speech and respect - College of Social Sciences and International ...

Taking Sides
during a routine traffic citation—a humiliation long accepted as the
cost of driving in that city—many women telephoned the station
with similar stories. 16 When Anita Hill testified before hundreds of
millions of viewers about her sexual harassment by Clarence Thomas,
innumerable women felt their anger validated for the first time. 17
In Hollywood, many who had accepted harassment as the occupational
hazard of an industry that marketed sex have challenged it and
sued perpetrators. 18
Such insubordination is more likely to be punished than rewarded,
however. The same factors that discourage complaints also
render status victims particularly vulnerable to retaliation. 19 An
English doctor who exploded at the male doctor with whom she
shared a surgery, shouting "I'm fed up with you brushing against me
and having my breasts touched and my bum touched as you go by,"
was ordered to pay £150,000 damages—the highest slander verdict
ever recorded—and an estimated £100,000 costs. The judge had
instructed the jury not to be miserly, referring to the just completed
Clarence Thomas hearings. 20 When a black man was insulted and
assaulted in Norwich by white racists, the judge sentenced him and
his white rescuers to the same two-year prison sentence as the
assailants, declaring: "I can see no basis for differentiating between
you in the matter of penalty." 21 It is essential, therefore, to protect
complainants against further victimisation.
C. Processing Disputes Informally
In what forum should speech victims complain, through what
procedures, and toward what end? State regulation should be
minimised for all the reasons I advanced earlier: procedural fetishism,
severity, formalism, inaccessibility, and delay. Instead, the
state should encourage the communities of civil society to redress
speech harms. 22 What constitutes a self-regulating community will
vary across time and place, but possible locales include schools and
universities, 23 workplaces, 24 trade unions, 25 residential neighbourhoods,
26 libraries, 27 shops, public transportation, voluntary associations,
sports teams, political parties and movements, and religious
congregations. Only communities whose diversity reflects that of the
larger society can address the reproduction of status inequality. The
community has several obvious merits as a locus of struggle.
Because it constructs status, the community can alter it. Because
members are joined by significant social bonds, they can influence
each other through informal sanctions like gossip, cooperation and
obstruction, deference and contempt, inclusion and ostracism. By
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