Top Quotes: “She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement” — Jodi Kantor & Megan Twohey

Introduction

“When I wrote about the class gap in breastfeeding — white collar women can pump on the job, lower paid women cannot — readers responded by creating the first-ever mobile lactation suites, now available in 200+ locations across the country.”

“Transactions that complex can never be truly secret. The agreements involved lawyers, negotiations, and money, and others inevitably found out too — colleagues, agents, family members, and friends. Together the payments formed a legal and financial trail that told the story of the allegations against O’Reilly. The settlements didn’t prevent the story; they were the story, a tale of cover-up that illuminated the alleged wrongdoing. This was a new way of reporting on sexual harassment.”

“She introduced students to research on the egalitarian behavior of bonobo apes, who over the course of evolution have eliminated male sexual coercion in their communities. If a male does get aggressive toward a female bonobo, she lets out a special cry, Rosenfeld explained. The other females come to her aid, descending from the trees and fending off the attacker.”

“In shipyards, construction sites, and other traditionally male workplaces, men sometimes tried to drive out women by putting them in physical danger. Chira had heard of one woman who had been left deep in a mine without any communication device, and another had been stranded atop a wind turbine.”

“Federal sexual harassment laws were weak, leaving out vast categories of people – freelancers, employees at workplaces with fewer than fifteen employees. The federal statute of limitations for filing a complaint could be as short as 180 days, and federal damages were capped at $300,000 – not necessarily enough to cover lost earnings or attract a good lawyer. No wonder many viewed settlements as surer propositions.

The deals worked out for the lawyers too, especially financially. They generally worked on contingency, getting paid only if the client did, taking at least one-third of the client’s award as a fee. Losing in court could mean getting nothing. So sexual harassment settlements had swelled into a cottage industry. Some attorneys fought back against egregious provisions, but others rubber-stamped them or capitulated in order to win bigger awards.

Even the EEOC, the government agency that was supposed to enforce sexual harassment laws, often kept its settlements confidential. The agency had very little enforcement authority, and, under its founding mandate, was required to settle whenever possible, often disclosing little. “We know internally who the companies are that have the most charges,” Chai Feldblum, then the commissioner of the EEOC, had told Jodi. But the agency was prohibited from making that information public. Before taking a job, a woman could not check with the EBOC to see what kind of record the prospective employer had on harassment.”

Weinstein

“How she had to procure and organize Weinstein’s personal supply of an erectile dysfunction drug called Caverject, administered through injection into the penis. How she had to keep a supply of those shots at her desk, hand them off to him in brown paper bags, and sometimes run the drugs to hotels and elsewhere, just before his meetings with women. And how, after she spent a week finding a new supplier of the drug, and paid for it with his company card, Weinstein gave Rehal a $500 bonus, paid for by the company, according to an email she saw him send to human resources. He had implied there would be consequences if she told anyone about these duties, mentioning her student loans and where her younger sister attended school, and saying he could have her kicked out.”

“One day, as she had walked a young woman to Mr. Weinstein’s hotel room, Franklin confronted him. “It’s not my job, and I don’t want to do it,” she remembered saying. “Your opinion doesn’t count,” she said he responded. Soon afterward, she was fired.”