Editors' Note and Acknowledgments: On Silencing Women

Abstract

Editors' Note and Acknowledgments On Silencing Women / / Hfhe silence is broken, as well as our hearts," Barbara Mikulski told L· the United States Senate on October 15, 1991, before she voted against confirmation of Clarence Thomas as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.1 Only the last part of this statement is absolutely true. Although the issue of sexual harassment received more serious national attention than the Second Women's Movement could ever have mustered in this decade, Thomas's subsequent confirmation will probably have a chilling effect on women coming forward with charges of sexual harassment . The reception given Anita Hill's testimony, in contrast to that of Thomas, proves once again that women's voices are simply not heard with the same authority or credibility as those of men. Instead, sex-stereotypical views about Anita Hill's testimony (why did she wait so long?) and person (was she simply unstable or a spurned woman?) dominated the thinking of all those voting for confirmation. Had Hill charged the Senate Judiciary Committee with a "high-tech rape" of her as Thomas charged he was a victim of a "high-tech lynching," her words would not have had the same impact as his. Women's voices are simply not heard in the same authoritative way as men's, especially on issues involving their sexuality. In this fashion women are silenced even before they speak out. The silence of and the silencing of women remains a major stumbling block for obtaining full citizenship for women in the United States. These two types of "silences" are based on the fact that women in the Unites States, at least, do not speak about their legal and public needs, their private desires, and their fears honestly or repeatedly enough to be heard. And even when they do, men appear to have a difficult time listening to women's voices—both literally and figuratively. This fact was poignantly recognized in a full-page ad in the New York Times on November 17,1991, endorsed by hundreds of African-American women who, with justified anger in wake of the confirmation of Thomas Clarence as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, said: We know that the presence of Clarence Thomas on the Court will be continually used to divert attention from historic struggles for social justice through suggestions that the presence of a Black man on the Supreme Court constitutes an assurance that the rights of African 1992 Editors' Note and Acknowledgments Americans will be protected. Clarence Thomas' public record is ample evidence this will not be true. Further, the consolidation of a conservative majority on the Supreme Court seriously endangers the rights of all women, poor and working class people and the elderly. The seating of Clarence Thomas is an affront not only to AfricanAmerican women and men, but to all people concerned with social justice. We are particularly outraged by the racist and sexist treatment of Professor Anita Hill, an African-American woman who was maligned and castigated for daring to speak publicly of her own experience of sexual abuse. The malicious defamation of Professor HUl insulted all women of African descent and sent a dangerous message to any woman who might contemplate a sexual harassment complaint. We speak here because we recognize that the media are now portraying the Black community as prepared to tolerate both the dismantling of affirmative action and the evil of sexual harassment in order to have any Black man on the Supreme Court. We want to make clear that the media have ignored or distorted many AfricanAmerican voices. We will not be silenced. Many have erroneously portrayed the allegations against Clarence Thomas as an issue of either gender or race. As women of African descent, we understand sexual harassment as both. We further understand that Clarence Thomas outrageously manipulated the legacy of lynching in order to shelter himself from Anita Hill's allegations. To deflect attention away from the reality of sexual abuse in African women's lives, he trivialized and misrepresented this painful part of African-American people's history. This country, which has a long legacy of racism and sexism, has never taken the sexual abuse...