ELLEN GOODMAN

Ellen Goodman, educated at Radcliffe College, worked as a reporter for Newsweek and the Detroit Free Press. Since 1967 she has written for the Boston Globe, and since 1972 her column has been nationally syndicated. The essay that we reprint appeared in the Boston Globe in October 1991.

The Reasonable Woman Standard

Since the volatile mix of sex and harassment exploded under the Capitol dome, it hasn’t just been senators scurrying for cover. The case of the professor and judge has left a gender gap that looks more like a crater.

We have discovered that men and women see this issue differently. Stop the presses. Sweetheart, get me rewrite.

On the Today show, Bryant Gumbel asks something about a man’s right to have a pinup on the wall and Katie Couric says what she thinks of that. On the normally sober MacNeil/Lehrer hour the usual panel of legal experts doesn’t break down between left and right but between male and female.

‘Professor Anita Hill, of the University of Oklahoma Law School, accused Clarence Thomas of sexually harassing her while he was her supervisor. The accusations were made before the Senate Judiciary Committee in hearings to confirm Thomas’s appointment to a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. During the televised hearings, several senators were widely regarded as having treated Hill badly. [—Ed.]

On a hundred radio talk shows, women are sharing experiences and men are asking for proof. In ten thousand offices, the order of the day is the nervous joke. One boss asks his secretary if he can still say “good morning,” or is that sexual harassment. Heh, heh. The women aren’t laughing.

Okay boys and girls, back to your corners. Can we talk? Can we hear?

The good news is that women have stopped rolling their eyes at each other and started speaking out. The bad news is that we may each assume the other gender not only doesn’t understand but can’t understand. “They don’t get it” becomes “they can’t get it.”

Let’s start with the fact that sexual harassment is a concept as new as date rape. Date rape, that should-be oxymoron, assumes a different perspective on the part of the man and the woman. His date, her rape. Sexual harassment comes with some of the same assumptions. What he labels sexual, she labels harassment.

This produces what many men tend to darkly call a “murky” area of the law. Murky however is a step in the right direction. When everything was clear, it was clearly biased. The old single standard was [a] male standard. The only options a working woman had were to grin, bear it, or quit.

Sexual harassment rules are based on the point of view of the victim, nearly always a woman. The rules ask, not just whether she has been physically assaulted, but whether the environment in which she works is intimidating or coercive. Whether she feels harassed. It says that her feelings matter.

This, of course, raises all sorts of hackles about women’s feelings. 10 women’s sensitivity. How can you judge the sensitivity level of every single woman you work with? What’s a poor man to do?

But the law isn’t psychiatry. It doesn’t adapt to individual sensitivity levels. There is a standard emerging by which the courts can judge these cases and by which people can judge them as well. It’s called “the reasonable woman standard.” How would a reasonable woman interpret this? How would a reasonable woman behave?

This is not an entirely new idea, although perhaps the law’s belief in the reasonableness of women is. There has long been a “reasonable man” in the law not to mention a “reasonable pilot,” a “reasonable innkeeper,” a “reasonable train operator.”

Now the law is admitting that a reasonable woman may see these situations differently than a man. That truth — available in your senator’s mailbag — is also apparent in research. We tend to see sexualized situations from our own gender’s perspective. Kim Lane Scheppele, a political science and law professor at the University of Michigan, summarizes the miscues this way: “Men see the sex first and miss the coercion. Women see the coercion and miss the sex.”

Does that mean that we are genetically doomed to our double vision? Scheppele is quick to say no. Our justice system rests on the belief that one person can get in another’s head, walk in her shoes, see things from another perspective. And so does our hope for change.

If a jury of car drivers can understand how a “reasonable pilot” 15 would see one situation, a jury of men can see how a reasonable woman would see another event. The crucial ingredient is empathy.

Check it out in the office tomorrow. He’s coming on, she’s backing off, he keeps coming. Read the body language. There’s a Playboy calendar on the wall and a PMS joke in the boardroom and the boss is just being friendly. How would a reasonable woman feel?

At this moment, when the air is crackling with hostility and consciousness-raising has the hair sticking up on the back of many necks, guess what? Men can “get it.” Reasonable men.

Topics for Critical Thinking and Writing

1.         Goodman is a journalist, which means in part that her writing is lively. Point to two or three sentences that you would not normally find in a textbook, and evaluate them. (Example: “Okay boys and girls, back to your corners,” para. 5.) Are the sentences you have selected effective? Why, or why not?

2.         Why does Goodman describe date rape as a “should-be oxymoron” (para. 7)?

3.         In paragraphs 11 and 12 Goodman speaks of “the reasonable woman standard.” In recent years several cases have come to the courts in which women have said that they are harassed by posters of nude women in the workplace. Such posters have been said to create an intimidating, hostile, or offensive environment.” (a) What do you think Goodman’s opinion of these cases would be? (b) Imagine that you are a member of the jury deciding such a case. What is your verdict? Why?

4.         According to Goodman’s account of the law (paras. 8—13), the criterion for sexual harassment is whether the “reasonable woman” would regard the “environment” in which she works (or studies) as “intimidating” or ~~coercive,” thus causing her to “feel harassed.” In a 500-word essay describe three hypothetical cases, one of which you believe clearly involves sexual harassment, a second that clearly does not, and a third that is a borderline case.