When will they get it?
On the doorstep of a Parramatta Road junk shop there stood, until recently, a life-size plaster black man holding a tray, his expression reminiscent of the disposition of the slaves in Gone with the Wind.
Glimpsed from the window of a city-bound bus, he was always surprising: racism is still with us, but some of its particular forms are (almost) a thing of the past.
The same goes for women's rights, although it's very uneven. Few would dispute women's right to vote, but when will bare bare-breasted women in magazine ads in newsagency doorways (their expressions a mix of subservience and suggestion) amaze us?
When will we get a leap in consciousness on this point similar to the one which has all but consigned Black Boy soap and golliwogs to the museums?
In the wake of the media circus surrounding Anita Hill's claims against US Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, some commentators have noted that the nation came to the brink of such a leap in consciousness about the issue of sexual harassment. Office politics in the US may never be the same again.
Hill's claim that Thomas sexually harassed her when she was employed by him 10 years ago failed to thwart his road to the Supreme Court, and the brawl it provoked struck many as a sobering reflection of the lack of unity over issues of race, class and gender. But others pointed out that with the embittered cry of thousands of women across the nation — "They just don't get it!" — some may have actually started to get it.
In the October 23 US Guardian, black activist Mimi Morris likened the hearings to a "a national teach-in on sexual harassment".
Feminist academic Elayne Rapping noted: "When women of this nation say that men 'just don't get it', they are referring to this kind of truth, a truth so pervasive, so deeply embedded in the mores and assumptions of this culture that to single-handedly take it on is to risk losing everything, your reputation, your sanity, your livelihood, the works ...
"I loved hearing these guys — old, affluent, secluded in their boys' club with their rubber checks and charter planes and disposable mistresses — mouth the feminist lines so humbly and sincerely. 'Sexual harassment is a very serious matter', they began to intone one by one. And it certainly is now."
In this country, campaigns against sexual harassment have been starting and stopping for years. Every now and then a case taken to equal opportunity boards gets into the papers; every now and then you hear of women's victories against those seeking to keep them in their place.
But the fact is that sexual harassment in many workplaces is still the norm, not the scandalous exception. Women put up with it. Most feel they do not have what it takes to do what just a few women decide to do: risk their reputation, sanity, and livelihood by making a case against their harassers. Many women still put up with it when the men they challenge respond with bewilderment: it was only a joke, a dirty picture, a quick grapple ... where's your sense of humour?
According to figures released by the Sydney-based Affirmative Action Agency and reported in the November 6 Sydney Morning Herald, one in four Australian women say they are the victims of repeated sexual suggestion or sexist jokes in the workplace, and one in five are forced to endure offensive pin-ups or drawings on workplace walls.
It appears they still just don't get it. Yet.
By Tracy Sorensen