October 21, 2017

So last night, nearly 35 years after the fact, I finally told my mother what happened when I was a senior in college. She said, on cue, “what were you going to a man’s office for after business hours?” Now in my 50s I have the vocabulary to explain, which I did, patiently and (actually) kindly. In fact, I said, the tuition our family paid purchased an expectation that I would be helped, not assaulted, by a representative of the university. Like Weinstein’s victims, I expected to have a professional encounter based on my education, skills, and potential, not a personal one, based on my body.

My mother, a libertarian who voted for the current president, thinks that people shouldn’t put their faith in institutions and I appreciate her perspective. But to prevent a political argument I explained my views on the responsibility of institutions by differentiating my experience from current campus demands about speech and safety and offense. In paying tuition, I said, I did not purchase the right to be shielded from offensive views or to be given first-rate mentoring or even to be saved from my own behavioral tendencies (I partied quite a bit as an undergraduate). I did purchase the right not to be physically assaulted by a representative of the university in a position of trust when I was seeking career advice.

In a gesture perhaps of sympathy, my mother responded that her mother had advised her always to carry around a large hat pin for these situations. Sound advice, I responded, to enable escape, but it doesn’t address the economic problem of thwarting women’s professional ambition. Being assaulted made me doubt myself. I never told anyone for many years and so nobody told me that I had done nothing wrong. There was no reason I shouldn’t have gone to his office. Of course I should have felt free to ask for help and advice.

So many of the #MeToo assaults I’ve been reading have occurred to women in the workplace: real estate agents showing homes and apartments; secretaries being asked to work weekends; sales representatives at out-of-town conferences; writers on assignment; veterinarians called to secluded farms, maids in hotel rooms. Why aren’t there more women running the world? Because on the way to the top you have to go to meetings after 5:00 and sometimes you have to ask a man in power for help. And often the physical and emotional costs aren’t worth it.

A key aspect of the Harvey Weinstein case is that the women he assaulted were ambitious — nothing wrong with that! — and saw the powerful organization behind him. He put himself forward as representing institutional power. It has become clear in recent days that investors in his company had little idea the extent to which he was abusing the trust of the organization. Aside from the costs of hush money and legal settlement, assaulting women instead of investing in their talent seems like a very poor business strategy.

I didn’t ask my mother if she preferred that I would have told her or what she would have done about it. I wish I had had someone to tell and because of that I’ve worked to be a mentor, to teach others how to speak up and what to say. Repeat after me, I said to mother, “I’m sorry this happened to you.” “I’m sorry this happened to you,” she said. “But get a hat pin.”