The biggest difference between now & the Anita Hill scandal is that people view accusers as credible

[DonViejo]

'I Believe the Women'

The biggest difference between now and the Anita Hill scandal is that people view accusers as credible.

By Susan Milligan, Senior Writer | Nov. 17, 2017, at 6:00 a.m.

The first time a woman made a very public allegation of sexual harassment before Congress, against a very prominent man, she was greeted with skepticism and hostility by male members of Congress. The late Sen. Arlen Specter, a former prosecutor and then a Republican, accused law professor Anita Hill of perjury. A Democratic member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Howell Heflin of Alabama, asked Hill if she was "a scorned woman." Former Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo., claimed he had a trove of letters from people who knew Hill saying "watch out for this woman" – but who would not speak publicly because "it gets tangled up in this sexual harassment crap." Public opinion polls at the time indicated that more people believed Clarence Thomas, then awaiting confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court, than Hill, who testified that Thomas had made sexual advances and graphic sexual remarks to her when he was her boss at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

More than a quarter century later, public people in politics, entertainment and journalism are battling sexual harassment or assault charges. They include Roy Moore, the Alabama GOP nominee for U.S. Senate who has been accused by more than a half dozen women of everything from outright sexual assault to merely creepy efforts to date teenage girls. The disclosures were a reminder that despite the supposed heightened awareness and workplace anti-sexual harassment training that ensued after the Thomas-Hill hearings, sexual harassment and assault itself is still an ongoing problem. But one things appears to be changing, something that was voiced by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell when he was asked about the Alabama man hoping to join McConnell's caucus next month.

"I believe the women," McConnell said in his characteristic, low-key intonation.

It's not enough, female members of Congress and feminist activists say, to fix a problem so many women, in so many occupational arenas, have endured and continue to face. But it's a critical step towards winning the argument that was at the heart of the Anita Hill matter, that of a woman's basic credibility.

When McConnell validated the Alabama women's accounts, "I was struck by it," says California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who was first elected to the Senate in 1992 as part of a "Year of the Woman" wave the Hill hearings provoked. "It was simple and direct."

more
https://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2017-11-17/mcconnell-lends-accusers-credibility-with-one-line?emailed=1&src=usn_thereport

[chelsea0011]

1. Speaking of Anita Hill. Are the people asking for Franken to resign also

now asking for Thomas' impeachment?

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. I was wondering that myself.

[spooky3]

3. I'm not sure that everyone who says he/she believes the accusers really does.

They would behave differently if they did--and if they cared about it.

I suspect many of them simply think that it is in their best interests to say that they don't disbelieve the accusers.

[pnwmom]

4. Right. The Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Joe Biden, actually allowed a man named Doggett

to testify that Anita Hill had something called erotomania, and that that was behind her allegations.

It was a literal witch-hunt, with Anita as the witch.