Speaking Truth to Power - Anita Hill [67]
I can’t count the number of times since October 1991 that I have been asked, “Why did you wait ten years to raise charges of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas?” To which I must first say that I wasn’t waiting from 1983 to 1991 to raise charges against Clarence Thomas. I was living my life. I was involved in the day-to-day struggles that everyone who lives and works and cares about their families and friends has. I had a full life of which Clarence Thomas was no longer a part. Moreover, the question misconceives what I was attempting to do in disclosing the information. I did not see the response as an effort to get relief or redress for the behavior. I was supplying information about how Thomas conducted himself in his professional role.
Perhaps a different question, and I believe a better question, is “Why didn’t you bring charges of sexual harassment immediately after you left the EEOC?” To understand the muteness of my response, one must understand that I wanted most of all for the behavior to stop. That was my chief objective throughout. I found a way to make that happen by removing myself from the situation. Even in hindsight I am convinced that there was no way to stop the harassment decisively except by leaving. What were the precedents? There was a woman in the District of Columbia who sued Department of Corrections officials for harassment she experienced in the late 1970s. She is still attempting to obtain relief for her harm despite the fact that she won her suit years ago. I also recall one of the very first sexual harassment lawsuits ever filed. The woman involved in this case, Paulette Barnes, was an African American suing her supervisor in the Environmental Protection Agency, complaining that he stripped her of all job responsibilities after she rejected his sexual advances, ultimately abolishing her position altogether. I know of a third woman whose career as a doctor was stalled for over ten years because as a resident she complained about a doctor’s harassment. I also know of countless women who changed college majors or professional careers and sometimes even relocated to other cities in lieu of confronting their harassers.
These were my options. I assessed the situation and chose not to file a complaint. I had every right to make that choice. And until society is willing to accept the validity of claims of harassment, no matter how privileged or powerful the harasser, it is a choice women will continue to make. I do not believe that in the early 1980s I lived and worked in a society, either in Washington or in Tulsa, that would have supported my right to raise a claim of harassment against the head of the EEOC. And given the state of the law and what occurred in 1991, I do not believe that a complaint would have stopped what was happening. For years I made the choice to remain silent about my experience and to push on in my life. I made that choice, like many other women, because I thought that it was my only choice. Even today most women choose to keep to themselves the slights, innuendos, harassment, and abuse they experience—because they are women. I hear from former students, now young lawyers working with seasoned professionals and struggling to maintain their dignity and their jobs in this kind of ongoing balancing act. I hear from middle-aged and older women who believe that their silence has allowed them to survive both economically and socially. In the world according to Senator DeConcini, all these women are sorely lacking in gumption. Yet they function in a world that encourages them to question their own reaction and to stop being “so sensitive” to the pain of their experiences. That alone takes a lot of gumption.
DeConcini also