I knew instantly Anita Hill was telling the truth. The whole thing was so familiar to me as a story I had not only lived myself, but had heard so many successful women, including my own mother, tell over and over again.
As for the men, who knows how many of them thought it was truly a vicious attack on the sterling qualities of a man nominated by a Republican President, and how many understood perfectly from experience that this is the seamy underside of women in the workplace. Why else do you think that a majority of men held the line for thousands of years and refused to allow women in their clubs, professions, schools, armies & navies, and so on and on? Just recently I was reading about their protestations that women being admitted to Harvard would mean those hallowed halls would have to see a lowering of standards, plus everyone KNOWS how dangerous it is to have young people of the opposite sex together in the same place!
I was "tried" innumerable times, and by men I otherwise liked and respected, as well as those I detested. The various little scenarios and so forth that they would come up with to try to "score" with me were many and sickening. I truly came to understand that, despite my wanting to think better of them, the first and most impelling instincts these otherwise talented human beings experienced was their sex drives. The urge to mate, and to score with a number of women. And there is something perverse going on, as well: their proclivity for twisting their own basic instincts into it all being the woman's fault just for BEING! There was also an element of mixed admiration and chagrin regarding a woman such as myself who dared "take a man's job" and "work in the world of men." As a newspaper reporter, bank officer, and political and civic activist, I stood many times where they were accustomed to seeing only men stand and speak. Oh, many times I felt such disappointment mixed with humiliation, and wondered why I seemed to be signaling a sexual drive of my own. Over and over, NOTHING was further from my mind! Well, I got through it with my reputation intact, but too many did not, and I'll tell you what: I knew it when I saw it.
I still have the fat scrapbook I made up from the beginning to the end of the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas matter. I titled it: "SHE TOLD THE TRUTH!"
And I say all of this with complete and total sincerity of the soul. For me, this is not political at all. Fact is, I was still a registered Republican at the time. This is a serious social problem, and one that needs to be LOOKED at in the full light of day, admitted to being the quicksand that surrounds the daily activities of women working to make a living, and incorporated into our laws and culture in such a way as to protect women from the hazards threatening them by the culture as we know it now.
