again, all of this takes the conversation about who you are and what you care about. so i do not give it very often generic advice because i think advice ought to be individualized and specific. you are a journalist. do you want to win a pulitzer prize? >> [inaudible] >> how are you going to go about doing it? are you writing now? so you have already started on the road to your pulitzer prize. >> yes. [laughter] >> what is your next step? >> to continue to expand and continue to talk to people like yourself. >> what would make you the happiest? >> i am very interested in issues that affect women. i like to look at all issues from a gender perspective.

might thesis was on human trafficking and how it affects women and girls. >> have you thought about turning that into a book? >> yes. >> have you allied aid? >> yes. [laughter] >> see? you are already there. [applause] those are the kinds of conversations that i like to have. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> that is just the beginning of our conversation. >> good afternoon. it is an honor to hear you. i was hoping that you could tell us a little bit about the experience of getting the voicemail message a year ago. virginia thomas, clarence thomas' wife left a voicemail on

your machine, i think asking for an olive branch but basically asking for your apology. what was it like to hear it? how does it sit with you a year later? >> i will be honest. i did not know that it was her. i thought it was a prank. my first description of it was that it was bizarre. either way if it was a prank or her. as you know, it became a news story. but then, honestly, once it became a news story, i remember within 24, 36, or maybe 48 hours, i got about 500 e-mails about this, how inappropriate was. but what really stuck with me is how passionate people were

writing about it. honestly, i started talking to people. kathleen was one of them. emma jordan at georgetown was 1. i said this issue still resonates with people. [applause] do not let the moment be captured by something like her voicemail. let's take the passion ourselves. and shape it. and out of this came this conference that happened last week. i am going to be going to detroit. i am going to visit with an all- girls academy in detroit to talk about issues that they are facing. that is my reaction to that voice mail. [cheers and applause]

>> i think we are only going to take the questions of the speakers that are in line. we are running a little bit over time. >> i will answer in short answers. >> i just want to say that when the hearings were going on years ago, i was in hollywood working for a production company. can you imagine what i heard? "you are making the holding up." what astounds me is that recently i learned that there were people who could have corroborated your evidence, and they were not allowed to speak. i think how this resonates to modern-day. i think about the banking crisis, and i think about all the regular people who really have a little say over what information gets out. joe biden decided 20 years ago

now we are going to cut the hearing short. had any of the bankers been held accountable for what they have done? has anyone been held accountable for how they cut you off? for someone like me, when i was 30 years old and i had no idea that there were people willing to testify for you and to tell of their experiences that were similar to yours, it shocks me. i read a lot, too. i am just astounded that the committee work that goes on in the senate when there is usually one man in power who says "we are going to stop it." that sort of thing needs to end. [applause] [laughter] >> i will say that the individual who was ready -- one woman got out of a hospital bed

ready to testify. these were not people that i had called. these were people who had come on their own to testify. yet, it is a travesty. it is a travesty because there was information that was lost. that testimony was not a part of the public record. that is a travesty. it is emblematic of the stories that get lost. but it was also a travesty for those women, personal. it was an affront to them. so, how do we make sure that that does not happen, that we do not just this mess -- "oh, there is another woman so we are not going to bother to call them" -- how do we make sure that we are all heard from?

in a way, how do we make sure that all of our processes include our voices? this is a time where we are dealing with those issues. you are right. that is not just something that happened 20 years ago. we are constantly dealing with how to have a really inclusive democracy. we are at that time. we have to hold our leadership accountable. including president obama. but we also have to hold ourselves accountable. we have to be accountable. we cannot sit back and say we are going to wait for the president to do something or my senator to do something. each of us have a responsibility. look at all of the powerful men and women who are here today. what can we do to make sure that

every voice is heard? that is the question that i will leave you with. i am going to make it more personal. what are you individually going to do to make sure that someone who does not have a voice gets heard, considered, and when policy gets made, that their stories are accounted for and included in the decisions that are made? thank you. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] [cheers and applause]

>> would the first panel please come up and stand? could you all be seated? we are going to go right to the third panel. there is going to be a giveaway at the end of the third panel, so i hope that you can stay. hello, everybody. i am a codeshare -- [applause]

i am a co-chair of this conference along wiand the modef the next panel. i want to tell you that when i walked in and i saw that everything was actually happening after all these months of planning, i got the feeling that it must be the way and architect feels who draws a beautiful building and then goes away for a year and comes back and there is the building. we did not go away for a year, but we worked very hard. seen it take place is really quite astonishing. you have met many of the committee members. i have to tell you that the one who built this building is cindy greenberg. [applause] and the way she has worked and the attention to detail and the team she gathered to make this

happen is really fantastic. if you want to put on a conference of two dozen people, hire cin -- 2000 people, hire cindy. i am a lawyer, a partner in new york. my boss is here which is wonderful. i am an activist. i am one of those slick lawyers that are inspector was referring to in the tape this morning. as a long time practitioner of employment discrimination law, and i want to tell you and _ that not only did anita lose in the senate in 1991, she would have also lost in a court of law.

i can prove that to you by referring to a case that was occurring at the same time. i am not telling you that is any -- that is confidential, but it gives you a flavor of what the law was like in 1991. lisa was a woman who worked for bell atlantic which is now verizon, repairing telephone lines. she worked out of a garage with thatl-makele crew tormented her every day. it would have been bad enough for her accept a day also singled her out. they drew crude pictures of a headless woman, women with their legs spread in the air, pictures of women having sex with animals.

they left them in terminal boxes that she was assigned to work on so she would find them. she felt threatened by the depictions. she said it is not like i have a sense of humor, but this stuff is not funny. they ridiculed her appearance and said she complained because she was on the rag. bell atlantic not only did nothing to stop it but their supervisors joined in. bell atlantic lawyers argued that none of this was illegal. it was just boys being boys. and the judge, a federal district court judge, agreed with them and dismissed the case. the supreme court had decided years before that sexual harassment in a hostile

environment was a legal, but that does not change the behavior -- was illegal, but that does not change the behavior of every judge. anita has told you what she went through. lisa described in this case what she went through. women who actually speak up and go public really get punished. they were punished in 1991, punished in 2000, and the sad reality is they are punished in 2011 also. but let me tell you a little bit about how the law has changed. the thing that has changed in the law is there is a definition of "hostile environment discrimination" that is useful. what is actionable is conduct

that is severe or pervasivethatn atmosphere of hostility and misogyny that is severe or pervasive. severe means touching. in a case where there is unwanted touching -- it does not have to be rape, but it has to be serious to have a good case of gender discrimination. i am sorry. i am talking about a good case because i am a lawyer. i was retained a couple of days ago by a woman who works at a major educational institution in this city. she was having dinner with his bought -- with her boss. he could -- he put her hand on his erect. this happened recently at a major educational institution in new york. these things still happen. that is obviously severe.

pervasive is also these days often enough. what anita went through was pervasive high style environment discrimination. what lisa went through was also hostile environment pervasive discrimination. but here is the thing the kind of takes away this legal gift that we have been given, and that is that the behavior has to be unwelcome. and welcome is the door through which -- and welcome -- unwelcome is the door through which defendants and their lawyers walk through to blame the victim. in the cases where these women were claiming they were subjected to pervasive hostile discrimination, they are then subjected to the oldest trick in the book, they asked for it.

she asked for it or she wanted it. why did you send your boss birthday cards or light hearted e-mails if you were bothered by his conduct? why did you get drunk at a holiday party? why did you let your boss come to your room when you were traveling? why did you tell of color jokes? why did you wear a skirt that was so short if you are not a slut? why did you not quit? as kitty and lani said this morning, lawsuits focus on who is telling the truth, but before you get to that point, you have been part of a system that is not your friend and you have been traumatized by a system that is not really geared to ending a bad situation, a bad system at work. i have to tell you with a little bit of cold water that some of my happiest clients are the ones who did not go public, are the ones who settled.

even the ones who decided not to complain at all. that is the sad reality, and that is the reality that i hope this brilliant panel that i am about to introduce will tell us how to fix. [applause] the panel is quite marvelous, as you know. i am going to ask them to come up as i introduce them, and then they will speak for a few minutes, and they may speak from the podium or from the chair. then we will have a question and answer. first is kimberly crenshaw. [cheers and applause] professor crenshaw teaches at ucla and columbia law school,

and i was not referring to either one of those, i must tell you. she is a leading authority in black feminist legal theory and racial law. her articles have appeared in the harvard law review and a number of other important periodicals. her groundbreaking work has traveled globally and was influential in the drafting of the equality clause in the south african constitution. welcome, ms. crenshaw. [cheers and applause] the next of our speakers is virginia valium. professor deleon is a professor of psychology and linguistics right -- valian is a professor of psychology and linguistics right here. her research focuses on language acquisition in two-year-old,

second language acquisition and sex differences in cognition. welcome. [applause] now, this is certainly the moment for which the phrase was created, a woman who needs no introduction. but i am going to introduce her anyway. gloria steinem -- [cheers and applause] you can stand. if it is ok. gloria steinem is a writer, lecturer, editor and feminist activist. she travels in this and other countries as an organizer and lecturer, and is a frequent media spokesperson on issues of

equality. the organizations that gloria has founded or created include ms. magazine, new york magazine, women's action alliance, national women's political caucus, voters for choice. we all have an anita hill moment. many of us have a glorious steinem moment also. welcome to gloria. she is also the world's most famous ex-playboy bunny. [laughter] the next speaker is devin carboy though -- carbato. [applause] devin recently served as the vice dean of the law faculty. he is currently an associate provost at ucla. he teaches constitutional criminal procedure,

constitutional law, a critical race theory and other subjects. he writes in the area of critical race theory employment discrimination and has published in major journals and spoken in all the best places for the last number of years. welcome to devin. and our last speaker is julie zellinger. [applause] welcome, julie. julia's 18-years old. [applause] she hasn't spoken to 1000 people too often before. she was born in ohio and is in her first year at barnard. she is the founder -- go ahead. [applause] she is the founder and editor of

the f-bomb, a feminist blog and community for young adults who care about their rights and want to be heard. they pose to the articles of teenagers and college aged feminists from all over the world about issues of culture and self image while also promoting open dialogue about issues like politics and social justice. julie and the f-bomb have been featured in media outlets such as more magazine, women's day and others. welcome, julie. [applause] i think that some of you want to speak from the podium. i am going to invite him to come to the podium and i am eager to hear what everybody says. -- kim to come to the podium and i am eager to hear what everybody says. >> every woman who had a moment

in which they were changed by anita hill's courage had a moment themselves. clarence thomas denounced the hearings as a high-tech lynching. two of us began working the phones, trying to find african americans, black men in particular, to come to washington, d.c., and to speak back against this breathtaking appropriation of the tragic history of racial terrorism. [applause] two african-american men showed up. one is here today. they came to join the men's brigade and found out they were it. [laughter] they spend long days going on every television show, network,

a radio show, looking for a counter-perspective, to remind people of our history, that anita hill was not the finger- pointing person people were framing her to be, but an african-american woman who story of workplace sexual abuse should not have been a mystery to most african americans. after fighting what we thought was the fight of our lives, we emerged from the capitol building to find ourselves surrounded by members of various communities whose image was hanging in the balance, african- american women. they were surrounding the capital. their hands were held. they were singing songs and praying to god for delivery from this particular challenge to clarence thomas is elevation to the supreme court.

we were shaken. we were disturbed. but we pushed our way through to a taxi, where talk radio was blasting a further harangue against the woman we had come to support. our taxi driver, an african immigrant, nearly drove off the road while making his point that this black woman was a traitor to our community. bent but not out, our experience was duplicated when thousands of black women feminists, and then and women across the country, were spurred into action, appalled by the way that anita hill was being framed by both the mainstream press as well as the black press, and by the almost complete absence of any critical commentary that address the introspection of race and gender stereotypes that were obviously at play. the stereotypes were not solely

the product of white imagination. that was made abundantly clear in the days following the hearing. the auguste new york times printed an op ed by orlando patterson, a noted scholar, who refrained clarence thomas' perjury by suggesting that anita hill was herself a perjurer by a responding the way she did to what was a cultural form of courting. thus, her being african-american was a defacto consent to her having been harassed.

three black feminists and a manifesto that captured the rage of 1000 -- penned a manifest of the captured the rage of 1000 black women, perhaps more. they insisted on an analysis that look to the over laping consequences of power. these black feminists, forced to buy their way into discourse, staked out a claim at the scene of the crime, the new york times. in the space of six weeks, these women raised nearly $50,000 to assemble 1600 signatures to pay for a new york times ad that was published november 17th, 1991. it was called with women -- it

was called, "black women in defense of ourselves." the ad called out the and productive framing of this debacle as something about race or as something about gender. they went further to broaden their critique to the entire new conservative agenda that was riding the coattails of clarence thomas on to the supreme court. now, this manifesto still stands among black feminists as one of the most poignant moments in our own true speaking to power, not just the power of the judiciary, the republican party, the white house, the media, but also the distorting power of rhetorical frames that emerge from a gender or race based narrative that ignore the interface between the two. what could have been, what should have been a powerful

intersection of coalition to defeat the elevation of this anti-equality, anti-civil rights, a neo-conservative sexual harassment to the supreme court ended up being splintered into an ineffective political effort, something i call a self- inflicted injury that continues to fester and metastasized into this right-wing juggernaut that the court represents today. so, calling for the politics of anti-racism and sexual -- sexual harassment a separate and distinct with the former being male and the latter being white. both of these moves were underwritten by the erasure of black women's political agencies across time, a political sensibility that was the foundation of both the civil rights movement and the mobilization against sexual harassment. we suspected then, we know now

with the help of the brilliant book "at the dark and of the st.," that rosa parks first act of courage was not sitting on that bus. her first act of courage was refusing to accept the likely acquittal of the gang of white men who raped a black woman with impunity. we know that it was not the sole stirring oratory of martin luther king that created the infrastructure of the black movement. it was black women who paved the way by taking up the dangerous work of defending black women against sexual terrorism. this work blended feminism and anti-racism at the very foundation of the civil rights movement. it was not an afterthought. yet, this memory was erased. bequeathing to clarence thomas the cingular trope of lynching

-- singular tightrope of lynching. at the same time, the erasure of black women's foundational role in establishing sexual harassment was forgotten, erased from memory, as critics claimed it was a white thing or supporters claimed it was an all wins thing. there is a truth to that it is a woman's thing, but the sexual harassment history that was linked to racial justice was erased. the fact that it was black women who were the plaintiffs in sexual harassment empowered the centuries of tradition of sexual abuse, an act of unmitigated power, a recognition that was finally given license to express

of the civil rights movement. when african-american men said do not call me boy anymore, african-american women said, i do not have to accept sexual predation anymore. now, have these histories formed a common knowledge? have we all been able to beat back the claims that anita hill was acting white by telling the stories of all the african american women throughout time who had resisted sexual abuse? if we had been able to lay down the path that anita hill had walked, i dare say, in fact, i think it is clear, clarence thomas would not be on the supreme court today. [applause] so, the question is how have we fair 20 years later? we know that sexual harassment is a worldwide issue. we know about the growth in

women's political leadership, the financial clout of emily's list. i have to take sexual harassment training at my university. but the question is, what is the legacy of speaking the truth that were buried, linking s to -- leading us to broader categories. perhaps we asked too much of this moment, too much to draw the analogy across all of these movements that seem to be so obvious the implicated. let's just as the lesser question. can we say there is no longer a need for black women to buy our way into the discourse about us? to insert agencies into the foundation of these movements that represent us? to rest comfortably in the recognition that this costly lesson about the opposition between feminism and anti-racism will never happen again? can we say that we think

intersection aline now? well, i wish i could say the answer to that is yes, but the legacy is not so celebratory. let's just look at a few things that happened immediately. in the immediate aftermath, there was something called the million man march, an african- american political mobilization that was notable for disinviting half of the constituency that it was purporting to represent, women and gay men. we know it in the debate about mike tyson, the fact that women who opposed him were called traitors. black women are still cast as snappy headed hos in the imus debacle. the racism in the shirley imus affair -- surely [unintelligible] affair. when we are the defaulters in

the subprime scandal, the eligible next day at home welfare moms -- illegitimate stay at home welfare moms, the co-conspirators who make up the fastest growing casualties in america's endless war on drugs, and now, the manipulative, accusing, money hungry rape accuser, the real woman who steps out from behind a facade of the hard-working immigrant, the woman who steals our resources, our good will, are transnational peace, our national pride. so yes, black women still find themselves defending their name, often alone, sometimes against france, almost always against those. s, against france -- friend'

almost always against foes. it is important to remember how the clarence thomas high-tech lynching surfed right wing and. it consequences can be seen today. programs targeted at black men and boys will trickle-down to black women and girls. but the real dividend here has been the elevation of family formation and individualism as the real source of inequality, squashing structural remedies and facilitating redistribution of wealth up and up. it is still relevant today not simply as a defense of black women, but as social justice advocacy that draws attention to the unfortunate erasures that create opportunity for the disease of retrenchment to

flourish and metastasize into this thing called the political center. i want to and by telling you that i still have my i believe anita hill t-shirt. i thought about wearing it today. 20 years leaves the mind clear. it does not do as well for the body. so i did not try to get into that. [laughter] i want to say that we want to talk and think about what is next. what needs to be memorialized, organized and projected through the culture, through the networks, through our politics. some of us were connected by the african american policy forum to address the wounds suffered at the release of dominique strauss-kahn, to ponder what to do about how little these lessons have saturated our culture, how quickly a woman's claims were dismissed, here and also in france.

we talk about the what the message seems to be, which is just get over it. we decided that we have had it. we are not over it. we will not get over it. we will not let our society get over it. indeed, until we say it is over, it is not over. [applause] so, it strikes me that this is not just a tag line for that case, but the cap -- a tag line for the entire political halter that wants to tell us the we're now post-feminist -- political culture that once to tell us that we are now post-feminist, post-racial. we are free agents living and dying by our own wits. the movement out of which we have all come are dead or yesterday's news. to those that say that, i want us to look around and see the power pulsating in here and out

there and tell them, all of them, clarence thomas, dominique strauss-kahn, wall street, the world bank, the whole lot of them, it is not over. [applause] >> hello. i'm going to address two questions. one is, how far have we come and, where should we go next? in 1991, a new york times poll at the time of the senate hearings showed that 47% of people thought anita hill's charges were false. 21% thought they were probably

true. 32% were undecided. only 23% thought that thomas should be confirmed if the charges against him were true. on the other hand, if there was doubt about whether the charges were true, a 56% thought he should be confirmed. most people were either undecided or did not believe professor hill, and therefore gave justice thomas the benefit of the doubt. so the people, the people, had about the same views of the matter that their senators had. 75% of the people polled also thought that the senate judiciary committee had treated professor hill fairly. we should keep in mind the role of political ideologies. the senate voted 52-48, as you

know. of the 52 who voted to confirm thomas, a leaven were democrats and the rest were republicans -- 11 were democrats and the rest were republicans. most of those democrats came from southern states. of the 48 who voted against confirmation, only two were republicans and one of them later changed his affiliation. in that same new york times poll, 38% of the women said that they had been the object of sexual advances, propositions or unwanted sexual discussions from man who supervised them or could affect their position at work. that figure is more or less the same now. depending on the steady, somewhere between 30%-40% of women report having been sexually harassed at work. 90% of the women in that poll who said they had experienced

some form of harassment did not report it. that figure is lower now, but it is still the case that most people, women or men, who experienced harassment do not reported. we have learned a lot about harassment since 1991. first, we know that although both men and women experience harassment, most harassment affects women. 31% of women at work, according to a recent poll, and 7% of men, say that they have experienced harassment. among women, harassment is greatest for single women between the ages of 25-44. that was the age of professor hill at the time. we know that all the harassment of women can occur in all types of organizations, it is more

likely to occur in organizations that have inadequate complaint procedures, that have a small percentage of women -- for example, firefighters, police officers, and especially a small percentage of women in positions of power. third, we know that although anyone can harass, men are much more likely to be harassed there is than women are -- harassers than women are. 90% are men, and 40%-50% of them are harassing men. they implicitly perceive a close relation between sex and power. there is an interesting experiment showing that men are

identified as likely to harass based on their answers to a questionnaire are also more likely to rape a woman -- rate a woman as sexually attractive if they have been primed by seeing words related to power than are men who score as not likely to harass. in other words, if you have a tendency in the harassment direction, you're more likely -- and you are a man, you're more likely to see a woman as sexually appealing if power is in fact -- invoked. so, it is not that women are attractive and that is why they are harassed. they are harassed because men who harass see them as

attractive to to power differentials or due to a desire to create a power difference, and because they are unlikely to suffer any consequences from their harassment. finally, it is still the case that most people, but now is down to about 62%, who experience harassment of any sort, most people do not report it and most people continue in their workplace. so, we know a lot, not enough, but we know a lot about sexual harassment. there is some reason to be optimistic about the future, given the many efforts to put the procedures into place for defining in maintaining professional behavior in the workplace. but we probably need to do much more, and there have been several calls to action today already. at the time of the confirmation hearings, i, like others who

have spoken today, tried desperately and unsuccessfully to get a senator to talk to experts on sexual harassment and have them testify. exactly the information that then senator biden, a chair of the senate judiciary committee, should -- decided should not be presented, information on how harassment works and the enormous response to harassment, both of which were present in professor hill's testimony, was information that the senate and the american people needed to hear. but biden decided that no context would be permitted. we need to do more to educate lawyers, lawmakers and judges. people have made good strides in that direction, but we need to do much more so that everyone understands how gender works and

the conditions that give rise to biased decision making. people this morning spoke about how quickly decisions were made. one thing we know from cognitive psychology is that fast decisions tend to rely on stereotypes rather than to fully examine the evidence. sexual harassment is an egregious abuse of power in the workplace, but there are many more subtle instances where those without power, women and people of color, are disadvantaged. these instances are on the present. they are -- on the present. they are subtle. they tended not to be recognized even though they culminate in the paucity of women and people of color in positions of status and achievement. in my book, i discussed reasons

how few arethe fueew, they, women or people of color in positions of status or prestige. the most recent failure of the judiciary to understand how gender works at work was the supreme court decision not to allow a class-action suit against wal-mart to go forward. just as lawmakers in 1991 did not understand sexual harassment of women and women's reactions to it, lawmakers and the judiciary today do not understand how women are disadvantaged in the workplace. in particular, they do not understand that employers can have good intentions, which is not to say that walmart has good intentions -- [laughter]

but nevertheless systematically create situations in which it is harder for women and people of color to a dance compared to white men. cognitive psychologists -- advance compared to white men. cognitive psychologists have demonstrated that people with the best intentions, including women, perceive women to be less competent than men. our real belief in a meritocracy buffers us from seeing the effect of our behaviors'. i will give you a very short precis of what we know about gender in the workplace, starting with a common, a small example. the meeting. a meeting where a woman makes a comment and everyone ignores the comment. 10 minutes later, a joke, to pick a name at random, makes the st. -- joe, to pick a name at

random, makes the same comment, and everybody says joe, what a great idea. this is one of women's favorite examples because it happens all the time and because people generally do not know what to about it when it happens. if they say something about it to one of their well-intentioned colleagues, they are likely to be told something like to not make a mountain out of a molehill. do not sweat the small stuff. save your ire for the things that really matter. and that is where an important notion from sociology comes in, the idea of the accumulation of advantage. the way that you become successful is by parlaying small gains into bigger gains. if you do not get your fair share of those small gains,

being listened to in a meeting, having your accomplished wreck -- accomplishments recognized, then you do not have the opportunity to make large gains. mountains are molehills, piled one on top of the other. each of those molehills matters. overtime, they accumulate to give women a disadvantage compared to men. is as if men get more interest on their achievements than women do. both men and women are likely to underrate the woman's performance in a task that requires competence. both women and men are likely to seek a woman who is successful as less likable -- successful asho is no less likable than a man who is

successful. both men and women are likely to sabotage a one woman who succeeds at a task we would associate with men. so all the men are particularly the aggressors in sexual harassment -- although men are particularly the aggressors in sexual-harassment, in the everyday events that advantage and disadvantage men and women, both men and women, to roughly the same extent as our experiments determine, slightly overweight man and underrate women, resulting in further -- over-rate men and under-rate women, resulting in further and further disparity. women stay in lower positions for longer periods of time. not making partner in a law firm, not making tenured

professor in the university. what can we do about this? there has been some progress, as people this morning emphasized. there has been progress, but we continue to have a situation which is unacceptable. so, what are we going to do about that? i think we need to do two things. first, we need to be much smarter than we have an about how we influence people in power and how we get people into power. so, we need to be much smarter about how to affect people's attitudes and behaviors. we need to educate. as a professor, i have this helpless belief in the power of education. we have to educate the judiciary. we have to educate lawmakers. we have to educate lawyers. there are a lot of efforts in

that direction. i think we need to be much more systematic in our efforts and much more determined in our effort. we need to find the letters that will work. this i get -- levers that will work. the second thing we need to do is form rapid response teams that can influence the media so that people do not have to spend $50,000 to get an ad in the new york times in order to get the facts out. many to make sure that we are influencing and giving good information to the people who actually have the power to spread that information broadly. there are a lot of us in this room. i think we can do it and i think we can do it smarter than we have done it before. thank you. [applause]

>> friends, sisters. the first thing i want to say is yes to everything you have just heard. [applause] here is the bad news. i just recently, a couple of hours ago, got off a plane from california, so if i say things that have already been said, i want you to shout out, and there, done that. ok. here is the good news. because of that, i can tell you that the conference of thousands known as pioneers is as envious of this conference as they are of wall street. [applause] in answer to kathleen's question, i would submit what is

said by feminists in indian country, which is the loss of memory is the source of oppression. everything i have heard in the last hour or so in this conference tells me that you are accumulating an added into each other's reality about what happened in the past, and no one of us really knew all the details. i can only submit as my detail arlen specter was shocked at the amount of opposition he got from women all over the country. as a pro-choice republican, he had the imagination that he was safe in some way. i do not know him, but i happen to cross his path, and he

actually appeal to me as to what he should do about this. i said, you should get up and apologize in public in the same way -- nine [applause] -- the cure has to address the disease and it has to be as public as the horrendous false accusations which you saw in the tape today, right? to this day, to my knowledge, he has not apologized. one of the things that could come out of this conference [laughter] is yet another appeal, because i take the point of the questioner who said its troubles us when there is no justice. it troubles us when we hear that there were witnesses on anita hill's behalf who never came

forward, and we are just learning that now. so, i submit to you that what we can do for each other and for justice most importantly is restore and supplement and extend each other's memory. so, with that in mind, i wonder if you have talked about the women's center at cornell university where the first speak out on sexual harassment was held in 1975, and indeed, where sexual harassment was named, and i wonder if you have already talked about the woman who brought the first such action under the civil rights act of 1964 in which you will remember gender was included almost as a joke. or michelle vincent, whose case

of being raped by her supervisor for two and a half years in order to keep her job caused the supreme court to rule that this was sexual discrimination in 1986. and of course, you have heard kitty can mackinnon. we know we needed her legal mind to enunciate this as sexual discrimination. we noted that with anita hill, the three great pioneers of understanding, protesting and prosecuting sexual harassment or all women of color. there were all african-american women. i hope that we might rethink our easy definition of the second wave of mostly white and middle- class, which renders almost invisible all of the leaders of color who were instrumental in that movement. [applause]

i disproportionately learned feminism from women of color. it was the national women's welfare association that had done a brilliant analysis of the welfare system as a gigantic husband which was jealous and looked under your bed for the shoes of other men. that was the first true feminist analysis of social policy that i had ever heard. it was florence kennedy who said it, after which, i was always at the climax if i had to speak before her. after her, it was elinor holmes norton, and some anymore. it is crucial, because it is by example that we lead.

it is how we behave, who we know, what we say, how we characterize the movement, whether we are in academia or in the media, that is imitated and taken to be accurate by those of around us. it is because of those strong voices that a new immigrant working as a hotel housekeeper knew that she had right to bodily integrity. she knew she had rights. and because she had the courage to come forward, those in another country did the same. true, but lost in the court, or in the legal redress the was available to them, but both have one in the court of public opinion. [applause] the housekeeper one and because other women came forward in another country and said would

happen to them. and she won in much shorter order than be unfair years that anita hill has been required to spend before she is, as she is now, the leave -- believed, honored entrusted by the majority of people in this country. clarence thomas is on the supreme court, but dominique strauss-kahn is never going to be president of france. [applause] however, there are still frontiers of things we do not know. we have learned a lot -- i have learned a lot in the hour-and-a- half i have been at this conference. there are frontiers. i hope we might consider the fact, for instance, that the

u.s. military, which happens to be the largest managed economy in the world -- well, i mean, think about it this way. suppose you were a woman in the military fighting or training next to an 18 or 25-year-old clarence thomas or strauss conn, who had done -- had a gun, and maybe your commanding officer, and that is what is being faced by the women in the military. the department of defense estimates that only about 13% of sexual harassment survivors report the assault in the military. most of the women and one-third of the men who are also sexually assaulted who may be treated, i may say, as women, in the absence of women, much as what happens in prison, they report that the sexual aggressors stock

to them for a long period of time prior to the assault, and they were living with that fear and that tension in close quarters, not just eight hours a day, but 24 hours a day. in 2010, less than 20% of reported cases in the military went to trial. only 13% of supporters -- of survivors reported, and only 20% of those cases went to trial, and of those cases, only 53% of the harassers or the a salters or the rape tests were convicted. sexual assault, in fact, is the leading cause of post-traumatic stress among women veterans, with the result of depression,

stress, high rates of substance abuse and difficulty after discharge. female rape and sexual assault and harassment survivors report a lower satisfaction rate, to put it mildly, with veterans' health services. and treating, just treating the sexual assault within the military costs us $800 million a year in tax dollars. for more, i hope you see the service women's action now our, represented here. are you here? [cheers and applause] a great group, and one that represents women veterans living from all wars with all kinds of imaginative communal healing tactics. but clearly, women and the

military are a frontier for the future of all the questions of sexual harassment. palin to my sisters who are lawyers and under -- bowing to my sisters who are lawyers and understand whether this will be useful not, i hope that in the future we will understand that those crimes that have no reward of money or power in the real world the sense, that have no motive except the need to prove supremacy, perhaps should be called supremacy crimes. it includes domestic violence, which has no other motive except proving power and supremacy. the ctually also includes b crimes of so-called senseless killings of men who go into a

school or a restaurant or a post office and kille senselessly, whether it is the montreal massacre or the scandinavian murder we just saw. these were clearly a man motivated by the need to pursue and complete in their minds the cult of masculinity. they said so in the ways that they explained their crimes. and yet, especially in the school killings in this country, our school killings, the press tends to stay -- to say, what is happening to our children? it is not our children. those crimes are 100% male, 100% white, and 100% non-poor. they are people, who through no fault of theirs, have been born

into a system that tells them that they buy those categories have a right to control other people, and in the presence of other -- i am not trying to do a single factor analysis here -- but in the presence of other influences, it is those people who become so needful, so addicted to power and superiority, that against their own short-term and long-term interests, they go into a public place and murder or kill and murder others. it is the people who feel that when the country is getting out of control, as this country now is, in a sense, it is the --

right now, we have turned against two wars much faster than we turned against the and on. -- against vietnam. in about 20 minutes, we are no longer going to be a majority european american family. we have a proud black family in the white house. we are critical of our financial institutions in a way we never have been before. and i think in a way, the supremacy crimes are something we should think about when we think about the ultra-right wing in this country. because, through no fault of theirs, they also have been born into a structure which has made them think that through right of birth they are entitled to be in control, and we are flipping out of control. we see the response of more funds being bought -- guns being

bought, more people joining racist groups and ultra-right wing groups, more virulent and violent rhetoric, more legislation against everything to do with women's reproductive freedom or personal freedom being proposed by the altar- right wing, and thinking about this, i think it away the paradigm of all violence is what happens in the family. if you consider that the time of a woman whoger for he is about to escape of violent household is that moment just before or after she escapes. she is most likely to be seriously injured or murdered at that moment because she is getting out of control. well, i think many of the crimes we talked about are crimes of

control or supremacy, and we are facing this in a larger sense in the country as well. because the country is getting out of control. therefore, those whose identity rests on control are in full backlash. but, as we would never advise a woman to stay in a violent home, or anyone to stay in a violent home, we are not going to stop. and what we need to understand is two things. there is never just one alternative. there are always many and at least two. one is that we are in a time of danger and we need to protect each other. we need to know that in our hearts. the other is that we are about

to be free and we are not going to stop. those two truths will help us, i believe, whether we look at the microcosm of sexual harassment, or whether we look at the political situation we now face in our country, and the surge toward democracy at last that is viewed by so -- viewed as so dangerous by so few. i'm so proud to be with you in this room at this moment because this tells me that we have the strength to go forward and reach the alternative of individuality, uniqueness, community and freedom. thank you. [applause]

>> good afternoon. i am absolutely thrilled and honored to be here. i remember way back when, as a recent graduate of law school, witnessing the hearings and thinking how inspired i was by anita hill's testimony, and she still continues to inspire me, so thank you for your courage, your commitment commack and your leadership. -- commitment, and your leadership. [applause] and thank you all for being here. i can feel your collective energy and your warmth and it suggests to me that i'm in the right place at the right time, even as i feel completely overwhelmed and intimidated by occupying the same space as these wonderful, brilliant, moving women.

of this panel is, what have we learned in 20 years and what comes next. in the limited time i have, i would like to focus on the what have we learned part. in most pacifically, focus on the question with respect to clarence thomas himself. don't throw things at me when i invoke his name. i would like to suggest we should have known 20 years ago. i hope we understand today that from a progressive perspective, clarence thomas presented us with a political problem. in the context of that moment, we should have known that the trajectory of his jurisprudence would be marked not only in terms of gender and sexuality but in terms of race. to put this in another way, i am hoping we have learned today that are feminist intervention

has to be confused with anti racism in our anti racist intervention has to be infused with a robust feminism. [applause] and that sounds somewhat abstract. i want to make it somewhat to more concrete and -- concrete by giving you a sense of the legal world that his jurisprudence helped to sustain. traditional and fairly moderate civil rights are being eroded. efforts to create new civil rights are being rigorously policed. what has clarence thomas said it? he thinks perfectly clear that roe v wade was wrongly decided. he has described it as previously wrong. this relates to a very cramped

understanding of the axis on which tender subordination occurs. the notion we might think of gender violence as a form of supremacy is completely lost to him. it just as thomas and his colleagues of also limited the right of the stem of gender violence, he has argued that sexual harassment -- he has participated with his colleagues in making it the enormously difficult for women to bring class-action suits to challenge multiple ways in which they experience prejudice. he has been on the wrong side of two significant supreme court cases. the supreme court found that the constitutional amendment that prohibited local municipalities

from passing anti discrimination and violated our clause of the constitution. the supreme court says you cannot, colorado, passed a law that prohibits local government from enacting protective legislation for injustice in the workplace. it reads in part that the amendment constituted a modest attempt by a seemingly tolerant call rod and community to preserve traditional morals against a powerful minority to revise it through the use of the law. more recently, the court struck down texases anti saw the may --

anti-sodomy statute. he said it was silly and would not have voted for it at the same time he made perfectly clear that the statute did not violate rights and founded in the united states constitution. that was an awful lot more that one could say about justice clarence thomas posey jurisprudence. the bottom line is, it is troubling and problematic. by and large, the time of the thomas hearings did not raise questions about what that moment my had suggested these of the jurisprudence. at the end of the day, can we trust this black man to do the right thing as it were with respect to racial justice? that was the question. notwithstanding that the

controversy was deeply gendered and come up de come up implicated a black woman defending herself. the question of what all of this jurisprudence was largely not taken up. the broader point i want to make is that the anti racist moment is not one in which we sought a very thick understanding of gender. now, if it is fair to say the anti races proponents at that moment were insufficiently attended to the way in which thomas posey jurisprudence might be shaped by gender, it is also fair to say that the proponent at that moment were not thinking party death about what thomas would it do in terms of race on the court. that is to say, the controversy

was deeply rationalized and involved a black woman defending herself. the question with respect to what that might mean a with respect to what thomas might do was not an issue that feminists often ask. i think it is fair to say that by and large, the engagement of the moment and did not adequately attended to the ways in which sexual harassment itself is rationalized. as we know, his work in this area has been important in illustrating the racial origins of sexual harassment. i think that part of the store continues to be buried. it is something we have to remember to articulate out loud. the broader point i want to suggest is that the race of

engaging gender -- i wanted to say something about thomas's racial jurisprudence. is important that we understand what he has done on the court there as well. i don't have time to find a case by case articulation of what has transpired. i can give you a quick sense of the narrative that anchors his jurisprudence. the narrative goes something like this. racial consciousness, a first to deal with racial justice are bad. racial consciousness, did i say that racial consciousness are perceived bad. that is roughly the theme throughout his tour as part of. whether to take the form of affirmative action, whether to take the firm of redistricting such as efforts to create majority minority districts, that are bad weather they take the form of desegregation.

there are bad in their efforts -- they are just plain bad. what this means for justice thomas concretely is that we should think about racial mediation the way we think about jim crow. we should treat it as constitutionally suspect, we should repudiate it, and we should do so in part because it portrays the idea that race matters when we know that it does not. put on this a another way, testis clarence thomas is part of a conservative bloc on the court whose race go something like this. we can't have affirmative have minority't majority districts -- you should all say those are not supporters. but these are the citations.

we cannot -- one could say it is precisely because everyone understood that clarence thomas's jurisprudence with respect to race was going to make it justice scalia. that is why we weren't really talking about it. those of us who might have feminist sensibilities. that is why we were focused on just a sexual-harassment. what i want it to suggest is that clarence is not a scully a clown. he is far more dangerous -- scalia clone. he speaks from a racial position. he speaks from a racial voice and his own voice. it is a voice that talks about -- it argues against 40 percy's

as racial paternalism. it is a voice that provokes frederick douglass to make arguments against. the fact that thomas is black ships not only what he says, but how he says it. it shapes the fact that he is not subject to the kind of critique that you might ordinarily expect. if he were to perform a quick search looking for example at to racism or racists and let's say justice rehnquist. here you are looking at examples. you would get lots of kids. lots of people have talked about justice rehnquist in this way. that is also with respect to justice scalia. if he were to do the same search for clarence thomas, there is one article that talks about the

extent to which clarence thomas might be racist. the same article talks about the extent in which his jurisprudence might be rationalized. that article was written by the great leon hit bottom. and that is the article. [applause] at the same time we see at least 30 articles discussing racist behavior with respect to clarence thomas. what do those articles it? they are written by his defenders calling his detractors racist. or they are references to clarence thomas himself calling his detractors racist. think about anita hill in this moment. how many articles exist that refer to the way in which she was treated as racist? they have yet to be written.

he can become a racial victim, but she cannot. all of this is to say that we have to understand at that moment. we have to understand how race and gender are working together to shape how clarence thomas can become a racial big dumb and to the extent to which that possibility did not exist for the anita hill. we have to think about how gender interventions need to have that racial understanding in mind and how racial intervention need to be infused with that gender policy as well. that is a lesson i don't think we learned in the moment. it is certainly a lesson i hope we understand it today. [applause]

>> a blog has been rewarded in numerous ways. i think the most valuable aspect from all over the world has been in the many obstacles my generation feels we face. my peers have written about everything from personal struggles to double standards to the sexual coverage and yes, sexual harassment. i recently asked the community what they thought about sexual- harassment, what their opinions or if they had stories to tell. surprisingly, this community that responded that sexual- harassment is unequivocally wrong. we think it is ridiculous that occurs in 2011. i found interesting the stores people chose to share about their experiences with sexual harassment. they shared stories that contained a notable lack of action.

gauge was left wondering if he had taken an interest in her because he thought she was smart or might get lucky. another commentator described how a male peer try to take off her bathing suit during a middle school swim lesson. they both admitted they felt horrible about that. white even when we know it's wrong to girls still fail to act against sexual harassment? why don't we do something about it? why don't we speak out against it? there are probably countless reasons. there are reasons that vary depending on the individual. overall, i think there are a few made reasons but girls under sexual-harassment. first, i think we need to look at the gender conditioning we impose on and children. despite the strides we have made, i think my generation was raised with gender stereotypes from william taft. we grow up in the social

structure that part encourages boys to pursue girls. in my generation, grows may pursue boys. definitions of relationships may have changed, we are aware that these are kasich structures are baseline. it is the dublin must revert to, that is incredibly problematic. the bottom line is we believe we have an inherent entitlement. boys feel they can be allowed to say anything they want to girls. how else could a group of frat boys marched around the campus last year chanting no means yes, and yes means anal. there is still a percentage of women who take these comments as complement. it is flattering attention. just as guys are trained to pursue women, girls are told that their main role is to attract men. we are taught to compete for the

most attention and accept any and all attention we do receive. even if we reject sexual- harassment, even if we stand up against it, which still live in a victim blaming culture. consider some of the major headlines of the past year alone. a police officer in toronto told members of my generation what we wear determines whether or not we will be raped. when reading the coverage of the gang rape of an 11 year old, she quoted her neighbors saying, she wore makeup and dressed inappropriately. our generation is paying attention to this. if we are internalizing disappear this is evident even the most superficial aspects of our lives. when they heard that pop singer riyadh that was assaulted by her boyfriend chris brown, we would ask what did she do to force him to hit her. we are able to write off sexual- harassment. still look at claims of sexual harassment and let the woman because that is what we are

trained to do. we blame the victim because that is what credible people like police officers and news sources do. why would we not? another significant problem my generation faces is sexual- harassment is we are still not exactly sure what it is. i think this stems back to our attitudes about the feminist movement at large. feminism is no longer a fight against obvious articles. we want roh vs. wade, title and then, the list goes on. it is not about getting rights, it is about preserving them. this is where it becomes complicated for us to be -- to interrogate our values into our daily lives. we may be passionate about fighting injustice is, we may theoretically be able to identify what is acceptable or not, we find it difficult to recognize the same injustices we speak against within the context

of our own lives. we have the semblance of understanding a superficial acknowledgment of right and wrong, but it does not always permeate our actions. i think our relationship is the perfect example of this. as a whole, young women aren't -- undeniably rejects sexual harassment. we know it is wrong print a think a lot of this understanding is a direct result of a need to create this is justified against sexual harassment. unfortunately, far too few of us even though she is. even though we did not necessarily what is the actions first half, they impacted our lives. we were born -- in theory, my generation is completely and tolerant of sexual harassment. the same young woman who say they are opposed to sexual harassment often ends up enduring it.

we expect the sexual-harassment is our boss demanding with sleep with him for want to keep our jobs. or as many offices and workplaces routinely have seminars and workshops about sexual harassment, this and does not occur in high school or medical care and exposure to the concept of sexual harassment is largely deliver to us through the media. most often, it is presented as humor. this is how they want to get blurred. this is how we can experience a sexual-harassment but feel unsure about whether or not we did or what to do about it. basically, there is something missing between that sexual- harassment is wrong and understanding and integration of

the principal and our lives. remember theys right answer when the hypothetical becomes real. this is not the reality for all of us. there are many young women who are taking action and speaking out against sexual harassment and refusing to tolerate it any longer. i think this is evident from where women marched in the street blaming it -- marching against our the term-limit culture. i think this is even evident from recently when young woman did fight sexual-harassment your 2007 brought the case of simpson versus the university of colorado at which the brought charges against male university students who harassed them at a party and held the university accountable for their past indifference.

a female university soccer player brought charges against her car to sexually harassed her and her fellow teammates. both cases were favorite -- ruled in favor of the women. the young women recognized an injustice and it took action. it is not that there is no hope left for my generation, it is that our work -- there are plenty of us who are willing to continue the fight. there are plenty he will take the legacy and run with it. [applause] >> rather than might ask any questions, there is not too much

time left. i would like to give you a chance to ask questions. can you come to the microphone? we have to break in a little more than 10 minutes. if you could make your questions short and direct them to a particular person. before you do this, i want to thank a brilliant panel. you have been fabulous. it is a can of stars and stars that have been corporate >> hello. i write for revolution newspaper. today we have heard 20 years of activism, some of the most incredible work and people in this room. yet as we have also heard, here we are. one in four women will be raped in college, every 15 minutes a woman is battered. we have seen the hugest onslaught of attacks in abortion

rights. pornography is becoming more violent and degrading even as it becomes more mainstream. it is an assault. i want this -- i want to suggest, the system is not your friend. i would say the system is the problem. i have in my hands constitution for the new socialist republics of the north america. i invite people to get it. also a declaration for women appeared to your hands on this. we need a different system. my question to the panel -- and a revolution -- is in the face of getting involved, i am sure none of you thought 20 years ago he would be sitting here 20 years in the future saying we have come a long ways that we are going backwards at the same time. when you have to say to young people today as you encounter, it is not so easy to change the world, to give up, and to

continue the intellectual courage to challenge your own assumptions as to get involved. >> you know, i think one of the things that age kind of gives you is a sense that each generation takes on its own struggles. it also inherits that which the generations before it passed on. my own sense is that this is a torch passing moment in which this generation does have to take up the question of, do we still have a project called feminism? do we still have a question called racial equity? there are even of contemporary issues around which to this generation can put its own mark on it? i think the question has to be put to you all. what is it that you need from

us? what can we provide? how can we facilitate? how can we encourage you to go forward? that basically is what we were able to inherit. that is what we need to pass on to you. >> question over you. >> i like gloria's idea of supremacy crimes. i would like to suggest that imperial wars are supremacy crimes. in terms of devon's elucidation of clarence thomas and also the statistics of whom voted for home, clarence thomas was a right-wing republican project put forth by george walker bush

who was no friend to black people. they were able to put him fourth. in part because the weakness of the democratic party's commitment to racial justice. my short question is to you. i spoke to a young woman who told me she has been harassed but has been discouraged by her professors from making a case saying -- he started with the notion -- that was brutally painful and affirmation. what can we take to encourage young woman to feel they can stand up for themselves?

>> i think my job and the job of anyone who is the friend of someone is to make sure they understand -- the choice is not deep river or shut up. i think they need to understand have a full range of options and what they are. i think if lots of people stand up together, it will make a difference. there are not the enough of all of us who are willing to say something. how many people in this room have experienced sexual harassment? how many people ever complained about it? maybe half. maybe even less than half. i don't have any more brilliant advice than that. >> hi. i in the director of the project of women's activism. chisholm -- please, i want to be quicker the first african- american woman elected to

congress experienced constant pervasive and hostile sexual- harassment. she briefly reversed it in her autobiography written in 1970. those of us to sought to some speak to it. recently, a number of staffers that we have interviewed has given us a specific examples of what she endured. there was one particular -- she would not go on delegation because of the harassments and she knew she would experience. she did not socialize with her congressional colleagues because of the harassment she experienced. one congressman was particularly . this congressmen would go to it is a's chair and what the seat of the chair clean. no one ever said a word.

this happened at the height of the woman's liberation movement in the 1970's. nobody can accuse her of being a coward. she ran for the presidency of the united states. her workplace environment was so misogynist thick and so hostile that she did not feel that she was safe with an elected official to raise this issue. i think if she were here, she would be thinking i need it, gloria, and everybody here fighting against sexual harassment. >> hi. i am from barnard college career development. i s