9-18-18
No women served on the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991
Breaking Newstags: Clarence Thomas, sexual harassment, Anita Hill, Brett Kavanaugh, Sexual Assalt, Christine Blasey Ford
In 1991, Patty Murray sat in her living room watching Anita Hill testify during the Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.
Murray, then a Washington state senator, was appalled by what she saw — an all-male Senate Judiciary Committee hurling insensitive questions at Hill about Thomas’s alleged sexual harassment.
“You testified this morning,” Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said, “that the most embarrassing question involved — this is not too bad — women’s large breasts. That is a word we use all the time. That was the most embarrassing aspect of what Judge Thomas had said to you.”
Like millions of other women across the country, Murray wondered how Hill would have been treated if there were women on the Judiciary Committee. Later, at a neighborhood party, there was only one subject women wanted to talk about: Hill’s treatment by all those men.
comments powered by Disqus
News
- Erika Lee and Carol Anderson on Myths and Realities of Race in American History
- Banished Podcast: Sunshine State's Descent Into Darkness
- Caroline Dodds Pennock on The Indigenous Americans Who Visited Europe
- Why Can't the Democrats Build a Governing Majority? (Review of Timothy Shenk)
- Victimhood and Vengeance: The Reactionary Roots of Christian Nationalism