Looking Back, Moving Forward: Anita Hill, #MeToo and What Comes Next

Looking Back, Moving Forward: Anita Hill, #MeToo and What Comes Next

When Anita Hill stepped forward in the fall of 1991 to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about her experiences of sexual harassment at the hands of Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, she faced a wall of disbelief and disrespect. The Committee’s 10 white male members asked her insulting and disrespectful questions; the media labelled her “a little nutty and a little slutty.” Thomas would go on to be confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he still sits today. Some feared that the treatment of Anita Hill by the Senate and the media would discourage women from stepping forward and reporting sexual harassment. In fact, the exact opposite happened.



In the years following Anita Hill’s testimony, claims of sexual harassment in employment filed with federal and state governments more than doubled—from 6,883 in 1991 to 15,618 in 1998. Students also started filing more charges for sexual harassment against educational institutions. Anita Hill’s testimony, broadcast live and around-the-clock on C-Span, raised awareness about sexual harassment and mobilized women and girls to fight back on multiple fronts.


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But as Cynthia Enloe argues in her recent book, The Big Push: Exposing and Challenging the Persistence of Patriarchy, male entitlement is stubborn, resilient and adaptable. In 2000, a majority of the Supreme Court, including Clarence Thomas, ruled in U.S. v. Morrison that the civil rights remedy for gender based violence was unconstitutional on the grounds that Congress lacked jurisdiction to create such a remedy. The defenders of patriarchy also figured out ways to get around laws against sexual harassment with nondisclosure agreements in legal settlements, which prevent women from speaking publicly about harassment, and mandatory arbitration clauses in employment contracts, which likewise hide information about sexual harassment. This is how people like Bill O’Reilly and Harvey Weinstein were able to repeatedly harass and assault women for decades.

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Another difference is social media. It’s always been easier to step forward if you are not alone. And in fact, most men who sexually harass and assault women do so repeatedly. New tools like Callisto and All Voices are providing mechanisms whereby women can find each other, band together, and challenge perpetrators of sexual assault. Collective action—a tool dating back to the 1970s, when feminists first coined the term “sexual harassment“—has always been the most effective way to resist sexual harassment and abuse. These differences will amplify the effect of women’s speaking out. As in the 1990s, we are likely to see significantly more women and Democrats in public office by this time next year. There is already a dramatic increase in the number of female House candidates—369—including 302 Democrats and 67 Republicans. According to the Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP), that’s almost four times the number of women signed up to challenge incumbents at this point in the election cycle in 2015. The number of female candidates running for the Senate has doubled—27 Democrats and 14 Republicans so far—for a total of 41. This is TEN TIMES the number of women running in the 2012 and 2014 elections at this point in the election cycle.

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And we must never—ever—give up.

http://msmagazine.com/blog/2017/12/11/looking-back-moving-forward-history-tells-us-uprising/