Sitting Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas, spiked political and social debates during his confirmation hearings in the 1990s. Justice Thomas is a conservative judge appointed by former President George H.W. Bush. (Anita Hill vs. Clarence Thomas: The Backstory) Prior to his judicial appointment, Clarence Thomas was the head of U.S. Department of Education 's Office of Civil Rights in Washington and the Equal Employment Opportunities Committee, where Anita Hill worked as his subordinate. (Anita Hill vs. Clarence Thomas: The Backstory) Around the time of his confirmation hearings, Anita Hill accused Thomas of sexually harassing her at the workplace. (Anita Hill Accuses Clarence Thomas) She claims that he made inappropriate sexual comments and showed her pornographic videos after
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Gender and social construction, gender roles, and race relations all played a role in the outcome of this debate. More importantly, the intersectionality of these identities were awoken by this debate. Society’s passive ideals of women were challenged by Hill, which did not sit well with many people at that time. Anita shared stories of many hateful letters she received for coming forth with the case. The type of language used by the media to describe women affects people’s perceptions and was echoed in many of the letters she received. Emily Martin discusses this concept in “The Egg and The Sperm: How Science Has constructed A Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles.” Martin explores how texts and media describe women as passive and relatively helpless and useless. Conversely, other texts make women appear aggressive and hostile if they were no longer passive. This is synonymous to Anita Hill’s case. Her bravery challenged societal norms that deemed women as dependent and below men. Her actions were therefore judged negatively and she was perceived as “crazy” or a “trouble-maker” by many. (Anita,
Gender and social construction, gender roles, and race relations all played a role in the outcome of this debate. More importantly, the intersectionality of these identities were awoken by this debate. Society’s passive ideals of women were challenged by Hill, which did not sit well with many people at that time. Anita shared stories of many hateful letters she received for coming forth with the case. The type of language used by the media to describe women affects people’s perceptions and was echoed in many of the letters she received. Emily Martin discusses this concept in “The Egg and The Sperm: How Science Has constructed A Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles.” Martin explores how texts and media describe women as passive and relatively helpless and useless. Conversely, other texts make women appear aggressive and hostile if they were no longer passive. This is synonymous to Anita Hill’s case. Her bravery challenged societal norms that deemed women as dependent and below men. Her actions were therefore judged negatively and she was perceived as “crazy” or a “trouble-maker” by many. (Anita,