taken a number
of personal risks. And she even reported being threatened at
the time and beyond the testimony, and she went on
to say, I have not gained anything except knowing that
I came forward and did what I felt that I
(24:19):
had an obligation to do. That was to tell the truth. Yeah,
I mean, there was absolutely nothing in this or Anita Hill,
But what about witnesses, what about other women, because surely
Anita Hill wasn't the only one this happened to, or
if she was, isn't that so suspect? Well, the thing is,
(24:40):
other women did come forward, but we never really heard
about it. I mean, some came forward to support hills
claims that she had previously complained to them, you know,
in private, of sexual harassment at the time of the incidents.
And some came forward though, to complain of their own
incidents of harassment. So why don't we know so much
(25:02):
about these other women? Caroline? Well, I mean they were
they were stifled by the Judiciary committee. Uh. One of
the most famous examples of this is the journalist Angela Right,
who was a really fascinating character in her own right,
didn't mean to do that. That's also her last name.
But Wright had worked with Thomas at the e o
(25:23):
C as well and shared similar accounts with Senate investigators,
like like the ones that Hill had shared, but Joe
Biden lifted her subpoena because she wasn't considered credible. So
basically you had Democrats and Republicans who were afraid of
Right testifying because they were worried it would cream or chaos.
(25:47):
They were worried that it would doom Thomas's nomination. Right
had been fired and or quit from like two other jobs,
and basically she stood up for herself in those scenarios
with not so great bossa is. But the committee was like, oh,
that just goes to show she's unstable. But basically what
(26:07):
led Angela Right into this situation, uh, was the fact
that she was horrified that Hill was being called hysterical
and that senators were saying, oh, there's no problem, it's
not like Hill was touched. So Right talks to her
higher ups at her newspaper, The Charlotte Observer and says,
(26:27):
I want to pin a column. I want to write
about this. This is what I was hired to do.
I'm going to do it, but she hadn't even published
it yet when the Senate Committee called and they were like,
we're very interested to know what's going to be in
your column, and Right ended up going to d C.
(26:48):
She sits in her lawyer's office for three days waiting
to be called, and behind the scenes what was going
on as Republicans and Democrats were working together to basically
be like, nah, we are not calling her, and I
mean Right would have and and Biden admits this Right
would have shifted the tone of the whole thing. And
(27:08):
she said, I believe her, Anita, because he did it
to me. And even a coworker Rights backed up her
account that Thomas had pressured her to date him, had
commented on Right's appearance and had asked what size rights
breasts were. And then you have Sakari Hardnett, who was
Thomas's ex assistant, who wrote to the Judiciary Committee quote,
(27:32):
if you were young, black female and reasonably attractive, you
knew full well you were being inspected and auditioned as
a female by Thomas. And that which reading this today
in sten like, obviously that is sexual harassment up down
in sideways, But that also reflects that that kind of
(27:56):
assumption that yes, okay, this is going to happen to you.
If you're pretty enough, you're gonna get hit on. But
it also reflects all of the retro office advice that
we talked about in our previous episode on the legal
history of sexual harassment, where you know, women writing to
other women would say, you know what, be pretty form,
It's okay, it's it's a compliment. He's just paying you
a compliment. Well, so, while you had these women in
(28:18):
the wings who had been waiting to support Anita Hill
but weren't called, you also had many who were against her,
some reported conflicting stories to weaken her credibility. Thomas had
a much larger number of witnesses at his disposal to
benefit his case rather than Anita Hills. But you also
have the fact that the committee ignored evidence regarding Thomas's
(28:41):
habitual use of pornography, although the habit was later documented
by so many others, including former girlfriend Lillian McEwen, and
so Lilian McEwen becomes an important character in this case
because Thomas's defenders cited his relationship with her in order
to deflo at Hill's accusations, how could he be doing this.
(29:02):
He's in this long term relationship with this lovely Lilian
woman and she didn't testify again because of Biden. He
limited female witnesses to those who had a professional relationship
only with Thomas, which is a laugh because he's actually
her asked them, so it's not all professional. Well, and
as McEwen would later describe it, she said, he was
(29:25):
always actively watching the women he worked with to see
if they could be potential partners. So you got some
grooming going on. She called it a hobby of his,
and saying that he asked one woman her bra s
eyes at one point, saying how he was obsessed with
porn and would talk about what he had seen in
magazines and films if there was something worth noting, which
(29:45):
sounds a lot like what Anita Hill was saying and
speaking of x as though we should also note that
um one of Anita Hill's ex boyfriends, attorney John Carr, said,
Oh yeah, I mean I remember her talking to me
in confidence about this. But he was so nervous for
her when he found out that she was going to
(30:07):
have to testify, because he knew the climate and he
knew what she was up against. Yeah, she was not
facing a sympathetic crowd. Oh and also in retrospect to
the owner of the porn video rental store that Thomas
would frequent because again pre Google, pre YouTube, uh said, Oh,
if I had known how things would have turned out,
(30:29):
I would have testified too. I saw him all the
time in there. Mm hmm, Yeah, I'm making my disapproving
emoji face. Uh. Well, so we've we've heard a lot
from Anita Hill, We've heard from Angela, right, what about
what about Thomas? How did he respond? Well, he did
(30:50):
not mince words. So Thomas's response to Anita hills accusations
was none to please, to put it incredibly mildly. Uh.
He first said that he felt shocked, surprised, hurt, and
enormously saddened upon hearing about Hill his accusations, and he
went on to of course deny that he'd ever asked
(31:12):
her out, instead claiming just to be a nice guy,
just a friend willing to help her out. And then
he famously called the hearings a high tech lynching for
uppity blacks, and then writing about this not too long after,
Time magazine reporters say that basically, you felt the whole
rooms still as soon as he says that, because he
(31:37):
is sort of throwing down the gauntlet around racism. Oh, absolutely,
I mean, And he threw in another lynching reference in
his relatively short testimony too. He said, no job is
worth what I've been through, No job, no horror in
my life has been so debilitating. And he goes on
to say, I will not provide the rope for my
(32:00):
own lynching. These are the most intimate parts of my
privacy and they will remain just that private. Yeah, I mean.
He went on lamenting about the testimony, how it had
drawn out his nomination, how I brought so much scrutiny
from the press. He said the process was robbing him
of something he could never get back, and it needed
(32:21):
to stop quote for the benefit of future nominees. He
also vacillated between saying he'd rather take an assassin's bullet
to this kind of living hell, and yet would rather
die than withdraw. But really, the point, he repeatedly hammered,
was that this was a racially motivated attack and on
(32:41):
on behalf of Hill, but also that it was that
she was some sort of operative on behalf of the
Democrats and he said, I cannot shake off these accusations
because they played to the worst stereotypes we have about
black men in this country. And if I remember correctly, Caroline,
in his autobiography, Clarence Thomas, you know, of course, writes
(33:04):
about how angry he will always remain about this incident
and about Anita Hill. And he said that his response
to learning that he had in fact been confirmed was quote,
whoopie damn do mm hmm. Sounds really excited. I wonder
if that has anything to do with the fact that
he's spoken from the bench twice in a decade. Anyway,
(33:26):
in the meantime, as this is happening, you see the
Senate Judiciary Committee attempt again and again too discredit and
delegitimize Anita hills testimony because of saying over and over again,
you know the old thing of like, well, how could
(33:46):
you even put yourself in this place? It goes back
to the standard for those old rape laws, where it's
like if you did not violently protest, if someone didn't
hear you screaming rape throughout the town square, then it
just couldn't have happened. So the first question they wanted
to know was, well, why did you follow him from
the Department of Education too? Very ironically the E E
(34:07):
O C. Yeah, And she answered by saying that she
thought by this point the sexual overtures which had so
troubled me, had ended. And secondly, like we had said earlier,
she was really worried that Reagan might phase out the
Education Department, and so she was worried about losing a job. Um.
And then they said, you know, if he's still harassing
you at the E O C, why did you remain
(34:28):
in contact with him after he left? And her answer
to that was, well, I might as well remain cordial
rather than burning bridges and cutting off all ties, since
I didn't work with him anymore and no longer felt threatened.
And of course they then pressed, why didn't you cut ties?
Why didn't you know? Why didn't you burn those bridges?
And she said, if I had done that, I would
(34:50):
have had to explain this whole situation that I've come
forward with today, because remember she didn't she didn't want
to publicize it. Yeah. And so as a result of
all of this so called evidence against her, Senator Arlen
Specter produced an affidavit from John Doggett, a Yale, classmate
of Clarence Thomas's and an acquaintance of Anita Hills and
(35:14):
dogg It. In this affidavit claimed that Hill had cornered
him at a party about leading her on, and he
referred to her ideas about romance between them as fantasies,
to which, of course, Anita Hill responded, I did not
at any time have any fantasy about romance with him.
But all of this was Senator Specter's way of trying
(35:34):
to paint her as just simply unstable. I mean this
woman again, hyper sexualization of women of color. I mean
she she just wanted a sexual attention. Yeah, And I
mean Spector hammered her on details, minute details of her
story changing. He questioned how valid her memories of events
from eight to ten years earlier were. In his example,
(35:55):
he said that when you spoke to the FBI in September,
you said you told just one friend about the harassment.
Now you have to witnesses lined up to testify that
you'd complained at the time. And she basically said, listen,
you have to take this testimony and the statement as
a whole. And of course there is no motivations, she
said to show i'd make up something like this. I mean,
(36:16):
I can hardly tell you what happened eight to ten
days ago, Caroline, much less eight to ten years. Um.
But one thing that's really important for us to highlight
is the gender and racial aspects of this, of how
it ties into the angry black women's stereotypes and concerns
(36:38):
about coming across that way, um. Women simply being seen
as outside of the norm in general, even back not
so long ago, and Biden himself even framed it as
part of quote a fundamental power struggle going on in
this country between women and men, making it. It's making
(36:59):
it a whole like he's she said thing when it
should not have been at all. Well, yeah, and as
many articles have gone on to point out, it should
have been a he said, they said. But um, when
you are looking at this in terms of outsiders perspectives,
people who are watching this hearing happened, so many women
saw their own experiences echoed in Hills experience, and so
(37:23):
many men were watching their fears about women making unsubstantiated
but damaging claims playing out of course, unsubstantiated in this
case being in air quotes. Um. And although angela right
for instance, back then took issue with how black men
were being portrayed in the press. She said she was
(37:44):
insulted that Thomas was considered the best African American for
the job. If they're gonna, like try to maintain the
racial balance of the court, they can at least find
a better, more qualified guy, someone who doesn't have this
sexually predatory repassed. Yeah. I mean, And the thing is, like,
Thomas was absolutely right about the stereotypes of black men
(38:08):
in this country, but he was using that to play
against like stereotypes about women and to discredit her. And
but if we put gender aside, the African American community
at the time largely stood behind Thomas. I mean to
a lot of people, Anita Hill, a black woman coming
(38:28):
forward to testify against a black man, I felt like betrayal. Yeah. Yeah,
it goes against the idea of solidarity, standing with your community.
What Angela Wright said about you know, I hate how
black men are portrayed in the press. I don't want
to have another takedown campaign of a black man. But
(38:49):
there are better people for this role. And Anita Hill
in the documentary would say I had a gender and
he had a race, And she explained it to Slates
Dollia Lithwick by saying that you have to keep in
mind that in Washington, d c. There was a great
deal of entitlement that went along with being male, and
(39:10):
they didn't take it into account, and instead they portrayed
him as an African American who could use the lynching
metaphor to his advantage. In other words, this is performance absolutely.
And meanwhile, though, you know, Lithwick asked Hill how it
felt to hide her anger, because you know, we have
the whole stereotype about the angry black woman which has
(39:34):
been used historically to marginalize women's intelligence and credibility. So
she has to mask all of that, whereas Thomas is
able to use his as a way to exert power.
And Hill said, quote, I don't use my anger as
a strategy. And I think that that's what he was doing.
(39:55):
That was a strategy. I don't even know how real
it was. Yeah, and then you have you know, we've
mentioned this already. You mentioned it earlier, Christian about going
back to early rape laws about women needing to uh,
they have to perform their anger, pain fear. They've got
to run screaming through the town to prove that they
(40:16):
were raped. And this gets at the root of what
Democratic Arizona Senator Dynas d Coccini said in that twenty
four documentary when he said that when women are harassed,
they ought to get angry and they ought to raise hell.
And Anita Hill is like, uh, excuse me what she says.
People can't tell us how we respond to our own problems.
(40:38):
They shouldn't say because she didn't act the way I
would have acted, it must not be true. You're supposed
to bang on the table. But she said, had I
done what d Concini said, then I would have been
caricatured in a different way. I mean absolutely. They were
already trying to paint her as hysterical and that only
would have played into that as well. But the thing is,
(41:01):
even after Thomas was confirmed, the gender discrediting efforts did
not stop. And this is where we have to talk
about an odious man, an odious writer named David Brock
and a book he wrote soon after the confirmation hearings
called The Real Anita Hill, and it was part of
(41:24):
a right wing smear campaign that continued after Thomas had
taken his seat at the bench to portray Hill as
a man hater, a crusading leftist, and a feminist zealot,
along with being a spurned woman bent on revenge. So
the things that they would highlight where how this woman's
(41:45):
never been married, she doesn't have kids, she's ambitious in
her career. What is her deal? She must be unhinged
not to mention she is a woman of color. What
is she doing in here? She just got into this
position Asian thanks to affirmative action, and now she's, you know,
inca hoots with feminist lawyer Katherine McKinnon to unleash some
(42:08):
kind of feminist campaign on this country. And we're not
going to stand for it. This feminist campaign to make
men act like human beings unthinkable. Oh and we have
to mention the most famous slash infamous. I feel like
this whole thing is famous slash infamous, this phrase that
Brock used and then was repeated. It feels like every
(42:31):
single review and even retrospective on the book The Real
and Anita Hill, in which he described her as quote
a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty. Yeah,
I mean it really His book really served to frame
the discourse for years, years and years until he came
(42:51):
out and apologized and said he had twisted the truth
at the behest of Republican politicians. I mean, but the
damage was already done. I Mean. The wildest thing to
me about all of this is how when that book
came out, reviewer after reviewer considered it almost like a
(43:12):
masterpiece of journalism. Um Deirdre English wrote a pretty in
depth analysis of the book and the reviews that it
had gotten in the nation in and she said the
only the only reviewer and commentator on it was op
ed columnists for The Times Anna Quinlan, who raised the
(43:35):
red flag, saying like, uh, there's some underlying bias that's
pretty evident in Broxhole argument, and it seems like he's
distorting some assumptions. But even she said that he had
unearthed some compelling contradictions. But listen to this, Caroline. This
will this will get your blood boiling, if it isn't already.
(43:55):
In response to this book over in Newsweek, George Hill
wrote at Anita Hill was not a victim of sexual harassment,
but of quote the system of racial preferences that put
her on a track too fast for her abilities and
made her fluent in the rhetoric of victimization. What but
(44:17):
you know what, I see a lot of that tone
reflected in a lot of internet common today. Oh yeah,
you you're just reveling in being a victim. Don't play
the victim? Yeah? Why why do liberals or feminists or
trans people or whoever you are, Why do you just
want to be the victim? Well? And even in uh
(44:40):
a Newsweek article on this that we read that came
out a couple of years ago, even then, it spent
so much time focusing on like how she looked and
called her childless. At one point, it's like, seriously, are
we still are we really focusing on her uterus? We are? Yeah,
we are. Because Hill herself has said that she feels
(45:02):
that that part of her identity, being a single woman
who doesn't have children, really really colored how people viewed her,
the lens through which people viewed her, and she says
it still does, which is why again it's another part
of why she wants to talk about it now. Yeah,
I mean, And even these contemporary articles that we read
(45:25):
for this podcast would usually circle back to her relationship status,
being like, and it turns out she's still not married,
but don't worry, she has been in a committed, happy,
monogamous relationship with a with an insurance salesman for a
number of years. It's like fine, yeah, It's like the
subtext is still there. And almost immediately though Hill's testimony
(45:50):
had amazing ripple effects. Gloria Steinham, speaking to Newsweek, said
that when Hill was not believed, the feeling was that
this would cause fewer people to report sexual harassment, But
what happened was the reverse. Because she had opened up
the subject, women began to talk to each other and
discovered that this had happened to many other women. So
(46:11):
it turned out to be a huge national teaching on
sexual harassment. And sure enough, according to e o C filings,
sexual harassment cases in the wake of her testimony more
than doubled from just over six thousand and nine to
just over fifteen thousand in nine. And over that same
(46:32):
period you also see awards to victims under federal laws
nearly quadrupling from seven point seven million dollars to twenty
seven point eight million dollars. So, even though we clearly
in still have deeply entrenched attitudes that allow sexual harassment
to continue, clearly, in just that short period, women are
(46:52):
starting to be heard. Yeah, I mean. And as another
part of the silver lining to this horrific spect to call,
you have more women in government. When the hearing took place,
just two women were in the Senate, and of course
none of whom were sitting in front of Hill that day.
But in Nino you have what has been deemed the
(47:16):
Year of the Woman, which has been credited to fall
out from those hearings, which drove a record number of
women to run for office, and women won four new
Senate seats plus one incumbent reelection, and twenty four new
House seats. Yeah, so clearly making a positive dent. Clearly
(47:38):
women are like, oh no, oh no, this isn't gonna
happen again. Yeah, I mean. And also once you have
those women in Congress, you also have more laws being
passed tightening up sexual harassment you know, protections and also
um sexual harassment protections within the government, like for government
(47:59):
employees that were not previously there. Well, so spoiler, I
guess at this point, in case you weren't aware, Clarence
Thomas was confirmed. WHOOPI damn do WHIPTI damn do as
he said, uh, and he was approved by a narrow
margin fifty eight. So you know, even though all those
(48:19):
Republicans and Democrats were in cahoots to suppress women's testimony, uh,
still wasn't very popular. But like Kristen said earlier, you know,
he never let go of that anger. And in that
two thousand seven autobiography he referred to Hill as my
most traitorous adversary. But Caroline, I've got a drop a
(48:40):
fact that I learned in the process of researching this
podcast which blew my mind, which cites like, how, of course,
how much he would hate Hill and consider her his
most traitorous adversary considering that one of his buds is
a rush Limbaugh, he who coined the term feminazi, He
(49:01):
officiated Clarence Thomas did Rush Limbaughs third now dissolved marriage. Yes,
Caroline's eyes a huge y'all. Oh, I hate it. Yeah,
But enough with those guys. What happened to Hill? What
happened to Anita Hill? Well, she had grand plans to
(49:25):
just go back to her previously quiet and private life
at the University of Oklahoma teaching commercial law. But unfortunately,
I guess life had other things in the cards because
she didn't stay there long. Probably not because life had
other things in the cards. It probably had more to
do with the death threats she was receiving in addition
to facing a push from conservative lawmakers to fire her
(49:46):
despite the fact you know, she hadum tenure ah and
while she didn't want to return a commercial law and contracts.
So many people were clamoring at this point to understand
sexual harassment and related laws that she's kept her focus
on it. And now she's a professor of social policy,
law and women's Studies at Brandeis University. And she says
(50:07):
that women still come up to her with like tears
in their eyes, treating her like a celebrity, I mean,
which she is to a to a certain degree, but
just saying thank you for what you did. Oh, I mean,
such a heroine absolutely um And Gloria Steinum has said
that some senators since then have you know, kind of
come back and approached feminist leaders asking like what can
(50:31):
they do to kind of rectify that wrong that was
committed And Steinham just suggested, apologize, just apologize for it.
But they've not know they haven't. And in a really
weird twist, and this kicks off the documentary, Thomas's current wife, Jenny,
(50:53):
who was not on the scene during the hearings, left
Anita Hill a bizarre voice message edge at seven thirty
in the morning on a Saturday on her work phone, saying,
I would love you to consider an apology sometime and
some full explanation of what you did with my husband.
(51:13):
So give it some thought and certainly pray about this
and come to understand why you did what you did. Okay,
have a good day. And the wild thing is that
she was making that phone call not in like two
or three, that was in and I mean, and she,
you know, invokes this prayer rhetoric and stuff. And Hill
(51:34):
herself is a devoted Christian, you know, it's not It's
not a thing of like Anita Hill being a heathen um.
But Hill, of course was stunned by it and simply
turned the voicemail over to law enforcement authorities. She was
not going to call Jinny Thomas back up and have
(51:54):
a little heart to heart. And writing about this for
The New Yorker, Jeffrey Tuban said, virtually all the evidence
that has emerged since the hearings corroborates Hill's version of events,
and this, of course makes Jenny Thomas's phone call to
Hill all the more puzzling, and speaking of evidence that
has emerged, you know, corroborating Hill's testimony, I do want
(52:17):
to recommend the book Strange Justice, The Selling of Clarence
Thomas by Jane Meyer and Jill Abramson, because there's was
the book that really, you know, kind of through Brock's
the quote unquote real Anita Hill to the wayside and journalistically,
you know, revealed what was going on with the case.
(52:39):
Imagine that journalistically, well, so you know, everybody wants to know,
like are you are you vengeful? Rageful? Like do you
throw darts at pictures of Clarence Thomas's face as I would? Um?
But Anita Hill has told many reporter I mean, of
(53:00):
course I'm angry. I'm angry with him, I'm angry with
the Senators. I'm probably less angry than I was ten
years ago, but it's still there. And she talks about
how bit by bit you let go of anger, and
she says, for me, the best way to do that
is to think about what my contribution can be to
make sure this doesn't happen to other people. She said
that the larger goal is both gender equality and racial equality,
(53:23):
because both racism and sexism contributed to my being victimized.
But I don't want to walk around being angry all
the time. It's not constructive. And so not only did
she speak truth the power she has been walking her talk.
She's doing exactly that, And what she really wanted to
accomplish with that most recent documentary was for young women
(53:47):
to know that history and also to know that she's okay.
I mean her parents who were so old at the time,
they sat there watching this whole thing go down. She was,
you know, one of was it. It was more than
a dozen children, like grew up in poverty. I mean,
she worked her way into you know, that tenured professorship. Um.
(54:11):
So she also wants to shed light on the fact
though that, like we have emphasized so many times, this
is not an issue that was just frozen in time. Yeah,
that we still have so much to accomplish, And she
said that she basically looks at it from the perspective of,
you know, it took a lot of brave women for
us to get where we are, but we have not
(54:32):
fixed the problem. All we've done is acknowledge it. Well, Caroline,
I do feel good that we have you know, answered
Anita Hills call to spread this history to young women
and to all of the people listening to this podcast,
because it's something that we all need to know about.
(54:52):
Absolutely and listeners, now, I want to hear from you.
What are your thoughts about it? I mean, does this
experience resonate with things that you've experienced before. Mom Stuff
at house sul works dot Com is our email address.
You can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or
messages on Facebook. And we've got a couple of messages
to share with you right now. I have one here
(55:16):
from Michelle. She says, I just wanted to send through
an email thanking you for your recent podcast interviewing Emily
Airies from bost Up. The first five minutes of the
podcast put a name to the roller custer of emotions
that I've been feeling for the last twelve months. Three
years ago, I packed up, left my family and friends
and moved to the opposite side of the country for what,
on paper was a great job. I've always prided myself
(55:38):
on being upbeat, enthusiastic and passionate about my work. However,
by the time I reached the end of last year,
I was a mess of exhaustion, anxiety, and cynicism. I
started obsessing over the simplest tasks at work, lost all motivation,
and spent countless nights awake, obsessing over the smallest details
from the day. I had stopped exercising and socializing and
was feeling isolated. I knew that my job was the
(56:00):
source of these feelings, but felt caught in a cycle
that I couldn't get out of. At the beginning of
this year, I realized that something had to give, and
I started considering a career change, but never felt quite
brave enough to take the next step. The same day
that I listen to your podcast, I finally worked up
the courage to submit an application for that job I've
always wanted. While it may amount to nothing, thanks to
(56:21):
your podcast, the next step doesn't seem quite as big
as it once did. Well, thanks, Michelle and good luck.
I've got a letter here from Alicia about our sexist
emoji episode, which, by the way, y'all, we've been getting
so much great feedback on that and so many great
favorite emojis, She writes. A year and a half ago,
I was painting a paint by number type mural in
(56:43):
my bedroom wall and needed something to listen to while
I worked. I was late to the podcast scene, so
I asked around for recommendations, and my mom recommended your podcast,
and I've been working on listening to every episode since then.
High five red Mom. When I listened to your sexist
emojis episode, it reminded me of a night this past December.
My sister and I were home for the holidays, and
(57:04):
one evening, we were sitting with my mom on her
bed looking at all new emojis from the recent update.
We joked that there needed to be a female version
of the egg plant emoji, and we spent the next
fifteen minutes scrolling through the list looking for an acceptable
vulva representation. Again cool mom, alert um. Anyway, our top
two favorites are the taco and the side by side
(57:27):
pieces of sushi slash sashimi. To be honest, I'm still
a little fuzzy on exactly when the egg plant emoji
should be used, but I've been known to send my
husband the sashimi to indicate that I'm interested in some
BANKI banky. Oh my gosh, Alicia, thank you so much,
and thank you for introducing me to my new favorite emoji.
(57:51):
And listeners. You can send your letters to mom seven
house at works dot com and for links all of
our social media as well as all of our blogs,
videos and podcasts with our sources. So you can learn
more about the incredible Anita Hill, head on over to
stuff Mom Never Told You dot com or more on
this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
(58:13):
Works dot com
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