{"id":1710,"date":"2019-08-01T09:28:12","date_gmt":"2019-08-01T09:28:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/?page_id=1710"},"modified":"2019-08-01T09:28:12","modified_gmt":"2019-08-01T09:28:12","slug":"phyllis-schlafly-on-womens-responsibility-for-sexual-harassment-1981","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/29-the-triumph-of-the-right\/phyllis-schlafly-on-womens-responsibility-for-sexual-harassment-1981\/","title":{"rendered":"Phyllis Schlafly on Women\u2019s Responsibility for Sexual Harassment (1981)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Conservative\nactivist Phyllis Schlafly fought against feminism and other liberal cultural\ntrends for decades. Perhaps most notably, she led the campaign against the\nEqual Rights Amendment, turning what had seemed an inevitability into a failed effort.\nHere, she testified before Congress about what she saw as the largely imagined problem\nof sexual harassment. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My name is Phyllis Schlafly of Alton, Illinois. I am a\nlawyer, journalist, author, wife and mother of six children, and am appearing\nhere as the volunteer president of EAGLE FORUM, the national organization which\nhas been leading the pro-family movement since 1972. I live in Alton, Illinois.\nMy testimony concerns sexual harassment, the subject of this hearing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, let me say that I am excluding from my\ndiscussion any reference to criminal acts. Sexual crimes should be punished to\nthe full extent of the law. I rejoice that the U.S. Supreme Court recently\nupheld a state law against statutory rape, handing down a decision which\nreaffirms society\u2019s right to treat men and women differently. However, crime is\nnot our subject today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Non-criminal sexual harassment on the job is not a\nproblem for the virtuous woman except in the rarest of cases. When a woman\nwalks across the room, she speaks with a universal body language that most men\nintuitively understand. Men hardly ever ask sexual favors of women from whom\nthe certain answer is \u201cno.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The former Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir, once\nspoke frankly about the relationship of men and women. She spent a lifetime\nworking alongside of men, but she said no man ever told a dirty story in her\npresence. My experience has been similar to hers. Virtuous women are seldom\naccosted by unwelcome sexual propositions or familiarities, obscene talk, or\nprofane language. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In those rare cases where a virtuous woman finds that\nsexual harassment is a condition of her employment, the social injustice is real,\nbut as a subject for Congressional concern it is totally dwarfed by the\ninjustice of sexual harassment or intimidation of women in the Armed Services\nwho do not have the freedom to resign. Yet, many of the same people complaining\nabout sexual harassment in the workplace are at the same time promoting the\ndrafting of women alongside of men. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s put this issue in focus. Anyone who is trying to\nmake a \u201cfederal case\u201d out of the problem of bosses pinching secretaries, and\nwho at the same time is promoting the drafting of women along with men and\/or\nthe full sex-integration of combat assignments in the armed services, is\nplaying political games with the term \u201csexual harassment.\u201d Nothing in the world\nwould create more sexual harassment than the drafting of 18- to 20-year-old girls\ninto the army. Military policies which force volunteer servicewomen into \u201cnontraditional\u201d\nassignments have already created a major problem of sexual harassment. Attached\nto my testimony is a letter from Army Times of May 1979, telling what it is\nreally like in the sex-integrated U.S. Army. The high rate of rape among American\ntroops stationed in Europe is already shocking. (Stars and Stripes said there\nwere 220 rape cases in 1980 involving American GIs stationed in Europe.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The biggest problem of sex in the workplace is not\nharassment at all but simply the chemistry that naturally occurs when women and\nmen are put in close proximity day after day, especially if the jobs have other\ntensions. That chemistry has always been present; what\u2019s different today is\nthat (a) there are many more women in the workplace, and (b) some women have\nabandoned the Commandments against adultery and fornication, and accepted the\nnew notions that any sexual activity in or out of marriage is morally and\nsocially acceptable. Attached to my testimony is a front-page article from the\nWall Street Journal of April 14, 1981, entitled \u201cSome Men Find the Office is a\nLittle Too Exciting,\u201d which describes some of the sexual tensions created by\nwomen in the workplace. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andrew Hacker, a professor at Queens College in New\nYork City, in an article in Harper\u2019s magazine in September 1980, wrote: \u201cNow\nhusbands are increasingly apt to have as colleagues high-powered younger women\nwho understand their professional problems in ways a wife never can. These\naffinities can emerge as easily in a patrol car as in planning a marketing\ncampaign. Shared work, particularly under pressure, has aphrodisiac effects.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sexual harassment can be the mischievous label applied\nin hate or revenge when one party wants out of an extra-marital liaison between\nconsenting adults. Neither Congress nor EEOC has the competence to sit in\njudgment on the unwitnessed events and decide who was harassing whom. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sexual harassment can also occur when a non-virtuous\nwoman gives off body language which invites sexual advances, but she chooses to\ngive her favors to Man A but not to Man B, and he tries to get his share,\ntoo…. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Senators and Congressmen should heed the oft-quoted\nprayer, \u201cLord, help me to change the things I can change, to accept the things\nI cannot change, and give me the wisdom to know the difference.\u201d Congress\ncannot prevent or police the sexual attraction men and women have for each\nother. But Congress can: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(a) Stop the government-induced inflation which forces\nmore and more women to join the labor force even though so many of them would\nprefer to be in the home. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(b) Keep women out of places where they don\u2019t belong,\nsuch as on ships of the U.S. Navy, and in military academy dormitories, and in\nmilitary barracks where there Is nothing between sleeping servicemen and\nservicewomen except maybe a curtain. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(c) Stop the Affirmative Action for women which forces\nwomen into jobs where the predictable effect is sex on the job and broken\nmarriages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source: Committee on Labor and Human Resources, Sex Discrimination in the Workplace, 1981: Hearings\nBefore the Committee on Labor and Human Resources <\/em>(Washington: U.S.\nGovernment Printing Office, 1981), 400-402. Available via Internet Archive (https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/sexdiscriminatio00unit<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly fought against feminism and other liberal cultural trends for decades. Perhaps most notably, she led the campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment, turning what had seemed an inevitability into a failed effort. Here, she testified before Congress about what she saw as the largely imagined problem of sexual harassment. My name […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":821,"menu_order":6,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1710","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1710"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1711,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1710\/revisions\/1711"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}