I was once on a work trip where a group of us were traveling to an event we were covering. As I bent over to climb into the van that was taking us, a male anchor put both of his hands on my butt. When I turned around, horrified, he said, laughing, “I didn’t want you to fall out.” Others watched. Some laughed. I was mortified.
Another time, I was new to a job and about to do an on-air segment with one of the network’s star anchors. He said, in earshot of others, “I hope it’s okay, I’ve been calling you ‘C Cup” around the office.” When I said awkwardly, “Um, it’s not okay,” he said, “It’s just a joke, relax.” This also happened in earshot of others — my new colleagues.
Both incidents — two of probably a dozen over my career — happened before the #MeToo reckoning. Back then the idea that these guys’ superiors would take a harassment complaint from me seriously when my harassers didn’t even bother to hide their behavior wasn’t even in the realm of possibility.
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And isn’t that the intended effect? Unwanted advances or inappropriate comments that happen in secret are sinister, but if they happen brazenly in public they can be shrugged off as harmless and merely “misinterpreted.” On Monday the New York Times reported accusations from a third woman who said that, when they met at a wedding in 2019, Cuomo put his hand on her bare lower back and later held her face in his hands and asked if he could kiss her. The incident was even apparently captured by a photographer. (CNN has not verified the woman’s allegations against New York’s governor.)
I don’t know what Cuomo did or didn’t do, what he intended or didn’t intend, but the way he has defended himself in his statement Sunday — which came only after it became clear that with the second accusation he couldn’t make the story go away — is not what accountability sounds like and it’s not acceptable. It’s the kind of sexist framework that demeans women as irrational, silly and unreliable witnesses.
It makes us not want to come forward because it’ll be, hey, we just can’t take a joke.
It actually makes things worse for Cuomo. It’s a slap in the face to the women who came forward, and a harsh reminder to the millions of women who might want to come forward but see now that powerful men will still try to put them in their place if they do. Maybe this time, with the blowback Cuomo is facing from his own party, it will end up differently for the women.
I’ve been in the civilian workforce since 1976. I have been falsely accused of sexual harassment several times.
Cry me a f’n river sweetheart. I was a single father with an absentee mother for most of that early time (1980s-’90s). I took it for my son’s sake.
BTW I....KNOW I was falsely accused and it was used as a weapon to increase the females power, against me personally and generally in the office environment...so no BS from you that I must have done SOMETHING wrong. I didn’t!
Boo-freakin'-hoo!
A dozen "incidents" over the course of an entire career! What man can't point to at least a dozen cases, over the course of his entire career, of 1) verbal abuse (incl. the assignment of disparaging nicknames, aggressive joking at his expense, expletives hurled in his direction, etc.) and 2) discrimination (expected to do the "heavy lifting" because he's a man, expected to pull long hours because he's a man)?
Only a dozen "incidents" in the course of an entire career?! Paradise!
Regards,