The long-term effects of the Thomas-Hill hearings and the O.J. Simpson case
Rosen, Ruth
The best antidote to feminist despair is knowledge of our own history. With each new skirmish in the gender wars, feminists fall into greater despair. We lose so often that we forget how greatly...
...In the fall of 1991, when the Senate confirmed Thomas, most Americans disbelieved Anita Hill's accusations...
...Feminist issues, once dismissed as "women's problems," have entered national mainstream politics where they have become a litmus test for both right and left...
...When I engage in my thought experiment, I become guardedly optimist...
...When does "no" really mean "no...
...His wit and learning enlivened our pages...
...Many of the most hyped trials and hearings of the late twentieth century should be viewed as battles that pushed feminist issues into the national consciousness...
...He taught at Brandeis, City College, and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York...
...All of this focused public attention on the injustices women once suffered in silence...
...Men were affected as well...
...I still remember the despair I felt after the Senate voted to confirm Clarence Thomas for a seat on the Supreme Court...
...Long after the media have shifted our attention to another trial, Americans will have learned that battering is a crime that often results in murder and that domestic violence cuts across all races and classes...
...MEYER SCHAPIRO, a world-renowned art historian, was one of our founding editors, and for more than forty years he remained one of our guiding lights...
...Who can deny that the legacy of those hearings was momentous...
...Our victory is that we have politicized women's experiences and forced the nation to debate them...
...Afterward, many women, both black and white, publicly recounted their own experiences of being sexually harassed...
...They complained about their new self-consciousness and their growing selfdoubt...
...Even feminists sharply debated whether new policies should protect women or safeguard their newfound sexual freedoms...
...they no longer knew how to behave with women...
...It is an experiment that pulls me out of despair, recharges my intellect, and allows me to analyze contemporary events in historical perspective...
...But the trial was not only about race and class...
...What our mothers once called, with a resigned shrug of the shoulders, "the facts of life," became newly labeled as gender crimes...
...When the O.J...
...We need to remind ourselves that slavery was once socially acceptable...
...I imagined how I would interpret these events if I were a historian looking back from the vantage point of 2075...
...During the late 1960s and 1970s, secondwave feminists boldly drew attention to experiences that had once been considered private matters...
...Our great victory is that we have changed the terms of debate...
...Consider, for example, the flurry of sex scandals and controversies that titillated a public puzzled by changing ideas about "appropriate" sexual behavior...
...Simpson trial, publicized feminist issues and encouraged the American public to take sides in the gender wars...
...Consider the outcome of the Thomas hearings...
...That doesn't guarantee any successful battles...
...Laws changed, although public consciousness lagged far behind...
...For hours I couldn't shake my sense of disbelief...
...Soon after the Thomas confirmation, thousands of American men reportedly worried about how to treat their female co-workers without being accused of sexual harassment...
...Simpson trial ended, many feminists were despondent and angry that the jurors—as well as many Americans—had not grasped the connection between repeated domestic violence and murder...
...From the vantage of 2075, this is how it might look...
...The "good old days" when men could abuse or harass women with impunity were fast disappearing...
...But a new national consensus had not yet been reached...
...In the darkness of our despair, let us remember that the gender wars have just begun...
...As a critical mass of women entered the labor force, feminists coined the term sexual harassment to describe unwanted sexual attention in the workplace...
...For more than two decades, the gender wars have simmered, occasionally erupting into public life...
...Violence at home and in the street began to be exposed and reviled...
...For far too long, Americans have regarded violence against women as a fact of life, rather than as a crime that is wholly incompatible with a democratic society...
...But the issues persisted...
...BERNARD ROSENBERG joined our editorial board in 1955, a year after the founding of the magazine...
...But then, feminists began naming the hidden injuries of sex...
...In the wake of the sexual revolution, they named coercive sex between acquaintances date rape...
...Meanwhile, gay men and lesbians struggled to 10 • DISSENT Comments and Opinions persuade society that their sexual orientation was an individual right, not a cause for discrimination...
...What had happened...
...We lose so often that we forget how greatly we have transformed American political culture...
...But their discomfort, though regrettable, was minor compared to the shame and harassment that women workers had experienced for centuries...
...But, like the Thomas/ In Memoriam The editors of Dissent mourn the recent deaths of two long-time editors...
...Women were confused as well...
...Before the contemporary women's movement ignited these battles, men were protected by women's shame...
...Media hype, however, only confirms our worst fears that an anti-feminist backlash is ubiquitous...
...Just months ago the women of the world at the Fourth UN Women's Conference unanimously agreed that violence against women constitutes a violation of their human rights...
...This, I believe, will be the legacy of this historic trial, one of the momentous battles in the gender wars...
...In many cases, the men in these trials or hearings were believed, acquitted, or exonerated...
...SPRING • 1996 • 11 Comments and Opinions Hill hearings, the Simpson trial will ripple through the culture, creating unexpected repercussions...
...As a result, more Americans began to understand why a hostile work environment violated the rights of working women...
...Don't be surprised if it is this voice that lives on to haunt us all...
...In the wake of the Republican assault against welfare, health care, public education, and affirmative action, black Americans justifiably feel besieged...
...We will print fuller tributes in future issues...
...The battles of the gender wars leave terrible scars, but they have redrawn the national and international political agendas...
...It wasn't, but African-Americans have plenty of good reasons— besides Mark Furhman—to distrust white authority, particularly local police...
...The Clarence Thomas hearings, the William Kennedy Smith and Mike Tyson date rape trials, the Navy's Tailhook sex scandal, the Spur Posse sexual assaults in Lakewood, California, the gang rape of a retarded girl in New Jersey, the furious debate over homosexuals in the military, and yes, even the O.J...
...Rather, we should brace ourselves for waves of backlash...
...The hearing ignited a national consciousnessraising session...
...Yet just one year later, a majority had changed their minds and believed that Hill had told the truth...
...q 12 • DISSENT...
...As prosecuting attorney Marcia Clark ended her summation, she wanted jury members to hear the voice of Nicole Brown Simpson crying out for the right to live...
...In the gloomy days following Hill's ritual humiliation, few feminists imaged that just four years later, Bob Packwood would prove such an embarrassment that his colleagues would force him to leave the Senate...
...It was about a gender crime, that of male violence against women...
...During the trial, the defense tried to characterize the prosecution's case as a racial attack...
...During his career he was the author of many books and articles on politics and culture...
...Then I did what I always do when the present becomes too excruciating...
...When does sexual interest cross the line and turn into harassment...
...One day it may be as unthinkable for a man to beat a woman as it is for anyone to own another person...
...Men were baffled...
...Some Senators even seemed downright eager, even desperate, to prove that yes, they had finally "gotten it...
Vol. 43 • April 1996 • No. 2
