March 28, 2016 • 46 mins
The term "sexual harassment" didn't exist before the 1970s. Cristen and Caroline investigate the legal history of this occupational hazard and why it took the courts so long to criminalize it.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Deep in the back of your mind, you've always had
the feeling that there's something strange about reality. Various, supernay
definitely a part and hunch of a week. On our
award winning science podcast stuff About your Mind, we examine
neurological quandities, cosmic mystery, evolutionary marvels, and our trans human future,
Golden Share, geodesic stole pass sweeps around. Join us on
(00:20):
the Stuffable your Mind podcast to explore the weirdest corners
of technology, history, philosophy, mythology in the human mind. Check
out Stuffable your Mind dot com to learn more. Welcome
to stuff Mom Never Told You from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hello when Welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
(00:45):
and I'm Caroline, and today we're talking about the legal
history of sexual harassment, which is a relatively new phrase
compared to how long sexual harassment in the workplace has
been going on. So you mean a couple of decades
versus forever? Yes? Yes, And I feel like Caroline half
the time when we talk about sexual harassment in the workplace,
(01:10):
it's in joking way because it seems like any kind
of sexual harassment training that you have to go through
if you have a job is painful, awkward, sometimes downright
weird and uncomfortable. Yeah, you weren't there for our last
sexual harassment training, were you know? I was not. I
(01:32):
was out of town. Don't tell hr. Yeah, it was horrifying.
Like I think, I feel more traumatized by the sexual
harassment training that we received, uh than any possible like
rude comment I've ever received in the workplace because of
graphic detail. Can you say it on the podcast? Um?
(01:55):
There were. It was two brilliant women giving the presentation,
and one of them used some hand motions and uh,
some terminology that I don't think she realized had pre
existing connotations of a way more sexual nature than she intended.
I was horrifying. So it sounds like the sexual harassment
(02:17):
training would have qualified as sexual harassment had it not
been training. I think that's the general feeling of the room. Yeah,
and it always seems to like any videos associating with
sexual harassment training, they just stopped shooting them after like
I know, well, they probably all made them after the
(02:38):
Anita Hill trial, yes, which we have a whole episode
about Anita Hill and the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearing right
after this um and speaking of which I mean, this
term sexual harassment came about in the seventies, but it
wasn't until that to help testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee,
(03:04):
that it really permeated our society. Yeah, because it took
something apparently that large and that big of a deal
to get people to be like, oh, is what I've
been doing wrong? Or oh is what that person has
been doing wrong? Should I report it? Because back in
the seventies, in nineteen seventy four, to be precise, uh,
(03:27):
then Cornell instructor Lynn Farley coined the term. It came
out of this consciousness raising session that she was holding
as part of her class on women and work, and
she ended up using it publicly outside of her class
for the first time in nineteen and this caught the
attention of the New York Times. Yeah, I mean, in
this whole episode really goes to show how powerful our
(03:50):
languages once you, once we're able to name things, how
that can really speed up progress in terms of achieving justice. Um. Now,
if we want to know what sexual harassment is, precisely,
apparently sometimes it includes awkward sexual harassment training from women
(04:11):
using uh gesticulations PG. Thirteen gesticulations. Sure, Now, according to
the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, sexual harassment equals quote, unwelcome
sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or
(04:32):
physical harassment of a sexual nature. But it is worth
noting that with these legal criteria, maybe a one off
incident might not fit as sexual harassment. It has to
be so frequent and severe that it contributes to what's
called a hostile or offensive work environment, or when it
(04:52):
results in an adverse employment decision, like the victim being
fired or demoted. But I mean, as we'll talk about
more in this episode, sexual harassment is so much more
than just making maybe offensive gestures or an offensive comment
or two. It's really more of a way to keep
(05:14):
women in their place, especially when they are in those
more male dominated roles. It's more about power, it's not
about lust. These are the same conversations that we have
when we talk about rape and sexual assault, because one
could argue successfully that sexual harassment is really part of
rape culture. Absolutely. I mean, I think that that power
(05:35):
aspect is important to centralize in how we talk about
sexual harassment because anyone can be sexually harassed, and anyone
regardless of gender can be the harasser, um, But a
lot of times, while it does happen between co workers,
there does seem to be absolutely that power dynamic involved.
(05:55):
And while reported incidents of it have less because we
are being trained as to what is and is not
okay in the workplace, and I think because hopefully maybe
gender politics and awareness of rape culture are improving, but
it still happens all the time. Yeah. So in two
(06:16):
not coincidentally, on the heels of Anita Hills testimony, hight
five percent of Americans said that they considered sexual harassment
to be a persistent problem, and thirty two percent of
women said that they had experienced it. When you fast
forward to late that percentage to drop to But you
(06:38):
also have to take into account ten percent of men
said that they had experienced it and twenty five percent
worried about false accusations. And that's coming from an ABC
News poll. Um. But you know, Christen, you said it
happens all the time, but reported incidents have lessened. There
was a Cosmos survey that we looked at too, that
said seventy of women and their survey that they talked
(06:59):
to just didn't report it, and there were a lot
of reasons. Among people who had experienced it but didn't
report it, four out of ten were either concerned about
the consequences of making a report or they didn't think
it would do any good. And I think because sexual
harassment and reporting sexual harassment is often lumped in with
(07:20):
the whole rhetoric of quote unquote political correctness, UM, there
is probably a fear that you won't even be believed
because I've also heard oftentimes, you know, we have the
jokes about sexual harassment in the workplace, but then also
so many complaints from men in particular. You know that
(07:41):
in that survey, who worried about false accusations, But these
guys who will will sometimes be like, oh, well, I
don't want to do that. She'll suit sexual harassment and
really making light of what is a serious issue and
especially a serious issue for lgbt Q employees. UM. There
was a piece over at the Center for American Progress
(08:03):
which cited data from u c l a's Williams Institute
which found that fifteen to forty three percent of gay
and trans workers have experienced some form of discrimination on
the job, and that includes sexual harassment. And that same
Cosmo survey that I talked about a minute ago. From
February found that one in three respondents had experienced sexual
(08:26):
harassment in the workplace. But there's an interesting division. So
eight one percent experienced verbal sexual harassment, reported unwanted touching
and sexual advances, But twenty five percent and this could
be like an age difference thing and or a generational
thing I'm wondering, reported being sexually harassed via lude, texts,
(08:48):
g chats, and emails, which I want to be like,
are you stupid, because that is so easy to be like, hello, hr,
look at these emails and texts. So are you encouraging
sexual harassers to cover their track? Don't get smarter about it? Noah,
(09:11):
if you leaving the paper trail is a good thing, Well,
that's true, but I mean, come on, that's ridiculous. That's
but I think that that speaks to the element of
a lot of people would say, oh, I didn't know
what I was doing with sexual harassment, or I would
never have thought I'm not someone who sexually harasses people.
(09:31):
I would never do that, not realizing that oh no,
even just a hint of you know, whatever it was
you said, could be construed as harassment. Yeah, and that
privileged element of assuming that you're sexual come on, or
the porn link that you just gea ch at. It
would be welcome and in the same way that street
(09:52):
harassers say, oh, but it's just a compliment. I bet
in in some of these people's minds, like, hey, it's
just a compliment. Man, she looks so good. Why would
I not want to compliment her bibs? Well, I think, yeah,
there's actually this study along these lines, and Kristen correct
me if I'm wrong. I feel like it was in
the eighties or nineties, but men and women were presented
(10:14):
with this scenario and they were told to judge at
what points sexual harassment entered the scenario. So basically, the
hypothetical scenario was that a woman was supposed to go
to lunch with the man to present a presentation of
her work, and at lunch he says, you know what,
screw that, Let's just talk about your personal life, and
he asks her all of these invasive questions. Uh. He
(10:36):
goes on to ask her to lunch a few more times,
and then dinner, and then drinks, and at drinks he
fondles her. And so they asked the men and the
women at what point did sexual harassment enter into this?
Almost to a person, the women said basically when he said, no, thanks,
I don't want to hear your presentation, Let's talk about
your personal life, and by far the majority any of
(11:00):
the men said oh when he fondled her. There seems
to be a massive disconnect, and I'm hoping that that
is narrowing. But as we see through lewd text, g
chats and emails being such a thing, clearly not everyone
has picked up on the need to be a little
more sensitive and aware. Well, that reminds you, Caroline of
(11:22):
a job interview that I had, and thankfully it was
a phone interview um where we went through all the questions,
had developed a nice rapport, and then at the end
of the conversation, this guy asks me what I'm doing
for the weekend, like what are you doing on Saturday?
(11:42):
And it caught me completely off guard because my Saturday
plans would have absolutely nothing to do with my qualifications
for this job. And afterward I told myself maybe it
was just to get a sense of whether I'd fit
into the company culture. But as soon as I mentioned that,
and this was true, that my soon to be in
(12:04):
laws were coming over for brunch. The interview quickly ended
and I never got a call back. And I don't
know that that was Again, that could have been just
a question, you know, friendly seeing what kind of what
my interests were outside of the office. But you know
(12:25):
that squeaky feeling that you get in your stomach when
you sense that someone is thinking of you as more
than just a potential good employee, that's so awful. Yeah,
my my stomach got squeaky. So I mean, and and
that's that's the factor too. It's that line where you
(12:45):
you feel that distinct shift from being a human person
with a brain to being a sexual object who might
also you know, what happened to to be decent in
the workplace. Yeah, I mean, there isn't visible sort of line.
That's very hazy. I can an invisible thing also be hazy,
(13:05):
I'm going to say in this case, it can. In
that Cosmos survey, six of women said that they had
not been sexually harassed, but those same women said they
had experienced sexually explicit or sexist remarks. So while there
might be some misunderstanding on the guy's part of like, no,
I didn't mean for that to be harassing or crude.
(13:26):
It seems like on the women's side too, there's a
little bit of a misunderstanding of like no, no, no,
when he says something like sexist or derogatory or sexually explicit,
like that, that's sexual harassment. Yeah, and I wonder too,
because you know, the stats in this Cosmos survey, which
probably probably not the most scientific survey in the world,
(13:48):
but nonetheless telling. I wonder since it was so commonly
reported by the women who were taking this survey, who
were younger than the numbers that ABC News are it on,
which was of women, I wonder if that points to
sort of the target demographic for sexual harassment. I mean,
(14:09):
in that Cosmos survey, it did find that a bulk
of the women who reported it were between or essentially
like in their twenties. I don't have the exact ages,
and it might also speak to our generational awareness of
what is and isn't okay. But if we look at
the specific industries where it tends to happen the most,
(14:33):
it really echoes some of our past podcast so women
working in food service, hospitality, retail, stem fields, arts and entertainment,
and legal fields. That was a curveball to me, reported
the most sexual harassment I mean in food service that
has been corroborated by other research as well. Yeah, I
(14:57):
guess I was surprised. The one that surprised me was
not legal fields, but with arts and entertainment, because these
are either male dominated fields like stem or legal or
things like food service and retail where you are sort
of open to abuse from customers, not to mention managers. UM. Yeah,
I was just trying to figure out what it would
be an arts and entertainment. Yeah. I mean, I think
(15:19):
that there's the client aspect as well. UM. I mean,
and if you are thinking about like traditional arts, you
have to deal with moneyed buyers um. And people critiquing
your work. I mean your your work is for sale. Yeah.
I guess actress is going on auditions maybe sure, but
it happens. Um. But they found in this survey of
(15:41):
the reported harassers were male coworkers and ten percent were
female co workers. UM and Pso COSMO has certainly changed
its tune from founder Helen Gurley Brown's advice in our
nineteen sixty four bestseller Sex in the Office, in which
she wrote, and I must quote a married man usually
(16:03):
likes attractive approving females around whom he may or may
not think of as sex objects. You'll never get me
to say this is wrong, m but horrifying. Yeah, oh oh,
Helen g this okay. So like I now begrudgingly acknowledge
(16:26):
that Cosmo does add to the feminist discourse online because
I hated it for so long. I grew up occasionally
getting a Cosmo or buying a Cosmo and it was
all horrifying. No magazine ever made me feel worse about
myself than Cosmopolitan magazine. It's all about sex, and it's
(16:48):
all like stupid sex tips, and it's all about pleasing
your man finding his moan zone. And I'm like, oh
my god, get over yourself, Like what about women, Like
can we have something that isn't like about like you
need the sexy bod to be successful. So honestly, it's
only about in the past year that I've like come
(17:10):
to terms with Cosmo being a little more legit in
contributing articles too feminist conversations. I'll go on the record
and say, fully legit. They had brought on a new editor,
like whole new guidelines, people like Jill Philipovic right for them. Now,
I mean it's a it's a good source. I will yeah,
but it wasn't for the longest time. And this whole
(17:32):
little anecdote here with Helen Gurley Brown, I'm like, yeah,
but how nice to see that magazines can evolve toward
feminism in a positive kind. I mean, we've seen that
with Marie Claire. I feel like and and maybe L
to everyone, definitely l especially online. And oh how I
wish that today's Cosmo was the Cosmo that I read
(17:55):
when I was in high school. Yikes. Um, But back
to sexual harassment. It's so so so common, especially in
food service, and this really echoes the episode that we
did on waitressing. And but this goes though, for men
and women both and especially researchers found when they're in
(18:18):
jobs that aren't paid the minimum wage. When you make
the like what is it like to fourteen an hour
and then the rest are your tips, sexual harassment runs rife.
ANTI magazine reported on a Restaurant Opportunities Center United survey
of six eight restaurant employees across the US, which found
(18:38):
sixty six percent of women and more than fifty percent
of men reported sexual harassment by managers and even more
from customers. Just another reason that the United States is
tipping system sucks because you have to just kind of
take it these You're depending on these customers, these abusive customers,
(19:02):
for your livelihood, to to supplement your terrible, terrible hourly
wage that you earn from your restaurant. And so, I mean,
it's bad enough being sexually harassed by your manager. I mean,
like that's awful, but then to have to basically try
to earn money from people who are actively harassing you
sounds traumatic. And it's also crystallizes to Caroline the power
(19:26):
dynamic at the core of all of this, because as
the history we're about to talk about really shows, the
wider the disparity between, you know, the power of the
harasser and the person being harassed, like the likelier and
the more pervasive it tends to be. And a lot
of this information is coming from the fantastic resource Directions
(19:51):
and Sexual Harassment Law. Reva B. Siegel wrote the introduction,
and it is dense with information about the history of
sexual harassment, the legal history specifically of sexual harassment, and
in this country, if we look back to slavery, I mean,
what better way to illustrate deeply ingrained power dynamics with
(20:14):
a huge distance between the harass er and the harassed.
Yeah so um. And Harriett Jacobs's eighteen sixty one autobiography
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. She wrote
how her slave owners quote began to whisper foul wards
in her ear when she was fifteen. And of course
(20:34):
Annabellum rape laws did not protect enslaved women whatsoever. But
even after the Emancipation Proclamation, there assumed hyper sexuality. Women
of colors assumed hyper sexuality often robbed them of justice.
And we go into more detail in this on our
two parter on the history of rape and rape culture,
(20:57):
which I highly recommend you also listened to. But yeah,
I mean it's so grim when it comes to slavery
because like you said, I mean, there the women had
no autonomy whatsoever, and the and the more economic power
that other person has over the victim, the likelier this
(21:17):
is to happen. Yeah. And although the context and extent
of the abuse is certainly different, outside the shackles of slavery,
women employed as domestic workers and manufacturing jobs and performing
secretarial work also encountered it regularly. Basically, if you left
the home, you were fair game. You were considered like
(21:41):
almost a woman of ill repute for mixing with men
in the workplace. So as we get to the eighteen fifties,
as the women's rights movement starts gathering steam, it's organizers
begin drawing these links between women's limited job prospects and
reduced wages that made them economically dependent on men, whether
(22:02):
in the workplace or at home, and that dependency, they argued,
normalized coercion. And this is something that Riva B. Seagull
and Katherine McKinnon also infinite emphasized in directions in sexual
harassment Law. How it is power, but it's also about
money and the socio economics tied up in all of this. Yeah,
(22:25):
there's one particular story that went a long way towards
recognizing those dynamics. So in eighteen sixty eight, you have
this woman, Hester Vaughan. She's a domestic servant. She gets
impregnated by her employer, she's fired as a result, and
she's later found destitute, her baby having died, and she
ends up being convicted of infanticide. Well, she's facing a
(22:50):
death penalty conviction, and a couple of suffragists that you
may have heard of. Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth, Katie stand
and a few others catch wind of this and they're
basically like, this is in sane, Are you serious? Like
all of this stuff was done to her. She's a
victim of circumstance in like the worst way. They basically
managed to gather enough attention for Vaughan's case that they
convinced the Pennsylvania governor to pardon her. Yeah, and they
(23:14):
used this as a platform to campaign for suffrage um
women on juries, all of these issues that were tied
up with hesser Van's case. Um. But also one name
you've probably heard of is Little Women author Louisa May Alcott.
In eighteen seventy four, she wrote a newspaper essay about
(23:36):
her sexual harassment experience from a female employer's brother. This
woman had hired her to essentially be her lady's companion
for a month or so, and her brother got real
smarmie and kept inviting her into his study, which in
eighteen seventy four, that was a direct come on, and
(23:59):
she was existed, and you know what he did, He
was like, Okay, you're not going to come into my study,
both literally and figuratively, Luisa may Alcott and I'm gonna
have you doing hard labor out in the yard. Yeah.
He he tried to. And this is such a like
a familiar refrain. He tried to bargain with her to
lessen her chores. Your life could be so much easier
(24:22):
if you just come into my study. Uh. And then
when she wouldn't, Yeah, he added to her burden even more.
But I love her story about basically telling him to
back the f off. She like waved something at him.
I don't know if it was like a poker from
the fireplace or a feather duster or what, but that
woman was not taking any guff well. And we even
(24:43):
see around the turn of the century. Um in this
book Women Wage Workers, authored by Helen Campbell, even back
then they're calling attention to these problems of sexual harassment
for like you said, Caroline, women making money outside the home.
Upton Sinclair in the Jungle also talks about it in
(25:05):
the context of domestic workers women in manufacturing and factory jobs,
even going so far as to compare it to slavery conditions,
particularly if they were poor and foreign. And in her
seven Bok Campbell described the sexual extortion of garment and
factory workers, and went on to say that household service
(25:26):
has become synonymous with the worst degradation that comes to women,
So not so great to leave the house, I guess. Ps.
Sexual harassment is nothing new, I mean. And that also
that quote right there goes so much to show how
class could only make you more vulnerable to it. And
(25:50):
in a call back to our International Women's Day episode
which focused a lot on women factory workers, which included
a lot of immigrant women going on strike. These low
wage workers in the nineteenth century were often looked down
on as immoral for working alongside men and in the
(26:10):
wording of the day, giving in to sexual advances. So
it was the onus was on these women to maintain
their purity. Talk about some victim blaming one oh one, yeah, like, oh,
you've made the mistake to enter the workplace, like this
is just natural and and how could we ever fix it?
Which is a legal refrain that we will see come
(26:32):
back in the seventies and eighties, Like I it's it
boggles the mind. I can barely speak because it boggles
the mind. Well, And in our International Women's State episode,
we talked about how uh snobby gentlemen of the day
look down on factory women for being immoral, and I
(26:53):
was puzzled by that at the time. But oh, this
now makes sense because even working alongside men was sketchy
to them because of the risk of sexual harassment, which
of course would have been the women's fault for being
there in the first place. There was the men putting
the women at risk, and then the men blaming the
(27:14):
women for being at risk. I know, Caroline, you preach
into the congre choir. I just want to throw my
headphones off and go run away. So Alice Kessler Harris,
who was a labor women's labor historian over at half Stra,
told The New York Times how nobody talked in terms
of sexual harassment back then, of course, because the term
(27:34):
had not been invented. She said, quote, the issue was
whether it was immoral for young girls to be working
alongside men and subjecting themselves to the natural licentiousness of
the workplace. And so the argument a lot of times,
Kesler Harris says, was that, you know what the solution is,
to take women of the workplace. They're safer at home. Yeah,
(27:57):
I mean. In nineteen fourteen, there was a report from
a Commission on Industrial Relations that cited a glass factory
that was so written with sexual harassment that all of
the younger female employees were replaced with older women. So,
rather rather than nipping the sexual harassment in the bud,
(28:18):
they're just like, fine, we'll take away all the spring chickens. Yeah,
rather than firing the men and still bring in those
older women, Nope, just fire fire the young women who
are too tempting hashtag distractingly sexy. Um. That same nineteen
fourteen report also noted how female department store clerks, which
(28:40):
this is, you know, a new industry that's bubbling up
at the time, those clerks endured sexual harassment from and
this is a quote from that report, buyers, managers and
floor walkers who take advantage of girls working under them.
We know of cases of girls who have got to
submit to buyers if they want to hold their positions.
(29:02):
Again and again and again. It's power, it's money, it's socioeconomics. Yeah, well,
so how do you how were you supposed to if
you weren't Louise may Alcott with the weaponized feather duster
waving it at that guy with a study, like, what
were you supposed to do. I mean, you had very
little recourse at the time because of course, I mean
(29:23):
we didn't even have a language to describe it. There
were no laws really to protect you, unless I mean
there were rape laws. But as we'll talk about in
a second, like the the bar was so high, and
even if you simply accused someone of sexually harassing you,
(29:43):
you were putting your reputation and your marriage prospects at
risk because that would mean that you're already a tainted woman.
Get out of here. And if you are a woman
of color, an immigrant, or even just like a white
domestic employee, well too bad, so sad, because you've already
(30:04):
been hyper sexualized and stereotyped as promiscuous anyway, So you know,
just just hope that you're a rich white woman then
you might have, you know, a little bit of illegal
leg to stand on. And speaking of which, the rape
laws at the time required that women proved they exerted
(30:25):
quote utmost resistance to the harassment or assault, otherwise you
must have been consenting. Yeah, And I mean that goes
back to even earlier quote unquote rape laws, where you literally,
as the woman, were expected to run through the town screaming,
and if nobody heard you screaming, they were like, oh,
well you're probably lying. Yeah, she's just making it up.
(30:49):
And so author Reva B. Siegal, whom we've started now
a few times, underscores how those most invested in strengthening
those anti rape laws were often the most disenfranchised, whose
only effective option so often was to begin organizing, just
as they had done to protest unfair wages and working conditions.
(31:12):
They had to band together because I mean, the law
wasn't going to protect them exactly. And because this dynamic
obviously continues through the seventies, eighties, and nineties, maybe you
could argue today it kind of takes people with privilege
seeding some of that privilege so that other people can
be safe at work. It's very easy from a privileged position,
(31:36):
whatever that position is, to just be like, oh, this
isn't really that big of a deal. And this was
especially true back then. Yeah, so what do you what
do you mean though, by seating privilege? What form did
that take? Well, essentially seating the privilege to a not
see it or recognize it and be give up your
actual harassing behavior. Oh so you're saying the men in
(32:00):
the office. Yeah, okay, okay, So we've already established that
sexual harassment is more severe in areas where women are
either new or and or they're in a male dominated field.
So by the time world where one ends, women had
started really becoming commonplace in the office, and their clerical
jobs increased one hundred and forty percent during the nineteen tents.
(32:24):
And so as a result, you have all of these newspapers, magazines,
and employment guides being packed with advice for young women
on how a proper office girl should behave and basically
just taking for granted and like, yeah, your your boss
is going to make a pass at you. Yeah. And
and this info is coming from the book Sex in
(32:44):
the Office, A History of Gender, Power and Desire by
Julie Verbitsky, which I highly recommend you're checking out. Verbitski
writes about how office guides for women in the nineteen
thirties and forties, which were extremely popular, typically encouraged women
to be pleasing to the eye because men like to
(33:05):
be surrounded by pretty women. Uh, but don't be overtly sexy,
you know, be pretty but not too pretty. And while
boss says would certainly make passes at the prettiest ones
because I mean, of course they're just just dudes. It
was all innocent masculine admiration and kind of an office
tradition of sorts. Yeah. And and like Kristen said, they
(33:28):
were popular. You had one called Manners and Business by
Elizabeth greg mcgibbons that was reprinted fourteen times between nineteen
thirty six and nineteen forty six. And it also acknowledged that, hey,
sex in the office happens. Yeah. And if we go
back to Cosmopolitan founder Helen Gurley Brown and her questionable
good advice, she writes in her best sellers about when
(33:53):
she was a secretary Games of Scuttle and Scuttle is
when bosses would pick a secretary to chase around until
they caught her and removed her underwear. I have so
many words and then none at all. Yeah, I mean
a lot of this. Reading this just reminded me of
episodes of mad Men and also watching The Wolf of
(34:13):
Wall Street. Yeah, I just don't I don't understand. Um.
He also had Dale Carnegie's executive secretary Marylyn Burke, who
read a guide in nineteen fifty nine warning against curvacious
women in low necklines that have a tendency to distract.
Sultry pouts, swinging hips, and lingering caresses of well manicured
(34:37):
fingers were off limits because they capitalized on male weakness.
Those poor men being preyed upon by women. Well, we
hear about this, We hear this echoed, I think most
prominently these days in school dress codes. It sounds a
lot like that, where girls with larger busts and larger
(34:57):
butts are often the most panelized. It is because they
have the most quote, distracting bodies, um, and all of
it being framed in the term of in terms of
men just not being able to help themselves. Boys can't
help but look and they'll be distracted. Ulk smash, Yes,
ulk smash, ulk smash. Well, we're about to get to
some hulk smashing, because Caroline, the second wave is coming.
(35:22):
And first we have the civil rights movement, and as
a result, in nineteen four the Civil Rights Act is passed.
Entitled seven of the Civil Rights Act outlaws employment discrimination
on the basis of sex and a lot of other factors.
But that on the basis of sex is a crucially
(35:44):
important phrase. But here's the thing. At that time, sexual
harassment was predominantly viewed as a personal matter that just
happened to take place in the office. It's like, oh,
I mean, like, this guy can have a crush on
you anywhere, he can be you know, inapprop brilliently touching
you anywhere, but he just happens to see you every
day at the office. So of course that's where it
(36:06):
will take place. It's just a personal issue. That's such crap.
And that was like entrenched in our legal approaches to
it absolutely. I mean, because keep in mind too, at
this time it was only men making the laws. Jerks, okay.
So riding the crest of the second wave, we get
(36:27):
Katherine McKennon and she was part of Lynn Farley's consciousness
raising groups that we mentioned earlier in the nineties seventies
in the heyday of the women's movement, and the stories
that she heard there at Cornell from secretaries about sexual
harassment were i opening. And what especially got McKinnon's wheels
(36:47):
attorning was this woman, Carmita Wood, who had quit her
job in a Cornell lab after her supervisor physically and
verbally harassed her to the point she began developing stress
related physical ailments. And this is really common to hear
from trauma victims in general, and sexual harassment victims specifically,
that they develop physical and emotional symptoms like stomach pains,
(37:12):
like anxiety, attacks like depression. So Cornell had refused Wood's
job transfer request and workers camp because they said that
her reasons for leaving again we're personal. And so McKinnon
realizes that these situations are happening because their women lightbulb.
(37:35):
Sexual harassment is sex discrimination. So in nine nine McKinnon,
who at this time is still a student at Yale
Law School, uses that but five year old term sexual
harassment to write the groundbreaking sexual harassment of working women
(37:55):
a case of sex discrimination. And this broke the whole
thing wide open legally speaking. And in that McKinnon wrote, quote,
sexual harassment perpetuates the interlocked structure by which women have
been kept sexually in thrall to men and at the
bottom of the labor market. Two forces of American society
(38:17):
converge men's control over women's sexuality and capital's control over
employees work lives. There you have it again, power and money,
power and money. Yeah. And as Riva Siegel wrote talking
about this, she says that this arrangement this power and
money arrangement has been institutionalized through marriage, prostitution, and as
(38:38):
we're seeing now sexual harassment. And so, along with her
colleague Glenn Farley, McKennon pieces together how sexual harassment asserts
a woman's sex role over her function as a worker.
And again, it's really just about the communication of power. This,
she said, is dominance eroticized. And it took about ten
(38:59):
years for mckennon's legal argument to essentially make its way
through various cases up to the Supreme Court. But first
in nineteen eighty we have the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
issuing its first sexual harassment guidelines, which we earlier defined.
And then is the big year. This is when the
(39:21):
Supreme Court hands down it's landmark decision based on McKinnon's
legal theory in the case of merit Or Bank versus Vincent,
in which a former bank employee alleged harassment by a
branch manager um and the Supreme Court determined sexual harassment
(39:41):
to in fact be a form of sex discrimination, thus
violating the nineteen sixty four Civil Rights Act. And Caroline,
I'm gonna be perfectly honest with you, I did not
before digging into this legal history. Fully understand that sexual
harassment is illegal because it is a civil rights violation. Yeah,
(40:02):
I hadn't realized that either. And even though it took
basically until with Anita Hill for sexual harassment to really
come to the forefront, uh, socially speaking, I mean, think
about how far we came in just a really short
time from the idea that sexual harassment and like the
sexualizing of women in the workplace, it's just natural, it's inevitable,
(40:24):
and the law couldn't be expected to eradicate it. It's
because we didn't have the language to identify it. I
mean that again goes goes to that whole point of
how putting language of something, identifying something, calling it out
can initiate change, and change is still happening here and
(40:44):
abroad around the same time that we're battling it here
in the United States. In four Australia's Sex Discrimination Act
made sexual harassment unlawful in the workplace. In two thousand two,
so a bit of a leap, the European Union recognized
it as a form of discrimination. And then every period
(41:05):
between and you had a whole slew of countries, including
Hong Kong, India, Israel, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and Vietnam
passing legislation that really clamped down on sexual harassment at work.
But in the case of Vietnam, they didn't clearly define
what sexual harassment was, nor our employers actually obligated to
(41:28):
take any preventive measures. Yeah, and we should also note
that with the that list of countries, many of them
already had anti sexual harassment laws in place, but this
was really like going in and tightening those laws even more.
And that's coming from the Society for Human Resource Management
and Caroline. This whole episode is the preview to our
(41:53):
next podcast, which is going to be all about Anita
Hill and the circumstances surrounding that and talk again about
power dynamics, gender race. A lot tied up with it
and the ripple effect that it would have because between
her hearing before the Senate and sexual harassment claims filed
(42:18):
with the E e O C more than doubled. And
that has again a lot to do with women saying,
oh my gosh, that's happened to me, and this is
what it's called, and it's a civil rights violation. So listeners,
now we turned to you, we want to know whether
this is something you've experienced, how you handled it, and
(42:39):
do you have any insights on eradicating sexual harassment from
the workplace, because this conversation definitely wasn't solutions oriented, because
we've only recently really figured out how much of a
problem it is. We've only just begun. Sorry your sexual
(43:00):
harassment anthem. Yeah, well, listeners, we hope to hear from you.
Mom Stuff at House stuffwork dot com is our email address.
You can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcasts or
messages on Facebook, and we've got a couple of messages
to share with you right now. I have a letter
(43:23):
here from Kate Uh. She says, I just started listening
to your podcast and I'm on a serious stuff I've
never told you crunch fest. I've enjoyed more than I
can list, but I wanted to express how much I
appreciated your episode on disability and de sexualization. My father
is a quadriplegic, and since I was a child, people
have asked me whether I was adopted or how my
parents conceived me. My two siblings and I were conceived
(43:46):
the old fashioned way, and it astounds me that even
mere acquaintances feel it's okay to ask me how my
parents have sex, and often comment on how remarkable of
a woman my mother must be to have married someone
in a wheelchair, have being a father in a chair
and not only made me aware of our world's inaccessibility
and attitude towards disability, but also of the miseducation of
(44:07):
the realities and needs of the disabled, even those are
on a spectrum for which to human beings able bodied
or not, have the same needs. As with many disabilities
and illnesses, the social stigma and preconceptions attached to them
are often the greatest hurdles people have to face. I
hope as a society we can continue to broaden the
conversation on disabled realities, needs and rights so that someday
(44:29):
there will be access for everyone to enjoy their sex
life in the same way much of the able bodied
community has for centuries freely and privately. Let it be
noted my mother is indeed a remarkable woman and would
still be regardless of her choice of husband. My father
is a legend as well, by the way, heck, maybe
that's why they married each other. Well, thank you, Kate,
(44:51):
oh I gotta let her hear from Jacqueline also about
our sexuality and disabilities podcasts, and she writes, I'm so
happy that you guys brought up the lack of sex
said that people with disabilities get in school. I'm a
twenty five year old living in Canada and the bone
disorder I was born with has left me standing only
four four And while I consider myself able body thanks
(45:12):
to my amazing parents, my high school did not. I
wasn't allowed to take jim in grade nine where you
get the sex said that isn't about getting your period.
This left me really clueless about sex, and still I
started university. Luckily, we live in the Internet age and
I was able to flesh out my knowledge from feminist sources.
I consider myself pretty sex positive now, but it's a
(45:34):
product of my own research. I appreciate your addressing this issue.
If people with even mild disabilities don't know about sex themselves,
how are we supposed to educate the able bodied people
that we want to have sex with. Well, thank you
Jacqueline for your letter, and thanks to everybody else who's
written into us. Mom Stuff at house stuffwork dot com
is our email address and filling all of our social
(45:55):
media as well as all of our blogs, videos, and
podcasts with our sources so you can learn more about
the legal history of sexual harassment. Head on over to
stuff mom Never Told You dot com for more on
this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
Works dot com.
Deep in the back of your mind, you've always had
the feeling that there's something strange about reality. Various, supernay
definitely a part and hunch of a week. On our
award winning science podcast stuff About your Mind, we examine
neurological quandities, cosmic mystery, evolutionary marvels, and our trans human future,
Golden Share, geodesic stole pass sweeps around. Join us on
(00:20):
the Stuffable your Mind podcast to explore the weirdest corners
of technology, history, philosophy, mythology in the human mind. Check
out Stuffable your Mind dot com to learn more. Welcome
to stuff Mom Never Told You from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hello when Welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
(00:45):
and I'm Caroline, and today we're talking about the legal
history of sexual harassment, which is a relatively new phrase
compared to how long sexual harassment in the workplace has
been going on. So you mean a couple of decades
versus forever? Yes? Yes, And I feel like Caroline half
the time when we talk about sexual harassment in the workplace,
(01:10):
it's in joking way because it seems like any kind
of sexual harassment training that you have to go through
if you have a job is painful, awkward, sometimes downright
weird and uncomfortable. Yeah, you weren't there for our last
sexual harassment training, were you know? I was not. I
(01:32):
was out of town. Don't tell hr. Yeah, it was horrifying.
Like I think, I feel more traumatized by the sexual
harassment training that we received, uh than any possible like
rude comment I've ever received in the workplace because of
graphic detail. Can you say it on the podcast? Um?
(01:55):
There were. It was two brilliant women giving the presentation,
and one of them used some hand motions and uh,
some terminology that I don't think she realized had pre
existing connotations of a way more sexual nature than she intended.
I was horrifying. So it sounds like the sexual harassment
(02:17):
training would have qualified as sexual harassment had it not
been training. I think that's the general feeling of the room. Yeah,
and it always seems to like any videos associating with
sexual harassment training, they just stopped shooting them after like
I know, well, they probably all made them after the
(02:38):
Anita Hill trial, yes, which we have a whole episode
about Anita Hill and the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearing right
after this um and speaking of which I mean, this
term sexual harassment came about in the seventies, but it
wasn't until that to help testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee,
(03:04):
that it really permeated our society. Yeah, because it took
something apparently that large and that big of a deal
to get people to be like, oh, is what I've
been doing wrong? Or oh is what that person has
been doing wrong? Should I report it? Because back in
the seventies, in nineteen seventy four, to be precise, uh,
(03:27):
then Cornell instructor Lynn Farley coined the term. It came
out of this consciousness raising session that she was holding
as part of her class on women and work, and
she ended up using it publicly outside of her class
for the first time in nineteen and this caught the
attention of the New York Times. Yeah, I mean, in
this whole episode really goes to show how powerful our
(03:50):
languages once you, once we're able to name things, how
that can really speed up progress in terms of achieving justice. Um. Now,
if we want to know what sexual harassment is, precisely,
apparently sometimes it includes awkward sexual harassment training from women
(04:11):
using uh gesticulations PG. Thirteen gesticulations. Sure, Now, according to
the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, sexual harassment equals quote, unwelcome
sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or
(04:32):
physical harassment of a sexual nature. But it is worth
noting that with these legal criteria, maybe a one off
incident might not fit as sexual harassment. It has to
be so frequent and severe that it contributes to what's
called a hostile or offensive work environment, or when it
(04:52):
results in an adverse employment decision, like the victim being
fired or demoted. But I mean, as we'll talk about
more in this episode, sexual harassment is so much more
than just making maybe offensive gestures or an offensive comment
or two. It's really more of a way to keep
(05:14):
women in their place, especially when they are in those
more male dominated roles. It's more about power, it's not
about lust. These are the same conversations that we have
when we talk about rape and sexual assault, because one
could argue successfully that sexual harassment is really part of
rape culture. Absolutely. I mean, I think that that power
(05:35):
aspect is important to centralize in how we talk about
sexual harassment because anyone can be sexually harassed, and anyone
regardless of gender can be the harasser, um, But a
lot of times, while it does happen between co workers,
there does seem to be absolutely that power dynamic involved.
(05:55):
And while reported incidents of it have less because we
are being trained as to what is and is not
okay in the workplace, and I think because hopefully maybe
gender politics and awareness of rape culture are improving, but
it still happens all the time. Yeah. So in two
(06:16):
not coincidentally, on the heels of Anita Hills testimony, hight
five percent of Americans said that they considered sexual harassment
to be a persistent problem, and thirty two percent of
women said that they had experienced it. When you fast
forward to late that percentage to drop to But you
(06:38):
also have to take into account ten percent of men
said that they had experienced it and twenty five percent
worried about false accusations. And that's coming from an ABC
News poll. Um. But you know, Christen, you said it
happens all the time, but reported incidents have lessened. There
was a Cosmos survey that we looked at too, that
said seventy of women and their survey that they talked
(06:59):
to just didn't report it, and there were a lot
of reasons. Among people who had experienced it but didn't
report it, four out of ten were either concerned about
the consequences of making a report or they didn't think
it would do any good. And I think because sexual
harassment and reporting sexual harassment is often lumped in with
(07:20):
the whole rhetoric of quote unquote political correctness, UM, there
is probably a fear that you won't even be believed
because I've also heard oftentimes, you know, we have the
jokes about sexual harassment in the workplace, but then also
so many complaints from men in particular. You know that
(07:41):
in that survey, who worried about false accusations, But these
guys who will will sometimes be like, oh, well, I
don't want to do that. She'll suit sexual harassment and
really making light of what is a serious issue and
especially a serious issue for lgbt Q employees. UM. There
was a piece over at the Center for American Progress
(08:03):
which cited data from u c l a's Williams Institute
which found that fifteen to forty three percent of gay
and trans workers have experienced some form of discrimination on
the job, and that includes sexual harassment. And that same
Cosmo survey that I talked about a minute ago. From
February found that one in three respondents had experienced sexual
(08:26):
harassment in the workplace. But there's an interesting division. So
eight one percent experienced verbal sexual harassment, reported unwanted touching
and sexual advances, But twenty five percent and this could
be like an age difference thing and or a generational
thing I'm wondering, reported being sexually harassed via lude, texts,
(08:48):
g chats, and emails, which I want to be like,
are you stupid, because that is so easy to be like, hello, hr,
look at these emails and texts. So are you encouraging
sexual harassers to cover their track? Don't get smarter about it? Noah,
(09:11):
if you leaving the paper trail is a good thing, Well,
that's true, but I mean, come on, that's ridiculous. That's
but I think that that speaks to the element of
a lot of people would say, oh, I didn't know
what I was doing with sexual harassment, or I would
never have thought I'm not someone who sexually harasses people.
(09:31):
I would never do that, not realizing that oh no,
even just a hint of you know, whatever it was
you said, could be construed as harassment. Yeah, and that
privileged element of assuming that you're sexual come on, or
the porn link that you just gea ch at. It
would be welcome and in the same way that street
(09:52):
harassers say, oh, but it's just a compliment. I bet
in in some of these people's minds, like, hey, it's
just a compliment. Man, she looks so good. Why would
I not want to compliment her bibs? Well, I think, yeah,
there's actually this study along these lines, and Kristen correct
me if I'm wrong. I feel like it was in
the eighties or nineties, but men and women were presented
(10:14):
with this scenario and they were told to judge at
what points sexual harassment entered the scenario. So basically, the
hypothetical scenario was that a woman was supposed to go
to lunch with the man to present a presentation of
her work, and at lunch he says, you know what,
screw that, Let's just talk about your personal life, and
he asks her all of these invasive questions. Uh. He
(10:36):
goes on to ask her to lunch a few more times,
and then dinner, and then drinks, and at drinks he
fondles her. And so they asked the men and the
women at what point did sexual harassment enter into this?
Almost to a person, the women said basically when he said, no, thanks,
I don't want to hear your presentation, Let's talk about
your personal life, and by far the majority any of
(11:00):
the men said oh when he fondled her. There seems
to be a massive disconnect, and I'm hoping that that
is narrowing. But as we see through lewd text, g
chats and emails being such a thing, clearly not everyone
has picked up on the need to be a little
more sensitive and aware. Well, that reminds you, Caroline of
(11:22):
a job interview that I had, and thankfully it was
a phone interview um where we went through all the questions,
had developed a nice rapport, and then at the end
of the conversation, this guy asks me what I'm doing
for the weekend, like what are you doing on Saturday?
(11:42):
And it caught me completely off guard because my Saturday
plans would have absolutely nothing to do with my qualifications
for this job. And afterward I told myself maybe it
was just to get a sense of whether I'd fit
into the company culture. But as soon as I mentioned that,
and this was true, that my soon to be in
(12:04):
laws were coming over for brunch. The interview quickly ended
and I never got a call back. And I don't
know that that was Again, that could have been just
a question, you know, friendly seeing what kind of what
my interests were outside of the office. But you know
(12:25):
that squeaky feeling that you get in your stomach when
you sense that someone is thinking of you as more
than just a potential good employee, that's so awful. Yeah,
my my stomach got squeaky. So I mean, and and
that's that's the factor too. It's that line where you
(12:45):
you feel that distinct shift from being a human person
with a brain to being a sexual object who might
also you know, what happened to to be decent in
the workplace. Yeah, I mean, there isn't visible sort of line.
That's very hazy. I can an invisible thing also be hazy,
(13:05):
I'm going to say in this case, it can. In
that Cosmos survey, six of women said that they had
not been sexually harassed, but those same women said they
had experienced sexually explicit or sexist remarks. So while there
might be some misunderstanding on the guy's part of like, no,
I didn't mean for that to be harassing or crude.
(13:26):
It seems like on the women's side too, there's a
little bit of a misunderstanding of like no, no, no,
when he says something like sexist or derogatory or sexually explicit,
like that, that's sexual harassment. Yeah, and I wonder too,
because you know, the stats in this Cosmos survey, which
probably probably not the most scientific survey in the world,
(13:48):
but nonetheless telling. I wonder since it was so commonly
reported by the women who were taking this survey, who
were younger than the numbers that ABC News are it on,
which was of women, I wonder if that points to
sort of the target demographic for sexual harassment. I mean,
(14:09):
in that Cosmos survey, it did find that a bulk
of the women who reported it were between or essentially
like in their twenties. I don't have the exact ages,
and it might also speak to our generational awareness of
what is and isn't okay. But if we look at
the specific industries where it tends to happen the most,
(14:33):
it really echoes some of our past podcast so women
working in food service, hospitality, retail, stem fields, arts and entertainment,
and legal fields. That was a curveball to me, reported
the most sexual harassment I mean in food service that
has been corroborated by other research as well. Yeah, I
(14:57):
guess I was surprised. The one that surprised me was
not legal fields, but with arts and entertainment, because these
are either male dominated fields like stem or legal or
things like food service and retail where you are sort
of open to abuse from customers, not to mention managers. UM. Yeah,
I was just trying to figure out what it would
be an arts and entertainment. Yeah. I mean, I think
(15:19):
that there's the client aspect as well. UM. I mean,
and if you are thinking about like traditional arts, you
have to deal with moneyed buyers um. And people critiquing
your work. I mean your your work is for sale. Yeah.
I guess actress is going on auditions maybe sure, but
it happens. Um. But they found in this survey of
(15:41):
the reported harassers were male coworkers and ten percent were
female co workers. UM and Pso COSMO has certainly changed
its tune from founder Helen Gurley Brown's advice in our
nineteen sixty four bestseller Sex in the Office, in which
she wrote, and I must quote a married man usually
(16:03):
likes attractive approving females around whom he may or may
not think of as sex objects. You'll never get me
to say this is wrong, m but horrifying. Yeah, oh oh,
Helen g this okay. So like I now begrudgingly acknowledge
(16:26):
that Cosmo does add to the feminist discourse online because
I hated it for so long. I grew up occasionally
getting a Cosmo or buying a Cosmo and it was
all horrifying. No magazine ever made me feel worse about
myself than Cosmopolitan magazine. It's all about sex, and it's
(16:48):
all like stupid sex tips, and it's all about pleasing
your man finding his moan zone. And I'm like, oh
my god, get over yourself, Like what about women, Like
can we have something that isn't like about like you
need the sexy bod to be successful. So honestly, it's
only about in the past year that I've like come
(17:10):
to terms with Cosmo being a little more legit in
contributing articles too feminist conversations. I'll go on the record
and say, fully legit. They had brought on a new editor,
like whole new guidelines, people like Jill Philipovic right for them. Now,
I mean it's a it's a good source. I will yeah,
but it wasn't for the longest time. And this whole
(17:32):
little anecdote here with Helen Gurley Brown, I'm like, yeah,
but how nice to see that magazines can evolve toward
feminism in a positive kind. I mean, we've seen that
with Marie Claire. I feel like and and maybe L
to everyone, definitely l especially online. And oh how I
wish that today's Cosmo was the Cosmo that I read
(17:55):
when I was in high school. Yikes. Um, But back
to sexual harassment. It's so so so common, especially in
food service, and this really echoes the episode that we
did on waitressing. And but this goes though, for men
and women both and especially researchers found when they're in
(18:18):
jobs that aren't paid the minimum wage. When you make
the like what is it like to fourteen an hour
and then the rest are your tips, sexual harassment runs rife.
ANTI magazine reported on a Restaurant Opportunities Center United survey
of six eight restaurant employees across the US, which found
(18:38):
sixty six percent of women and more than fifty percent
of men reported sexual harassment by managers and even more
from customers. Just another reason that the United States is
tipping system sucks because you have to just kind of
take it these You're depending on these customers, these abusive customers,
(19:02):
for your livelihood, to to supplement your terrible, terrible hourly
wage that you earn from your restaurant. And so, I mean,
it's bad enough being sexually harassed by your manager. I mean,
like that's awful, but then to have to basically try
to earn money from people who are actively harassing you
sounds traumatic. And it's also crystallizes to Caroline the power
(19:26):
dynamic at the core of all of this, because as
the history we're about to talk about really shows, the
wider the disparity between, you know, the power of the
harasser and the person being harassed, like the likelier and
the more pervasive it tends to be. And a lot
of this information is coming from the fantastic resource Directions
(19:51):
and Sexual Harassment Law. Reva B. Siegel wrote the introduction,
and it is dense with information about the history of
sexual harassment, the legal history specifically of sexual harassment, and
in this country, if we look back to slavery, I mean,
what better way to illustrate deeply ingrained power dynamics with
(20:14):
a huge distance between the harass er and the harassed.
Yeah so um. And Harriett Jacobs's eighteen sixty one autobiography
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. She wrote
how her slave owners quote began to whisper foul wards
in her ear when she was fifteen. And of course
(20:34):
Annabellum rape laws did not protect enslaved women whatsoever. But
even after the Emancipation Proclamation, there assumed hyper sexuality. Women
of colors assumed hyper sexuality often robbed them of justice.
And we go into more detail in this on our
two parter on the history of rape and rape culture,
(20:57):
which I highly recommend you also listened to. But yeah,
I mean it's so grim when it comes to slavery
because like you said, I mean, there the women had
no autonomy whatsoever, and the and the more economic power
that other person has over the victim, the likelier this
(21:17):
is to happen. Yeah. And although the context and extent
of the abuse is certainly different, outside the shackles of slavery,
women employed as domestic workers and manufacturing jobs and performing
secretarial work also encountered it regularly. Basically, if you left
the home, you were fair game. You were considered like
(21:41):
almost a woman of ill repute for mixing with men
in the workplace. So as we get to the eighteen fifties,
as the women's rights movement starts gathering steam, it's organizers
begin drawing these links between women's limited job prospects and
reduced wages that made them economically dependent on men, whether
(22:02):
in the workplace or at home, and that dependency, they argued,
normalized coercion. And this is something that Riva B. Seagull
and Katherine McKinnon also infinite emphasized in directions in sexual
harassment Law. How it is power, but it's also about
money and the socio economics tied up in all of this. Yeah,
(22:25):
there's one particular story that went a long way towards
recognizing those dynamics. So in eighteen sixty eight, you have
this woman, Hester Vaughan. She's a domestic servant. She gets
impregnated by her employer, she's fired as a result, and
she's later found destitute, her baby having died, and she
ends up being convicted of infanticide. Well, she's facing a
(22:50):
death penalty conviction, and a couple of suffragists that you
may have heard of. Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth, Katie stand
and a few others catch wind of this and they're
basically like, this is in sane, Are you serious? Like
all of this stuff was done to her. She's a
victim of circumstance in like the worst way. They basically
managed to gather enough attention for Vaughan's case that they
convinced the Pennsylvania governor to pardon her. Yeah, and they
(23:14):
used this as a platform to campaign for suffrage um
women on juries, all of these issues that were tied
up with hesser Van's case. Um. But also one name
you've probably heard of is Little Women author Louisa May Alcott.
In eighteen seventy four, she wrote a newspaper essay about
(23:36):
her sexual harassment experience from a female employer's brother. This
woman had hired her to essentially be her lady's companion
for a month or so, and her brother got real
smarmie and kept inviting her into his study, which in
eighteen seventy four, that was a direct come on, and
(23:59):
she was existed, and you know what he did, He
was like, Okay, you're not going to come into my study,
both literally and figuratively, Luisa may Alcott and I'm gonna
have you doing hard labor out in the yard. Yeah.
He he tried to. And this is such a like
a familiar refrain. He tried to bargain with her to
lessen her chores. Your life could be so much easier
(24:22):
if you just come into my study. Uh. And then
when she wouldn't, Yeah, he added to her burden even more.
But I love her story about basically telling him to
back the f off. She like waved something at him.
I don't know if it was like a poker from
the fireplace or a feather duster or what, but that
woman was not taking any guff well. And we even
(24:43):
see around the turn of the century. Um in this
book Women Wage Workers, authored by Helen Campbell, even back
then they're calling attention to these problems of sexual harassment
for like you said, Caroline, women making money outside the home.
Upton Sinclair in the Jungle also talks about it in
(25:05):
the context of domestic workers women in manufacturing and factory jobs,
even going so far as to compare it to slavery conditions,
particularly if they were poor and foreign. And in her
seven Bok Campbell described the sexual extortion of garment and
factory workers, and went on to say that household service
(25:26):
has become synonymous with the worst degradation that comes to women,
So not so great to leave the house, I guess. Ps.
Sexual harassment is nothing new, I mean. And that also
that quote right there goes so much to show how
class could only make you more vulnerable to it. And
(25:50):
in a call back to our International Women's Day episode
which focused a lot on women factory workers, which included
a lot of immigrant women going on strike. These low
wage workers in the nineteenth century were often looked down
on as immoral for working alongside men and in the
(26:10):
wording of the day, giving in to sexual advances. So
it was the onus was on these women to maintain
their purity. Talk about some victim blaming one oh one, yeah, like, oh,
you've made the mistake to enter the workplace, like this
is just natural and and how could we ever fix it?
Which is a legal refrain that we will see come
(26:32):
back in the seventies and eighties, Like I it's it
boggles the mind. I can barely speak because it boggles
the mind. Well, And in our International Women's State episode,
we talked about how uh snobby gentlemen of the day
look down on factory women for being immoral, and I
(26:53):
was puzzled by that at the time. But oh, this
now makes sense because even working alongside men was sketchy
to them because of the risk of sexual harassment, which
of course would have been the women's fault for being
there in the first place. There was the men putting
the women at risk, and then the men blaming the
(27:14):
women for being at risk. I know, Caroline, you preach
into the congre choir. I just want to throw my
headphones off and go run away. So Alice Kessler Harris,
who was a labor women's labor historian over at half Stra,
told The New York Times how nobody talked in terms
of sexual harassment back then, of course, because the term
(27:34):
had not been invented. She said, quote, the issue was
whether it was immoral for young girls to be working
alongside men and subjecting themselves to the natural licentiousness of
the workplace. And so the argument a lot of times,
Kesler Harris says, was that, you know what the solution is,
to take women of the workplace. They're safer at home. Yeah,
(27:57):
I mean. In nineteen fourteen, there was a report from
a Commission on Industrial Relations that cited a glass factory
that was so written with sexual harassment that all of
the younger female employees were replaced with older women. So,
rather rather than nipping the sexual harassment in the bud,
(28:18):
they're just like, fine, we'll take away all the spring chickens. Yeah,
rather than firing the men and still bring in those
older women, Nope, just fire fire the young women who
are too tempting hashtag distractingly sexy. Um. That same nineteen
fourteen report also noted how female department store clerks, which
(28:40):
this is, you know, a new industry that's bubbling up
at the time, those clerks endured sexual harassment from and
this is a quote from that report, buyers, managers and
floor walkers who take advantage of girls working under them.
We know of cases of girls who have got to
submit to buyers if they want to hold their positions.
(29:02):
Again and again and again. It's power, it's money, it's socioeconomics. Yeah, well,
so how do you how were you supposed to if
you weren't Louise may Alcott with the weaponized feather duster
waving it at that guy with a study, like, what
were you supposed to do. I mean, you had very
little recourse at the time because of course, I mean
(29:23):
we didn't even have a language to describe it. There
were no laws really to protect you, unless I mean
there were rape laws. But as we'll talk about in
a second, like the the bar was so high, and
even if you simply accused someone of sexually harassing you,
(29:43):
you were putting your reputation and your marriage prospects at
risk because that would mean that you're already a tainted woman.
Get out of here. And if you are a woman
of color, an immigrant, or even just like a white
domestic employee, well too bad, so sad, because you've already
(30:04):
been hyper sexualized and stereotyped as promiscuous anyway, So you know,
just just hope that you're a rich white woman then
you might have, you know, a little bit of illegal
leg to stand on. And speaking of which, the rape
laws at the time required that women proved they exerted
(30:25):
quote utmost resistance to the harassment or assault, otherwise you
must have been consenting. Yeah, And I mean that goes
back to even earlier quote unquote rape laws, where you literally,
as the woman, were expected to run through the town screaming,
and if nobody heard you screaming, they were like, oh,
well you're probably lying. Yeah, she's just making it up.
(30:49):
And so author Reva B. Siegal, whom we've started now
a few times, underscores how those most invested in strengthening
those anti rape laws were often the most disenfranchised, whose
only effective option so often was to begin organizing, just
as they had done to protest unfair wages and working conditions.
(31:12):
They had to band together because I mean, the law
wasn't going to protect them exactly. And because this dynamic
obviously continues through the seventies, eighties, and nineties, maybe you
could argue today it kind of takes people with privilege
seeding some of that privilege so that other people can
be safe at work. It's very easy from a privileged position,
(31:36):
whatever that position is, to just be like, oh, this
isn't really that big of a deal. And this was
especially true back then. Yeah, so what do you what
do you mean though, by seating privilege? What form did
that take? Well, essentially seating the privilege to a not
see it or recognize it and be give up your
actual harassing behavior. Oh so you're saying the men in
(32:00):
the office. Yeah, okay, okay, So we've already established that
sexual harassment is more severe in areas where women are
either new or and or they're in a male dominated field.
So by the time world where one ends, women had
started really becoming commonplace in the office, and their clerical
jobs increased one hundred and forty percent during the nineteen tents.
(32:24):
And so as a result, you have all of these newspapers, magazines,
and employment guides being packed with advice for young women
on how a proper office girl should behave and basically
just taking for granted and like, yeah, your your boss
is going to make a pass at you. Yeah. And
and this info is coming from the book Sex in
(32:44):
the Office, A History of Gender, Power and Desire by
Julie Verbitsky, which I highly recommend you're checking out. Verbitski
writes about how office guides for women in the nineteen
thirties and forties, which were extremely popular, typically encouraged women
to be pleasing to the eye because men like to
(33:05):
be surrounded by pretty women. Uh, but don't be overtly sexy,
you know, be pretty but not too pretty. And while
boss says would certainly make passes at the prettiest ones
because I mean, of course they're just just dudes. It
was all innocent masculine admiration and kind of an office
tradition of sorts. Yeah. And and like Kristen said, they
(33:28):
were popular. You had one called Manners and Business by
Elizabeth greg mcgibbons that was reprinted fourteen times between nineteen
thirty six and nineteen forty six. And it also acknowledged that, hey,
sex in the office happens. Yeah. And if we go
back to Cosmopolitan founder Helen Gurley Brown and her questionable
good advice, she writes in her best sellers about when
(33:53):
she was a secretary Games of Scuttle and Scuttle is
when bosses would pick a secretary to chase around until
they caught her and removed her underwear. I have so
many words and then none at all. Yeah, I mean
a lot of this. Reading this just reminded me of
episodes of mad Men and also watching The Wolf of
(34:13):
Wall Street. Yeah, I just don't I don't understand. Um.
He also had Dale Carnegie's executive secretary Marylyn Burke, who
read a guide in nineteen fifty nine warning against curvacious
women in low necklines that have a tendency to distract.
Sultry pouts, swinging hips, and lingering caresses of well manicured
(34:37):
fingers were off limits because they capitalized on male weakness.
Those poor men being preyed upon by women. Well, we
hear about this, We hear this echoed, I think most
prominently these days in school dress codes. It sounds a
lot like that, where girls with larger busts and larger
(34:57):
butts are often the most panelized. It is because they
have the most quote, distracting bodies, um, and all of
it being framed in the term of in terms of
men just not being able to help themselves. Boys can't
help but look and they'll be distracted. Ulk smash, Yes,
ulk smash, ulk smash. Well, we're about to get to
some hulk smashing, because Caroline, the second wave is coming.
(35:22):
And first we have the civil rights movement, and as
a result, in nineteen four the Civil Rights Act is passed.
Entitled seven of the Civil Rights Act outlaws employment discrimination
on the basis of sex and a lot of other factors.
But that on the basis of sex is a crucially
(35:44):
important phrase. But here's the thing. At that time, sexual
harassment was predominantly viewed as a personal matter that just
happened to take place in the office. It's like, oh,
I mean, like, this guy can have a crush on
you anywhere, he can be you know, inapprop brilliently touching
you anywhere, but he just happens to see you every
day at the office. So of course that's where it
(36:06):
will take place. It's just a personal issue. That's such crap.
And that was like entrenched in our legal approaches to
it absolutely. I mean, because keep in mind too, at
this time it was only men making the laws. Jerks, okay.
So riding the crest of the second wave, we get
(36:27):
Katherine McKennon and she was part of Lynn Farley's consciousness
raising groups that we mentioned earlier in the nineties seventies
in the heyday of the women's movement, and the stories
that she heard there at Cornell from secretaries about sexual
harassment were i opening. And what especially got McKinnon's wheels
(36:47):
attorning was this woman, Carmita Wood, who had quit her
job in a Cornell lab after her supervisor physically and
verbally harassed her to the point she began developing stress
related physical ailments. And this is really common to hear
from trauma victims in general, and sexual harassment victims specifically,
that they develop physical and emotional symptoms like stomach pains,
(37:12):
like anxiety, attacks like depression. So Cornell had refused Wood's
job transfer request and workers camp because they said that
her reasons for leaving again we're personal. And so McKinnon
realizes that these situations are happening because their women lightbulb.
(37:35):
Sexual harassment is sex discrimination. So in nine nine McKinnon,
who at this time is still a student at Yale
Law School, uses that but five year old term sexual
harassment to write the groundbreaking sexual harassment of working women
(37:55):
a case of sex discrimination. And this broke the whole
thing wide open legally speaking. And in that McKinnon wrote, quote,
sexual harassment perpetuates the interlocked structure by which women have
been kept sexually in thrall to men and at the
bottom of the labor market. Two forces of American society
(38:17):
converge men's control over women's sexuality and capital's control over
employees work lives. There you have it again, power and money,
power and money. Yeah. And as Riva Siegel wrote talking
about this, she says that this arrangement this power and
money arrangement has been institutionalized through marriage, prostitution, and as
(38:38):
we're seeing now sexual harassment. And so, along with her
colleague Glenn Farley, McKennon pieces together how sexual harassment asserts
a woman's sex role over her function as a worker.
And again, it's really just about the communication of power. This,
she said, is dominance eroticized. And it took about ten
(38:59):
years for mckennon's legal argument to essentially make its way
through various cases up to the Supreme Court. But first
in nineteen eighty we have the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
issuing its first sexual harassment guidelines, which we earlier defined.
And then is the big year. This is when the
(39:21):
Supreme Court hands down it's landmark decision based on McKinnon's
legal theory in the case of merit Or Bank versus Vincent,
in which a former bank employee alleged harassment by a
branch manager um and the Supreme Court determined sexual harassment
(39:41):
to in fact be a form of sex discrimination, thus
violating the nineteen sixty four Civil Rights Act. And Caroline,
I'm gonna be perfectly honest with you, I did not
before digging into this legal history. Fully understand that sexual
harassment is illegal because it is a civil rights violation. Yeah,
(40:02):
I hadn't realized that either. And even though it took
basically until with Anita Hill for sexual harassment to really
come to the forefront, uh, socially speaking, I mean, think
about how far we came in just a really short
time from the idea that sexual harassment and like the
sexualizing of women in the workplace, it's just natural, it's inevitable,
(40:24):
and the law couldn't be expected to eradicate it. It's
because we didn't have the language to identify it. I
mean that again goes goes to that whole point of
how putting language of something, identifying something, calling it out
can initiate change, and change is still happening here and
(40:44):
abroad around the same time that we're battling it here
in the United States. In four Australia's Sex Discrimination Act
made sexual harassment unlawful in the workplace. In two thousand two,
so a bit of a leap, the European Union recognized
it as a form of discrimination. And then every period
(41:05):
between and you had a whole slew of countries, including
Hong Kong, India, Israel, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and Vietnam
passing legislation that really clamped down on sexual harassment at work.
But in the case of Vietnam, they didn't clearly define
what sexual harassment was, nor our employers actually obligated to
(41:28):
take any preventive measures. Yeah, and we should also note
that with the that list of countries, many of them
already had anti sexual harassment laws in place, but this
was really like going in and tightening those laws even more.
And that's coming from the Society for Human Resource Management
and Caroline. This whole episode is the preview to our
(41:53):
next podcast, which is going to be all about Anita
Hill and the circumstances surrounding that and talk again about
power dynamics, gender race. A lot tied up with it
and the ripple effect that it would have because between
her hearing before the Senate and sexual harassment claims filed
(42:18):
with the E e O C more than doubled. And
that has again a lot to do with women saying,
oh my gosh, that's happened to me, and this is
what it's called, and it's a civil rights violation. So listeners,
now we turned to you, we want to know whether
this is something you've experienced, how you handled it, and
(42:39):
do you have any insights on eradicating sexual harassment from
the workplace, because this conversation definitely wasn't solutions oriented, because
we've only recently really figured out how much of a
problem it is. We've only just begun. Sorry your sexual
(43:00):
harassment anthem. Yeah, well, listeners, we hope to hear from you.
Mom Stuff at House stuffwork dot com is our email address.
You can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcasts or
messages on Facebook, and we've got a couple of messages
to share with you right now. I have a letter
(43:23):
here from Kate Uh. She says, I just started listening
to your podcast and I'm on a serious stuff I've
never told you crunch fest. I've enjoyed more than I
can list, but I wanted to express how much I
appreciated your episode on disability and de sexualization. My father
is a quadriplegic, and since I was a child, people
have asked me whether I was adopted or how my
parents conceived me. My two siblings and I were conceived
(43:46):
the old fashioned way, and it astounds me that even
mere acquaintances feel it's okay to ask me how my
parents have sex, and often comment on how remarkable of
a woman my mother must be to have married someone
in a wheelchair, have being a father in a chair
and not only made me aware of our world's inaccessibility
and attitude towards disability, but also of the miseducation of
(44:07):
the realities and needs of the disabled, even those are
on a spectrum for which to human beings able bodied
or not, have the same needs. As with many disabilities
and illnesses, the social stigma and preconceptions attached to them
are often the greatest hurdles people have to face. I
hope as a society we can continue to broaden the
conversation on disabled realities, needs and rights so that someday
(44:29):
there will be access for everyone to enjoy their sex
life in the same way much of the able bodied
community has for centuries freely and privately. Let it be
noted my mother is indeed a remarkable woman and would
still be regardless of her choice of husband. My father
is a legend as well, by the way, heck, maybe
that's why they married each other. Well, thank you, Kate,
(44:51):
oh I gotta let her hear from Jacqueline also about
our sexuality and disabilities podcasts, and she writes, I'm so
happy that you guys brought up the lack of sex
said that people with disabilities get in school. I'm a
twenty five year old living in Canada and the bone
disorder I was born with has left me standing only
four four And while I consider myself able body thanks
(45:12):
to my amazing parents, my high school did not. I
wasn't allowed to take jim in grade nine where you
get the sex said that isn't about getting your period.
This left me really clueless about sex, and still I
started university. Luckily, we live in the Internet age and
I was able to flesh out my knowledge from feminist sources.
I consider myself pretty sex positive now, but it's a
(45:34):
product of my own research. I appreciate your addressing this issue.
If people with even mild disabilities don't know about sex themselves,
how are we supposed to educate the able bodied people
that we want to have sex with. Well, thank you
Jacqueline for your letter, and thanks to everybody else who's
written into us. Mom Stuff at house stuffwork dot com
is our email address and filling all of our social
(45:55):
media as well as all of our blogs, videos, and
podcasts with our sources so you can learn more about
the legal history of sexual harassment. Head on over to
stuff mom Never Told You dot com for more on
this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
Works dot com.
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