Disclosure

Some of you may wonder how a woman could rape a man. The answer is, of course, she can’t. Rape is a crime of violence. It is exclusively a crime of males, who use rape with appalling frequency to keep women in their place. That is the deep truth of our society, and of all other societies before ours.

For their part, women simply do not oppress men. Women are powerless in the hands of men. And to claim that a woman committed rape is absurd. But that didn’t stop Mr. Piggy, who is interested only in smearing his new supervisor. He’s even bringing a formal charge of sexual harassment against her!

In short, Mr. Piggy has the nasty habits of a typical patriarch. As you might expect, they appear everywhere in his life. Although Mr. Piggy’s wife is an outstanding attorney, he pressures her to give up her job and stay home with the kids. After all, Mr. Piggy doesn’t want his wife out in the business world, where she might hear about his affairs with young women and his excessive drinking. He probably figures his new female supervisor wouldn’t approve of that, either. Maybe she won’t allow him to be late to work, as he so often is.

So Mr. Piggy has made his underhanded move, and another talented businesswoman sees her career unfairly jeopardized. Will she be able to keep the pigs in the pen at Company X? Stay tuned for updates.

"Christ," Sanders said. He read it through again.

Hunter came back with two cappuccinos in paper cups. She pushed one toward him. "Here. Looks like you need it."

"How did they get the story?" he said.

Hunter shook her head. "I don’t know. It looks to me like there’s a leak inside the company."

"But who?" Sanders was thinking that if the story made the paper, it must have been leaked by three or four p.m. the day before. Who in the company even knew that he was considering a harassment charge at that time?

"I can’t imagine who it could be," Hunter said. "I’ll ask around." "And who’s Constance Walsh?"

"You never read her? She’s a regular columnist at the Post Intelligence," Hunter said. "Feminist perspectives, that kind of thing." She shook her head. "How is Susan? I tried to call her this morning, and there’s no answer at your house."

"Susan’s gone away for a few days. With the kids."

Hunter nodded slowly. "That’s probably a good idea."

"We thought so."

"She knows about this?"

"Yes."

"And is it true? Are you charging harassment?"

"Yes."

Jesus."

"Yes," he said, nodding.

She sat with him for a long time, not speaking. She just sat with him. Finally she said, "I’ve known you for a long time. I hope this turns out okay."

"Me, too."

There was another long silence. Finally, she pushed away from the table and got up.

"See you later, Tom."

"See you, Mary Anne."

He knew what she was feeling. He had felt it himself, when others in the company had been accused of harassment. There was suddenly a distance. It didn’t matter how long you had known the person. It didn’t matter if you were friends. Once an accusation was made, everybody pulled away. Because the truth was, you never knew what had happened. You couldn’t afford to take sides-even with your friends.

He watched her walk away, a slender, compact figure in exercise clothes, carrying a leather briefcase. She was barely five feet tall. The men on the ferry were so much larger. He remembered that she had once told Susan that she took up running because of her fear of rape. "I’ll just outrun them," she had said. Men didn’t know anything about that. They didn’t understand that fear.

But there was another kind of fear that only men felt. He looked at the newspaper column with deep and growing unease. Key words and phrases jumped out at him:

Vindictive . . . bitter . . . can’t tolerate a woman . . . blatant hostility . . .

rape . . . crime of males . . . smearing his supervisor . . . affairs with young women . . . excessive drinking . . . late to work . . . unfairly jeopardized . . . pigs in the pen.

These characterizations were more than inaccurate, more than unpleasant. They were dangerous. And it was exemplified by what happened to John Masters-a story that had reverberated among many senior men in Seattle.

Masters was fifty, a marketing manager at MicroSym. A stable guy, solid citizen, married twenty-five years, two kids-the older girl in college, the younger girl a junior in high school. The younger girl starts to have trouble with school, her grades go down, so the parents send her to a child psychologist. The child psychologist listens to the daughter and then says, You know, this is the typical story of an abused child. Do you have anything like that in your past?

Gee, the girl says, I don’t think so.

Think back, the psychologist says.

At first the girl resists, but the psychologist keeps at her: Think back. Try to remember. And after a while, the girl starts to recall some vague memories. Nothing specific, but now she thinks it’s possible. Maybe Daddy did do something wrong, way back when.

The psychologist tells the wife what is suspected. After twenty-five years together, the wife and Masters have some anger between them. The wife goes to Masters and says, Admit what you did.

Masters is thunderstruck. He can’t believe it. He denies everything. The wife says, You’re lying, I don’t want you around here. She makes him move out of the house.

The older daughter flies home from college. She says, What is this madness? You know Daddy didn’t do anything. Come to your senses. But the wife is angry. The daughter is angry. And the process, once set in motion, can’t be stopped.

The psychologist is required by state law to report any suspected abuse. She reports Masters to the state. The state is required by law to conduct an investigation. Now a social worker is talking to the daughter, the wife, and Masters. Then to the family doctor. The school nurse. Pretty soon, everybody knows.