<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" In 1991, law school professor Anita Hill testified during the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, detailing the harassment she experienced when she worked under him at the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Hill&amp;#039;s testimony was televised nationwide, bringing the term &amp;quot;sexual harassment&amp;quot; into the general lexicon for the first time. Hill told Congress that Thomas made a series of inappropriate sexual remarks including talking about porn films featuring bestiality and rape. For her testimony, Hill was roundly vilified, first by an all-male Senate Judiciary committee who condescendingly and aggressively questioned her and then by the media, which, according to one former conservative journalist who later regretted his involvement, sought to paint Hill as &amp;quot;a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty.&amp;quot; Majorities of Americans concluded that Hill was lying. Thomas was confirmed and remains on the Supreme Court today. Almost 20 years later, Hill received a strange voicemail from Thomas&amp;#039; wife, Ginni, asking her to apologize and explain &amp;quot;why you did what you did with my husband.&amp;quot; Rather than apologize, Hill made the tape public and reopened the public debate on sexual harassment. The &amp;quot;Anita&amp;quot; documentary, by Oscar-winning director Freida Lee Mock, takes the conversation even further, looking at Hill&amp;#039;s life now and asking: How far has she come? How far have we? Hill spoke to Cosmopolitan.com. Today you&amp;#039;re a hero to many women. But at the time of your testimony, you faced so much hostility. I imagine it must have felt quite traumatic and overwhelming. Very much so. It was quite isolating. At the time, seven out of 10 people polled thought that I had perjured myself. There was also an effort by members of the Senate committee to sort of isolate me and suggest my experience wasn&amp;#039;t typical. It was psychological warfare almost \u2014 they wanted people to think that this was either minimal or an aberration, and that nobody should take it seriously. It only took the first two or three letters of people saying, &amp;quot;This is what happened to me&amp;quot; for things to improve. A week or so after the hearing, I got a phone call. It was this muffled, very deep voice, and the person said, &amp;quot;You know, you have opened a whole can of worms.&amp;quot; I thought, &amp;quot;This person is going to tell me about terrible I am.&amp;quot; But then they said, &amp;quot;I was a victim of incest. And this is what happened to me. What you faced is the same kind of questioning and the same kind of harassment that I faced.&amp;quot; Since then, I&amp;#039;ve heard from people who have been sexually assaulted, from people who have been the victims of clergy abuse, and from people who have just tried to go into their workplace and do the right thing. What ultimately happened is that people who faced power and who tried to right wrongs and who just tried to be heard identified with the testimony. Looking back, what were your support systems? Who showed up for you? The amazing thing is that I had so many people who showed up for me. I had my immediate family, my brothers and sisters, and my parents. I had great friends. I had colleagues at the University of Oklahoma who came together and said, &amp;quot;How can we help out?&amp;quot; Colleagues I had met throughout the country came together to put together a legal team for me. And then there were complete strangers who heard the story and stepped forward. In the photo that you see in the film of me testifying, behind me is a woman named Susan Deller Ross who&amp;#039;s a law professor, and there&amp;#039;s also an older gentleman. His name is Warner Gardner and he&amp;#039;s now deceased, but he was a Washington, D.C., lawyer, and he stepped up and said, &amp;quot;I just want to be a part of a support team for her.&amp;quot; I think it&amp;#039;s important for people to know this, because the system was not supportive. What has changed since you testified? What hasn&amp;#039;t? Workplaces have changed. Some of the stuff that was going on \u2014 some of the loose banter that was accepted \u2014 is no longer acceptable. I know all sexual harassment has not ended, but some of it has. There are more policies in place that prohibit sexual harassment and they&amp;#039;re well-stated and they&amp;#039;re clear and they&amp;#039;re out front.  In terms of public awareness, in 1991 people would still say, as Senator Simpson did during the hearings, that sexual harassment is not a problem. &amp;quot;Crap&amp;quot; is what he called it. I think people know now it&amp;#039;s real and it&amp;#039;s prevalent. The senators tried to portray it as an anomaly. It&amp;#039;s not. I think the people who are among your readers would say, &amp;quot;Yeah, I grew up in a world where I know sexual harassment is wrong.&amp;quot; That was not the case 23 years ago. What led you to decide to speak out about an issue that almost no one had spoken out publicly against before?  When I decided to speak, my concern was with the court. People misunderstand that and think I must have wanted to raise the issue of sexual harassment. No. I was talking about the integrity and the character of this individual and his behavior. It wasn&amp;#039;t as if I said, &amp;quot;I want to start a public conversation about sexual harassment.&amp;quot; That was an unintended consequence, and I&amp;#039;m very proud of that, but my question to myself was, &amp;quot;Does this really speak to the integrity of the individual, his respect for the law, and his respect for people and their rights to be able to work in an environment where they are judged on the basis of their work and not on their sexual availability?&amp;quot; And I concluded that this was worthwhile information. What advice would you give to other women who want to speak out?  Take care of yourself. Talk to people who know you and love you and tell them what happened. Accept that it&amp;#039;s not your fault. A lot of people still think, &amp;quot;Oh, well, I thought I was being nice but they misinterpreted,&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;I just wanted to be friendly,&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;I was trying to be a good employee,&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Maybe I should have worn something different.&amp;quot; But you are not to be blamed because someone else misbehaved. Then you can prepare yourself to come forward. Know what the institutional policies are, whether it&amp;#039;s a college or a workplace or any other organization. Take the steps to learn what the processes are, who to go see, what an investigation is going to look like, what kind of evidence you need to be able to convince people of what&amp;#039;s happening, and the potential outcomes. Having that knowledge is important.  These things can be all-consuming. You get to a point where you can feel like you are defined by this thing that is happening to you, that you didn&amp;#039;t choose, that somebody imposed on you. That&amp;#039;s when I say, go back to those people who love you and care about you and realize that this is something that is happening to you. It is not who you are. You are not a victim. You are a whole human being with a lot of skills and a lot of gifts that will define who you are, and you should refuse to be defined by an incident. Remember those things that made you who you were before it happened. Who are you outside of your testimony? What do people not know about you? I wonder if there&amp;#039;s anything they don&amp;#039;t know! I am the youngest of 13 children. I am the granddaughter of slaves. My parents were born in 1911 and 1912, and they lived through segregation and they lived through blatant race and sex discrimination, and they raised strong, empowered, successful children.  I&amp;#039;m also an educator, and after having had a career in education for 31 years now, I bring a set of skills and understanding about getting people to come together in conversations to better further knowledge. One thing that has come out of the hearing is that I&amp;#039;m a person now who feels deeply connected to people. I hear from so many people, and I understand how peoples&amp;#039; lives have been impacted by the hearings. And I feel a responsibility based on that position. I try to help people find their voices so that my situation will not be repeated. Why make a film now? I would love for your readers to know that when they see the film, they&amp;#039;re going to see who I was before and what has happened since, but the film is really about how we move forward. It talks about the hearing, but it&amp;#039;s also about how you can have a life you think is going to go one way and then a terrible situation comes up and you can use that to help move people to a better place. That includes me, the person at the center of it. I want people to know that I have a good and happy life. RELATED:  The 31 Best Pieces of Advice for Young Women Are Women Hiding Their Career Achievements From Potential Partners? Follow Jill on Twitter. Photo credit: Getty Images "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/q-and-a/a5983/anita-hill-documentary-sexual-harassment/?click=cos_new>