Leah Garchik: Christine Blasey Ford’s mention of “uproarious laughter” sparks range of emotions.
‘Uproarious laughter’ threatens and silences
There’s a TV on my desk in the newsroom, and like many Americans, I’m listening to the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford, interspersed with comments of newscasters broadcast during hearing breaks, and newsroom comments of Chronicle editors and reporters covering the story. It’s a few hours in, and although I’ve never experienced the horror of the direct attack alleged by Ford, or even worse, an actual rape, I’m filled with emotion.
Ford’s description of hearing her alleged attackers’ “uproarious laughter” is the take-away quote so far, agreed upon by the TV commentators I’m watching and newsroom pros whose voices are flowing around me. Her story is specific; she is describing what she heard.
But for all the women who have experienced such episodes without reporting them, that specter of “uproarious laughter” has lurked, threatened, quashed memories and silenced voices.
There was always the traditional “victim,” a wily floozy or gold digger, whose presentation of herself — how she dressed, talked, flirted — was “provocative.” And then there was the woman stupid enough to skip off to a party with a bunch of boys who like to drink. LOL. Honey, did you think they’d be playing Scrabble?
But then there were the rest of us, women with a range of “minor incidents” — hands slapped away, indecent comments ignored — bubbling to the surface. When we were young women, it was hard for any woman who feared herself being a plain Jane — is it an accident that the term for her male equivalent, ordinary Joe, does not refer to his looks? — to reveal she’d been targeted by a frat boy in need of a feel. He must have been kidding ... uproarious laughter. Nothing to be taken seriously.
I was a college student when a man waited outside my classrooms, class after class, followed me home on the bus, stood on the sidewalk across the street from the house, watching. Neighbors noticed first. I told my parents, and my father — yes, “a loving parent,” in the phrase used by President Trump — said authorities couldn’t be informed about this unwanted shadow unless the man did something to harm me. I was terrified, but I never reported him.
Certainly, college officials wouldn’t have taken action; this happened outside of college as well as inside. The only other option seemed to be the police, but nothing really happened; how could I get this stranger into trouble? There was no visible scar, no attack. One man’s obsession with some gangly freshman was harmless, even laughable; the chase is the stuff of comic cartoons.
I’d read on the Internet a friend’s description of a longago Chronicle incident when, in a crowded elevator, a coworker she said was probably drunk tore open her shirt and exposed her to the other passengers. He received “a reprimand” in his permanent record, whatever that means.
It was probably the stuff of office legend, like the guy who did get canned after he asked to sniff a co-worker’s panties. People used to stand around telling these stories. And the response was usually “uproarious laughter.”