[Magdalen] Now Keillor.

[Louise Laughton]

We need to separate trivia from real assault. Women my age (80) and even many much younger took for granted the way the world was when we were young and young middle-aged in the work place. We knew how to play the game, escape trouble without angering anybody. And sometimes, I’m sure, it was to the relief of the boy/man involved who himself was just playing the game as it existed everywhere. This is not to say it was right, but it was the way things were, and it was trivia. Not rape. Not child abuse. Not doctor-patient abuse. Not clerical abuse of a vulnerable person in the congregation. When workplace sexual harassment first entered my life as a new term, it was 1980 give or take and in the newsroom where I worked. We joked. One woman, like me at that time 40-something, asked of sexual harassment, “What do I have to do to get it?” I, at about that time, called a man in the art department “Honey, “ as in “That’s just what I had in mind, Honey.” He said he’d give me one more chance but any more “Honey” and he’d have to file a sexual harassment complaint. In other words, the whole thing was a joke. And yes. The girl who got sloshed at a frat party was thought to be somewhat responsible for whatever had happened to her.