March 30, 2016 • 51 mins
In 1991, Anita Hill testified before the U.S. Senate that then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas sexually harassed her when they worked together. Cristen and Caroline talk about the significance, gender and racial dynamics, and lasting impact of Hill's public hearing that captivated the nation.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Join me Julie Douglas for the Stuff of Life, a
sound escaped podcast that explores everything that makes us human.
Nothing is too beautiful to happen in life. Look for
a new episode every Wednesday in iTunes or wherever you
get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You
(00:26):
from House top Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm christ and I'm Caroline and Caroline. Even
though we're talking today about something that happened, it's timely
because HBO's Confirmation hits screens April six, in which Carrie
(00:51):
Washington is starring as Anita Hill. That's right, she also
produced it. It's 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
(01:15):
Thomas's confirmation hearings. Yeah, and it's it was pretty surprising
to a lot of people that this documentary came out
because Anita Hill is so famously private, famously private. It
is that a contradiction um but Hill said that she
felt it was time to revisit this and for people
(01:36):
to understand who I am and who that is is
someone who really helped change 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
(01:58):
a hearing that the entire country and importantly a lot
of women, started 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,
(02:22):
because I do, 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
(02:43):
her sitting there, I remember her seeing her in her
blue suit. I'm 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,
(03:08):
I I know I 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
(03:30):
The Cosby Show well, and so when I watched that documentary,
I needed 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.
(03:53):
And yeah, I saw a picture of 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, this chapter in our not
(04:18):
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. I mean, watch
(04:40):
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
(05:05):
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. So I mean,
(05:27):
that's why I think it's so important. Read the transcript, yes,
if you want more details, but you've got to 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 windsuit face. Oh
my god, me too. Were they mean? Yes, yes, of
(05:50):
course they were. I had so many, so many wind seeds. Okay, anyway, right,
So in July nine one, when Kristin and I were
win suiting it up and swished switching down the allway
President Bush the first nominated forty three year old conservative
African American judge Clarence Thomas to replace just as Third
Good Marshal to the Supreme Court amid what was then
(06:13):
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 see
like a massive Washington monument size from the illuminated Bibles
(06:39):
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 nub A,
c P, the National Bar Association, and the Urban League
fearing his views on affirmative action. They were worried that
it would reverse the progress of the Civil rights era
(07:00):
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.
He had less than two years of experience as a
federal judge. But still the nomination heads to the Senate
(07:20):
Judiciary committees confirmation hearings, which go relatively smoothly, but they
end in a tie, which sends the nomination to the
full Senate without a clear recommendation. And at this point,
although 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.
(07:45):
And in October of Anita Hill, who was the University
of Oklahoma's first tenured black law professor, came forward 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
(08:09):
and at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in nine two.
In nine three, but let's back up a second, 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 confidential statement to the Senate
Judiciary Committee saying that Thomas had harassed her ten years
(08:31):
earlier when they were both single. The FBI, per usual,
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
(08:53):
alleged that Hill approached Senators attempting to smear Clarence Thomas,
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,
(09:16):
and once it broke, Anita Hill famously said, I felt
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
Hill get summoned to testify live on TV, delaying the
(09:38):
confirmation hearings, and those harassment hearings began just a couple
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
(10:02):
the you know, the Senate to air it live on
television because they did not want it to be a
closed hearing. Yeah, and I mean sort of often 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,
(10:23):
so with her testimony, Anita Hill's testimony, it was a
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
(10:45):
making a formal sexual harassment claim and that she did
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's cecil Richards, you know, planned
parenthood testimonies before the Senate, and even Hillary Clinton has
been Ghazi testimonies. I mean, those two things were nothing
(11:11):
compared to what Anita Hill sat through. Oh I know,
But it is interesting that Time magazine article came out
about a year after the 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
(11:32):
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. Uh And I get And they did a
(11:53):
great 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
(12:17):
it's 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, exactly, Well, so let's get
into the allegations. Hill said in her report that Thomas
(12:40):
talked 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 discus of a
particular porn actor who had a really large penis, who
(13:03):
went by the name of Long Dong Silver and Senator
or In 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 to discredit her by saying, no, no, no, you
(13:25):
heard it. In this case, you didn't hear it from
Clarence Thomas. Yeah. Um and Hill 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 Phil recounted Clarence Thomas reaching for
(13:45):
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
(14:08):
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 jealous. 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 me who's like, that's a line
(14:30):
similar to one in the Exorcist, like someone who's really
plugged into pop culture Because Google didn't exist back then,
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 dating
(14:52):
a supervisor was inappropriate, and so her last day at
the e o C before taking a position at Oral
Roberts Universe, 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 that
(15:15):
last straw Hill 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 should
(15:36):
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
(15:59):
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
(16:21):
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 your 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
(16:41):
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 manifestotions of the anxiety and pain
(17:02):
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.
(17:24):
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
(17:45):
had an obligation to do. That was to tell the truth. Yeah,
I mean, there was absolutely nothing in this or Anita Hill. Um,
But what about witnesses? What about other women? Because surely,
and to Hill, wasn't the only one this happened to,
or if she was, isn't that so suspect? Well, the
(18:06):
thing is, 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
(18:28):
know so much 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 Wright, 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
(18:49):
the e o C as well and shared similar accounts
with Senate investigators, like like the ones that Hill had shared,
but Joe Biden lifted her Tina 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
(19:12):
or chaos. 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 bosses. But the committee
was like, oh, that just goes to show she's unstable.
But basically what led Angela Right into this situation, uh,
(19:37):
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, 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
(19:59):
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. She sits in her lawyer's office
for three days waiting to be called, and behind the
(20:20):
scenes that 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 she said, I believe her Anita,
because he did it to me, And even a coworker
(20:40):
Rights backed up her account. That Thomas had pressured her
to date him, had commented on rights 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, if you were young, black female
(21:01):
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 sixteen, like, obviously that is
sexual harassment up down in sideways. But that also reflects
that that kind of assumption that yes, okay, this is
(21:24):
gonna happen to you. If you're pretty enough, you're gonna
get hit on. But that 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
(21:44):
these women in 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 ben fit his case rather than
Anita Hills. But you also have the fact that the
(22:04):
committee ignored evidence regarding Thomas's 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 deflect Hill's accusations. How
(22:27):
could he be doing this. 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 Hara asked them, So it's
not all professional. Well, and as McEwen would later describe it,
(22:50):
she said, he was 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
bobby 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's something worth noting,
(23:11):
which 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
(23:31):
he found out that she was going to 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 if I
(23:53):
had known how things would have turned out, 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 you respond? Well? He did not mince words. So
(24:18):
Thomas's response to Anita Hill's accusations was none too pleased,
to put it, incredibly mildly. Uh. He first said that
he felt shocked, surprised, hurt, and enormously saddened upon hearing
about Hill's accusations, and he went on to of course
deny that he'd ever asked her out, instead claiming just
(24:41):
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 is sort of throwing
(25:05):
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 own lynching. These
(25:28):
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 to stop quote
(25:48):
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 on behalf of Hill,
(26:09):
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 play 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 about how angry he will
(26:31):
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, whoopedie 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, in the meantime, as
(26:53):
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 you even put
yourself in this place? It goes back to the standard
(27:15):
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? Two?
Very ironically, the E D O C. Yeah, And she
answered by saying that she thought by this point the
(27:38):
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 in contact with him
after he left? And her answer to that was, well,
(27:58):
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 have had to
explain this whole situation that I've come forward with today,
(28:20):
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 dogg It, in this affidavit,
(28:41):
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 to paint her as just
(29:02):
simply unstable. I mean this woman again, hyper sexualization of
women of color. I mean she she just wanted this
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, he said that when you
(29:23):
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, I can hardly tell
(29:43):
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 uh concerns about coming across
(30:06):
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 it a whole,
like he said, she said thing when it should not
(30:28):
have been at all, well, yeah, and as many articles
have gone on to point out, it should have been
he said. They said, But um, when you are looking
at this in terms of outsiders perspectives, people who are
watching this hearing happen, so many women saw their own
experiences echoed in Hills experience, and so many men were
(30:50):
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 insulted that Thomas
(31:12):
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 past. Yeah,
I mean, And the thing is, like, Thomas was absolutely
right about the stereotypes of black men in this country,
(31:35):
but he was using that to play against like stereotypes
about women and 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 forward to
(31:56):
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
there are better people for this role. And Anita Hill
(32:19):
in the documentary would say I had a gender and
he had a race. And she explained it to Slate's
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
they didn't take it into account, and instead they portrayed
(32:40):
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
(33:00):
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.
(33:21):
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've 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
(33:42):
were raped. And this gets at the root of what
Democratic Arizona Senator Dynasty Concini 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.
(34:04):
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 Diconcini 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
(34:24):
have played into that as well. But the thing is,
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
(34:47):
called The Real Anita Hill, and it was part of
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
(35:09):
the things that they would highlight where how this woman's
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 thanks to affirmative action, and now she's, you know,
(35:30):
in caa hoots with feminist lawyer Katherine McKinnon to unleash
some 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 ha unthinkable. Oh and
we have to mention the most famous, slash infamous. I
feel like this whole thing is famous, slash infamous, this
(35:52):
phrase that Brock used and then was repeated. It feels
like every 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
(36:13):
the discourse for years, years and years until he came
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
(36:38):
masterpiece of journalism. Um Deardre English wrote a pretty in
depth analysis of the book and the reviews that 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 and a In Lynn who raised
(37:01):
the 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. In response to this book over in Newsweek,
(37:25):
George Hill wrote that 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 you know what, I see a lot of
(37:46):
that tone reflected in a lot of internet common today.
Oh yeah, you you're just reveling and 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 a Newsweek article on this that we read
(38:10):
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 that that part of her identity, being
(38:32):
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 for this podcast would usually circle back
(38:53):
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 had amazing ripple effects. Glorious Steinham, speaking
(39:21):
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 it turned out to be a huge
national teaching on sexual harassment. And sure enough, according to
(39:44):
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 n
and over that same period you also see a war
its two victims under federal laws nearly quadrupling from seven
(40:04):
point seven million dollars to twenty seven point eight million dollars. So,
even though we clearly in t ST still have deeply
entrenched attitudes that allow sexual harassment to continue, clearly in
just that short period, women are starting to be heard. Yeah,
I mean, and as another part of the silver lining
to this horrific spectacle, you have more women in government.
(40:30):
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 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,
(40:51):
and women won four new Senate seats plus one incumbent
re election in twenty four new House seats. Yeah, so
clearly making a positive dent. Clearly 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
(41:14):
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 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 whippy
(41:37):
damn do as he said. Uh, and he was approved
by a narrow margin, fifty two to forty eight. So
you know, even though all those 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 those traitorous adversary.
(42:03):
But Caroline, I've got a drop a fact that I
learned in the process of researching this podcast which blew
my mind, which sites 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 Russia Limbaugh,
(42:24):
he who coined the term feminazi. He officiated Clarence Thomas
did rush Limbaugh's 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
(42:47):
Anita Hill? Well, she had grand plans to just go
back to her previously quiet and private life at the
University of Oklahoma teaching commercial law. But unfortunately, uh, 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
(43:09):
facing a push from conservative lawmakers to fire her despite
the fact, you know, she had um tenure. Ah. And
while she did want to return to 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,
(43:30):
law and women's Studies at Brandeis University. And she says
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 Steinem has said
that some senators since then have you know, kind of
(43:53):
come back and approached feminist leaders asking like what can
they do to kind of wrecked the I that wrong,
that was committed and sign Um 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 documentary,
(44:16):
Thomas's current wife, Jenny, who was not on the scene
during the hearings, left Anita Hill a bizarre voice message
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
(44:37):
did with my husband. 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
(44:58):
rhetoric and stuff. And He'll 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
Jenny Thomas back up and have a little heart to heart.
(45:21):
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 to recommend the book Strange Justice,
(45:46):
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. Imagine that journalistically, Well, so you know,
(46:10):
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 course I'm angry. I'm angry
with him, I'm angry with the senators. I'm probably less
(46:30):
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, because both racism and sexism
(46:52):
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 she speak truth the power she
has been walking her talk. She is doing exactly that.
And what she really wanted to accomplish with that most
recent documentary was for young women to know that history
(47:15):
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. So
(47:37):
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
(47:58):
fixed the problem. All we've on 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 absolutely,
(48:19):
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 of 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. Well, I have one here
(48:42):
from Michelle. She says, I just wanted to send through
an email thanking you for your recent podcast interviewing Emily
Aries 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
(49:04):
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
(49:26):
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 listened 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
(49:47):
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 Sexiest
Emoji episode, which, by 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 my bedroom
(50:09):
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.
Hi 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
(50:30):
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 this side by side
(50:53):
pieces of sushi slash sushimi. 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 to sushimi to indicate that I'm interested in so
bankey panky, Oh my gosh. Alicia, thank you so much,
and thank you for introducing me to my new favorite
(51:15):
emoji 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 for more on this
(51:37):
and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff Works
dot com
Join me Julie Douglas for the Stuff of Life, a
sound escaped podcast that explores everything that makes us human.
Nothing is too beautiful to happen in life. Look for
a new episode every Wednesday in iTunes or wherever you
get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You
(00:26):
from House top Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm christ and I'm Caroline and Caroline. Even
though we're talking today about something that happened, it's timely
because HBO's Confirmation hits screens April six, in which Carrie
(00:51):
Washington is starring as Anita Hill. That's right, she also
produced it. It's 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
(01:15):
Thomas's confirmation hearings. Yeah, and it's it was pretty surprising
to a lot of people that this documentary came out
because Anita Hill is so famously private, famously private. It
is that a contradiction um but Hill said that she
felt it was time to revisit this and for people
(01:36):
to understand who I am and who that is is
someone who really helped change 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
(01:58):
a hearing that the entire country and importantly a lot
of women, started 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,
(02:22):
because I do, 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
(02:43):
her sitting there, I remember her seeing her in her
blue suit. I'm 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,
(03:08):
I I know I 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
(03:30):
The Cosby Show well, and so when I watched that documentary,
I needed 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.
(03:53):
And yeah, I saw a picture of 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, this chapter in our not
(04:18):
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. I mean, watch
(04:40):
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
(05:05):
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. So I mean,
(05:27):
that's why I think it's so important. Read the transcript, yes,
if you want more details, but you've got to 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 windsuit face. Oh
my god, me too. Were they mean? Yes, yes, of
(05:50):
course they were. I had so many, so many wind seeds. Okay, anyway, right,
So in July nine one, when Kristin and I were
win suiting it up and swished switching down the allway
President Bush the first nominated forty three year old conservative
African American judge Clarence Thomas to replace just as Third
Good Marshal to the Supreme Court amid what was then
(06:13):
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 see
like a massive Washington monument size from the illuminated Bibles
(06:39):
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 nub A,
c P, the National Bar Association, and the Urban League
fearing his views on affirmative action. They were worried that
it would reverse the progress of the Civil rights era
(07:00):
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.
He had less than two years of experience as a
federal judge. But still the nomination heads to the Senate
(07:20):
Judiciary committees confirmation hearings, which go relatively smoothly, but they
end in a tie, which sends the nomination to the
full Senate without a clear recommendation. And at this point,
although 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.
(07:45):
And in October of Anita Hill, who was the University
of Oklahoma's first tenured black law professor, came forward 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
(08:09):
and at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in nine two.
In nine three, but let's back up a second, 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 confidential statement to the Senate
Judiciary Committee saying that Thomas had harassed her ten years
(08:31):
earlier when they were both single. The FBI, per usual,
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
(08:53):
alleged that Hill approached Senators attempting to smear Clarence Thomas,
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,
(09:16):
and once it broke, Anita Hill famously said, I felt
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
Hill get summoned to testify live on TV, delaying the
(09:38):
confirmation hearings, and those harassment hearings began just a couple
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
(10:02):
the you know, the Senate to air it live on
television because they did not want it to be a
closed hearing. Yeah, and I mean sort of often 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,
(10:23):
so with her testimony, Anita Hill's testimony, it was a
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
(10:45):
making a formal sexual harassment claim and that she did
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's cecil Richards, you know, planned
parenthood testimonies before the Senate, and even Hillary Clinton has
been Ghazi testimonies. I mean, those two things were nothing
(11:11):
compared to what Anita Hill sat through. Oh I know,
But it is interesting that Time magazine article came out
about a year after the 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
(11:32):
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. Uh And I get And they did a
(11:53):
great 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
(12:17):
it's 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, exactly, Well, so let's get
into the allegations. Hill said in her report that Thomas
(12:40):
talked 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 discus of a
particular porn actor who had a really large penis, who
(13:03):
went by the name of Long Dong Silver and Senator
or In 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 to discredit her by saying, no, no, no, you
(13:25):
heard it. In this case, you didn't hear it from
Clarence Thomas. Yeah. Um and Hill 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 Phil recounted Clarence Thomas reaching for
(13:45):
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
(14:08):
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 jealous. 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 me who's like, that's a line
(14:30):
similar to one in the Exorcist, like someone who's really
plugged into pop culture Because Google didn't exist back then,
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 dating
(14:52):
a supervisor was inappropriate, and so her last day at
the e o C before taking a position at Oral
Roberts Universe, 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 that
(15:15):
last straw Hill 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 should
(15:36):
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
(15:59):
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
(16:21):
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 your 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
(16:41):
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 manifestotions of the anxiety and pain
(17:02):
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.
(17:24):
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
(17:45):
had an obligation to do. That was to tell the truth. Yeah,
I mean, there was absolutely nothing in this or Anita Hill. Um,
But what about witnesses? What about other women? Because surely,
and to Hill, wasn't the only one this happened to,
or if she was, isn't that so suspect? Well, the
(18:06):
thing is, 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
(18:28):
know so much 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 Wright, 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
(18:49):
the e o C as well and shared similar accounts
with Senate investigators, like like the ones that Hill had shared,
but Joe Biden lifted her Tina 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
(19:12):
or chaos. 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 bosses. But the committee
was like, oh, that just goes to show she's unstable.
But basically what led Angela Right into this situation, uh,
(19:37):
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, 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
(19:59):
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. She sits in her lawyer's office
for three days waiting to be called, and behind the
(20:20):
scenes that 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 she said, I believe her Anita,
because he did it to me, And even a coworker
(20:40):
Rights backed up her account. That Thomas had pressured her
to date him, had commented on rights 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, if you were young, black female
(21:01):
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 sixteen, like, obviously that is
sexual harassment up down in sideways. But that also reflects
that that kind of assumption that yes, okay, this is
(21:24):
gonna happen to you. If you're pretty enough, you're gonna
get hit on. But that 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
(21:44):
these women in 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 ben fit his case rather than
Anita Hills. But you also have the fact that the
(22:04):
committee ignored evidence regarding Thomas's 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 deflect Hill's accusations. How
(22:27):
could he be doing this. 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 Hara asked them, So it's
not all professional. Well, and as McEwen would later describe it,
(22:50):
she said, he was 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
bobby 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's something worth noting,
(23:11):
which 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
(23:31):
he found out that she was going to 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 if I
(23:53):
had known how things would have turned out, 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 you respond? Well? He did not mince words. So
(24:18):
Thomas's response to Anita Hill's accusations was none too pleased,
to put it, incredibly mildly. Uh. He first said that
he felt shocked, surprised, hurt, and enormously saddened upon hearing
about Hill's accusations, and he went on to of course
deny that he'd ever asked her out, instead claiming just
(24:41):
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 is sort of throwing
(25:05):
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 own lynching. These
(25:28):
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 to stop quote
(25:48):
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 on behalf of Hill,
(26:09):
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 play 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 about how angry he will
(26:31):
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, whoopedie 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, in the meantime, as
(26:53):
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 you even put
yourself in this place? It goes back to the standard
(27:15):
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? Two?
Very ironically, the E D O C. Yeah, And she
answered by saying that she thought by this point the
(27:38):
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 in contact with him
after he left? And her answer to that was, well,
(27:58):
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 have had to
explain this whole situation that I've come forward with today,
(28:20):
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 dogg It, in this affidavit,
(28:41):
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 to paint her as just
(29:02):
simply unstable. I mean this woman again, hyper sexualization of
women of color. I mean she she just wanted this
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, he said that when you
(29:23):
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, I can hardly tell
(29:43):
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 uh concerns about coming across
(30:06):
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 it a whole,
like he said, she said thing when it should not
(30:28):
have been at all, well, yeah, and as many articles
have gone on to point out, it should have been
he said. They said, But um, when you are looking
at this in terms of outsiders perspectives, people who are
watching this hearing happen, so many women saw their own
experiences echoed in Hills experience, and so many men were
(30:50):
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 insulted that Thomas
(31:12):
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 past. Yeah,
I mean, And the thing is, like, Thomas was absolutely
right about the stereotypes of black men in this country,
(31:35):
but he was using that to play against like stereotypes
about women and 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 forward to
(31:56):
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
there are better people for this role. And Anita Hill
(32:19):
in the documentary would say I had a gender and
he had a race. And she explained it to Slate's
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
they didn't take it into account, and instead they portrayed
(32:40):
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
(33:00):
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.
(33:21):
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've 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
(33:42):
were raped. And this gets at the root of what
Democratic Arizona Senator Dynasty Concini 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.
(34:04):
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 Diconcini 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
(34:24):
have played into that as well. But the thing is,
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
(34:47):
called The Real Anita Hill, and it was part of
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
(35:09):
the things that they would highlight where how this woman's
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 thanks to affirmative action, and now she's, you know,
(35:30):
in caa hoots with feminist lawyer Katherine McKinnon to unleash
some 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 ha unthinkable. Oh and
we have to mention the most famous, slash infamous. I
feel like this whole thing is famous, slash infamous, this
(35:52):
phrase that Brock used and then was repeated. It feels
like every 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
(36:13):
the discourse for years, years and years until he came
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
(36:38):
masterpiece of journalism. Um Deardre English wrote a pretty in
depth analysis of the book and the reviews that 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 and a In Lynn who raised
(37:01):
the 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. In response to this book over in Newsweek,
(37:25):
George Hill wrote that 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 you know what, I see a lot of
(37:46):
that tone reflected in a lot of internet common today.
Oh yeah, you you're just reveling and 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 a Newsweek article on this that we read
(38:10):
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 that that part of her identity, being
(38:32):
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 for this podcast would usually circle back
(38:53):
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 had amazing ripple effects. Glorious Steinham, speaking
(39:21):
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 it turned out to be a huge
national teaching on sexual harassment. And sure enough, according to
(39:44):
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 n
and over that same period you also see a war
its two victims under federal laws nearly quadrupling from seven
(40:04):
point seven million dollars to twenty seven point eight million dollars. So,
even though we clearly in t ST still have deeply
entrenched attitudes that allow sexual harassment to continue, clearly in
just that short period, women are starting to be heard. Yeah,
I mean, and as another part of the silver lining
to this horrific spectacle, you have more women in government.
(40:30):
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 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,
(40:51):
and women won four new Senate seats plus one incumbent
re election in twenty four new House seats. Yeah, so
clearly making a positive dent. Clearly 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
(41:14):
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 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 whippy
(41:37):
damn do as he said. Uh, and he was approved
by a narrow margin, fifty two to forty eight. So
you know, even though all those 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 those traitorous adversary.
(42:03):
But Caroline, I've got a drop a fact that I
learned in the process of researching this podcast which blew
my mind, which sites 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 Russia Limbaugh,
(42:24):
he who coined the term feminazi. He officiated Clarence Thomas
did rush Limbaugh's 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
(42:47):
Anita Hill? Well, she had grand plans to just go
back to her previously quiet and private life at the
University of Oklahoma teaching commercial law. But unfortunately, uh, 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
(43:09):
facing a push from conservative lawmakers to fire her despite
the fact, you know, she had um tenure. Ah. And
while she did want to return to 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,
(43:30):
law and women's Studies at Brandeis University. And she says
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 Steinem has said
that some senators since then have you know, kind of
(43:53):
come back and approached feminist leaders asking like what can
they do to kind of wrecked the I that wrong,
that was committed and sign Um 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 documentary,
(44:16):
Thomas's current wife, Jenny, who was not on the scene
during the hearings, left Anita Hill a bizarre voice message
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
(44:37):
did with my husband. 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
(44:58):
rhetoric and stuff. And He'll 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
Jenny Thomas back up and have a little heart to heart.
(45:21):
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 to recommend the book Strange Justice,
(45:46):
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. Imagine that journalistically, Well, so you know,
(46:10):
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 course I'm angry. I'm angry
with him, I'm angry with the senators. I'm probably less
(46:30):
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, because both racism and sexism
(46:52):
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 she speak truth the power she
has been walking her talk. She is doing exactly that.
And what she really wanted to accomplish with that most
recent documentary was for young women to know that history
(47:15):
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. So
(47:37):
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
(47:58):
fixed the problem. All we've on 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 absolutely,
(48:19):
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 of 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. Well, I have one here
(48:42):
from Michelle. She says, I just wanted to send through
an email thanking you for your recent podcast interviewing Emily
Aries 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
(49:04):
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
(49:26):
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 listened 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
(49:47):
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 Sexiest
Emoji episode, which, by 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 my bedroom
(50:09):
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.
Hi 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
(50:30):
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 this side by side
(50:53):
pieces of sushi slash sushimi. 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 to sushimi to indicate that I'm interested in so
bankey panky, Oh my gosh. Alicia, thank you so much,
and thank you for introducing me to my new favorite
(51:15):
emoji 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 for more on this
(51:37):
and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff Works
dot com
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Samantha McVey
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.