Five Women: This American Life

Vivian

They're surrounding him, and sort of hanging on his words, and leaning in, and it's just got that-- no offense, his words weren't that interesting, you know. It's like, they were fine. But, oh my God, and he was eating it up. You could just see he loved this. And then I'm sitting in the back of the room, on the couch with this other woman, Lynn, and she looks up and she goes, hm, the cupcakes.

               Chana Joffe-Walt

Vivian lost it. She loved this word. It was perfect.

Chana Joffe-Walt

And you understood immediately that that was meant to refer to the women who were surrounding the supervisor.

Vivian

Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, and I was really proud that she was basically saying, you're not one of them. You know, I did not want to be one of them.

Chana Joffe-Walt

She was basically saying that you're cool and they're not.

Vivian

Exactly, exactly. Like we're grown up women, and they're not. Oh, God, yeah. That's who I want to be.

--"Five Women" on This American Life

Okay, I know from the outset, that this post is going to bring down the wrath of Hell upon me, or at least the wrath of women--and I'm not sure which is to be more feared. If Ms. Maud reads it, I shudder to think how many ways she will use to dismember my argument and consign me to that deep hole of male ignorance and obtuseness, the "knuckle draggers."

Still, it needs to be said. 

Listening to "This American Life" podcast on the case of Don Hazen was enlightening in ways only podcasts can enlighten.  Women describe their sexual liaisons with the owner of an on line news source, "Alternet" and the ways in which he "sexually harassed" them.

Among the things I can remember, not having taken notes:

1. He invited a woman, Deanna, to his apartment and she was attracted to him because he was an accomplished man who did not need her, unlike her prior boyfriends, and although he had a girlfriend, he had sex with her but did not use a condom, which gave her pause, but she did not stop him and demand he use one. Years later, he told her he had Herpes and she was livid he had never told her because, although she was on oral contraceptives she had no protection from Herpes.

2. A 21 year old college student, Kristin,  has a reporter's notepad at a protest, and he goes up to her and asks about her journalistic ambitions and offers her an audition. 

(Deanna is standing there and is disgusted because she sees this is exactly the approach he had used with her years earlier, telling a young woman she has "talent" and then hiring her and then bedding her. It's like telling a starlet she has talent--she's insecure, ambitious and here comes her big chance with someone who reassures her she really does have a big future.)

Kristin later goes to his apartment in New York, which, although Kristin has slept with enough men to know that a visit to a man's apartment might be an invitation to sex, she does not refuse, or suggest they meet at a restaurant but goes, smokes marijuana with him and when he starts showing her pictures of a lot of gorgeous blond women, who he tells her were past girl friends, she thinks it a little weird or pathetic, and when she shows her a photo of an erect penis which he says is his penis, she again thinks it weird but has no idea he means to have sex with her because he is, like, this sixty year old guy, and she is young.

When he originally approached her, Hazen told her to send him a copy of her work to his office, and then got back to her offering her a job, and it doesn't take fours years of psychiatric residency to see the game he was playing: Oh, I'm so impressed by your talent. I'm hiring you to be a big star. But any woman who has gone to college, as Kristin has, or who, for that matter, has sat at a Manhattan bar, knows that approach. Oh, it's not that I want to get you into bed because of the way you look: I'm so impressed by your talent. 

3. Other women recount remarks he's made about their breasts, their bodies and one, a woman of color tells him that she's not his type because she's not a blonde, and he says, "Well, you could wear a wig."

These and many other stories create a picture of:

1. A man who is beyond clumsy with women. Who thinks remarks about how beautiful their bodies, breasts, legs are will prompt them to jump immediately into bed with him.

2. A man who has hired women telling them he sees their "talent" as journalists, but when they arrive at work, they look around and realize all the other female employees happen to be young, beautiful and "talented."

3. These women think of themselves as "professionals"  and some have majored in "journalism" in college and each wants to believe she has "talent" as a "journalist."  But the whole notion of their "talent" is as thin as the "talent" of a Meghan Kelly, i.e. a sexy blond who is on air because she thinks she has journalistic talent, but she is no Gwen Ifil. 

All of these women share the disadvantages of being women in a world where competition for jobs, especially in journalism, is intense.  Like Jane Austen's women, they have few economic options, and like Jane Austen's women, whose choice seems to be between penury and a marriage to a wealthy man, these women need to use their "feminine wiles" to hook, not a husband, but a "rabbi" who will foster their careers. 

And part of that process may invoke selling if not sex, at least the promise of the possibility of sex.

None of these women are strangers to sex, and each has had enough experience with men to recognize the circumstances and the conditions which might lead to sex with a man.

Women in the sex trade laugh at being called "prostitutes" by respectable wives.  "And what do they think they are?" the sex workers ask. "I work gigs for an hourly wage and they are on retainer. So that makes them better than me? " 

At least one mentions how Don Hazen violated her space, put his hands on her in the wrong places uninvited and made clear to her his hopes, if not demands, for sexual relations.

But none of them quit after his stupid, awkward overtures. They all figured the could handle it, they could keep him at bay and keep their jobs.  But they all knew, on some level, they had been hired on the prospect they would eventually, in the right circumstances, have sex with Don Hazen. 

But they did not quit. 
Why did they not quit? 
Because, I suspect, on some level, they knew they could not get jobs elsewhere. If they had to get a job by sending in a portfolio of articles to a potential employer who would judge them on their work alone, they would not stand a chance. But if they could sell themselves along with their work, then they might score a job. 

But each deluded herself into believing she was a starlet with talent. 
And the fact is, none of them had anything to sell on the marketplace for "journalism." And what, exactly, is journalism? It can be nothing more than a book report for your high school history class. 

Listening to the way they express themselves during the podcast, it is difficult to imagine any of them could actually produce a coherent well written article, although I'd need more information to be sure of that.  I suppose it's possible to be inarticulate during a podcast interview but  to be able to write with discipline. But still, these are not folks I'd expect to be writing for the New Yorker any time soon.

In high school, the basketball coach selected the cheerleaders and he always selected the prettiest girls, saying, "You can teach any girl to cheer; but you can't teach an ugly girl to be pretty."

And what was Fox News star Meghan Kelly selling? Was she selling her incisive insight into the news of the day or the newsmakers? 

Would Judy Woodruff or Gwenn Ifil or Lisa Dejardins ever pose and post photos like these? 

That's been pretty much the Fox News formula. 

After all, what is required of a "news reader" or even a "TV personality" who sits on the white couch and reacts to what her colleagues are saying?

Gwen Ifil was a gifted reporter, who could cut through the smokescreen of what politicians were putting out and ask just the right question.  "She read her briefing book," her executive producer said of her, "And she used it effectively."

But these women, the women of Alternet,  sexually liberated, want it both ways. They are fine to be hired because of their looks, their bodies, their radiating sexuality, but when the boss tries to cash in on that promissory note, they are victims.