Ebook: Tainted witness: why we doubt what women say about their lives

In 1991, Anita Hill brought testimony and scandal into America's living rooms during televised Senate confirmation hearings in which she detailed the sexual harassment she had suffered at the hands of Clarence Thomas. The male Senate Judiciary Committee refused to take Hill seriously, and the veracity of Hill's claims were sullied in the mainstream media. Hill was defamed as a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty, and Thomas was confirmed. The tainting of Hill and her testimony are part of a larger social history in which women find themselves caught up in a system that refuses to believe what they say. The Anita Hill case shows how a tainted witness is not who someone is, but what someone can become. 'Tainted Witness' elucidates how persistent and pernicious patterns of doubt attach to women who bring forward accounts of sexual and racial violence.