Tag: Sexism

TECH JOBS: SEXUAL HARASSMENT WITH BENEFITS

During the last decade of my career as a union rep, the biggest challenge was trying to hang on to basic benefits that had been won years ago. In the beleaguered newspaper industry, that battle was all uphill. We reduced sick leave and vacation time. We froze pensions and scaled back medical insurance. The pain was aggravated by almost daily reports from the booming tech startups that were offering a smorgasbord of benefits to die for (here and here): one year of paid leave for new mothers and fathers, on-site child (and dog) care, acupuncture and improv classes, free meals, midday siestas in a “nap pod,” $4,000 in “baby cash” for employees with newborns, and unlimited paid vacations.

As accomplished as I was at making outrageous arguments with a straight face, I would have had a hard time staying in character while pounding the table over nap pods. Besides, our entire focus was on trying to maintain some semblance of medical insurance and a modest retirement plan. Those shiny tech benefits formed a cruel oasis in our desert of retrogressions. Based on recent developments, however, all that glitters in Silicon Valley employee relations is not, by any stretch of the imagination, gold. As Paul Harvey used to say, here’s the rest of the story:

Despite its cutting edge image, the tech industry is a bastion of sexual harassment, a throwback to the pre-Clarence-Thomas days when male supervisors didn’t differentiate between the workplace and a pick-up bar, five minutes before last call. According to Fortune Magazine, 60 percent of the female tech workforce say they have experienced unwanted sexual advances on the job, most of them from a superior. Some 39 percent of those women said they did not report the harassment out of fear it would hurt their careers.

Susan Fowler was not among that 39 percent. She recently quit her engineering job with Uber because of what she described as a culture of rampant sexual harassment. She described her experiences in a blog post that has managed to shed a glaring light on what had been a dirty little secret of tech employment. Fowler said her manager repeatedly asked her to have an affair. She went to Uber’s Human Resources Department where, to her astonishment, she was told that it was the guy’s first offense and they were not inclined to take any action beyond a warning. Fowler said she later learned that her manager had made similar overtures to several other female subordinates, all of whom had also gone to HR and gotten the same “first offense” line. More women have since come forward with related accusations against other managers. In a quick clean-up effort at damage control, Uber brought in former attorney general Eric Holder to help with a corporate-wide sexual harassment investigation.

This kind of predator conduct was common in most workplaces 30 years ago. It went hand-in-hand with a male-dominated hierarchy and the subservient role carved out for women workers. Sexual harassment is a large umbrella. It includes unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, lewd and offensive gender-based comments and related harassing behavior based on sex. All of that was perfectly legal until the late 1970s when federal courts, for the first time, ruled that the Civil Rights Act’s prohibition against sex discrimination covers sexual harassment. That led to seven-figure damages against employers who failed to protect their employees from sexual harassment.

All of a sudden, companies were adopting strict no-harassment policies and training supervisors to keep their hands and ribald thoughts to themselves. A lot of whining men stumbled through the 1980s, blathering to each other about how “a poor guy just doesn’t know what he can do or say these days”. By the mid 1990’s most of them had figured it out. That’s not to say sexual harassment came to an abrupt halt. It never left us, but the law and threat of punitive damages changed the workplace culture and dramatically slowed it down.

And then the tech boom hit, and it was the 1970s all over again. These nerdy, otherworldly digital gurus who redefined the workplace to make it fit a whole new approach to functionality, came programed with a manly way of thinking that had been outlawed 40 years ago. Since Susan Fowler blew the whistle on Uber, scores of women from other tech companies have come forward with their horror stories. Haana told the Guardian that her Silicon Valley manager put his hand up her shirt and groped her while they walked down the street after an off-site meeting. Joe told a leading tech blog that he witnessed a top executive repeatedly hit on and touch female staffers Joe supervised. Joe went with the women to report the incidents to the CEO but nothing was done.

Here’s how Wired.com described the culture of tech workplaces: “Kegerators, or at least well-stocked beer fridges, are standard fixtures at tech companies, right up there with ping-pong tables and beanbag chairs. Some, like GitHub and Yelp, even offer multiple brews on tap. Conferences and meetups are awash with free drinks.”

Clearly, this industry has carved out an alternative universe for a work environment, replacing the conventional office’s structure and rigidity with a party-like atmosphere that intentionally blurs the line between work and fun. Unfortunately, that’s not the only line being discarded. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act does not contain a sex discrimination exemption for cool, innovative tech companies. A word of caution to women seeking employment there: nap pods, child care and oodles of paid time off are worthless without a guarantee of a workplace free of discrimination and harassment. Sadly, such a venue seems to be a rarity in the tech industry.

POST ELECTION BLUES? YOU’LL FIND NO ESCAPE IN FLORIDA

Having just returned from a protracted stay in Florida, I’m still trying to untangle the state’s incongruous dualism. There is nothing more radiant than ocean waves glistening under a January sun. Yet, you don’t have to venture far from the beach to find a sea of tacky souvenir shops offering, in almost parody fashion, blow-up sea urchins and plastic alligator heads that glow in the dark. They can be ignored if you try hard enough, focusing instead on the elegant palm trees and luscious greenery adorning Florida’s highways and byways. Then again, such aesthetic vegetation is interspersed with gigantic billboards, split evenly between adult sex shops and personal injury lawyers. Florida folks are pragmatic. If a marital aid breaks at an inopportune time, they know who to call for punitive damages.

And then there’s politics. Florida and its 29 electoral votes have long been the southern belle of presidential elections, drawing more attention than any state below the Mason-Dixon line, and most of them above it. Its hanging chads took center stage in the 2000 legal battle that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court decision handing the presidency to George W. Bush. President Obama carried the state in 2008 and 2012. Two of the supporting actors in last year’s Republican primary drama – Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio – are Floridians. But Donald Trump beat them both and went on to capture the state’s electoral prize in November. With that sometimes-you-win-and-sometimes-you-lose background, you’d think Florida voters would be in a Que Sera, Sera kind of place over the pending Trump inauguration.

That’s decidedly not the case. The most dramatic evidence of the deep personal tension felt by many Floridian liberals came in an unlikely venue. Micanopy is a small, beautifully peaceful, antediluvian town a few miles south of Gainesville. Its main drag is filled with shops selling crafts, antiques and home furnishings. We spent an hour in one of those stores and drew an occasional glance from the owner, who undoubtedly marked us as out-of-towners. She approached us after the other customers had left and asked where we were from. Upon learning that we lived a few miles outside of Washington, D.C., she withdrew into a brief and pensive silence. After mentally calculating the political demographics, she took a chance.

“I just don’t know what to do,” she told us. “This whole thing with Trump. I’ve never been so scared.” My wife, Melissa, and I nodded and smiled, much to the store owner’s relief.
“Oh, thank God,” she said, “I figured you were safe. You just never know. So many customers are for Trump. It’s just awful. I can’t let on and I don’t even want to talk to them. I’ve never been through anything like this. My candidates have lost in the past and life goes on. But this time is different. I am scared of this guy. Some of his supporters scare me even more. The day after the election, I thought I would close the shop and sell the business so I wouldn’t have to deal with them. But it’s been my life. I don’t know what to do.”

It’s not just a Florida thing. New York City is offering employees counseling services and other support for dealing with Trump’s election. Therapists throughout the nation have reported an overwhelming caseload of patients needing help with their anxiety and depression over the incoming Trump administration. Staffers at the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline say they have been swamped with calls from people in deep distress with feelings of hopelessness and betrayal over the election.

It’s a safe bet that this level of angst has to do with more than differences of opinion over tax policy or climate change. By campaigning against what he called “political correctness,” Trump, intentionally or unintentionally, validated the misogyny, racism and homophobia that progressives have been fighting for decades. For people affected by identity politics, this is deeply personal.

A man who sexually assaulted women and made disparaging comments based on race, religion and nationality will become president of the United States by the end of the week. A bully who delights in punching below his weight and demeaning anyone who gets in his way will soon be the leader of the free world.

Those of us who are bothered by our new reality have been counseled by Trump voters to “get over it and move on.” They are half right. We will never – and should never – get over the fact that our new president is the antithesis of the character and values we struggled to instill in our children: kindness, inclusiveness, fairness, decency and honesty. He is who he is. We need to accept that and move on. As of 12:01 p.m. Friday, we’re playing for keeps. It’s no longer about obnoxious early-morning tweets or a Fox news soundbite. Now it’s about policies and programs, legislation and executive orders. We who believe that America’s greatness lies in its diversity, including all of those struggling in the shadows, need to focus on keeping our dream alive.

Yes, this week’s inauguration represents one of the finest attributes of America’s unique democracy: the peaceful transfer of power based on the will of the electorate. Yet, another equally powerful piece of our system is one that allows citizens to rise up in agitation and peaceful protest when leaders betray the values and principles that made our country great. That’s why Saturday’s Women’s March on Washington is just as important to this inauguration as Friday’s swearing in.

Although our candidate lost, her campaign theme continues to thrive. Starting with Saturday’s march, and continuing every day for the next four years, we are, indeed, Stronger Together.

IN SEARCH OF A NEW MILLENNIAL FEMINISM

I still can’t get the image out of my head. Newspapers keep using the picture in their serialized election retrospectives: shocked and distraught young women crying their eyes out under the glass ceiling of a New York hotel ballroom, Hillary Clinton’s election night headquarters. Like Sherlock Holmes’ dog that didn’t bark, this was the glass ceiling that didn’t shatter. They had gathered there, giddy and hopeful, ready to watch up close the election of America’s first woman president. It wasn’t just a loss for them; it was a dream rudely interrupted and demolished by a larger-than-life symbol of every sexist, misogynistic pig of a white male they had ever known, heard or read about.

I want to believe that those millennial women will embrace that moment of pain and anguish, and use it as a catalyst for a new wave of feminism. Thanks to trails blazed by their mothers and grandmothers, the world is a far less foreboding place to women in their 20s and 30s. Doors once closed are now open. Rampant sexism, although far from dead and buried, is no longer baked into our social norms. This generation of women never experienced the hopeless cruelty of systemic oppression that spurred giants like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Eleanor Smeal, and countless others, to devote their lives to fighting for change. When things are just a little bad, most of us suck it up and soldier on.

It’s about to get much more than just a little bad. That’s not just because the glass ceiling didn’t break on November 8. America’s president-in-waiting is the embodiment of almost everything the baby boomer feminists fought against: degradation, sexual harassment, verbose inequality. It’s all crawling out from behind its rock in full daylight now. Progress comes through an accumulation of baby steps; regression through a gigantic leap backwards. The leap back has begun. To me, that’s what the tears streaming down the faces of those young Clinton supporters were all about. The fulcrum of change suddenly reversed course, and the ride back is going to be anything but pretty.

This is about so much more than the country’s failure to elect a woman president. Women are ridiculously outnumbered in the Congress ( only 19% are women), state legislatures (24%), governors’ offices(12%) and in the upper echelons of academia (26% of college presidents are women) and corporate America (4% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women). Those numbers not only measure an agonizingly slow march to equality, they tell an even bleaker and pervasive story.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter, formerly on the faculty at both Yale and Harvard Law School, conducted extensive studies in the 1970s on the effects of the underrepresentation of women on organizational effectiveness. Kanter found that when women were the few among the many men in a work group, their participation and effectiveness were significantly diminished simply by virtue of being outnumbered. This phenomenon held, she found, in any situation where those from a demographically identifiable group were the “few among the many” from the majority group. Simply being a “token,” Kanter discovered, meant reduced participation, status and ability to shape the group’s outcome.

I did a mini-replication of Kanter’s study 35 years ago. I tracked a number of small task groups, some dominated by men, some by women and others with a relatively equal balance. I measured the amount of time each participant spoke, interrupted others, offered solutions, among other indices of participation. In the groups dominated by one gender, those in the minority greatly limited their participation and the overall effectiveness of the group process was severely limited. In the balanced groups, however, there was a more equalized level of participation along with a desire to reach consensus and, as a result, a higher level of effectiveness.

The lesson from the research is simple: the country is losing out by continuing to have decision making bodies that don’t look anything like the rest of the country. The damage from a Congress that is 81% male isn’t just the lack of opportunity for more women to serve. The real blow comes from the kind of laws that flow out of a legislative body that resembles an Elks Club.

It’s not too hard to imagine what lies ahead for us right now. Funding for women’s health, always a battle in “good times” is in for a severe blow. Mike Pence and his ilk are already salivating about defunding Planned Parenthood. Another faction would love to put the screws to what they see as the Justice Departments’ overzealous use of Title IX to combat sex discrimination on college campuses. With Jeff Sessions as attorney general, that’s an objective easily met. Donald Trump says he will see that Row v. Wade will be overturned as soon as he puts his stamp on the Supreme Court. As a frightening foreshadow of what’s to come, a Tennessee woman is now facing criminal charges for attempting to abort her pregnancy with a coat hanger.

Still, I really do believe the sun will shine again, that we will manage to reverse the backwards retreat and start moving upward and forward, toward an America that prides itself in the values of diversity, equality and justice for all. Getting there means that those millennial tears from election night must be turned into action steps. The boomer feminists were a great opening act. But it’s your time and your move now. Don’t let those tears be in vain.

TRUMP AND WOMEN: JUST ANOTHER POWER GRAB

At least Bill Cosby made one good decision in his life. He rejected Donald Trump’s advice on how to handle allegations of sexual assault. As reported by the Washington Post, Trump told an E! reporter in 2014 that the 79-year-old comedian was making a big mistake by not personally responding to the dozens of women who said Cosby forced himself on them. The Donald, of course, faced his own growing cavalcade of accusers this week, women who, one by one, came forward to say they were forcibly groped and/or kissed by the Republican presidential candidate.

Trump followed the advice Cosby turned down, and I am willing to bet half my 401(k) that, at some point this weekend, one of Cosby’s lawyers pointed to the candidate’s traveling freak show of a defense and said to his client, “Do you see now why we told you to keep your mouth shut.” Trump didn’t merely deny the accusations, he held rallies to denigrate and belittle the accusers. He claimed some were ugly, not worth his grope. The cult-like crowd was right out of a Rocky Horror Picture Show. Trump would cite an accusation of sexual assault and the audience would chant “we don’t care,” followed by laughs and jeers. Trump called the women liars and the faithful Trumpians chanted “Lock them up,” the official campaign refrain for non-believers.

One woman in a North Carolina rally Friday wore a hand painted t-shirt with the words “Trump Can Grab My” followed by an arrow pointing to her crotch. Two days earlier in an Ohio revival meeting, women wore shirts that said, “Hey Trump, Talk Dirty to Me.” In case there was any doubt, this is no longer Mitt Romney’s Republican Party. To these folks and their candidate, sexual assault is a myth, just like global warming, a conspiracy hatched by vile liberal interests designed to stop Trump from making America great again. Why else would all of these women come forward now with their accusations?

Of course, we know the answer to that question only too well. This is the way it always works. Women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted cower in shame and insignificance, afraid to come forward because no one would believe them. They spend years in turmoil and agony and powerlessness, wondering, in their darker moments, if maybe they somehow brought this on themselves. And then, later – sometimes years, decades later – one woman steps forward with a story she can’t hold in any longer. Another woman sees it and suddenly recognizes that she is not alone, not the only one, and she too goes public. Then the dam bursts and the flood begins.

I saw the pattern so many times in my work as a union representative. A young woman in her first job would find the boss’s hands all over her. To him, it was just another power grab. To her, it was the most traumatic moment of her life. Never once was there a single victim. Within days of the first complaint, the others quickly followed. None of it had anything to do with how the women looked, dressed or what they did. It wasn’t about sex. It was about power, about men in powerful positions taking what they wanted because they could. It had always been that way and would forever remain thus – until the first victim ends her silence and frees the rest to do the same. Just ask Bill Cosby or Donald Trump.

For me, a seminal moment in understanding this dynamic came in 1991. I was visiting my aunt who was 79 then, long retired from a career as a department store clerk. We were watching the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. Anita Hill, who had accused Thomas of sexual harassment, had just completed her testimony. My aunt, rarely at a loss for words, sat in silence, seemingly in another place. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Finally, she spoke.

“I never knew it was wrong,” she said. “I mean we didn’t like it. Actually, we hated it. But these men were in charge. They were over us. And we didn’t want to lose. . . no, we couldn’t lose our jobs. We didn’t have a choice. It’s just the way it is.” It was the only time I saw my aunt cry. The moment was transformative for us both. She was apprehending a new day in which it was simply wrong for a man to use his power over a subordinate that way. And I, for the first time, was realizing there had actually been a point in our history when sexual harassment was an accepted norm: “just the way it is.”

So here we are, in 2016 – three weeks from electing the 45th president of the United States. Have we finally moved the gender fulcrum far enough to elect a woman? Or are we about to knowingly choose a sexual predator, who not only flaunts the rules of decency, but brags about it? My aunt has been gone for 15 years. She never missed an election and always voted Republican. Had she been around these past few days, however, I can tell you without hesitation that Donald Trump would not get her support. Once she saw a world where sexual harassment was wrong and not a way of life, she would never, ever, vote to go back.

GOP’S ANSWER TO TRUMP PROBLEM IS BLOWING IN THE WIND

When our newest Nobel Laureate wrote that “you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” Bob Dylan had never met the current crop of Republican politicians. These folks desperately need emergency meteorological assistance. Their old windsocks of public opinion are no match for the velocity of the October gusts of Donald J. Trump.

Ordinarily, politicians publicly shower fellow party members with obligatory superlative prose that has all the sincerity of an Eddie-Haskell-to-June-Cleaver compliment. That’s only when the mic is on. Behind the scenes, it is more Jerry Springer than Leave it to Beaver. Alas, this is no ordinary election. The challenge for Republican congressional candidates has been how to distance themselves from a toxic presidential nominee without losing votes from the deplorables who love him. After anguishing through months of tortured Trumpisms, each raising the level of racism, misogyny and xenophobia one step higher, most GOP leaders and candidates managed to stake out deeply contorted positions on The Donald. They were tightly parsed and highly nuanced, a natural result of simultaneously condoning that which they condemn. Then the Access Hollywood tape hit and all bets were off. And then on again. Consider, for example:

Darryl Glenn, Republican Senate candidate from Colorado, withdrew his endorsement of Trump after the tape hit the news. In it, the presidential candidate boasted about using his star power to get by with sexual assaults. Glenn told Fox News that “America cannot have a man who speaks this way about women be the face of our country to the Free World.” After 48 hours of backlash from Trump supporters, however, Glenn reversed course and threw his support behind Donald to be the face of our country to the Free World.

Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-Ala.) came out against Trump on Saturday, telling Politico that the Republican nominee’s remarks were “disgraceful” and that he “is not fit to be president of the United States.” By Tuesday, however, Byrne was back on the Trump Train, regardless of how disgraceful and unfit he may be.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) has outdone the Kama Sutra in finding unique positions. She clearly loathes the guy but is involved in a very competitive reelection battle in a state where Trump has a solid base of support. Initially, Ayotte refused to endorse him but said she would vote for him, a dubious status akin to being a little bit pregnant. Then she was asked during a television appearance if she thought Trump was a role model for children. She said yes. The next day, however, she reversed herself, saying that Trump was no role model but that she would still vote for him. After the groping tape was released, Ayotte made a clean break and said she would not vote for Trump, a stand she says may end her political career.

Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) had supported Trump until the tape went public. She immediately reversed course, according to the Omaha World-Herald, saying that his comments were “disgusting and totally unacceptable under any circumstance.” She reversed herself once more on Tuesday and said she will vote for Trump.

The list goes on and on, with changes occurring hourly. There has been far less fluctuation in the stock market this fall than in the Trump positions held by Republican leaders. What remains unknown at the moment is whether any of the un-endorsement “recanters” will flip once more on the heels of new allegations by women who say Trump sexually assaulted them. The only law that matters right now is the uncertainty principle of physics: positions constantly change based on the momentum of events.

Even those who have gone a few days without a reversal are left with some curious juxtapositions. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) says Trump is a “pathological liar” and “utterly amoral.” Yet, he has endorsed him. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) characterized Trump’s remarks as “textbook definition of racist.” He refuses to campaign with him. But, for the record, the Speaker has endorsed the racist.

There is, of course, an unprecedentedly long list of high ranking Republicans, who have publicly repudiated their party’s presidential candidate. For the most part, they are the ones not up for reelection this year. As for those who are, this is my plea:

Donald Trump is a very mean man, a man who brags about the women he has forcibly groped, a man who has denigrated every minority group, a man who can’t tell fact from fiction, a man who has most of us frightfully scared over what will become of our country, our world, should he be elected. For the love of God and America, please don’t let this man bring us down. No job is worth that price.

PUSSIES AND THE UNMAKING OF A PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE

So let’s recap. Prior to last Friday, we knew that Donald Trump believes:

Laziness is a trait in blacks;
Mexican immigrants are rapists;
It’s funny to mock a disabled reporter;
Muslims should be prohibited from entering the country;
Megyn Kelly had blood coming out of her whatever;
His money should be counted only by “little short guys that wear yarmulkes”; and
The Pope is disgraceful.

Yet, Trump was only a couple of poll points behind Hillary Clinton and enjoyed the backing of most Republican office holders. Then came the Pussy Tape and all hell broke loose. At least now we know there is a line never to be crossed. This will be helpful for future campaigns. You can denigrate blacks, Latinos, Muslims, Jews, the disabled and the Pope and still be acceptable to most Republicans. But boasting about grabbing women by their pussies is a deal breaker.

Well, maybe it’s not quite that linear. There is another explanation. Jacob Riis, a 19th century photographer and social reformer, taught that progress comes from the cumulative effect of many events. The same is true of regression. Here’s Riis:

“. . . I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”

Applying the Riis paradigm to Trump’s fall from GOP grace, it took more than a pussy grab to throw the Party of Lincoln into a cataclysmic frenzy. As Hillary suggested in Sunday night’s debate, if Donald’s bus ride peroration on groping, extramarital seduction, furniture shopping and Tic-Tacs had been a singular aberration, he might have gotten a pass, particularly if he promised to forever keep his two small hands to himself. But coming as it did, on the heels of serial character flaws, rarely seen by someone not on a registered sex offender directory or a terrorist watch list, it was almost too much to take. Even open-minded, understanding Republican congressional leaders like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan called the boys on the bus dialogue sickening, repugnant and unacceptable. And then, just to hedge their bets, continued to endorse Trump to become the leader of the free world.

Pussygate’s most fascinating feature has been the Rorschach quality of responses from party leaders. See if you can pick out a unifying theme in this sampling of reactions from GOP White Guys:

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (Trump’s running mate): “As a husband and father, I was offended by the words and actions described by Donald Trump. . .”

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush: “As the grandfather of two precious girls, I find that no apology can excuse away Donald Trump’s reprehensible comments degrading women.”

Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney: “Such vile degradations demean our wives and daughters. . .”

Utah Senator Mike Lee: If anyone spoke to my wife or my daughter or my mother or any of my five sisters the way Mr. Trump has spoken to women, I wouldn’t hire that person. . .”

Get it? Thank God these men have women in their families so they can muster enough empathy to recognize that forcibly grabbing them by their genitals is not an appropriate precursor to the presidency. Then again, neither is calling blacks lazy or denigrating Muslims, Jews, the disabled or the Pope. It’s just that those demographics don’t have a seat at the table in most white Republican households. Some foibles are easier to overlook, but this talk of groping white women really hits home with these guys.

It harkens back to some really messed up gender role stuff, a quid-pro-quo known as The Art of a Very Bad Deal. In days of old, when men ruled the roost, social norms required that they protect and revere their womenfolk. House Speaker Ryan actually touched on that notion when he explained why the Trump pussy tape “sickened” him. Said Ryan, “Women are to be revered and championed, not objectified.” The basic deal was that men would open doors for women, pull out their chairs, lift them to their pedestals and forever protect them from harm. In exchange, men called all the shots, held all the power, owned all the property and cast all the votes.

So here we are, in a new era. Not only can women own property and vote, one of them is on the verge of becoming the next U.S. President, thanks in large part to her blustery, braggadocios, bloviating, blowhard of an opponent. And his penchant for grabbing women by their pussies. Although we may not necessarily live happily ever after, there could not be a more delicious ending to this very grim fairytale.

SHIELDING STUDENTS FROM EVIL WON’T HELP THEM ALLEVIATE IT

College campuses, once a hotbed of anything-goes radicalism, are morphing into antiseptic bastions of thought cleansing. The source of this depressing trend is a new breed of students, determined to avoid offense or emotional discomfort at any cost.

Harvard Law School students, according to The New Yorker, have asked their professors not to teach about rape law because the subject is traumatic for them. Northwestern University students filed federal charges, eventually dismissed, against their instructor for writing a professional journal opinion piece opposing prohibitions against faculty-student dating. They said it made them uncomfortable. Students in a number of colleges have been allowed to skip reading assignments that contain passages that might upset them. Here’s how Atlantic Monthly introduced a lengthy analysis of this trend: “Something strange is happening at America’s colleges and universities.”

Indeed it is. The movement’s origins were benign and well intentioned. It started with infrequently used “trigger warnings” on assigned readings, designed as a heads’ up for students who had experienced trauma – sexual assault or other violence. They weren’t excused from the assignment, but the advance warning allowed them to consult with a therapist or take other precautions. In those same early days, human rights training for both faculty and students focused on a concept of “microaggressions”, a form of subconscious racism or sexism typically involving a stereotype. An example would be telling Asian students they must be good at math.

Those noble and sensible beginnings, however, evolved into darker outcomes. As a result of student pressure, backed by threatened social media attacks and the filing of federal discrimination charges, trigger warnings expanded way beyond the traumatized few and are now issued by more than 50% of the faculty, and for such subjects as racism, classism sexism, disregard for personal autonomy, spiders, drug use, suicide, indigenous artifacts, Nazi paraphernalia and slimy things. Worse yet, many schools report that a trigger warning now means students don’t have to read the objectionable material. Fortunately, leaders of some of the country’s leading educational institutions have recently tried to dial this movement back. American University, the University of Chicago and others have adopted policies against trigger warnings. Meanwhile, microaggressions have gone from a human rights learning strategy to a list of things that should never be said. In the University of California system, for example, the faculty has been warned against using a long list phrases, including, “I believe the most qualified person should get the job.”

Sheltering students from unpleasant thoughts and offensive ideas is anathema to what education is all about. How do you teach history without exploring the horrible trauma of war, slavery, Jim Crow laws and the treatment of American Indians? How do you teach literature if you have to trigger out Shakespeare’s “Othello” because of its violence against women, or his “Henry V” because of Henry’s use of warfare and threatened sexual violence as a way of obtaining political success? What about the suicide themes of Sylvia Plath’s poetry or the fear, pain and suffering caused by totalitarianism in Kurt Vonnegut’s novels? If the goal of education is to teach students not what to think, but how to think, you don’t get there by allowing them to remain in their comfort zones.

Trying to shelter students from racist and sexist microaggressions may alleviate momentary angst, but it does nothing to eradicate the broader problem that produced them. When they surface, why not use them as teachable moments so the entire class can learn what stereotyping is and the pain it causes? It is sadly ironic that this push to create a sanitized, safe and protective campus environment is happening at a time when this country is 30-some days and a handful of poll points away from electing as president someone whose campaign has been filled not with microaggressions, but with “YUGE” macroaggressions. Here is a small sampling of the headlines: (TRIGGER WARNING: These news reports are likely to cause anxiety, depression and a sudden interest in Canadian real estate.)

Donald Trump Eats a Taco Bowl to Prove His Love for Hispanics
Trump Campaign CEO Complained of Jews at Daughters’ School
Donald Trump: If Black Lives Don’t Matter, Then Go Back to Africa
Trump Calls for Banning Muslims From Entering U.S.
Trump Wanted to Fire Women Who Weren’t Pretty Enough

That’s the world outside of the campus cocoon. The Donald Trumps out there do not come with a trigger warning. Dealing with them, resisting their vile hate and racism is not optional. That’s why we need college graduates who are ready, willing and able to work against the forces they’d rather not think about. It’s the only way we can move this evil trauma from the headlines to the history books.

BODY SHAMING THE NEWS

America may be on the verge of electing its first woman president, but don’t let that fool you into thinking that rampant sexism has left the building. That point was just pounded home in a very personal way. A child kidnapping case that gripped the hearts of Minnesotans for 27 years was solved last week. The man who snatched, sexually assaulted and murdered 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling in 1989 confessed and led authorities to the child’s body. I lived in Minnesota when Jacob was kidnapped and know only too well how visceral that crime was – and is – to Minnesotans. News that his remains had been found quickly sucked the air out of the entire state. It was all anyone talked about.

Well, almost. That, and the couture of a young female television reporter. The diversion came from a Minneapolis Star Tribune columnist who noted that Jana Shortal wore jeans on TV while reporting Jacob’s story and didn’t look good in them. Cheryl Johnson, whose column is called simply “CJ”, wrote that somebody at the local NBC affiliate “didn’t do Jana Shortal any favors with that wide camera shot. . .She looked great from the waist up in a polka-dot shirt and cool blazer, but the skinny jeans did not work. I was among a number of media types who found them inappropriate and, given the gravity of the day’s subject, downright jarring.”

So much for Minnesota Nice. So much for Jana’s bold and daring efforts to abandon what she calls the “lady uniform” as a prerequisite for delivering the news, a lingering legacy of the Roger Ailes school for women in broadcast journalism. Jana, who has been doing a daily breaking news show for the past year, goes on camera in her own clothes because the emphasis is on what she is reporting, not on how she looks. That should not be, but unfortunately is, a revolutionary move for television news in 2016. There was, to say the least, a major firestorm over the C.J. column, which the newspaper promptly pulled from its website and replaced with a full-throated apology.

It is so sad that there are still forces measuring the worth of a woman by how she looks, and a man by what he does. I wrote a research paper on this subject in 1983. It described and quantified a societal tyranny in which women had to either conform to the way a male-dominated culture insisted they look, or pay the price. Mostly, they paid the price. The currency was life threatening eating disorders, chronic stress and/or repeated rejections for the better jobs as a result of not looking the part. The phenomena back then was called “lookism,” and it painfully enforced this toxic double standard. Today, the term is “body shaming” and, as the newspaper columnist demonstrated, it is every bit as insidious.

I gathered the studies more than 30 years ago, all of them showing how companies made hiring, pay and promotional decisions on the basis of how women looked and on what men could do. The empirical evidence was staggering, but not surprising. I was a morbidly obese man when my journalism career took off in the 1970s. Despite being between 200 and 300 pounds overweight, I had the choice of beats on my newspaper and won countless awards and accolades. Women just as capable, if not more, were held back if they were carrying an extra 25 pounds or just didn’t have the “right look”.

Nearly two generations later, not much has changed. Jana Shortal is critiqued not on the quality of her reporting, but on the cut of her jeans. We have a Republican presidential candidate who insults men based on their behavior, but reserves adjectives like fat, ugly and disgusting for the women he wants to diminish.

I cringed when I read Jana’s Facebook reply to the CJ column. Although eloquent and poignant, it was painfully obvious that the columnist’s words hit her hard. A short snippet from her post: “I wore my clothes. The clothes it took me a very long time to feel comfortable in no thanks to the bullies like you who tried to shame me out of them.”


Here was this bright, strong, young woman, anchoring her own news show in a major regional market, and doing it her way, making it about the journalism instead of about herself. And right smack in the middle of reporting the biggest local story of the year, she is attacked by a veteran columnist for not looking good in skinny jeans. It stung something fierce because, far below the intellectual surface of gender equality, complete with its admonishment of body shaming, lurks this ancient notion that women, no matter what else they do, must “look good” doing it. It’s a notion that needs to die. Now.

THE DIFFICULT HUSBANDRY OF HILLARY AND HUMA

 

There was media speculation today that Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign might be jeopardized by the fact that both she and her top aide are married to men who cheated on them.  I wouldn’t have given that nonsense a second thought if it had appeared in the National Enquirer, the official organ of the Trump campaign.  Instead, it was on the front page of the New York Times. It  was in a piece about Anthony Weiner once again getting caught with his iPhone at crotch level.   The sexting former congressman is married to Huma Abedin, Clinton’s longtime assistant. This from the Times:

“Mr. Weiner’s extramarital behavior also threatens to remind voters about the troubles in the Clinton’s own marriage over the decades, including Mrs. Clinton’s much-debated decision to remain with then-President Bill Clinton after revelations of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.”

Really?  Does our culture change that slowly?  It took 144 years for women to win the right to vote in this country.  They’ve been given a ballot since 1920, but until a few weeks  ago, not one of them has ever been nominated for president by a major political party.  Hillary Clinton finally breaks through the ceiling’s last shard of glass, only to be told that she should have kept her husband from straying if she wanted to be president.  Either that, or divorce him.

Bill Clinton not only cheated and lied about it, he was subsequently rewarded with a 73% approval rating in his second term.  But Hillary is somehow disqualified  because she didn’t stand on her man or kick him to the curb.  And now poor Huma is in the same sinking boat, a powerful woman too busy with her career to properly service her poor husband, who had to go out and find an app for that.

This is all very reflective of American life in the 19th century, except for the app part.  Marriage was an asymmetrical institution, more about property rights than partnership.  A wife was supposed to tend to her husband’s every need in exchange for his bringing home the bacon or, in vegan households, an appropriate soybean substitute.  A husband who frequently strayed from the marital bed brought disrepute upon his wife for not taking sufficient care of him.

I totally get where we have been.  What I don’t understand is why is it taking us so long to move on?  Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin are among the most powerful people in this country.  To blame them for the caddish and ribald choices their husbands made seems so yesterday.

Look, this is not a paid political advertisement for the Clinton campaign.  Although I look forward to voting for her, I respect legitimate objections to her candidacy.  Many of her public choices have landed her in jams she could and should have avoided.  If you don’t trust her, don’t vote for her.  If you don’t like her position on trade, don’t vote for her.  If you don’t like her tax plan, don’t vote for her. But rejecting Hillary Clinton on the basis of her husband’s sins is taking us back to a place we should have left a long time ago.