The Sexual Harassment Merry-Go-Round

As lights flashed, cameras rolled and senators scrambled for their chairs, law professor Anita Hill took center stage on an October morning in 1991. By the time she finished testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee that day, she had popularized a new phrase: sexual harassment. Yet six years later, the term remains vague and undefined. Whether due to misuse, overuse or simply being showcased by the wrong people at the wrong time, many people now wonder whether sexual harassment is a legitimate concern or just another ploy conjured up by the left.

As a conservative Republican woman, I believe that sexual harassment is a legitimate issue, but one that affects a limited number of women. Unfortunately, the radical feminist leaders of the sexual harassment movement have so egregiously sold out women in general that the issue of sexual harassment is in danger of being taken seriously only by other zealots.

While the majority of Americans polled by The Times just after the hearings on Clarence Thomas’ nomination to the Supreme Court believed Thomas rather than Hill, the issue didn’t go away after the dust settled and Thomas was confirmed. A year later, five new women were elected to the U.S. Senate, two of them from California. Both Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer are liberal Democrats. Boxer, especially, campaigned zealously against sexual harassment, preaching lawsuits and retribution and sounding more like a Baptist minister than a strident feminist.

By 1994, two years after the “Year of the Woman,” women finally were getting some fair representation. That is why when sexual harassment charges were brought against two male senators, I eagerly jumped on board. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.) and Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) both were accused of what appeared to be legitimate charges: Packwood of making unwanted sexual advances to women staff members and lobbyists, Inouye of sexually assaulting his hair stylist and other women. I did a blistering commentary against Packwood on KABC television. I didn’t care that he was a Republican. His inebriated groping and grabbing was inexcusable. But to my utter surprise, while Packwood was publicly pummeled by outraged feminists until he resigned, the Inouye case was allowed to quietly disappear.

Around the same time, in May 1994, a young female employee of the state of Arkansas named Paula Corbin Jones filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against the current darling of the feminist movement, William Jefferson Clinton. But the anti-sexual harassment warriors of the Anita Hill crusade scattered for cover, becoming mute and refusing to change their “I Believe Anita Hill” buttons for “I Believe Paula Jones” slogans. To this day, feminist leaders like NOW’s Patricia Ireland fumble around to explain the discrepancy in their treatment of the two women. Boxer, for example, excuses Clinton by saying the Jones case “is about something that happened . . . when Bill Clinton was governor. So it’s just different on its face.” She conveniently forgets that Hill’s accusations were about supposed events long before Thomas’ nomination.

With these twisted proclamations, the definition of sexual harassment has become so muddled that every woman was left to define the issue for herself. Did a second invitation to lunch after the first was declined constitute harassment? At least one corporate teaching film on the subject said “yes.” Other women declared themselves victims if a man’s glance was unsolicited or they were complimented on their appearance. By reducing the issue to the absurd and polluting it with personality and politics, left-wing feminists have done to sexual harassment what Johnnie Cochran did to civil rights during the O.J. Simpson trial. They have taken a legitimate concern and reduced it to triviality through double talk, fast talk and sleight of lips. And in the process, they themselves have lost all credibility.