A little zero tolerance is good for the national soul
Like probably most readers of this column, I was very curious to know everything about these kisses that forced a senior senator from office and back into the Oregon woods where he, as one of the most prominent environmentalists, now can kiss and hug the trees.
Over the years, having myself become somewhat desensitized to the profound tremors and sweats that accompany kisses on the mouth, I was anxious to find out what was so momentous about Packwood's kisses. There must have been something about these labial smooches that was never part of my life nor even my dreams. I was relieved when I found out that we must not remain in suspense any longer; we can finally pierce the mystery of the kisses. The Senate Select Committee on Ethics of the United States Senate 104th Congress, one of the few institutions that still separates the chaff from the wheat by disseminating only what is in the best interest of the public and justified by the costs, published the Documents Related to the Investigation of Senator Robert Packwood. Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1995.
As I had always suspected, there was much to say about these kisses. In fact, more than 10,000 pages packed into 10 hefty volumes full of significance and revelation and distributed in 100,000 copies. Since some of the senators, not comprehending and underestimating the lasting pain of kisses on the mouth, were not willing to absorb the 10,000 pages, the Senate Ethics Counsel on Senator Robert Packwood published a condensed form of merely 325 pages which can be purchased for a pittance of $10 US: The Packwood Report. New York: Times Books, 1995.
Not having access to the set of 11 volumes on the Packwood kisses, and not having ordered my private set due to the salary freeze (there is something wholesome about budget cuts), I must rely on the account of Julia Reed, The Case of the Kissing Senator, that was published in the New York Review of Books on February 1, 1996. I ask readers' forgiveness for my referring primarily to Reed's account, but since she is a sensitive woman by virtue of the many seminars on sexual harassment and violence against women that she presumably has been obliged to attend, she is credible. Statistics tell us that it is highly likely that she, as a woman, has suffered multiple attacks of violence and abuse by men in the form of kisses on her mouth, kisses blown to her, suggestive leers, and unwanted invitations to dinner.
Julia Reed introduces her account of what the psychiatric profession probably will soon be calling the Kissing Disorder (Aspatsomania) or the Packwood Syndrome to be treated by their medical specialists, by quoting Senator S. Thurmond: "If I'm ever struck insane, I hope it will be in Washington because the people there won't know the difference." Who knows what city he would have mentioned had he lived in Canada and met our Sexual Harassment and Equity Officers and visited our Violence Against Women Research Centres which disclose that "Violence against women costs Canadian society at least $4.2 billion annually"? The Centre for Women's Studies and Feminist Research at the University of Western Ontario recently distributed the information that "sexuality (not sexual behavior) is a social phenomenon that is negotiated in a dynamic, interactive context" (Women's Studies News Letter, January 1996, 5). This insight touched me in a particularly person way: What do I do if they come trying to negotiate mine?
As is common in cases of alleged sexual harassment, one woman who is frustrated for a reason totally unrelated to sexual misconduct (as a student she may be unhappy with her low mark) and who interprets sexual harassment codes as hunting licenses, mobilizes others to confess having been harassed by the same man. In this case, the journalist Florence Graves went to great lengths and expense and with much effort and zeal about the task of tracking down former employees with the result that, finally, twenty-two women testified to having been kissed or chased around the table by Packwood.
Some of these women, as is usual again, needed first some persuasion or therapy to realize that they were traumatized by these kisses in the parking lot, in the elevator or a campaign trailer. These kisses, more perfunctory than passionate, did not, however, prevent the traumatized victims from eating pizza later or playing charades with the perpetrator, of staying in his employment and campaigning for him, of kissing him back, and for one of them even from inviting him to her wedding.
We are reminded, of course, of Anita Hill who overcame her trauma by continually seeking Clarence Thomas's company and support for her career. Reed talks in this context about the Repressed Injury Syndrome, another innovation for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. This mental disease - prevalent among women who sympathize with feminism, but who need nevertheless some prodding to really embrace its agenda of empowerment by self- denigration - consists basically of one single symptom: they do not know how painful for themselves and damaging to themselves a fleeting erotic encounter with a man can be. These patients remember everything; however, they do not know how much they have suffered until they are told by a very empathic feminist therapist, who does know. They respond well to therapy that advocates the proper consciousness of being injured and abused.
Unfortunately, there were even more victims and pathologies on the conscience of the Senator. Paige Wagers was so devastated by a kiss that from that moment on she did not function anymore but was "reduced to teaching dance."
Some others were so incapacitated by the kisses that the crusaders Gloria Allred and Holly Pruett had to file the complaints for them. After one single kissing encounter with Packwood everything in their lives went wrong; they became depressed and divorced. What in addition is typical in such cases is the claim that these victims whose lives were shattered did not volunteer to be interviewed by Sally Jesse Raphael, Larry King and other lay psychoanalysts for publicity's sake or some other gain, but to protect other unsuspecting women from falling prey to traumatizing kisses. Paige Wagers was so concerned about the spreading of such kisses that with her testimony before the Ethics Committee and on TV talk shows she wanted "to contributed something positive to the world."
It is truly admirable when those who have been harmed are only concerned about the welfare of others.
Short of studying the more than 10,000 pages of the authenticated account, I have studied and collected everything else about Packwood's kisses that was available to me, always hoping to read about some sin of the Satyr that would enrich my inner life and that I have missed when reading Petronius and Marquis de Sade. To my great disappointment kisses on the mouth apparently were Packwood's greatest offense that the women complained about.
There are many lessons to be learned from this courageous act of administering justice to a meritorious senator who stumbled and fell too often on his lips.
For many years in the feminist camp with his support for abortion, for accepting Anita Hill's view of reality and voting against Justice Thomas' confirmation, he still was not immune to charges of sexual harassment. This is the policy of zero tolerance at its best. Although Patricia Schroeder and Gloria Steinem must have felt grateful to Packwood for his long support of their causes, they could not allow moral sentimentality to prevail over solid principle. Thus they saw themselves compelled to ignore their gratitude and to collect money to support the 22 "brave souls" who so virtuously fought for all women. They were apparently more grateful to Anita Hill than to Packwood as indicated by the buttons they wore and distributed: "Thanks Anita, Bye Bob."
The policy of zero tolerance, of course, means as well that no costs should be spared to eradicate the evil of kisses on the mouth, whether they were provoked or unprovoked, whether they were instantly experienced as devastating for one's psyche, or later in therapy discovered as unwelcome. Certainly they were a source of fame and income. The Senate by postponing every other business for more than two entire days and by spending millions of dollars for the investigation of the kisses made the right decision, thus sending an important message to all who are tempted.
Zero tolerance means that a happy ending to a "situation that was not consensual" does not have any redeeming power either. The feminist lawyer Linda Chapman, in her clear prose, enlightened the senator and instructs us about what constitutes sexual harassment: ...when I saw a situation that was not consensual or involved an improper advance, I'm talking about one that may have ended up consensual but that began as nonconsensual...for example, a situation where you may have made an advance that then later changed to a consensual situation. Chapman rightly warns those women among us whose nonconsensual kisses were finally blessed by marriage contracts not to be complacent and not to allow the initial injury to be forgotten. After all, what good can come out of a relationship that started out violently? Catharsis for these victims is best obtained by turning their husbands in to the authorities.
It is a humiliating experience after so many years to realize that I used to enjoy watching Fred-and-Ginger movies without even feeling guilty - Ginger at the beginning was never "consensual"! Today we could avoid such belated guilt by allowing our wives to install an f-chip into our TV sets and to control what we, their non-discriminating husbands, watch.
Some other parts of the world do not share our commitment to zero tolerance and hypocrisy. Shortly after the premature retirement of Senator Packwood into the woods of Oregon, the former French President Francois Mitterand died. One particular photo of his extended family standing at the coffin deserves our attention in this context. The picture showed his wife Danielle, their two sons, their two grand-daughters, his mistress Anne Pingeot and their twenty-one year old daughter Mazarine. The relationship of the president with Anne Pingeot started when she was 20 and he 50 years old. He had been married at the time for fifteen years to Danielle, and she was unmarried.
She is a highly cultivated woman, is curator at the Musee d'Orsay, shared with Mitterand a passion for golf, and lived in a chic annexe of the Palis d'Elysee on 11, quai Branly in view of the Eiffel Tower at the expense of the taxpayer and protected by presidential guards. Their long relationship was never a secret, she never interfered in his public duties, and Mitterand for the last ten years spent Christmas with Anne and Mazarine in Egypt and New Year's Eve with Danielle and their sons in France. Mazarine, now a philosophy student at the Sorbonne, accompanied the President on many of his trips abroad such as the voyages to Italy, Egypt and Morocco, and after the President died Danielle invited Anne and Mazarine to join her in the plane to Cognac for the funeral.
What North Americans between the Rio Grande and the North Pole will find most surprising and perhaps shocking is the fact that neither the French press nor the electorate exploited their knowledge of the President's private love affairs, despite the fact that Mitterand had plenty of enemies and adversaries who would have loved to weaken his political position. Is this perhaps because the French do not know how much they themselves suffer?
We can really be proud of our accomplishments in North America having recognized the virtues of "zero tolerance" policies when we realize that the country of Simone de Beauvoir is still happy with a level of at least "hundred percent tolerance" sensitivities and does not know even about its own pain.
Moreover, it does not appear to dawn on the French that every private kiss is a political act. Fully 86 percent who filled out the questionnaire of Paris Match approve of Mitterand's extended family being present at the coffin during the official ceremonies. What's more, according to the survey of Ifop- L'Express-Europe, 71 percent of a representative sample of the French population think that the presence of Mitterand's two families at the funeral does not damage the image of the woman in the French society; 40 percent said that their very visible presence improved their esteem for the president; 26 percent disagreed; and 77 percent think that the private life of the president should be of no concern for anyone else. Mitterand, in fact, had so much respect for the institution of the family that, with the benediction of the nation, he had two. What unconscious vicarious victimization of French women!
We should, however, never relax and become complacent about the progress we are making. There is always room for further improvement. Our Sexual Harassment Officers, whenever they have a quiet moment (between advising the harassed, investigating and adjudicating complaints), may consider a possible improvement of our policy.
The University of Massachusetts at Amherst leads the way by establishing a "general environmental harassment policy" that defines deviant speech as "material that serves to harass." The new speech code is seen as necessary to protect the university members from becoming offended on the grounds of "race, color, national or ethnic origin, sexual orientation, age, religion, marital status, veteran status, disability, citizenship, culture, HIV status, language, parental status, political affiliation or belief, and pregnancy status."
Since invited campus guests, however, in Amherst are not subjected to prosecution, as they are on our campus, Louis Farrakhan recently was welcomed with restrictions to give a three-hour guest lecture. That is progress and freedom of speech, if not for us, at least for someone like him.