The notion that Anita Hill should have displayed a certain type of body language isn’t completely insane — cartwheels and Bronx cheers would have been odd — but Near Wild Heaven’s claim that she could see right through Hill’s act sounds seriously delusional.
Lessee…Hill was endangering her professional career, probably hurting a fellow African American, opening herself to a torrent of insults and accusations, and seemingly trying to precisely describe events and complex emotions from a decade earlier. And Near Wild Heaven believes she knows what kind of body language Hill should have been displaying in that circumstance.
I can’t see how Near Wild Heaven could know such a thing, because that situation was largely unprecedented.
Then you’ve fallen victim to the old logical fallacy of false authority. Whatever you experienced as sexual harassment–it’s an umbrella term for a wide range of speech and behaviors–it clearly has not made you an authority on the subject or given you any special insights into others who’ve been harassed. Your case proves that experiences don’t necessarily overcome inborn prejudices: you may indeed still be naive.
You have some serious soul-searching to do. Ask yourself, “Why would I, someone who’s been sexually harassed, have had such an immediate and strong visceral reaction to another person claiming sexual harassment? How much of my reaction has to do with my own experiences and how much with what society and my upbringing has told me about women?”
You have an opportunity here to reflect and to read the research and become a better person for doing so. Or, of course, you can double down and refuse to acknowledge the real damage accusations like yours have–not only to Ms. Hill, but to every victim who comes forward and every victim who doesn’t dare.
It’s extremely hard to judge. Her story has changed quite dramatically over time and been materially contradictory in places, and some of the people she claimed would corroborate her story have done the opposite. Others have supported her version of events. Much of the press gave up in frustration precisely because they couldn’t corroborate her story and because of some of her claims turned out to be false.
It’s possible that she was assaulted. It’s also possible that she’s delusional or an attention seeker. But IMHO her claims are not sufficiently convincing for me to assign them much weight. YMMV.
Hill’s accusations were far more straightforward and consistent, and Thomas’s defensive attacks on her (something Biden didn’t do to Reade) were highly suspect.
Stories like that should really give more credibility to people like Hill. When accusations are made against republicans, they vow to get back at Democrats for them. But when they make their accusations, they fall apart immediately.
The problem is, is that the Republicans have been divorced from credibility for so long, they just have no idea what it even means anymore.
If I had a gun to my head and I had to bet my life on what happened, I’d bet that Biden made unwanted advances towards Reade.
The best argument against Reade’s credibility is evidence of dishonesty in other areas of her life. The arguments there are inconsistencies in her accusations against Biden are essentially that she omitted parts of the accusation at different points, which is both not an inconsistency at all and completely reasonable for recounting any event especially a traumatic one.
When Reade spoke up again in 2020 it likely sparked a massive firestorm of competing political pressures behind the scenes. Evidently right-wing media didn’t think she would go along with them making a huge thing out of it so they didn’t continue to push the story down the stretch of the campaigns.