From sexual harassment cases to #MeToo, new book profiles next generation of feminists
Linda Hirshman, a New York attorney who specializes in writing about social movements, previously authored an informative book on the impact of Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
In her new book, “Reckoning: The Epic Battle Against Sexual Abuse and Harassment,” which was released Tuesday, she journeys back to the 1970s to reveal unsung heroes — black and white, rich and poor — in the behind-the-scenes legal slog to win protections now in place against workplace sexual harassment and campus rape. Those fights set the stage decades later for the leaders of what became known as the #MeToo movement.
Hirshman’s book separately probes what she calls the “Naughty 1990s” to show how time after time, supposedly liberal men (and women) undermined women’s rights by first defending President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal and later by backing Sen. Joe Biden’s poor treatment of Anita Hill’s sexual harassment allegations in the Senate judiciary committee hearing of 1991 that ultimately placed Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court. After those events in the 1990s, Hirshman argues that feminism was suddenly seen as irrelevant as an “out-of-print book.”
But Hirshman then spins all of her analysis forward to the present to reveal how millennial bloggers, journalists who either sued their bosses or investigated tips, activists in the #MeToo movement and students who fought campus rape all helped re-energize the next-generation women’s movement. We recently spoke with Hirshman about her new book.
Q: Your book says that at least 100 high-profile abusers and harassers have gone down as part of the #MeToo movement so far. Do you think we’ll
soon see more exposés on major predatory sexual harassers like producer Harvey Weinstein, who had more than 100 victims all by himself ?
A: I have a rule, which is there is never only one, and this has stood me in good stead in my appointed round. … There’s never only one (victim). And in Al Franken’s case, there were eight that we know about. I don’t know that we’re going to see characters like Harvey Weinstein … and Bill Cosby. I don’t know if we will see people like that.
I have friends in high finance, and they tell me that the goingson on Wall Street make Hollywood look like nothing — but that has never come out!
Q: You reveal that other reporters from the New Yorker and New York Times had worked on tips about Weinstein for years before the story broke. How many other serial harassers do you think are protected by arbitration clauses and nondisclosure agreements? Is there any way to cap
or limit those protections ?
A: New Jersey has just passed a law forbidding you to require NDAs (in sexual harassment cases). You can legislate that. If you are in N.J., your boss cannot require you to sign a NDA when you sue him under the Civil Rights Act.
Q: You previously wrote about similarities between the first two female Supreme Court associate justices, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Sandra Day O’Connor, in your earlier book “Sisters-in-Law.” Both worked in different ways in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s to help fellow women. But your new book seems to place all hope for women’s political and legal power on Democrats. Do you no longer see any women coming up in the Republican/Goldwater tradition the way O’Connor did from your own home state of Arizona?
A: No — there’s nobody coming. Look what happened to Kirstjen Nielsen, who was certainly not a liberal ( Nielsen was the former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security who resigned after being tasked with implementing the Trump administration’s family-administration policy). (Room for pro-choice women in the Republican Party) has been coming to a close since 1980 with the rise of religious conservative forces in the country. The realignment started a long time ago, and it sped up in the last few years. “High sexism voters” have been flopping into the Republican Party. And there is iron-clad (polling) data to support that.
Q: A chapter of your book describes the culture of general tolerance for Bill Clinton’s sexual misbehavior (and for other powerful men’s sexual misbehavior) in the “Naughty 1990s.” This is identified as a factor that turned women against Hilary Clinton when she ran against Barack Obama in the 2000s. And you write that Clinton’s decision to “stand by her man” later affected her campaign against Donald Trump because she could not take the moral high ground against Trump’s womanizing. Do you think Hilary Clinton’s losses will make it difficult or impossible for any other woman to become president? We now hear the mantra that no woman is electable.
A: Yes — I do think that. As wrong and unjust and as unsupported by the actual data as the position (that “no woman is electable”) is, it is clear to me that her defeat is being used by people who don’t want to see women succeed very effectively. So the beat goes on.
Q: You compare, as many have, the testimony Christine Blasey Ford gave in 2018 about Brett Kavanaugh allegedly sexually assaulting her as a teenager to the testimony that Anita Hill gave in 1991 about having been sexually harassed by her former boss Clarence Thomas. Both men now serve on the Supreme Court. Recently Joe Biden, who as senator chaired the Hill/Thomas hearings, apologized to Hill. Do you believe him? In your book, you write that his memoir doesn’t include Hill.
A: I like looking at facts on the ground. I picked up that book a year ago, and he wasn’t running for president, and you got a clear view. … He can’t go back and write his memoir. He never mentioned Anita Hill. Open the book and look in the index. … She isn’t there.