Who-Stole-Feminism.-How-Women-Have-Betrayed-Women

182 WHO STOLE FEMINISM?(c) give you sexual notes or pictures(d) make suggestive or sexual gestures, looks, comments, or jokes(e) pressure you to do something sexual(0 force you to do something sexual• If you've been sexually harassed at school, how did it make youfeel?Forty-two hundred of the magazine's 1.9 million subscribers returnedthe questionnaire, a 0.2 percent response. 77Nearly all the respondentsreported they had been harassed as defined by the questionnaire. Specifically,the data showed that 89 percent of the respondents had receivedsuggestive gestures, looks, comments, or jokes; 83 percent had beentouched, pinched, or grabbed; 47 percent were leaned over or cornered;28 percent received sexual notes or pictures; 27 percent were pressuredto do something sexual; and 10 percent were forced to do somethingsexual.Ms. Stein, who was much moved by the responses, began to writeabout them even before she completed the study. In the November 1992issue of Education Week, she wrote:Their letters arrive by the hundreds daily, screaming to be read:"OPEN," "URGENT," "PLEASE READ" are scribbled on the envelopes.Sometimes the writers give their names and addresses, sometimesthey don't. . . . Inside the envelopes are chilling stories, handwrittenon lined notebook paper. ... All beg for attention, for answers, andabove all, for some type of justice. 78"To thousands of adolescent girls," she concludes, "school may beteaching more about oppression than freedom; more about silence thanautonomy. We need to heed their warnings and listen to their stories."When Ms. Stein's final report came out on March 24, 1993, the resultswere carried in newspapers around the country. The reporters cited Ms.Stein's figures in just the way she and the Wellesley researchers must havehoped: Instead of pointing out that the "9 out of 10" of those whoreported being sexually harassed were girls who had taken the trouble toanswer a magazine survey—and who constituted no more than twotenthsof 1 percent of the magazine's readership—the reporters simplyspoke of an epidemic of harassment. The story headline from the BostonGlobe was typical: "A U.S. survey shows wide harassment of girls inschool." 79What Ms. Stein and the National Organization of Women had devised