Strauss Kahn Circus Coming Soon

I am conflicted about writing this as Mr. Kahn has not been convicted. But I gather a dirty licentious, Clinton like trial is on its way. Oh the Tabloids will love it, SEX,SEX, SEX. rated 3 XXX with a Frenchmen and Black maid from Africa main characters. Whoopee.

A little Background

In 1975 I wrote a piece for the Harvard Business Review “Three Men Two Women on a Raft” It was an honest revelation of what had occurred on an Outward Bound Trip down the Rogue River in Oregon. Going down the river each person on the raft took turns as the helms-person in charge. In the article I wrote, the men on the raft did everything they could to undermine the women. The result was an overturned raft with all of us in the ice cold water. The women then declined the helms position. The men said “oh that’s okay we’ll take over.” At the time I suggested that was pretty much the way in the corporate world. That Harvard Review piece became a “best seller Reprint.” It was republished 25 years later. Mostly to see how things had changed. I think they have. (Women may find themselves in that same “predator” position as the men. Yupp I experienced that.)

That article gave me a kind of legitimacy among women who at the time were struggling with the issues of fairness and equality in the workplace. And that’s how I became the recipient of stories of sexual harassment at work. At the time I was at the Ford Foundation. Many young women researchers one way or another made their way to my office at the Foundation to relate horror stories of what went on at their workplaces. I have chosen a few examples. However I do have to go much further back into the 1930s for my earliest lesson in sexual exploitation.

It came with Edith my first wife. She was a dancer who appeared in a WPA show called “From Gospel to Swing.” In the reviews she was singled out as a “dancer to watch.” Look, she was really good. She danced with an infectious joy and the audience loved her. Some time later she was auditioning for Broadway, Hollywood shows. God, I remember it so well. She was up early and bright for an interview with an agent in the old Brill building on Broadway in the 50s. Alas, she comes home practically in tears. First she doesn’t want to talk about. Slowly she lets on to what happened. The Agent tells her to take off her clothes. She say’s “for what?” He tells her she has to understand, if she really wants to make her way in the Show-biz world she’s gonna have to “put out.” Yes he says “that’s how it is and if you can’t do it go find some other way to make a living.” She did.

It’s decades later. A young women was doing a survey of ways to create job opportunities for Black youth. She goes to see, (I am not going to mention names.) an important leader in the field. After a few minutes of questioning he asks her, “How she feels about sex? She suggests it’s is none of his business. In a short time he is up and suggesting they go in the closet for “some fun.” She picks herself up and is out the door. Asks me ”what is wrong with these men?

A friend in Washington tells me of a staff opening in a NYC Congresmen’s office. Oh, yes of course I know a young women, Brandies graduate good research background. She goes for the interview. Gets passed a couple of other staff people is ushered into the Congresmen’s office. He shuts the door. Spends his time looking at her Legs asking questions about her experience and then out of the blue asks,”do you enjoy fucking.” It’s not that she never heard the word before. But she really believed she was going to work at a level beyond that.

In my years in the Lindsay Administration I would hear a constant chatter about women being harassed at the top level of City Agencies. I knew some of the men involved. I began to wonder what was about them that made them think that the position they were in entitled them to take any women who happened to be in proximity for their immediate sexual gratification?

For at least some men there seems to be a confusion with the power inherent in their job position and what that entitles them to. Is it a purely neurotic need to transfer that power to sexual satisfaction to make it complete? I can’t answer that. What I do know is that women should not have to put up with the distorted maniacal view that power entitles men to harass women to satisfy a sexual urge. Unfortunately there are just to many men who need to learn that.

As women come into the positions of power will they have to learn that as well? It is also why I am not surprised by the Strauss Kahn revelations. Been going on forever. Mostly the victims shut-up. This one didn’t. How many women out there could add to these stories? And why don’t they? Anyway here comes the 3XXX Circus. Do you think our suppressed sexual fantasies arrived on the Mayflower?