The contemporary explanation for why this happened is always simple: Society is a sexist patriarchy. But that response works from a modern mind-set, where it’s unthinkable to imagine a professional man making unwanted jokes about pubic hair without being seen as a sexual harasser. Such thinking was not always universal. The very first sexual harassment case in U.S. history (under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act) had happened just fifteen years before this hearing. For many Americans, the Anita Hill allegations were the first time they had considered the possibility that sexual harassment
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