Ellen Levine : A Voice for Mainstream Women Decries the “Gang Rape” of Anita Hill

Back in the days of the Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III’s Commission on Pornography, the regal visage of Ellen Levine, then editor of Woman’s Day, would peer out, over a pile of smut, to question, in tones more bemused then alarmed, what it all meant.

The commissioners never succeeded in defining the word “pornography,” but they certainly studied a great deal of erotica. Throughout the year-long exercise, Levine, while expressing shock at bestiality and the like, frequently cautioned against tendencies toward censorship. She filed a minority dissent to the commission’s opinion that more restrictive legislation on adult pornography was called for. It was difficult, however, for conservative critics to pin the label “libertine” on this woman, whose life story seems so in tune with the aspirations of the readers of the mainstream magazines she has edited.

Levine, now 48, is one of those women who have made it--and have it made. As they say in frequent testimonials: mother, wife and executive. After graduating from Wellesley College in 1964, she married Richard Levine, a clinical professor at Columbia’s medical school. The mother of two sons, she has been a reporter for the then Bergen Evening Record, an editor of Cosmopolitan, the editor in chief of Woman’s Day, senior vice president of Hachette Magazines and is currently the editor of Redbook magazine. She also hosts a program on women’s attitudes on the CBS television station in New York City. The program is based on a weekly Redbook-CBS poll of American women.

Levine says she does not speak for all American women--or even for her own magazine’s readers. She reports that her polling data indicate no such monolithic viewpoint. Her views are her own, but she is convinced that anger is widespread because of what she calls the “gang rape” of Anita Hill by the men on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Question: Is there anything positive about the Clarence Thomas confirmation uproar?

Answer: Yes. This has taken sexual harassment out of the closet as no other case has done before. I think men had to have been thinking about things in their past, or perhaps in their present, that women may have found actionable or that could possibly surface years later and negatively affect their careers.

Q: Yet women were quite divided in appraising who was telling the truth. Why do you think that was?

A: Part of it had to have been the sympathy sentiment for Thomas. It was so painful to watch him that there were points even where I walked away from the television, saying, “Oh, let’s just get it over with. It’s too much agony.”

Q: Whom did you believe?

A: I believed her. But I went back and forth like a lot of people. When he spoke, I was mesmerized and hypnotized and sympathetic. I think that both of them think that they are telling the truth. But if you’re going to ask me whether or not I believe the scenario is possible, and that a woman will not do anything about it and she will follow him to another job--I absolutely understand it perfectly.

Q: What about the argument that she failed to bring a suit in timely fashion?

A: I would be very unlikely to advise a woman to bring a sex-harassment suit.

Q: Why?

A: Because, I think, unless she has very clear-cut evidence--a letter, a tape--it will damage her. Particularly if she’s sensitive to start with. I’ve heard men talk too often about how “I’m not going to hire her, she’s a troublemaker. She sued her former company.”

Q: Is this pessimism of the moment or should women be concerned about official indifference on sexual harassment?

A: When you consider what they did to Anita Hill? I have now decided that they savaged her. And what it means to women is, if you go forward, you’re going to get gang-raped. They shoot the messenger: “She’s psychotic.” I’m saying she’s brave. She’s a lawyer. And she was gang-raped by the Senate. They should be ashamed of themselves. They were complaining about character assassination on his part. What about the character assassination they did to her: “a woman spurned,” “she’s psychotic,” “she has a fantasy life.” How about the possibility that this happened and they want to discount it?

Q: What about the charge Thomas raised--that it was a “high-tech lynching?”

A: That’s offensive because, after all, he was being challenged not by the white Establishment but by a black female.

Q: What do you think a poll of your readers would show?

A: I think women aren’t a monolithic group. I think younger working women will believe it. But you’re going to see a split on working, non-working and age demographics on it. Even if you do not see that split, if a third of the women believe her--that’s a lot of women. Maybe they have a very good reason to believe her. Maybe they’ve experienced this themselves. Maybe that’s what the polls are showing. It feels familiar to them.

Q: Have you experienced sexual harassment?

A: Have I been around extraordinary sexual innuendo? All the time. Do I feel harassed? Only once have I felt harassed.

Q: What happened?

A: It was a situation where I felt like I had no power. Where somebody did something that was so subtle that I could never have claimed that anything had happened. But it was clear to me--and it was clear to him--and he was in charge. And it made me very uncomfortable. He simply touched my leg with his leg, and he looked at me, and the door was closed. And it was an important meeting--to tell me that I was reporting to him.

Q: Did anything happen after that?

A: No. I just made very sure that no doors were closed in any further meetings. And whenever possible, the meeting was in my office. And I left the company shortly thereafter. But I had an option. If I did not have an option to leave, I would have been in a very difficult position. . . .

Q: What is going to happen now in the workplace as a result of this?

A: I think there’s going to be a couple of months of great caution. I think there will probably be some more education in the workplace. Women may talk to each other. Do I think there will be any more suits brought having watched this? I sure wouldn’t want to bring a suit. What were they talking about--the 120-day statute of limitations? I mean, that’s pretty short.

If somebody came to me and said, “I want to sue so-and-so right now.” I’d say, “You got a letter? You have a tape? The two of you were alone in the room? Don’t even think about it unless you have a letter or a tape.”

Q: What is the political fallout? Are we going to see more of a push for women to be in the Senate?

A: When I was listening to the vote, and you had to get to 50 till you heard a woman’s voice, it was pretty upsetting--and I hope there will be a push. I don’t think women should be expected to vote together on too many issues. We are not “one woman” anymore. On the other hand, I think it should be very clear when you look across the faces, that they’re white males, that’s why it (the charge of sexual harassment) got missed in committee. I have to believe that if there were a few women on that committee it wouldn’t have been missed.

Q: Is it true that men don’t get it?

A: When a woman says to a man, “You simply don’t understand.” I think, very often, he doesn’t understand. I think, clearly, he doesn’t understand very often that these remarks can intimidate a woman whom he works with. I was flying on a plane from Miami and men were reading out loud and it was in the first-class section. I was the only female. They were reading out loud from the Wall Street Journal or USA Today, laughing over Anita Hill’s comments. I think they simply don’t understand. Maybe we’ll begin to speak the same language--or if we don’t speak the same language, there will be a better translation for them.

Q: Do you connect this with your work on the attorney general’s Commission on Pornography? There were reports that Thomas talked about pornography in law school and Anita Hill said he brought it up with her.

A: It wouldn’t surprise me if he spoke about pornography. It was very clever of her Senate critics to categorize that as the most offensive and disgusting and degrading thing they’d ever heard--because then you look at Thomas and you can’t think of this man as a horror person. Look at the video-store renters of pornography movies. Those aren’t always horrible, disgusting people. A lot of them are executives at IBM. It was strategically clever to characterize it that way. You look at this man; he’s not a horrible person. Consequently, he couldn’t possibly have done these things. But then people always say, “He was such a nice guy. How could he have shot his wife and his 12 kids? He went to church.”

Q: The biggest sticking point, the one her critics played on, was: Why would she go from one job to another with him? Why would she continue, at least on a minimal basis, to socialize? Why would she make calls? Why did she wait 10 years? It goes to the question of: If this guy was such an animal, such a beast--

A: He wasn’t a beast and he wasn’t an animal. He was a man. And you’ve learned to live with it.

Q: What is it about the conditioning of women that produces this response?

A: The first thing that women think is: How did I bring this on myself? What did I do wrong? Why would someone I respect do this to me or why would somebody I respect speak like this--if you’re a vulnerable person. Then you can just be a cynic and say, ha, this happens all the time, let’s get on with it.

Q: Do you expect a sea change in male attitudes now?

A: If you put an optimistic spin on this, you will have men all through the United States rethinking their behavior--and not just in the office. I’ve been at dinner parties where I sat down on my chair, and some guy’s hand was there. It’s like, give me a break. And my husband is sitting across the table. The guy had too much to drink. It’s not just their behavior in the office but the optimistic standards that people will stop and think about what appropriate behavior is. And that people have different sensitivity levels. The best way to deal with this is to keep it out of the office whenever possible.

I think it’s a problem that many men have. It’s something they haven’t been called on. And, for them, I do see the difficultly for me, too. They’re used to working in an all-male atmosphere, where these jokes are perfectly appropriate. You know--the office place as locker room. And as the senators go back to their locker room, you’re going to tell me they don’t tell jokes?

Q: You’ve been the editor of Woman’s Day. Now you’re the editor of Redbook. You’ve been out there with mainstream American women. Do you detect anger?

A: I detect it more in younger women than I do in older women. I think, in older women, you’ll get a kind of a tut-tut, men-are-such-little-boys attitude. Younger women are not as willing to forgive it or to find it endearing. Oddly enough, I had no anger myself about this. I am highly insulted about the way they treated her.

Q: Finally, any good news?

A: I’m very discouraged about whether or not I think anything terrific is going to come out of this. I think maybe women need to educate other women on how to deal with this if it’s not going to be actionable. And I don’t always think a legal suit is the right way to deal with this, because I do think it brands you, and if you can come up with a better way to deal with these situations--by getting the support of your peers and strategizing your way out of these positions--that would be my No. 1 choice. Rather than going through something like dragging it through the court system for three to four years, being obsessed with the problem. Maybe this is like self-defense for women. You know, women are now going to karate classes to protect themselves from being mugged at night. Maybe women need to get together and share some of these experiences that they’ve had in the workplace and help each other devise ways to think their way out of them.