The Wash Rag
Issue 2.2
March, 1994

PARTY POLITICS
WHEN IS IT HARASSMENT?

Even a casual look at the sexual harassment issue will quickly show that in any given work situation, some women apparently are sexually harassed and some are not.
It may be that put into the same situation, some women just plain don't notice that they are being sexually harassed.
I recently had the unfortunate experience of being able to analyze my own response to overt sexual harassment.  Because a well-known person was speaking, I attended a local party function.  Part of the evening's activities was a pork chop buffet.  We were told to line up by table, so I was separated from the people I was talking to.
The line to the buffet was loosely formed across what was usually a dance floor.  I was therefore surprised that someone was standing extremely close behind me.  Out of the corner of my eye, I determined that it was a man.
He began bumping against me more and more persistently so I moved first to one side, then to the other, but the person followed.  I finally stuck my sizeable purse between us.  I did not confront him.  Why?  I had gone there for an informative and enjoyable evening, not to confront some over-sexed maniac, and if I had confronted him, the confrontation might have been more angry than spirited.  I went back to my table and sat down across from two women who are prominent in the women's movement and the party, both of whom claim they have never been sexually harassed!  I find it hard to believe them, considering my own experience.  
Perhaps they enjoy having physical contact with complete strangers.  They might
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have struck up a friendly conversation and finished up the evening in the sack with this person.  Then, obviously, this would not have been a case of sexual harassment.
Another possibility is that they have enough social stature so that few if any men will try to sexually harass them.  Women who are married to, daughters of, or otherwise related to some prominent person are not likely to be the objects of sexual harassment.  Who would try to harass Elizabeth Dole, Hillary Clinton, Queen Margarethe or Queen Elizabeth?  
An example of what happens when a connected woman is stalked occurred when the Chief Justice of the New York Supreme Court, Judge Sal Wachter, became obsessed with socialite Mrs. Joyce Silverman.  After making some attempts to avoid it herself, she contacted a U. S. Senator and he requested an FBI investigation which resulted in the justice losing his position and being disbarred for some very bizarre behavior.  This is what should happen in every stalking case, but it rarely does.  Most stalkers are ignored by law enforcement because the women they stalk are not connected.  
What we have left, then, are the women who aren't particularly well-connected and who don't find unsolicited physical contact from the opposite sex cute or disarming.

SERIAL KILLERS ETC.
A Dateline feature on March 8, 1994 included an interview with serial killer Jeffrey Daumer.
Daumer's own analysis of the reason he killed and dismembered his victims, even cannibalizing some, was his desire to completely control someone.  He even made bizarre attempts to keep victims alive while controlling them.
What everyone seems to be missing is that Daumer's need to control and dominate someone is the same one that drives abusive husbands and boyfriends, stalkers, rapists and sexual harassers in the work place.  
Rush Limbaugh, on a 60 Minutes program several months ago, expressed it succinctly, stating that men would dominate as husbands or they would dominate as criminals.  I feel that my opinion of men is higher than his is.
But the truth is that the need to dominate unconditionally is a powerful force in the male psyche, perhaps controlled by some male hormone (testosterone?) and/or steroid and/or undiscovered biological chemical, and measuring it might give a clue as to the likelihood of a man exhibiting behavior which is intended to control and subjugate others.
Of course, determining this and treating it with some other substance to reduce production of it would probably destroy our whole system of business, military, political and religious domination, because without their need to dominate, all our male so-called leadership would probably go raise roses or write poetry and forget about power and control, and who would ever start all the 
wars that drive our economy?  
(page 2, column 2)

Or perhaps Jeffrey Daumer's comment that he was glad he had been caught and stopped might give a clue to us that men are often really not happy with their own behavior and would gladly be stopped and forced to behave differently if that was possible.
But just like Jeffrey Daumer, they won't give in gracefully, but will fight change every inch of the way.


JUST ABOUT OLYMPIC HOPEFULS?  I THINK NOT!
THE NANCY KERRIGAN CAPER

Nobody has missed the incredible saga of Nancy Kerrigan's knee.  Oh, when will Peter, Paul and Mary come out with a ballad about it.
Many people seemed to be shocked that such a thing could happen in the sacred arena of Olympic sports.  The only thing about the whole affair that shocked me was that finally someone caught one of them.  The whole thing has left the impression on me of a pimp clearing his whore's favorite corner of competition so she can make more money for him.  
Tonya Harding's protestations of innocence seem to me unbelievable.  Her performance at the Olympics was so bad that there can be no doubt that she needed help if she expected to win.  At least the unfolding of events prevented Jeff Goulooley from eliminating the rest of Tonya's competition so they couldn't  prevent her from getting the gold.
When I was a computer programmer/analyst and consultant in San Francisco, I had such problems as this:
uI could not eat or drink anything in the company cafeterias at several businesses I worked for.  If I did, I would spend a week or more recovering from a variety of allergic reactions, stomach ailments, and skin rashes.
uIf I left my desk during the day, someone put something (cocaine, angel dust or something similar) in my work area which prevented me from being able to work the rest of the day.  I had to bring my lunch and snacks and take them at my desk.  At one job in South Dakota, I was exposed to chlorine gas by my supervisor, I suppose because I never offered to have sex with 
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him, although I can't actually say why.  
uComputer output was lost so often that I had to keep detailed logs of when I submitted jobs and when they got back so that I could explain to my supervisors why it took me so long to get anything done (this was before PC's and modems).
uOn one occasion, I found a bug in a program in San Francisco, then ran off punch cards and took the program to Amarillo for production testing.  The same bug was in it, even though I had corrected it and run many tests afterwards.  Once, after we did get on-line testing, I was making changes on a printing terminal.  I made a change, listed my changes (as I always did), and the change was not printed off three times before it finally listed off as having been changed.  Someone was apparently changing it back to be wrong as fast as I was correcting it (also on-line, no doubt).  I constantly had similar problems.
uI had death threats left on my telephone answering device.
uMy purse was pillaged for my lunch money so many times that I finally bought a briefcase with a combination lock and had to keep anything sensitive in it.
uWhen I applied for promotion to a position for which I was well-qualified, the description of the job was changed so I didn't qualify.
uI was asked to make a presentation on the work which I and I alone had done for months, and when I did, instead of the whole project showing up, the project leader and one of the men in the project attended.  The man subsequently gave a presentation on my work to upper management, and I am sure that my name was never mentioned.  
uI was told by a potential employer that it was not possible for a woman to be successful in California without using sex.  
I challenge anyone to be successful under conditions like these.


The WASH RAG is published by Women Against Sexual Harassment, P. O. Box 505, Hudson, South Dakota 57034-0505.  ISSN 1068-2449.  Subscription price is $10.00 a year.  Copyright 1994 Tesseract Publications.

SETTING A GOOD EXAMPLE
 WOMEN HELPING WOMEN

Some of the TV dramas and sitcoms have had excellent material on sexual harassment.  A rerun of Designing Women recently pitted the largely female staff of the business against a bevy of loud, course, harassing construction workers in their neighborhood.
Being themselves very assertive, they took on the task of changing the behavior of those men, inviting them to coffee and having Anthony, their black, male partner, lecture them on the proper behavior of men towards women.  At that point, the score was men - 1, women - 0.  The men drank the coffee, ate the cookies, made numerous lewd and suggestive comments and left.
It was abundantly clear in this dramatic depiction of sexual harassment that the men were having fun!  The group discussed the situation and found a way to make it not be fun any more:
They once again invited the men to coffee, got them to sign their wives/mothers/sisters up for a free gift for which they had to give their phone numbers.  Then later they invited the men to coffee with the female family members listening in private.  The result was that their behavior wasn't fun any more.  Their women descended on them in rage and scolded them.  Score:  Women - 1, men - 0.
Another Designing Women several years ago had Annie Potts being treated shabbily by a male friend who pretended ardor to get what he wanted and even proposed marriage, only to drop her unceremoniously.  On investigation, she found that he had left a whole string of broken hearts and shattered dreams. 
As she was later taking part in a TV program, she invited the women who had thus been treated by him to participate.  They described in detail how he had misled them and exploited them.  
I later saw a talk show with many women doing the exact same thing.  A US Marine
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from San Diego had convinced women in Australia and Hawaii that he planned to marry them.  They had quit jobs, bought wedding dresses, shipped belongings to San Diego and loaned him large sums of money before he dumped them.  Some of the love letters to both had identical phrases in them.
Murder She Wrote gets my vote for the winner, though, for a classic depiction of sexual harassment.
A young, inexperienced sales girl is approached by an executive and told that she has to go out with him to keep her job.  
The sales girl goes to the personnel manager and tells her what happened, and refuses to file a sexual harassment suit because she needs the job to take care for an elderly parent.
The personnel director, a woman, whips out an old complaint against the sales girl which was discreetly settled by another executive and threatens to reopen it if the sales girl refuses to go along with the executive harassing her and use the situation to spy on him.  
Subsequent story line leaves no doubt that the personnel director is only too happy to use sex to benefit her own position. 
Thanks to these wonderful women for putting the real facts of sexual harassment in such an easily understood form to prepare young women and girls for their real-life encounters with sexual harassment.


TOO GOOD NOT TO SHARE

Heard on Northern Exposure:

Chris:  I'm trying to get in touch with my woman-ness, Shelley.

Eve:  Then go out and cut your salary in half!


ATTORNEY'S FEES
A MATTER 
OF MONEY

Last fall Rapid City lawyer Linda Lee Viken spoke before the Rapid City hearing of the Human Rights Commission.
She spoke of the problem that women have with attorney fees.  If the employer moves the action to a Circuit Court, the woman is forced to get an attorney, and there is often no way for her to get money for attorney fees.
According to her statement, the law looks good but often it is not economically feasible to pursue an action against an employer, as the claim may be less than attorney's fees.
It is hoped that the commission will work to improve this.
Since this item was broadcast on public radio last fall, I haven't heard anything further about helping women with the expenses of legal action against sexually harassing employers.
Myself, I find the highly successful method used by the actresses who were sexually harassed by talent agent Wallace Kaye magnificently successful (for a comprehensive study of this case, see MS Magazine, March/April 1994).  One woman complained to the police and the police investigated.  They sent in a female undercover agent who said afterwards that she had been more frightened by this job than when she was solicited by johns in her role with the vice squad.  When news of the investigation came to light, many women came forward and testified to put the man in jail where he belongs.  Cost to the women:  nothing but their time.  And the women quoted testified that none had lost work because of their complaints.  Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.  In cases that do not involve law enforcement itself, at least.
Just such a case was related to us by Liz Bentliff of Watertown.  She was hired as a jailer at the Codington County Jail.  The head jailer acted jealous of her when she had a boyfriend, and he called her in to ask her questions about her personal life though he was married.  When she didn't respond to his advances, he began to tell lies about her work performance.  After her complaints to management did no good, she quit and took legal action against him.  He was demoted but not fired.  Other women also complained against him and one other woman settled a sexual harassment complaint against him out of court.  

FORMER AGENT RESIGNS

Suzane Doucette, who was placed on unpaid leave after refusing to provide sex to her boss in order to get a promotion, says that the FBI discriminates against women and minority employees.  She resigned from the FBI to protest her inactive status, and has also filed a federal lawsuit.

AND TO RECAP . . .

 The whole Packwood matter appears that it will never be over.  On 20/20 on March 4, Barbara Walters interviewed Senator Packwood.  According to her introduction, his accusers say his behavior was inappropriate and charge that he abused his power.  
Packwood himself says that he hired many women, promoted them to responsible positions and paid them well.  He says that none of this was dependent on them providing him with sex, that he never fired anyone for refusing him sex, and he never promoted a women for giving it to him.  
It seemed that for every woman willing to go on the record with a complaint, there was one who was willing to deny that complaint was valid.  
One of the main objections against Packwood is that he tried to discredit his accusers.
Packwood himself says that of the 22 on-the-record complaints against him, he can only remember a quarter of the women.
He says those accusers were friendly to him for months and years after the event that they complained about. It should be noted that the effects of sexual harassment aren't always easy to assertain for months and years after it occurrs.
He admits that he had a drinking problem which may have contributed to his inappropriate behavior.
In another case, the Supreme Court did rule that a woman making a sexual harassment complaint does not have to prove that it caused her emotional damage in order to bring legal action against an employer.  The case was Theresa Harris against a truck leasing company.
The whistle-blower in the Tailhook scandal has resigned from the Navy.  Lt. Paula Coughlin stated that the the assault at the convention and the subsequent abuse she has experienced have made it impossible for her to serve any longer.
Additional items have appeared citing sexual harassment cases against a member of the board overseeing the U. S. Government Merit Systems Protection Board, The Los Angeles Police Department, Lucky's Food Stores, and Burns International Security (contractor to the US Border Patrol).

JOIN WOMEN AGAINST SEXUAL HARASSMENT
TOGETHER, WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE!
Check the item you think is the most important for WASH to address.
o  Open a state-wide toll-free help-line for victims of sexual harassment.
o  Start a support group for victims of sexual harassment.
o  Educate women and girls of their rights should they become victims.
o  Increase the statute of limitations on sexual harassment to seven years.
o  Other_______________________________________________________________________
o  Check here if you wish to volunteer to help.
Send with your subscription check for $10.00 to:
Women Against Sexual Harassment, P. O. Box 505, Hudson, SD 57034-0505.
Name:_________________________________________________
Address:______________________________________________
Telephone number:___________________________________