Learning to be a ‘good little girl’

Many women learn to accept whatever is thrown at them and just hope for acceptance

In 1974, I was just out of law school. At one of my first court hearings, as I walked past the other attorney — a man much older than I was — to address the court, he reached out, and grabbed and pinched my bottom, and grinned at me. I was shocked, but did not say or do anything. I did not alert the judge or even look at the attorney. At that time, I was practicing law with my very protective father, Jim Toulouse. I didn’t even tell him.

Current events have brought this incident back to my mind. Even though it was 43 years ago, I remember the courtroom I was in, exactly what I was wearing, and who the judge was — a man I still have a great deal of respect for, and there is no doubt would have stood up for me. Looking back, I now wonder why I “just let it go.”

I was raised with four sisters; my father and mother were both strong supporters of the rights of women. I was articulate and had no trouble voicing my opinions. But I kept quiet about this man’s crude behavior. Maybe a little out of embarrassment, but it also had to do with still trying to make it in a “man’s” field. I was among the first 100 women to be admitted to the New Mexico Bar.

I had just graduated from Notre Dame Law School. I was in the second class at the law school to have women in it; there were still no women undergraduates until my last year. In my class, there were only 12 women out of a class of 200. Our presence there was resented by many of the male students and some of the faculty members. We were told “you are taking the place of a man who should have got in because he would have a family to support.” When we walked through the library, some of them would bark because “we were all dogs.” The criminal law professor would call on women only to recite the facts in rape cases. The word “feminist” was thrown in our faces as if it was an obscene word. If women law students complained, it only got worse. I learned to accept whatever was thrown at us, to be a “good little girl” and eventually hope for acceptance.

At the hearing, I did not want to call attention to the behavior of the lawyer in question that would single me out as a “woman” who needed protecting from a male judge or my father. So I said and did nothing.

Hopefully, things have changed, but sometimes I am not so sure.