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PDFFrom The Root:
Close your eyes. Can you remember what you were doing in October of 1991? Zoom in on the crisp fall days of the Senate hearings when Anita Hill stood up and told her truth. Can you see it?
I can. I was a senior at Yale, and I had a very cute boyfriend whom I berated constantly for using sexist, homophobic language — like calling a guy who wouldn’t stand up to his girlfriend a pussy or a fag. He was a very nice young man from a well-known activist family that had fought for civil rights for generations. He said he was talking like one of the guys, and that I was blowing things out of proportion.
I wasn’t having it. I had taken bell hooks’ class the semester before. Had grown up crawling around the Ms. magazine offices and spent summers at my godmother Gloria Steinem’s house. My mother was one of the most visible black feminists in the world. All of which meant that the boyfriend and I had some lovely discussions about Rousseau and the Enlightenment over ramen at my tiny off-campus apartment, but we almost came to blows over what I found to be his unfathomable utterances of patriarchal subterfuge.
Full piece here.
See also: Anita Hill’s Keynote Address at Anita Hill, 20 Years Later
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