During the 2016 Presidential campaign, eleven women accused Donald Trump
of making unwanted sexual advances toward them. Following a well-worn
playbook used by other accused sexual harassers, Trump
dismissed the women as “horrible, horrible liars” and their allegations
as “pure fiction.” The women’s voices swayed very few voters, it would
seem. Even after the “Access Hollywood” tape surfaced, allowing voters
to hear Trump boasting about “grabbing” women “by the pussy,” he was
elected President. Among those who put his candidacy over the top (at
least in the Electoral College) were fifty-three per
cent of white female voters.

So why have Harvey Weinstein’s alleged transgressions been taken so much
more seriously? One answer, it seems, has less to do with the accused
than with the accuser. Weinstein’s sexual-harassment scandal is unlike almost
every other in recent memory because many of his accusers are
celebrities, with status, fame, and success commensurate with his own.
Sexual harassment is about power, not sex, and it has taken women of
extraordinary power to overcome the disadvantage that most accusers
face. As Susan Faludi, the author of “Backlash: the Undeclared War
Against
Women,”
put it in an e-mail to me, “Power belongs only to the celebrities these
days. If only Trump had harassed Angelina Jolie . . .”

Anita Hill, a woman with unusual insight into this topic, agrees that
the nature of Weinstein’s accusers is the reason that his exposure has
proved to be a watershed moment. In a phone interview, Hill emphasized
that sexual-harassment cases live and die on the basis of
“believability,” and that, in order for the accusers to prevail, “they
have to fit a narrative” that the public will buy. At least until now,
very few women have had that standing.

Twenty-six years ago, Hill learned this the hard way, when, as a young
Yale Law School graduate, she famously testified that Clarence Thomas
was unsuitable for confirmation to the Supreme Court, on the grounds
that he had repeatedly harassed her while he served as her boss, at the
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (I wrote about the confirmation
process and Hill’s allegations in the book “Strange Justice: The
Selling of Clarence
Thomas.”)
Her testimony blasted the subject of workplace sexual harassment into
the public consciousness, but it was swept aside by the Senate. In
televised public congressional hearings, Hill’s credibility was
attacked, her character smeared, and her sworn testimony dismissed as an
unresolvable “he said, she said” conflict. After Thomas described the
process as a “high-tech lynching”—despite the fact that both he and Hill
are African-American—the Senate confirmed him.

Hill, who is now a law professor at Brandeis University, told me that
what Thomas possessed, like many accused harassers, and unlike many
accusers, was a winning “narrative.” The lynching story resonated
deeply. Without a similarly widely accepted narrative, Hill was
vulnerable to detractors supplying their own readings—imputing false motives,
insinuating psychological problems, and smearing her, as the American
Spectator notoriously did, as “a bit nutty and a bit slutty.”

In contrast, Hill pointed out, “the Hollywood-starlet narrative is part of the
folklore. The casting couch is a long-standing issue.” In addition, she
told me, “people often believe the myth that only conventionally
beautiful women are harassed—and so it didn’t seem that far-fetched to
people that this would happen to beautiful starlets who we all know and
love.”

Charges levied at political figures, Hill believes, face a particularly
high hurdle. Her case, like those of the women who accused Trump, she
says, “was cast as a political story.” In such situations, “everything
gets interpreted through a political lens, and it makes it almost
impossible” for people to seriously consider whether the accused
harasser “is the right person to represent you. It just becomes ‘This
is our guy’ and ‘people are trying to bring him down.’ ”

Meanwhile, as Jessica Leeds, who accused Trump, during the campaign, of
groping her on a plane thirty years ago, told the Washington Post, “It
is hard to reconcile that Harvey Weinstein could be brought down with
this, and [President] Trump just continues to be the Teflon Don.”
Melinda McGillivray, another accuser, told the Post that she, too, was
having trouble accepting the double standard. “What pisses me off is
that the guy is president,” she said. McGillivray accused
Trump of grabbing her at Mar-a-Lago, in 2003, when she was twenty-three years
old.

Hill says she is “hopeful” that, in light of the Weinstein affair and
other recent sexual-harassment revelations against powerful bosses,
“people will revisit the women” who accused Trump. But she fears that
the Weinstein lesson “won’t translate to everyday women, or even those
in high-profile careers in places like Silicon Valley,” who still don’t
have the fame, success, and standing of movie stars.

“We need to transfer the believability,” Hill said. She argued that the
public needs to understand that Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie “are
just like women down the street. People need to take this moment to make
clear that this is not just about Hollywood.”