Sexual Harassment: Women Speak Out

In the essays and poems in this anthology, a follow-up to Anita Hill's testimony at the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, women offer accounts of sexual harassment. Debra Kuperberg tells how, as a student teacher of youths in a maximum-security facility, she found it easier to cope with the incarcerated students than with some men on the staff. Adriane Fugh-Berman describes the sexism laced through her medical-school training, while Diane Hugs relates how a doctor exploited her paraplegic condition to fondle her paralyzed limbs. Jana Gary describes a series of incidents, from a professor's inappropriate attention to a man's shoving a pornographic image in her face when she was twelve. While these women's experiences convincingly reveal sexual harassment as a manifestation of ``male privilege and dominance'' of women, Sumrall and Taylor (who co-edited Women of the 14th Moon ) fail even to acknowledge that sexual harassment cases may also include women abusing women or men or men harassing men. Deliberate or not, it diminishes the value of the work. Illustrated. Author tour. (May)