Haven’t we learned anything since Anita Hill?
Ruth Marcus looks back in writing about the sexual harassment allegations against Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
“I have three daughters,” New
York Gov. Andrew Cuomo observed in October 2017, in the midst of controversy over returning political donations from Harvey Weinstein after the producer faced accusations of sexual assault. “I want to make sure at the end of the day, this world is a safer, better world for my three daughters.”
In an odd way, perhaps he has. Every high-profile sexual harassment case raises, and helps resolve, questions of crime and punishment: what behavior is acceptable, how workplaces should respond and what price must be paid.
At this late stage, in 2021, one could be forgiven for wondering, with no small degree of exasperation, whether the perpetrators will ever learn. So it is possible to examine the stream of allegations about Cuomo and ask: Really? Has nothing changed?
But there is another, more hopeful interpretation: What once was commonplace — bosses asking out subordinates, co-workers making crude sexual remarks — is now understood to be forbidden, a career-killer.
Consider the progression of scandal.
When law professor Anita Hill came forward nearly 30 years ago with allegations that Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her, you could see the male senators charged with weighing her claims struggling to comprehend the realities of sexual harassment.
They knew they were supposed to say it was intolerable, but they could not understand how an accomplished lawyer could have remained silent in the face of such alleged behavior, even following Thomas to a new government job. The real-world costs to victims of harassment for speaking up were lost on them.
The next year, in 1992, The Washington Post published an account of how Oregon Republican Sen. Bob Packwood, seen as a champion of women’s rights, made repeated, uninvited sexual advances to women on his staff.
The Packwood story showed a system rife with sexual exploitation and only starting to take harassment seriously. But it was not until almost three years after the initial report that Packwood resigned — and only as he was on the brink of expulsion, hours after the Senate Ethics Committee released devastating excerpts from his own diaries.
That was what it took to punish a serial harasser.
Then came President Bill Clinton, whose relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky appeared to be consensual but by definition could not have been: the most powerful man in the world with a woman young enough to be his daughter.
The shift in how society regards such behavior is exemplified by Lewinsky herself. “Sure, my boss took advantage of me, but I will always remain firm on this point: It was a consensual relationship,” Lewinsky wrote in a 2014 piece for Vanity Fair. Four years later, as the #MeToo movement took hold, Lewinsky’s charitable assessment changed. “It was a gross abuse of power,” she wrote.
It is possible to read the reports of Cuomo’s behavior and imagine that, in part at least, he internalized some of these historical lessons. He might have thought he was being careful and canny, but simply failed to realize how much has changed, and that harassment is intolerable even in an oh-so-slightly subtler form.
The first woman to come forward, Lindsey Boylan, described a textbook case of harassment, with Cuomo allegedly inviting her to play strip poker and kissing her on the lips — allegations he denied.
The second former Cuomo aide to speak out, Charlotte Bennett, related a more nuanced — and unchallenged — account, in which the governor appeared to be playing a coyer game, not directly propositioning Bennett but asking her leading questions about whether she “had ever been with an older man” and offering his assessment that “he’s fine with anyone above the age of 22.” (Bennett was then 25.)
Cuomo said in an initial statement that he had “never made advances toward Ms. Bennett, nor did I ever intend to act in any way that was inappropriate,” although he later acknowledged that “my interactions may have been insensitive or too personal.” Ya think?
The latest New York Times report about Cuomo opened a fuzzy new frontier in the harassment debate — conduct in a private setting, not the workplace. Anna Ruch, a guest at a 2019 wedding, recalled that Cuomo touched her first on her bare back; then, after she removed his hand, put his hands on her cheeks and asked if he could kiss her. The ensuing photo — bad luck there, Governor — testifies to her discomfort.
Politics is a notoriously handsy occupation, but Cuomo wasn’t asking male guests for a kiss. And unlike a corporate executive, an elected official out in public is never truly off the clock. Did he just figure his power gave him the freedom to violate what should be a clear rule of modern etiquette — don’t touch anyone without consent?
In the private sector, Cuomo almost certainly would be out the door. Elected office presents a different set of challenges. The offending manager can’t be moved to a different department. In the end, voters do the hiring and firing.
Three decades into this complex debate, Cuomo’s daughters live in a “safer, better world” — but also a world in which too many powerful men still believe they can behave badly and suffer no consequences.