Send The Secretaries Out For Condoms - And A Grip On Reality
The Age
Monday February 7, 1994
I READ that in the wake of the Lorena Bobbitt case (the American woman who cut off her husband's penis last year) women in the United States are going around making ``V" signs by raising two fingers and bringing them together like scissors, and carrying car bumper stickers saying ``Beyond Bitch". It's known as the new female militancy, and it reportedly has men scared.
While it can do no harm if even a few male bullies are forced to consider the possibility that their victims might exact revenge in such a savage way (and even the most macho bully has to go to sleep some time) most men really do not need to worry, for there is little danger that women en masse are going to take up violence against them.
The great majority of violent crime and the great majority of cases of sexual harassment have always been and still are committed by men.
That is why `Disclosure', the latest best-seller written by Michael Crichton (author of `Jurassic Park'), is silly as well as misogynist.
`Disclosure', described on the dust jacket as ``a breathtaking thriller that redraws the frontline in the sex war" is about a man who is sexually harassed by his female boss. The film rights to the book, which has just been released in Australia, were reportedly sold to Warner Bros for $US3.5million before it was even published.
The novel is the story of Thomas Sanders, an executive at a high-tech company in Seattle, described as ``a handsome man, with the easy manner of an athlete". He has a wife, Susan, who (although she has ``the kind of fresh beauty that requires no make-up") is not perfect because she expects poor Thomas to help her manage the kids in the morning: ``Can't you please feed them? Pretty please?" Teasing, she ruffled his hair and her bathrobe fell open. She left it open and smiled. ``I'll owe you one ..."
Enter Meredith Johnson, Thomas's new boss, with whom, by a strange coincidence, he had an affair 12 years before. She is now hard, confident, power-thirsty. On her very first day in charge, she summons Thomas to her office, where she locks the door (she'd already sent her secretary out to buy condoms), opens the chilled wine, leans back (revealing perfect breasts under a silk blouse) and reminds him that he always had a ``nice hard tush". Then she kisses him, warns him about the dangers of all work and no play, and pushes him down on her couch, where she straddles him in her business suit.
When decent, naive Thomas rebuffs her - because, of course, he's happily married - Meredith, in a vicious fury, accuses him of sexually harassing her, and orders his transfer from the company. However, Thomas is determined that American justice will clear his name.
Now read on - or perhaps don't bother, for `Disclosure' is so stilted and cliche-ridden as to be laughable if it were not for the message it is sending out. Unfortunately, a lot of people will read it and many of them will be only too eager to believe that message.
The book is the latest in a series of productions coming out of the US - `Fatal Attraction', `Basic Instinct', `Mrs Doubtfire' - demonstrating the harm that is done to home and family, and especially men, when women go out and get careers and become powerful. In `Jurassic Park' Michael Crichton appealed to people's fear of monsters. In `Disclosure' he is speaking to an equally ancient fear, men's fear of powerful women; the castrating woman, the ``vagina dentata". It is the same kind of fear that in the past burnt women as witches and in some cultures today still leads to clitoridectomies on little girls.
Crichton's thesis is that women in power are as likely to sexually harass as men, because in the US five per cent of harassment claims are brought by men against women, and five per cent of corporate supervisors are women. But as the American group NOW (the National Organisation for Women) has pointed out, according to Bureau of Labor statistics women make up 42per cent of all executives, administrators and managers, and sexual harassment does not only occur at the highest corporate level but wherever there are differences in power. As Ruth Jones of NOW said, ``It's not a major movie until a man is harassed".
Claims of sexual harassment of men by women are, in fact, quite rare.
Of 180 claims of sexual harassment in Victoria last year nine per cent were made by men - double the previous year - but a significant proportion of men's claims were against other men. While it is good that men are becoming more willing to complain about being sexually harassed, the common response of men when the subject is mentioned is: ``I should be so lucky". Men can joke about sexual harassment because so few of them have ever been in a position where a more powerful person is making sexual demands of them.
I once knew a woman whose behavior towards a work colleague was so bad - walking past his desk giving him long lovesick looks all day, persisting in asking him out after he refused - that it almost amounted to sexual harassment. But I find it very hard to imagine many women attempting the kind of absurd seduction described by Michael Crichton.
There is another scene in `Disclosure' where, under cross-examination, Thomas Sanders's female lawyer is getting Meredith Johnson to agree that in rape cases, no does not always mean no. For all Crichton's pious protestations in interviews that he supports women's right to have power, his book is part of the backlash against women's equality.
It reinforces the old myth that ``hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" (how often have you heard of a woman shooting up an office building because some man has rejected her?) Worst of all, it promotes the idea that, because women will do it too whenever they get the chance, sexual harassment is somehow all right.
`Disclosure' by Michael Crichton, Century $29.95.
© 1994 The Age
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