As some blogs have pointed out, Reade made a rather unbelievable statement in an interview with Fox News. As background, Reade was quibbling with the headline of the AP article detailing how she walked back earlier statements made to multiple news outlets that she had filed a complaint detailing her allegations of sexual harassment against Biden. The AP changed its headline so that it quoted her verbatim (“Reade: ‘I didn’t use sexual harassment’ in Biden complaint.’”), but apparently using her own damn exact words was still misleading, as Ms. Reade tried to explain to Fox:
Reade told Fox News that [the headline is] "still incorrect" and "misleading."
"They're standing by the fact... that I said I don't think I used the term 'sexual harassment.' We didn't use it as much back in 1993, so I don't know but that's not to say that there isn't a box that I didn't check. Until we get that form, we don't know," Reade explained.
Let’s, just for the sake of the argument, give Reade the benefit of the doubt that when she told the New York Times that her complaint “really detailed the harassment” and told NPR that she “she filed a formal written complaint about harassment” (etc), that she didn’t actually mean that she used the word “harassment.” Even if you give her that much, the explanation—that the term “sexual harassment” wasn’t used as much in 1993--is just totally absurd.
Maybe that was the case in 1990 (although even then, people working on the Hill probably would have known the term). But in 1993? No way.
That was two years after Anita Hill’s allegations against Clarence Thomas—and the nationally televised confirmation hearings that followed—brought sexual harassment into the national media spotlight. Within months, everyone from Time to law professors were talking about how the Hill/Thomas hearings had sparked a national debate about sexual harassment. Nina Totenberg said that it “ripped open the subject of sexual harassment like some sort of long-festering sore. It oozed over every workplace, creating everything from heated discussions to an avalanche of lawsuits.”
That same year, the Civil Rights of 1991 expanded the remedies available to women who were sexually harassed or who were retaliated against for reporting harassment. The number of sexual harassment complaints filed with the EEOC increased by 71 percent in the last quarter of 1991 compared to a year earlier—despite the fact that Hill’s allegations against Thomas didn’t even become public until after that quarter started.
Had this died down by 1993? Hardly. In fact, one of the top news stories that year was the allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault against a Senator, Republican Bob Packwood of Oregon. If anyone knew the term “sexual harassment” in 1993, it was someone working in the Senate. In fact, the Packwood story became national news starting in November and December of 1992, right around the time Reade started working for Biden. By the time the 103rd Congress was seated, the pressure for the Senate to act against Packwood was growing.
The Packwood scandal remained national news for much of the year as the Senate grappled with how to handle the allegations. In August 1993--right around the time Reade stopped working for Biden—the New York Times Magazine did a thorough review of the allegations. Here are some choice selections from that piece:
Tales of Packwood's exploits as a masher, often involving members of his staff, had long been served up for the delectation of insiders, like canapes at a political cocktail party. In the years before sexual harassment became a national catch phrase, such incidents were usually winked away.
******
Now after months of legwork by staff investigators, the committee is considering hearings that could re-expose to the public the raw nerve of sexual harassment -- Round 2 in a fight to define the meaning and moral valence of an issue first raised at the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings. If anything has become clear in the two years since that agonizing confrontation, it's that the national debate over sexual harassment is far from over.
******
The 60-year-old Packwood is cast in the unlucky role of lightning rod just when the Senate is under pressure to prove its newly awakened sensitivity to the issue of sexual harassment, following the rough, inquisitorial treatment Hill suffered at the hands of some Senators two years ago. Fifty-eight senators have adopted anti-sexual-harassment guidelines framed by the Capitol Hill Women's Political Caucus. Packwood, in an irony no one's failed to note, was an early signer.
...but Reade says that “we didn’t use” the term “sexual harassment” as much in 1993? Give me a break.