BY CAMILLE PERI, FIONA MORGAN AND DAWN MacKEEN | "I just couldn't hold it in any longer," Juanita Broaddrick told Lisa Myers in an interview that aired on "Dateline NBC" last week, explaining why she came forward after 21 years to allege that then-Arkansas Attorney General Bill Clinton had raped her. "I didn't want granddaughters and nieces when they're 21 years old to turn to me and say, 'Why didn't you tell what this man did to you?'" It was a touching moment and, according to a Fox News survey, a convincing one -- a remarkable 54 percent of the "scandal-weary" American public who watched the interview believed Broaddrick was telling the truth. Yet during the last week, as her character and motives came under the intense media scrutiny she says she had stayed silent to avoid, it was clear that she was still going to have to go it alone. Most of the feminist establishment was strangely tongue-tied -- a reticence in some ways as striking as Broaddrick's long silence.

In a sense, this is not surprising. From the beginning, feminists have been hopelessly ensnarled by Clinton's sexual dramas, unable to untangle the web of the personal from the political. Women and women's organizations, whose support for Clinton has been vital, have been faced with the Ted Kennedy dilemma: Forced to weigh Clinton's standing as one of the most powerful political advocates for women with the knowledge that, at the very least, he misused his power in his personal dealings with them. But the seriousness of Broaddrick's charges and their impossible mysteries have put the president's female supporters in the most difficult bind yet.

As the week wore on, the situation grew increasingly surreal. Al Gore's announcement of $233 million in grants to help battered women followed on the heels of the broadcast, reportedly watched by 23 million viewers, in which Broaddrick told of being bruised and raped by Gore's boss. On "Meet the Press" Sunday, National Organization for Women President Patricia Ireland tried diverting the blame to conservatives for "backing us all in this country into a corner" by not bringing the story out sooner. Ireland also urged legislators to help in passing the Violence Against Women Act, even as she admitted that Clinton should probably no longer lead the charge. On the other hand, Susan Estrich, a USC law professor and rape victim, called for the nation to move on. While saying that, as a rape victim, she was "very sensitive to all the reasons that a woman would not come forward," Estrich also said she found it "utterly implausible that if this man really did commit rape, a woman would sit by and let him become president of the United States." It was left to Bill Bennett to ask, "How many women, Susan, do you need to hear from? How many times does this kind of thing come up?"

For some women, the latest revelations about Clinton will undoubtedly be the last straw; for others, they will probably remain another murky and troubling question. Yet it seems clear that this is one more indelible stain on the Clinton legacy. Salon asked 11 prominent American women to weigh in on Broaddrick's credibility, the feminist quandary and how this should affect Clinton's final days.

Susan Brownmiller
(author of "Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape")
I think Juanita Broaddrick's story is credible. You judge a witness when you see them. I watched her on television and she struck me as telling an honest story. Now, I part company with someone like -- who is that right-wing woman on MSNBC? Laura Ingraham -- who is saying, "Monster rapist in the White House!" If you read "Against Our Will," you know I don't call men monsters for raping. I think Bill Clinton at that time was probably unaware that he was being anything more than assertive. It just seemed like he was operating under the assumption of: "Wow, I have some authority and I can use a little force here and this is what she wants." This is the struggle that the women's movement faced in politicizing rape.

I think it's as hard [to bring rape charges against elected officials] as it is to bring them against football players and boxers, because there's a well of sympathy on the other side. You don't want to destroy somebody's career. It troubles me that in this case I have been hearing women my own age feeling very hostile toward Juanita Broaddrick and saying, "What did she expect when he said, 'Let's meet in your room'?" And I guess relations between men and women, and work situations, are not at a point in which a woman can say, "Sure, let's meet in my room" and not expect that the man will have a different idea of what this means.

We're in a period where there is no forward motion in feminism, no desire on the part of people to organize for social change, so people are saying, "Yes, but he appointed some women, he did this." And I keep saying, "Hey, wait a minute. This is the movement's job. You're not supposed to be grateful to the president. This is what we do; we keep the heat on for social change and for equality." We're not living in a time when there is interest in movement work. So it seems to me that older feminists, people like Patricia Ireland and Gloria Steinem, are so grateful to Clinton that it's clouding their judgment.

I think his presidency has been damaged. But I'll tell you, this whole thing over the last two years has been such a circus, it's hard to view this story as any different from any of the others. A lot of people want to move on. It's very hard to take this as anything more than testimony about the character of the man.

Susan Faludi
(journalist and author of "Backlash: The Undeclared War against American Women")
Juanita Broaddrick's story sounded credible to me, but I'm just somebody watching somebody speak on television. It's not a story that I've personally investigated, so to say that she's credible is just a gut reaction on my part. That said, I have no reason to disbelieve her. If it's true -- and again I don't have any way of judging based on the information that's absorbed through television and news articles about an event that happened 21 years ago -- it's terrible, it's awful, it's all the adjectives one could think of.

I'm not sure what Juanita Broaddrick wants done. It sounds as if no one's asked her that. There's nothing legally that can be done. Women and men can voice their protest in the ways that have always been open to us.

It seems to me that the all-Monica channels spend all their time bringing on anti-feminists to complain about the lack of feminist response, yet they very rarely bring on anyone with feminist sympathies, even though that's most of us in the country.

If the media -- and the Republicans -- were focusing on this as a way to express concern about women's rights, this would be a forum for advancing feminist concerns more generally, but that's not what's going on here. Juanita Broaddrick, like Monica Lewinsky, like Paula Jones, are women who are being used by Clinton-haters to further an agenda that has nothing to do with women's rights. And if they can attack feminists in the process, then it's a two-for-one deal for them. What people seem to be ignoring is: Why was Juanita Broaddrick afraid to speak up 21 years ago? Because in the conservative social climate then, a woman who said, "I was raped" or "I was molested" or "I was thrown out of my job because I was pregnant" was just not believed. What is it that changed that climate? It's the work of feminists. To hold feminists up as having feet of clay is a little ironic, to put it mildly.

If true, it's horrible. But so far the information seems to be coming out of the same attack-dog cabal of right-wingers. So until one sees the fullness of whatever is out there about this case, you're reluctant to leap up and become hysterical. We've had Republicans crying wolf over and over again and then it turns out they're the wolves in sheep's clothing. Which is not to say that this time they do not have something. I just wish they had spent one-hundredth of the time and energy of Starr's investigation to protect women against violence in the general population. We'd have a whole lot better country today. The network of lawyers and right-wing think tanks and Scaife organizations suddenly are desperate to turn over any injustice done to a woman as long as the perpetrator is Clinton. Otherwise, in their book, women can be damned.

N E X T_ P A G E: Gloria Allred says Clinton should resign

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