This Is <i> Not</i> the Final Word on Sexual Harassment

Burned out yet on the topic of sexual harassment? After all, we’ve been deluged by it for nearly two years.

Those awful Hill/Thomas hearings in the fall of ‘91--who could forget them? Tailhook, Newport Beach cops. So many stories, so much argument, so many bad feelings. And just when the fuss was dying down, the Spur Posse rode into town, airing its tawdry linen all over the place.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the whole nagging topic just dried up and blew away?

Oh, but then what would we argue about?

How about the concept of men as victims? Like a leaky faucet, this notion is dripping into the spongy social conscience: Men are victimized by women who wear short skirts. Drip . Men are victimized by women’s decisions to continue or terminate pregnancies. Drip. Men are victimized by women who have custody of the kids. Drip. Men are victimized by women who turn them down for dates. Drip. Men are victimized by the onerous, narrow roles society insists upon. Drip.

It’s almost enough to make you forget that sexual harassment continues around the land, in small and large ways, and that the victims are--sorry to be so retro, here--overwhelmingly female.

The other day, at a seaside cafe, I met a young woman whose story reminded me how insidious and prevalent sexual harassment continues to be. She asked that I not use her name, nor the name of the place she used to work since she hasn’t yet decided if she will look for another job in Los Angeles. She doesn’t want to ruin her chances of finding work by attaching her name to such troubles. She doesn’t want to get sued.

She was tall and slight, in a washed silk shirt and white jeans. Her long auburn hair fell in ringlets around her freckled face. She looked like a cousin, maybe, of a young Jackie Onassis--very pretty, much younger looking than her 29 years.

She was raised in a small town in Louisiana and moved to L.A. four years ago.

She wanted to work in the entertainment industry--who doesn’t?--and eventually found a job assisting a pair of editors in a small house that does post-production work for television commercials.

“It was a good job,” she said. “Lots of flexibility and responsibility.” With overtime, she was pulling down close to $40,000 a year.

She had been at the job for three or four months before one of the editors she worked for began to bother her.

“He would grab me, try to kiss me. I would say, ‘No. Stop it.’ And he would say, ‘You’re just frigid.’

“I’m the type of person who tries to make reason. I would say, ‘Why are you doing this? You have a girlfriend.’ Finally, I told him, ‘Don’t touch me, don’t grab me, leave me alone!’ Then I was trying to do my job and trying to get away from him. He’d always say, ‘What’s wrong with you? Is something going on outside work?’ The situation got out of hand. Once, he came up and just grabbed my breasts.

“I would try not to offend him, just because I had to work so closely with him. It got worse and worse. I thought I could control the situation, but I was wrong, definitely.”

She wasn’t the only one in the office receiving unwanted attention, she said. Special torture was reserved for the company’s receptionist, who was frequently commanded to sit on one of the editors’ laps.

“She would cry every day,” said the assistant. “She was really abused mentally, too. She went to the comptroller and complained. The comptroller told the owners, and they reprimanded the editor. Then the editor totally trashed her to other people. Then she got laid off because she had a bad attitude.”

This, eventually, was the assistant’s fate as well.

She couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep and had a hard time functioning well on the job. The editors decided she was incompetent.

“The thing was,” she said, sounding bewildered, “I had become incompetent.”

On her last day, the editor who had plagued her with sexual propositions took her to lunch. “If you sleep with me,” he said, “I can get you a job . . . You know you want me. “

The assistant left the company in June. She was being considered for another job when the boss at the new company telephoned her at home to ask her out. “This is a personal call,” he explained. “I try to keep my personal life separate from business.”

Funny thing, though.

She turned him down, and even though he tries to keep his personal life separate from business, he never called back about the job.

Hey, who could blame him?

She probably hurt his feelings.

Drip.