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The road to hell was paved with handbags
By Susan McCarthy
An innocuous response to the key-stowage dilemma, or the first step on the slippery slope of obsessiveness? Carry a purse and find out
(03/02/99)

In the tub with Leadbelly
By Sarah Seager
An ex-punk rocker turned mother contemplates her latest passion, children's folk music
(03/01/99)

Mother Time
By Jennifer Bingham Hull
We have lots of some kinds of time, little of others -- which is why people who live outside this zone, including many politicians, don't understand our lives
(02/26/99)

Amnesia
By Sallie Tisdale
It's easy to pretend that we are not who we once were, to treat our painful condition as an echo of someone else's mistakes. Reading my teenage journals forced me to stop pretending
(02/25/99)

A dime bag for the schoolgirl
By Janet McDonald
I thought escaping Vassar to make Harlem drug runs meant I could be in the elite world, but not of it.
(02/24/99)

BROWSE THE MOTHERS WHO THINK FEATURE ARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

WE BELIEVE YOU, JUANITA (WE THINK) | PAGE 1, 2, 3
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Deirdre English
(former editor of Mother Jones)
I believe you, Juanita ... if only because, as Pat Ireland has (finally) said, who can believe Clinton's straight-faced denials about his exploits with any woman? To me, the most appalling thing about the whole Lewinsky mess was the realization that, had it not been for the telling stain on the dress, Clinton clearly would never have stopped proclaiming, "Listen to me: I did not have sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky."

It was one thing when Monica and Bill were both lying, even perjuring themselves, to cover up a consensual liaison. But once Monica had been betrayed by Linda Tripp, it was scandalous for Clinton to continue to lie -- because then he left Monica alone in the cold, in a he-said, she-said situation she could never have won. By intensifying his lies then, Clinton was painting her as a stalker, a fantasist, a liar.

Did any man ever before slander a woman by saying he did NOT have sex with her? Clinton did just that -- because then she had to be crazy. That was the very story that, as we know from Christopher Hitchens' affidavit, Sidney Blumenthal was sent out to plant in the press. Unbelievably, the scheming advice that Tripp gave Monica -- save the dress, you might need proof -- turned out to be the only thing that saved Monica from being thrown to the wolves. Today, instead of being trampled underfoot like so many of history's discarded female playthings, Monica survives to have a second chapter.

Was Ken Starr's inquiry out of bounds? Absolutely. Were these impeachable offenses? No. But does Clinton lie to cover up his exploitative and reckless indulgences? We know he does.

Danielle Crittenden
(founder of the Women's Quarterly and author of "What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman")
Well, I am waiting for NOW to issue "I believe Juanita" buttons. If feminists believe, as they say they believe, that Broaddrick's allegations are "credible," then they also have to grapple with the fact that the president may be a rapist. And I don't know how they -- or anyone else, for that matter -- who finds Broaddrick "credible" can simply let the matter rest or pray for it to go away. We know Clinton won't do the honorable thing, which is to come clean and/or resign. The Republicans attempted to do the honorable thing and got pummeled for it. It will be up to Democrats now to come to the aid of their party -- and the country. Let them pressure their president for answers. Why not form a committee of those female congresswomen who marched upon the Senate not long ago to protest Clarence Thomas' nomination? Or why doesn't Madeleine Albright -- who wishes to make rape an international war crime -- tender her resignation? Or are we going to have to wait for Milosevic to launch a formal protest of our leader's behavior with the U.N.?

Katie Roiphe
(author of "The Morning After: Fear, Sex and Feminism on Campus")
I don't think there's any way of knowing if this is true. And that said, I tend to think that he didn't do it.

In situations where it's his word against hers, we really believe who we want to believe. It's a Rorschach test for the country: What do we want to see? Because the information is ambiguous, as it always is. It always comes down to this, whether it's Anita Hill or Bob Packwood. It's not about what actually happened, it's about what we want to think happened.

In this case, I think a lot of people don't want to think that the president raped this woman, and so they don't. We saw the same thing with Kathleen Willey. Why did the feminists who were shouting and screaming about Anita Hill and Bob Packwood suddenly say, "Well, if it was one grope, it doesn't matter." And why the national coldness toward her? People just don't want to believe it -- even if you put these women on TV and you have them cry in front of the camera.

I think Patricia Ireland was somewhat evasive because she tried to turn it around on Ken Starr: Why didn't Ken Starr reveal this information to us? Really, she and the establishment feminists have been slow on the uptake in this entire scandal and notably non-emphatic about this type of situation all the way along. She's starting to be somewhat less hypocritical. But it's a small glimmer.

As for this woman's story, anyone's belief or non-belief about it is pretty speculative. There aren't facts, no facts that are going to confirm or refute this. He probably was in Little Rock that day, and maybe he was in that hotel room, but that doesn't exactly tell us what happened. I feel that if Clinton were the kind of person who would rape somebody, there would be more instances.

Once you have a public figure who's been embroiled in sex scandals for such a long time, it's going to attract a lot of lunatics and a lot of emotionally fragile people. And it's going to mean every small misbehavior on his part -- not that I'm counting rape as a small misbehavior -- is going to come back to haunt him. But a woman coming out with it 20 years later sets off alarms for me, as it does for a lot of people. Why wait that long? And once you've waited that long ... why come out at all? There is a reason why we have a statute of limitations in the law.

I do [support Clinton in general]. If it were true that he raped somebody, that would change my view of him. I think of him as being sort of sleazy and a man of appetites, but I don't think of him as being violent. That's part of why it would surprise me. We know a great deal about this man's sexual behavior and it just doesn't seem to fit into that portrait. But you never know.

Katha Pollitt
(associate editor and columnist for the Nation, co-editor of "Reasonable Creatures: Essays on Women and Feminism")
I think Juanita Broaddrick told her story in a very persuasive way. She has people who say she told them about the rape at the time -- one of them says she helped calm her immediately after, although I gather some of them may have grudges against Clinton, as so many people in Arkansas seem to have! All the people I've talked to about this bring up the fact [that she denied the rape in an affidavit]. I found her explanation about 80 percent persuasive; she said, "This wouldn't be good for my family" and that she just wanted it all to go away. I can certainly understand why somebody wouldn't want to get involved in the Paula Jones lawsuit!

I don't think there's a lack of interest [among feminists] at all. Patricia Ireland has made some pretty strong statements. But there's a history here. Two weeks ago, we had this story of the black prostitute and the love child, which turned out to be a hoax. There are people who will say anything about President Clinton. They'll say that he killed 60 people. They'll say that there are the testicles of some enemy of a relative of his in a jar on some sheriff's desk. They say he's a major drug dealer. You have to admit that the people who pushed this forward have pushed forward other accusations that didn't pan out.

One of the features of this whole long procedure, beginning with Paula Jones' accusations, is the way it has been used to tar the women's movement as elitist, hypocritical and unethical. I think that feminists have been very unfairly treated. In the first place, there have been feminists on every side of these issues: There is no monolith here. In the second place, feminists have tried to make nuanced statements that have not been heard as nuanced statements. They have tried to distinguish, for example, between consent and non-consent, in the case of Monica Lewinsky, and that distinction has been made to look self-serving. They have talked a lot about what sexual harassment is legally, as opposed to boorish behavior we might not like. And every time they have tried to say anything except, "Ew, President Clinton, get rid of him, we hate him," they have been charged with hypocrisy.

The feature that is so fascinating about President Clinton is his ability to get constituencies on his side while he is really not doing very much for them. The women's movement is an example of that, even on abortion -- he hasn't signed major anti-choice legislation, true, but an abortion is harder to get now than in l992. He's very popular among blacks, but he's done very little for them except on the symbolic level. Environmentalists, gays, unions, civil libertarians -- he's disappointed them all. But they stick with him, and the reason is that the Republicans are so terrible on all the issues that these constituencies care about, they feel they have to go with the lesser of two evils. But I'm a journalist and my politics aren't so focused on electing people, so I have the luxury of just saying the heck with him -- let's get back to building a movement. I don't have to weigh in the same ways as the head of NARAL or the head of the NAACP, who have put their eggs in the presidential basket, as it were.

It's not like the Republicans are in favor of wonderful sexual harassment laws. It's not like they have wonderful policies about rape. They keep saying, "Oh but you believed Anita Hill." I just want to say, "But look at what you did to Anita Hill! You didn't believe her, you didn't treat her with respect at all, you called her an 'erotomaniac' with 'proclivities.'" For them to portray this charge as credible, with their record of indifference to violence against women, has to be politics. If Juanita Broaddrick were coming forward and saying she had been raped by George W. Bush or Gary Bauer, I wonder how credible they would find her.

In my heart I believe her, yes. But what do you do with this information? One of the things that's so frustrating about this is: It's out there, people think about it, but there isn't anything you can do with it. It's not an allegation that anyone can use legally; it's only an allegation that people can try to use politically.
SALON | March 3, 1999

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R E L A T E D_.S A L O N_.S T O R I E S

The ugliest story yet Why the Wall Street Journal ran the Clinton rape story that no other reputable news organization would touch.
By Joan Walsh
Feb. 22, 1999

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