The Wash Rag
Issue 6.2
June, 1998

A BOOMING ECONOMY FOR THE USA
TO WHOM CAN WE GIVE THE CREDIT?

It is interesting that the American business climate has become so healthy in the past year or two.  I’ve heard numerous opinions as to why this has been so, but none I have heard comes near to what I regard as the truth.
I believe that Anita Hill should be given the credit for the U. S. economy outstripping everyone, including the Asian economies, some of which have in recent years outstripped ours by leaps and bounds.
When she testified before the U. S. Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991, she started a chain reaction which made our economy once more the strongest in the world.  That involved many women in many corporations making similar charges of the sexual harassment they had experienced. 
 When the law suits started, corporate executives began to clean up their policies regarding sexual harassment, which meant that the men who took advantage of women sexually were either put on notice or fired and the women who also took advantage of the use of sex in the workplace either had to get some job skill which got them off their backs for 100% of the day or become honest women and go into prostitution full time.  In short, they eliminated the pimps and whores from their staffs.
Suddenly, the economy boomed, while those in Asia, where sexual harassment practices remain unchecked, fell.  I think that Anita Hill is even responsible for the chaos in the Asian stock markets.  Bless her.
I’ve always said that sexual harassment was counter-productive for businesses.  It encourages women for sexual acts and discourages them from doing productive work.  I repeat that claim now.  Businesses concerned about their bottom line should rid their staff’s of pimps and whores before they look at any other cost-cutting measures.  It is the most cost-saving measure they can take.
I am very suspicious that the secret to Microsoft’s phenomenal success is that Bill Gates utilized all of the talents of all of his employees regardless of their gender.

LAW ENFORCEMENT TO BLAME?

One aspect of harassment which is being ignored is the law’s assumption that if you know a crime was being committed and did nothing to prevent it, then you are just as guilty of it as the perpetrators themselves.
Women often complain that their reports to police are ignored, and often even if the perpetrator is known, they are never brought to task.
Why does no one charge officials with complicity when there was evidence to prove that harassment was taking place, the perpetrator was known by those officials, and they did nothing to stop the crimes from taking place, protect the victim or punish the guilty party.  Surely, incompetence charges are not sufficient to send a message to those responsible that they must enforce the laws no matter what the sex of the victim.
The answer to this might have come from a correspondent, Mary Henderson of La Junta, Colorado.
Mary worked for the Colorado Department of Corrections at the Arkansas Valley Correctional Facility in Ordway, Colorado after working previously as a deputy sheriff and at the Arrowhead prison in Cañon, Colorado.  After satisfying experiences in previous jobs, she was greeted by a male officer on her first day at Arkansas Valley with the remark that “With an ass like that you’ll go far in DOC.”
In 1992, Mary was faced with a life and death situation when an inmate forced his way into her office armed with a shard of glass and took her hostage.  He held her hostage for 5½ hours during which he cut her repeatedly and tried to electrocute her.  
When her partner tried to get help in the situation, their supervisor hung up on him three times before he was able to get any help in resolving the situation.
She had been warned that her refusal to date a co-worker would result in her not getting any help if she would need it, and the man who had hung up on the other end of the line was that same man. 
When she reported the harassment to the DA, she was advised against bringing the matter up or the inmate would walk.  The inmate was convicted of assault and attempted murder in the matter.
The DA, denies having this conversation with Mary.  Her subsequent lawsuit against the Colorado Department of Corrections was dismissed in January of 1994.  She quit her prison job in 1993, as she says, out of disgust with the system.  
Other women have also brought suit against the guard.  Sandy Haberman who worked at the facility during the same time frame, filed an internal complaint alleging sexual harassment which led to post-traumatic stress in December of 1993.  
The DOC investigated and interviewed at least a dozen officers.  The matter was to be confidential and to be released only to those with a need to know which was a DOC policy.  Haberman was afraid of retaliation were the matter to become public, but someone released it.   She blames the matter in the breakup of her marriage and the suicide of her 14 year old son in 1993.  
Since her disability leave has ended, Mary has become an advocate in the area of sexual harassment. 
Haberman, however, was awarded $362,500 after a jury guilty verdict in federal court.  Among evidence was a description of the farewell party for Deputy Warden Joe Paolino which was captured on videotape, which included the reading of a fake letter from a female employee making sexual harassment charges, gag gifts including a pair of panty hose with an attachment for a penis and other gifts with sexual connotations.
A report on Westward.com describes the matter in part as follows:
“Accounts of life at Arkansas Valley, offered by former employees who support Haberman or are contemplating lawsuits of their own, paint a picture of a male fiefdom — a place where testosterone cases shout ‘Hooters!’ during training sessions and casually accuse women colleagues of performing oral sex on inmates; where heavyset female clerical staff are mysteriously transferred out of central administrative offices and replaced with shapelier models; and where Paolino himself was, on one occasion, spotted offering massages to secretaries during break time in the weight room.”
A later Westword.com relates a list of comments made to Haberman and Henderson.  They shock even me, and it takes a lot to shock me.  Working in such an atmosphere seems to be impossible.  How could anyone get anything done.
Another article on the Colorado Prison system relates the trial of a prison captain who forced female prisoners to have sex with him between 1993 and 1994.  He was fired from the department of corrections, then hired by the women’s prison.  
Yet another incident in 1998 from the Pueblo Chieftain involves a suit filed by Donna Fails against Warden Joseph Paolino, the DOC and its director, Ari Zavaras.  
She reported misconduct by another officer at the Cañon City prison which the DOC allegedly tried to cover up.   She claims a pattern of gender discrimination and hostile work environment against her and other women.  
Interestingly, the DOC’s spokesperson is a woman, Liz McDonough.  It seems to me that whenever men get into a tight spot, they send out a woman to explain it.  If they are being praised for anything, they send out a man.  It seems especially probable in cases of sexual harassment that women are pressed into service as lawyers, spokespersons, and general fall guys.  I’d like to see some of those women refuse to be used in this manner, but it obviously ends up being a professional wind fall for them.

BRAVE NEW WORLD,
HUXLEY WAS A PROPHET!
NO LONGER A  PROGNOSTICATION

Recently, Brave New World, was shown on NBC.  I had read Aldus Huxley’s portrayal of a society totally based on promiscuity twenty or thirty years ago, and was once more struck by the similarity between the dominance of sexual contact in the fictional piece and the prevailing attitudes in my work places.  Indeed, “Promiscuity is your duty” was exactly the impression I had gotten from my employers at that time, for although my job performance was consistently above the men and women I worked with, I repeatedly saw men who were complete half-wits and women I knew to be in relationships with managers but who had few if any job related skills soar to the top.
I was disappointed that the piece did not mention the reason why some of the incubators inhabitants became Alphas, some Betas and some Gammas.  Betas and Gammas had specific nutrients withheld during incubation, giving them specific personality traits, making them able to handle work that was detailed and frustrating or menial drudgery.  Those who received complete nutrition became Alphas.
I can’t help but associate this to the many chemicals the food industry puts into our food.  For example, an age old method of preserving food is pickling.  Yet one finds preservatives in pickles.  Why?  I can pickles to avoid them.  The only jars of pickles that spoil are those where the seals are broken.
In order to avoid preservatives in bread I mostly bake my own.  But should I leave a few slices of it too long in the bread keeper, it rarely if ever molds, but dries up.  The bread with preservatives in molds in a matter of days.  I had one piece of zucchini bread that I baked in my bread box for three years before it molded.  Amazingly, days after I wrote the draft for this article, when I opened the wrap it was in, it was wet and moldy.  I don’t know, nor do I wish to guess, how it got  wet after three years during which I occasionally opened it in puzzlement because it was such an unusual thing.  But it does make one wonder.
I myself have felt pretty much like the savage in Brave New World, an object of such bizarre curiosity because of my non-existent sex life (compared with the sex life I have had, this is heaven to me) and now, as well as when I read the book, identified with him more than anyone else.
I think that we are already living in a “Brave New World.”  Sex, not working mothers, is the curse of our society.  

THE ISSUE FLOURISHES
POTPOURRI:
IN THE MEDIA

On April 10, America’s Most Wanted included a statement by John Walsh that women and girls should be taught to control their own bodies and boys should be taught to respect women and that when they say “no,” they mean it.  Thanks to John for his stand on this issue.
An Ida Grove, Iowa, woman filed a complaint against the county sheriff, according to a KTIV story.  Her civil rights complaint says that she was sexually harassed by the sheriff and one of his deputies, and that she was slandered by him after he fired her.
An interesting Mystery! on PBS in March included a Quid Pro Quo situation between a master at Oxford who is retiring and the wife of one of the two candidates to replace him.  He tells her that he will “put in a good word” for her husband and guarantees her husband’s success if she will sleep with him.  She does, and then he laughs at her, and is subsequently murdered, to nobody’s dismay, apparently.  In another PBS Mystery! “An Unsuitable Job For A Woman,” Cordelia is hired by a businessman’s wife to work for her husband in order to catch him sexually harassing their employees.  He is, but the gist of it for me, was that both of these programs did a good job of portraying the chaos that sexual harassment causes in women’s lives.
Merrill Lynch has agreed to pay $8 million in damages to women who brought the action and have agreed to change their method of dealing with sexual harassment to allow employees with complaints to sue without going through mediation.  
One of the saddest stories I’ve ever heard  found the NCAA guilty of price fixing for creating associate coach positions at colleges around the country paying a top salary of $12,000.00 a year.
One of these coaches brought suit and the courts found that the NCAA and the colleges were indeed guilty of fixing salaries, which they found to be a case of price fixing.  Too bad some secretaries and data entry clerks can’t do the same.
One of the colleges commented that the positions had been created  to give young men interested in coaching a chance to get some experience.  
Duh!  What is to stop them from doing so on their own, and if nobody wants to take the job at that salary, or if they can get more elsewhere, that college will either do without or raise their pay offering.
Nobody ever apologized for paying me a fraction of what men doing the same thing were getting paid.  And when I decided I didn’t want to work for what they were offering me, they just had to make-do with the half-witted men they were paying twice what they paid me.  Since I haven’t heard any complaints, I suppose they worked out just fine for them.  Either that or they found some other woman willing and able to do the work, or maybe they got smart and paid her what she was worth.
It amazes me that the highly male management agonizes so much over paying men low salaries, but routinely expects women to earn less than they need to survive on.  It brings to mind the opening lines of the novel, “Quo Vadis:”
“As Petronius, bored by Vatiniu’s joking, had taken part after last night’s feast in a discussion with Nero, Lucen and Seneca as to whether women possessed souls, he woke as had been said, late, and according to his habit, made use of the baths.”
I read this novel when a teenager, and was amazed when I retrieved the passage that it was so short.  The part in italics was all I remember of the novel, other than something about togas and chariots.  That was all that I retained.
April U S News and World Report included a “practical guide to dealing with lechers and flirts in the workplace.”
They include:  Don’t be so quiet (see March Wash Rag) , Don’t be so nice, Don’t be so private, Do the paperwork, and Grow up and lighten up.  They appear on page 32.
From the U. S. Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau, we have a list of Sexual Harassment Resources.  We can copy them for you for $5.00 plus postage if you need them, or contact the Labor Department.  If you call me, I can try to help you over the phone.
Nebraska’s Domestic Abuse newsletter contained an interesting list of prevention and avoidance tips for sexual assault.  When I read them, I was startled how appropriate they all were for sexual harassment.  I should not have been, as sexual harassment is, of course, a sexual assault.
The topics are:  Know your limits, Communicate your limits, Talk to each other, Be aware of the other person’s actions, Make a scene if you feel threatened, Stick with friends you trust and Avoid using alcohol or other drugs.  There are also tips for men.
An article in the April U S News and World Report has the following caption under an illustration:  “Every attempt to clarify sexual harassment law merely makes it worse.”  For who, him or me?  In truth, defining sexual harassment, the subject of the article, is sometimes very difficult.  
An April 14 Argus Leader article discusses the use of sexual harassment insurance to keep companies from having to bear the load of damage suits.  It is apparently being used to take the place of a firm policy on sexual harassment in some cases.  One broker states that a year ago he was selling one policy a month, but is now selling four policies a week.  
I see this as a big problem looming on the horizon.  Women will no longer have to fight guilty businesses, but insurance companies protecting their bottom line.  This could become a big problem for women.
The president’s problems continue to be in the news.  They still seem to me to have virtually nothing to do with sexual harassment, and nothing has happened to change my mind.  Frankly, I don’t think that anyone is truthful about their sexual activities.  I’ll bet that even Kenneth Starr would lie under the same circumstance.  This is not the same kind of action as selling drugs to finance a war against an elected administration in a foreign country.
I think that it might be worthwhile to examine the question as to why women are on the whole paid less than men when, in my experience, women in a given position always work harder and accomplish more than men.
To answer that, I ask another question:  What would happen if pay were based on productivity rather than sex.  
First, women would make as much as or more than men.
Next, women would earn enough to survive independent of their association or lack of it with a man.
Finally, women would demand that in order to have a relationship with them, they be treated with respect by that man.
And that, dear friends, is why women are paid less than men.  End of story.

WHAT IS ASSAULT?
PUTTING LAW ENFORCEMENT ON NOTICE 
I am convinced that law enforcement uses very limited definitions of assault, attempted murder and murder, and they need to be forced to modernize their definitions.
If someone places (as happened to me) dog feces between my bedroom floor and the vapor seal under the house, then that is, because of my age,  assault with the intent to kill.
Some years ago, the state department of health inspected my house because I had had so many health problems since moving into it.  They informed me that they thought the earth under it was moist because of water leaks causing mildew or mold to grow, and that this was giving me health problems.
Because I had had many water leaks, and it was hard to get leaks underneath repaired, I finally had a basement put in.  When the construction company started work, they hauled much junk out from under my mobile home.  Included were two five gallon plastic containers, one of which was full of what appeared to be water.  It was located in an area where there were no water pipes, and because the containers were equipped with spigots, I must believe that they had been placed there for the expressed purpose of keeping that end of the mobile home just as damp as the rest was.  There was simply no other reason to have water in a container under there.  It must have been very hard to get anything that heavy under there.
I have identified fifteen different water leaks, either in water pipes, sewer pipes or eaves troughs, that put water under my home, in the six years I have lived here.  When I moved in, I had the house inspected by a plumber, and there were none at that time.
In addition, the man who put the basement in apparently did not fill in the concrete blocks with concrete in the area under my bedroom, and mysteriously, the eaves troughs leak directly above a hole in the fill next to the foundation that appears again every time I fill it up.  It apparently leads to a hole or crack in the foundation.  The basement wall underneath became very wet there the last time I noticed it after a rain.  I have repeatedly repaired the eaves trough, but shortly after repairing, it always begins to leak again.
I have dumped many wheel barrows of dirt along this wall to try to get the water to run off away from the house, but this always disappears with a few weeks, and once again, the basement wall gets wet.
Nobody seems to see this as an assault on me.  Because I am allergic to molds, it makes me very sick to have the basement wet all the time.  To me it is assault with the intent to kill, but nobody else seems to see it that  way.  Perhaps if they were the victim, they would see it that way.
Not to mention that in order to cause all of these problems, my property is being trespassed on, stolen and vandalized repeatedly and systematically, which constitutes racketeering in my opinion.
The purpose of this is a little hard to figure out.  Perhaps the former owner is trying to get me to sell back to him for less than I paid him for it.  Maybe it is conservative harassment because of my support of feminist causes including abortion rights and sexual harassment.  
Perhaps they intend to get me so sick I can’t take care of myself and force me into a retirement home where they can pick me dry of all my assets.  Your guess is as good as mine.  Maybe it is all three at the same time.  To tell you the truth, that is my best guess.
Several months ago, I swept and vacuumed the west room in my basement.  After I had done the west end of it, I moved all of the furniture there and did the east end.
A couple of weeks later I was down there to check on something and as I walked through the room to the east, I noticed something lying on the floor in the east end of the west room.  As I walked I puzzled over what it might have been.  I couldn’t recall having left anything at all there after I finished vacuuming.
When I came back, I picked it up.  It was a piece of sheet metal about 12” by 14”, and it was bent in the middle to about a 30º angle.  I had never seen it before.
I had gloves on at the time, as it was winter.  I took it up and put it into a shopping bag and locked it into my office and took it to the local sheriff a few days later.  I never heard anything from it.
I believe it had been used to keep warm air from circulating in my heat ducts to my bedroom and my computer room, both of which were very cold all last winter, but are usually the warmest rooms in the house.  I suppose that there was a similar obstruction in the heat duct at the other end of the house.  Either it was not accidentally left behind, or because of the debris in that area, I did not notice anything there.
How many times has something similar been done where I had no way to prove that, for example, an estimate for printing, seemed different than I remembered it, or my living trust or durable power of attorney had been changed.  And even the sheriff says my place is like Fort Knox.  I know they did not get in through a door or window, but through some kind of a concealed entrance that was put in when the basement and/or rural water were installed.
I have begged for help in finding how my home is being entered.  I have gotten absolutely none.  Using a pipe locator that I finally was able to buy, I have located suspicious readings in areas where there should be nothing, as this land was agricultural before it became a residence.  The locator seems perfectly accurate in locating existing water and sewer pipes and electrical lines so I believe that it is accurate.
It appears to me that local law enforcement is ignoring assaults on me and my property, and because I have made so many complaints, that they should be held responsible for them just as an individual is found guilty if they knew a murder was taking place and did nothing to stop it.
In my dreams, it appears.  I guess that the Bill of Rights does not apply to me.  I recall a note on a bulletin board at Levi Strauss when I worked there.  “You gotta have balls,” it proclaimed.  Perhaps, in an attempt at belated honesty, that should be appended to the constitution.  If not, perhaps law enforcement should start to defend the constitution, and defend women’s rights just as aggressively as they defend men’s.

INTRODUCTION CONTINUED

(From December, 1997, on people who try to get close to you for the purpose of manipulating you, and how you are kept from relationships you could benefit from.)
Getting rid of them can be very difficult, but extremely important if you are to succeed in stopping the harassment.  I suspect that a few of them are just naive individuals who are being manipulated by others, but I believe that most know exactly what they are doing.  Being rid of them is, next to being rid of my ex-husband, the best thing I ever did for myself.
Although I have had a number of similar experiences, the one that sticks in my mind most prominently happened about ten years ago when I had just finished editing the index for the South Dakota State Poetry Society.
I suppose because I had done this, I was invited to the retirement party of the Arts Council Director at the Civic Fine Arts Center.
By local standards, it was a gala event with many local artists and activists in the arts present.  I knew most only casually if at all.  I believe I was the only poet present.
But I noticed a formerCivic Fine Arts Center director I’ll call Pat across the room, and she saw me at the same time.  As we met halfway, she greeted me happily and was just saying that she’d been wanting to talk to me because . . . when someone came up behind her and literally forced herself between Pat and me.  Pat tried to protest as the woman physically dragged her away.  I still recall Pat with a startled look on her face looking over her shoulder as she was being dragged across the floor, supposedly to meet someone who was presumably much more important than me.
I stayed until after the program.  Nobody else seemed to want to talk to me.  I felt very hurt.  Pat was a cheerful woman in her thirties and when I had come into the Arts Center when she was director, I’d always felt she was genuinely happy to see me and interested in the progress of the Index.  Needless to say, I’ve never seen nor heard from her since.  I still don’t know what she wanted to say to me. 


The WASH RAG is published by Women Against Sexual Harassment, P. O. Box 164, Canton, South Dakota 57013-0164.  ISSN 1068-2449.  Subscription price is $10.00 a year.  Copyright 1998 Tesseract Publications.  Phone:  (605) 987-5070