For me, it began during the presidential campaign when Trump mocked and imitated a disabled reporter. I thought, “How could anyone vote for him after this?” It continued during the debates, when he stalked Hillary, tromping around the stage and looming over her. Although she was a weak candidate, I was shocked when he won and depressed that so many Americans voted for him. Yet again, I deplored that the Electoral College gave the election to someone who had lost the popular vote.

Crazy Town continued during one of his early cabinet meetings, when everyone in the room, led by Mike Pence, groveled and tried to outdo each other in sycophantic praise for Trump. I had never witnessed anything like it. Despite this, seemingly endless firings and replacements followed over the next two years, with one hireling after another running afoul of an irrational power freak. As George Packer wrote in the September 24th New Yorker, “A coarse and feckless viciousness is the operating procedure of his White House, and the poison spreads to everyone. Only snakes and sycophants survive.”

My dismay has increased as it has become clear that the Republican Party, in both the House and the Senate, has followed this corrupt lead, betraying its long-held values. A balanced budget? Let the deficit sky-rocket as we give more tax breaks to the wealthiest among us. Suspicion of Russia? Let it disappear as the president meets privately with Putin and praises him to the point that many of us consider treasonous. And now, the Supreme Court. The hypocritical claim of “Let the people decide” used in an unprecedented blocking of Pres. Obama’s right to appoint a justice, has now been trashed. Attempting to rush Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation through before the November elections, the scant Republican majority in the Senate allowed less than 10% of his papers released, dismissed any objections to his evasive answers, and now seems not to have done its basic homework. Three and perhaps four women have come forward claiming he sexually harassed them. All have asked for FBI investigations of their charges, something they would be extremely unlikely to do if they were just trying to “smear” him, as he claims.

Do I believe them? You bet I do. I worked as a rape crisis counselor at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village for fourteen years. In all that time, we had only one false claimant — a con-woman who went from city to city and was easily caught. We even had a pamphlet titled “I Never Told Anyone,” since this was so common. Look at the harassment Christine Blasey Ford, the first accuser, has experienced: death threats to her and her family, hacking of her email, etc., etc. It remains far more difficult for women to come forward with charges than for men to deny them.

And now the eleven Republican men on the Judiciary Committee are pondering whether to question her themselves or to hire a female attorney to present a better picture. She of course is not allowed to have her attorney present, nor to bring in corroborating witnesses. The echoes of the Senate’s base treatment of Anita Hill many years ago are deafening. And the context for all this is Trump’s own boasts about “pussy grabbing,” his infidelities, and his own sexual harassment of women. If you elect a clown, expect a circus.

     It wasn't until a few weeks after I posted my "Me Too" blog that I realized I had left out the most important and shocking sexual harassment I had experienced: a man exposing his erect penis to me in the lobby of our building when I was ten.  I had walked home from school as usual and thought nothing of there being a white man in his mid-thirties in the small lobby behind the glass front door -- people often waited there to be buzzed up to apartments.  He turned around, showed his penis to me and said, "Do you want to play with it?"  To my chagrin, I said, "No thanks" -- I was mortified that I said "thanks."  I rushed into the building, rode the elevator to our fifth floor apartment, and told my mother what had happened.  She called the police, who came right away.  When I described the man as in his mid-thirties, my mother said, "Oh, children never know how old people are," and I felt completely undermined.  He was not caught.

     For years afterwards, I used to walk past the building's door to make sure no one was there before I went in.  This childhood experience was one reason the exhibitionists I experienced in graduate school had such an impact on me.  But it wasn't until I talked with other women that I realized that this experience "counted."  I think I had just assumed that since I wasn't a grown-up, it didn't matter.  I had had another sexual encounter when I was even younger, probably seven or eight.  I was walking home on Lexington Avenue and a man started walking with me and talking.  He asked me if I knew about what I heard as "my cult."  I didn't know the word "cunt" yet, but that must have been what he said.  I walked away and didn't think too much about it.

     When I talked with my sister and friends about these experiences, after I published my first blog, I realized that they were not only part of my experience of sexual harassment, but perhaps the most important part.  I also realized that virtually every woman I knew shared these experiences.  "It was the way the world was," a number of them said and that was true.

      I hope these situations are changing.  My dear friend and writing partner, Judith Zinsser, gave me a birthday card with a cake with candles on the front labelled "Feminist Birthday Cake."  When you open the card, it reads : They're not candles, they're the patriarchy going up in flames."  May it become true.

When I first heard about the #me too movement, I thought, "Not me."  I had never been raped nor sexually molested.  When I thought about the subject in more depth, however, I realized I had experienced extremely hostile work environments and also two sexual attacks.  But I had rationalized them and explained them away.  If a card-carrying feminist like myself could do that, then I think it needs explaining to others.

In graduate school in New York, I suffered from a number of men exposing their erect penises to me -- on the subways and especially, in libraries.  There was an "exhibitionist," the euphemistic term for this, in the Columbia Library stacks, a dark and scary location all by itself.  Columbia's solution was to give every female researcher a whistle, so that we could blow it if he arrived.  It's hard enough to do research without that handicap.  When I told a dinner party of hetero couples about this, the men all laughed and said that they would love it if a woman exposed herself to them.  I and the other women declared it was not about sex, but about power.  They didn't get it.  This would have been in the late '60s.  I hope that times have changed....

During that era, my then husband and I had dinner with another couple at their house.  When we went to leave, the husband helped me on with my coat and then put his hands on my breasts.  We left and I told my husband.  We decided to never see them again.  But that's all we did.

A number of years later, in the 1980s, I had just moved in with a man.  An old boy friend came to see me.  As soon as he entered, he lunged at me, grabbed me and thrust his tongue in my mouth.  I angrily pushed him away and he said, "You know you wanted it."  I made him leave and told him I didn't want him in my life.  

Finally, in the early 1990s, I became a member of the Graduate Faculty of the City University of New York, whose offices were on 5th Avenue and 34th Street.  When I joined, a female colleague told me to never get on an elevator with Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., the eminent biographer of FDR.  Schlesinger was known for grabbing women's asses.  I never did and as far as I know, he was never challenged much less stopped.

When I think about these experiences in contrast to Ernestine Rose's life, I'm struck by how much progress we have made.  She hesitated to speak about either prostitution or divorce, although she eventually did about both, for fear of being accused of "free love," a blanket charge of dissipation aimed only at women.  I hope that the Me Too movement, which has now gone world-wide, will continue to empower women and bring down male perpetrators, including our current president.