The Power of Storytelling: a Quest for a Public Discourse on Sexual Harassment
| Author | Jenny Morgan |
| DOI | 10.1177/135822910500700402 |
| Published date | 01 September 2005 |
| Date | 01 September 2005 |
International
Journal
of
Discrimination
and
the
La\\',
2005,
Vol.
7,
pp. 5-28
1358-2291/2005
$10
©
2005
A B Academic Publishers. Printed
in
Great Britain
THE POWER OF STORYTELLING: A QUEST FOR A
PUBLIC DISCOURSE ON SEXUAL HARASSMENT
JENNY
MORGAN*
University
of
Melbourne,
Australia
ABSTRACT
This article explores the possible reasons for the absence
of
a public discourse
about sexual harassment in Australia, which can be contrasted with a relatively
well-developed legal discourse.
It
also briefly compares the debate about sexual
harassment in the United States and Australia that followed in the wake
of
controversial and very public sexual harassment cases in each country.
It
argues
that
the debate in the wake
of
the Clarence Hill-Anita Thomas hearings
in the United States was much more productive than the debate in Australia
after the publication
of
Helen Garner's book,
The
First
Stone. The discussion
in Australia focused on whether the young women in the case had 'over-reacted'
and whether there were generational differences in women's reactions to sexual
harassment. The more interesting (and I would argue, far more important)
questions
of
what
is
sexual harassment
is
and what are its effects were ignored.
This article goes on to explore one aspect
of
what sexual harassment
is
and
does by examining what women actually do in response to sexual harassment
through an analysis
of
some
of
the stories
of
targets
of
harassment as they
appear in the law reports. In this way it tries to make some
of
the legal
discourse about sexual harassment a
part
of
the public discourse about the
phenomenon.
INTRODUCTION
What
I
aim
to
do
in
this article is
to
reflect
on
some 'stories'
about
sexual
harassment
and
in
doing
so,
contribute
to
both
the
public
and
legal discourses
about
it.
It
could
be suggested
that
it
was the
sharing
of
stories
of
sexual
harassment
in
the
workplace
and
else-
where
that
led
to
the
'naming'
of
this
particular
harm,
a sense
of
entitlement
that
an
injury
had
occurred,
and
the
development
of
the
legal claim for sexual
harassment.
1
The
centrality
of
personal
descriptions
of
'life' has,
of
course, a
long
tradition
in
second wave
feminism with its
encouragement
in consciousness-raising
groups
in
the
late 1960s
and
early 1970s.
Legal storytelling
or
legal
narrative
scholarship is a relatively
new
development
in critical legal writing,
most
developed
in
the
6
United
States,
and
with
particular
purchase
in feminist
and
critical
race scholarship.2
As
Abrams
has
described it, legal
narrative
scholarship
might
include descriptions
of
life experience in a 'first
person'
perspective, often
about
experiences
that
are
usually
not
described in
traditional
legal texts, for example
rape
or
childbirth.
3
This
sort
of
narrative
may
be presented with little
or
no
analysis
but
is often used as a
means
of
'making
an
abstract
claim
more
tangible'.4
It
often includes
the
stories
of
'outsiders',
those who
have
tended
to
be excluded
from
law
and
legal scholarship. However,
Abrams
argues,
not
only does this scholarship include
the
tradition-
ally excluded,
but
it
is also
making
an
epistemological claim -
it
'present[s] experience as a
way
of
knowing
which
should
occupy a
respected position,
or
in some cases a privileged position, in analysis
and
argumentation',
5 challenging the
way
legal knowledges have
been traditionally created.
The
levels
of
discourse
about
sexual
harassment
around
the
world
have
been uneven.
It
was suggested in 1995
that
in
Australia
there
has
been little
or
no
public discourse
about
sexual
harassment.
6
While there
may
be
an
absence
of
public discourse, this
contrasts
quite
dramatically
with a
substantial
legal discourse
about
the
phenomenon,
albeit
one
that
generally
appears
only in
obscure
law
reports
(and
then
often
only in
summary
form).
The
silence in
countries
such
as
Australia
about
the
experience
of
sexual harass-
ment
also
contrasts
sharply
with the
situation
in
other
countries
such
as
the
United
States, which I explore
later
in
this article. I
think
part
of
that
missing (Australian) public discourse is a knowl-
edge
of
what
actually
happens
when
someone
is sexually harassed.
Did
the
early stories
of
sexual
harassment
get swallowed
up
into
the
legal quagmire,
without
'passing
go'? Is there a
way
of
getting
them
out
again
as
part
of
the
public
story
of
sexual
harassment
and
not
just
the
legal story?
I
have
argued
elsewhere
that
it
was
fundamentally
important
that
sexual
harassment
(in
Australia,
as in the
US
and
Canada)
was recognised as
an
issue for anti-discrimination law, laws
at
least
on
their face concerned with inequality between
women
and
men.7
However, this clearly was
not
enough
and
the
more
recent
attempts
to
use
the
discourse
of
citizenship
may
provide
an
additional
very
fruitful
avenue
to
articulate a public language
that
makes
the
harm
of
sexual
harassment
visible.
8
Yet
this discourse
must
be
tied
to
what
actually
happens
in
the
workplace
and
elsewhere. I
do
not
want
to
suggest
that
the
language
of
equality,
or
the
language
of
citizenship occludes the
meaning
of
these stories; these discourses
are
essential ways
of
making
sense
of
'the
mess'.
Rather,
I
want
to
go
back
to
the
stories,
another
way
of
making
that
harm
both
visible
and
visceral.
As
Smart
has
said,
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