As Anita Hill fielded a question about Clarence Thomas at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema Friday night, she was calm, cool, and collected – just as she was in 1991, when she testified at a Senate Hearing that Supreme Court Justice nominee Thomas had sexually harassed her.
She was asked what she thought of Thomas’s voting record, in a Q&A following a Hot Docs screening the film Anita.
She smiled and took a breath. “You know that scene in the film back in 1991 after Thomas was confirmed, when someone asks me what I thought about that?” she began. “I said I wouldn’t answer. And 20 years later, I still don’t talk about Clarence Thomas.”
The packed house sat rapt as Anna Maria Tremonti moderated the discussion with Hill and filmmaker Frieda Mock.
Hill is clear that, though the hearing was the most difficult experience of her life, some good that came out of it.
“One thing I remember, looking at the panel, was the lack of representation of women or people of colour and the disconnect between the senators and the experience of half the population. I believe that caused Americans to imagine what we needed from elected officials.
“People kept saying that he played the race card and they seemed to forget that I was black and that Thomas had a gender, too. I was thought of as villainous, scorned, either to prudish or an erotomaniac. But I emerged from that hearing confident of both my gender and my race.”
She recalled that once Thomas was confirmed – by just four votes – everyone interpreted the decision as a he won, she lost situation.
“Everyone said that no woman would ever again come forward – which really was another way to blame me,” she said wryly. “But women took a bit of knowledge away. They knew their rights and realized that not taking the chance to come forward put them at greater risk.”
Though Hill was impressive – you could see why she’d make a magnificent teacher – filmmaker Mock made some of-the-wall comments. At one point, she claimed that she just wanted to tell Hill’s story and that “she didn’t actually have a point of view.”
Strangely, Tremonti let that pass, something she wouldn’t normally do as host of CBC’s morning show The Current.
And I wish that someone had mentioned that Sarah Thompson got roasted when she said that Mayor Rob Ford had grabbed her ass at a public event. The skeptical response to her claims proves that, despite the courageous Hill and the movement to end sexual harassment that she galvanized, a less-than-perfect female’s claim of harassment still gets almost zero credence.
