Fighting for Women While Exploiting Them : Packwood: By ardently championing women’s issues, the senator was buying protection from sexual harassment charges.

About five years ago, when Judge Robert H. Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court was before the Senate, a friend asked me to talk to Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.) about the matter. Packwood was undecided as to how to vote, she said, because of the abortion issue and, more generally, because of his worries about whether Bork was properly sensitive to the needs and rights of women.

So I, as a female Bork supporter, told the senator that, while he might disagree with the nominee on particular issues, Bork was one of the straightest men I had met when it came to exhibiting a genuine regard for the women around him.

That answer did not appeal to Packwood: He took his cue from the women’s groups fighting the nomination and voted against Bork. So did Brock Adams of Washington, Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, Donald W. Riegle Jr. of Michigan and Charles Robb of Virginia. This list, along with the names of David Durenberger and Dan Quayle, is also a roster of post-Watergate senators tarred by public allegations of sexual misbehavior.

The scandals vary in size and credibility, but some do reflect the realities of a politician’s life, which is a perpetual performance and a perpetual gamble. The tension and exposure of ego are excruciating. The use of alcohol is frequent. The highs are irresistible and the ever-present admirers profoundly deluding. There will be predatory and compulsive sex.

Yet it is striking that in today’s Senate, liberals fall into sex scandals at least as often as conservatives. In the House as well, liberals hold their own.

You wouldn’t know that from the reporting on the Packwood case: Most of it marveled at the illogical and unexpected contrast between Packwood’s public and private selves. And women’s group leaders expressed sharp surprise, even though the rumors had circulated for years. One leader called Packwood’s case awful because, “He was supposed to be a role model.” Another tempered her criticism, noting, “We owe him a great deal.”

Yet there should not be much surprise that we are seeing more incidents of sexually aggressive behavior by legislators commonly called “good” on women’s issues. Being “pro-woman” has meant supporting measures meant to increase women’s autonomy and economic advancement. But those who advocate more freedom for women have too often succeeded in making them more, rather than less, vulnerable to predatory behavior.

Before the sexual revolution, society consigned women to traditional, dependent roles and took great--almost obsessive--care to protect them from sexual violation. Female freedom was widely associated with promiscuity.

Congressmen broke the rules all the time, of course. Some extorted sex, a disgusting practice then and now. Many carried on in a more bizarre fashion than today--but also more exclusively with what used to be called loose women. As late as the mid-1970s, the women in the most notorious congressional sex scandals were a stripper, undercover policewomen posing as prostitutes and semi-professionals such as Elizabeth Ray.

Yet by then behavior had begun to change, in ways that probably gave the liberal harasser a larger place alongside his conservative brethren. When the sexual revolution proclaimed sexual freedom for all women, the predator--we are talking here about not the occasional or unthinking offender but the chronic recidivist--could do his stalking more broadly and publicly. A woman was expected to be able to repel him on her own. If she couldn’t--well, not much had been lost.

And, ironically, it was liberals, champions of women’s freedom, whose relatively open style made it easier for them to profit from the new system. A few of the sleazier congressmen discovered that they no longer had to go sneaking around after illicit female companionship. They could give a women a responsible staff position and bring her right on to the House floor.

The women’s movement saw that these arrangements were a bad, easily exploited bargain. But movement theorists did not want to say anything that might keep women out of good jobs. So they emphasized issues of consent. A man who propositioned a woman was not making a request but applying pressure. A man propositioning a woman who somehow needed him--for a job, a reference, a vote--was abusing power.

These post-liberation rules strike liberal and conservative harassers alike. The new standards have created the worst of both worlds for your basic congressional predator: He must tolerate women all over the workplace and keep his hands off them besides.

If he is a conservative, he can only hunker down, choose his targets carefully, and remember that the next woman he ogles may turn him in. A liberal has an additional option: He can try to buy protection, by becoming valuable enough to women’s issue groups so that they will be less inclined to believe bad things about him. Such a man may well grow confident of his immunity from exposure.

But such protection is growing less and less effective. Today, a victim will talk and a newspaper will publish. And when the perpetrator is liberal, there is always surprise--and confusion over the fact that a man usually labeled a supporter of women is also an exploiter of women.

We should stop being surprised. In fact, we should start thinking about whether there is something fundamentally wrong with the current definition of what it means to be “good” for women or “bad” for women. It cannot be a good definition, after all, if it leaves room for the contemptuous, hostile behavior we have seen in the Packwood case.