Bearing Witness: Sexual Harassment and Beyond--Everywoman's Story

After Clarence Thomas's 1991 confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court were rocked by Anita Hill's allegations of sexual harassment, Morris ( Storming the Statehouse ) decided to collect ``corroborating testimony: stories that might demonstrate how common--even tame--Hill's initial experiences with Clarence Thomas had been.'' She wanted to tear away what Edmund Burke called ``the decent drapery of life,'' the blanket of silence that protects predatory men and, as she discovered during her interviews, that is maintained by other women--mothers, sisters, daughters, friends and co-workers. Most of the book is drawn from Morris's interviews, as women talk of verbal harassment and physical abuse and the variety of responses from putting up with it to whistleblowing. Only in the final third of the book does Morris begin a historical analysis, citing the shaping force of popular culture . While she provides interesting portraits of several women working on issues like rape treatment and sexual harassment, Morris could have addressed more fully the question of how to establish healthier patterns of male-female interaction. Author tour. (Mar.)