COLUMN RIGHT/ VIRGINIA I. POSTREL : Don’t Put Women Back on Pedestals : Even if Anita Hill’s charges are true, it is still no more than hypersensitivity to ‘petty slights.’

Women are fragile. Women are dangerous. Women are not equal to men.

Those are the messages coming out of Washington. By taking Anita Hill’s charges seriously, Congress and the media are insulting American women and teaching the country a dangerous lesson.

Hill’s charges may very well be completely false, as Clarence Thomas maintains. Certainly her behavior during the 10 years following the alleged incidents suggests that she harbored no ill will toward Thomas and, indeed, sought to maintain a friendly relationship with him.

But even if they are true, the charges are trivial--or at least they ought to be. Hill has declared that Thomas asked her out several times and that he described pornographic movies to her. Such actions might make a woman uncomfortable, but they are no big deal.

Any woman with the gumption to pursue a career as a lawyer ought to have the guts to tell her boss that she isn’t interested in dating him and doesn’t want to hear about sex films.

The message the Senate is now sending--egged on by such feminists as Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.) and law professor Susan Estrich--is that women don’t have guts and shouldn’t need them. Women, they are saying, must be protected not just from overt physical overtures or threats to their livelihood but from anything that might disturb their pretty little heads. The men of the Senate, at once patronizing and terrified, are only too happy to encourage this message.

And it is exactly the opposite message that women need to hear. When women enter the work force, especially the professional work force, it often takes them years to realize what men already know: The working world does not particularly care about your emotional state. It doesn’t exist to make you miserable, but neither is it there to make you happy. The longer young women take to realize these fundamental facts, the less successful they are.

Feminists are discrediting working women, teaching them to be hypersensitive and teaching men not to trust them. Never, never, never, they are telling men, be alone with a female colleague. You never know what she might say about you later. Never act toward a woman as you would toward a man. Watch your language in front of the ladies.

In its 1988 guidelines on sexual harassment, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said, “Title VII does not serve ‘as a vehicle for vindicating the petty slights suffered by the hypersensitive,’ ” If true, Hill’s charges certainly fall under that rubric.

But by pushing aside the specific charges in favor of a general label of “sexual harassment,” public discussion has elevated petty slights to the status of rape and incest. Viewers calling C-SPAN to react to Hill’s accusations Tuesday night quickly moved the discussion toward these serious crimes. Among political commentators, Tom Clancy has used the occasion to bash Democrats with Chappaquiddick and the William Kennedy Smith rape trial. And Mark Shields has invoked Willie Horton. In the process, Thomas has been tarred, not only with the charges made against him but also with guilt by association.

The test of how much Hill’s charges have damaged American women will come in the Senate hearing. If the senators believe in equality for women, they will treat her story with the serious scrutiny it deserves. They will ask uncomfortable questions. They will probe contradictions. They will not be afraid to make the witness cry.

If, however, feminist hypersensitivity has triumphed, the senators will go easy on Anita Hill. They will treat her like a lady. Or a child.

And we will, all of us, be back on the Victorian pedestal, with nobody to blame but our fellow women.