640: Five Women
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From W.B. E.C., Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm out of class. Quick warning to everybody who's listening to this podcast version of our show. There are some words that we have unbeeped. If you don't want to hear that, maybe you're listening with kids, you can get a beeped version at our website, thisamericunlife.org. Tchayana Jaffi-Walt, one of our producers, has been reporting this story. It's going to be the whole hour today. It's a really good one. Here she goes. When Vivian started reading about the men in Hollywood and the media and their sexual transgressions, she thought of the men in her past who had behaved poorly, the man who assaulted her in her 20s, and the others. A few unwanted kisses over the eye, truly unwanted, drunken guys just sort of pushing themselves on me, and you know, the usual array of jokes and comments and this and that. She thought of them, and she thought of Don, her partner of 23 years. And Vivian wondered. Don was a boss to dozens of women. He ran alternate, a progressive news website. And he was a flirt. It was easy for me to imagine that Don had missed unspoken signals. Being a little too present, a little too close, a little too eager, a little too, you know, those kinds of things. She'd seen it. She'd seen Don's attention make women uncomfortable at parties and restaurants. And what would end up happening is I would catch her eye and we would roll our eyes together like a god man. There would be a sort of a bond there and it would go, you know, and things would go on. This is like Don flirting with some woman in front of you. Yeah, he was a flirt. Yes, I knew he was a flirt. I also really knew that didn't have anything to do with us. That had to do with a need for attention. Did you feel embarrassed by it? Of course. But it would pass quickly. It was usually very easy to move things along. Then I could step in. I could step between. I could, you know, engage her in conversation and whatever, right? Would you talk to Don about it? Rarely. Because I didn't think I'd be believed. By him. By him. I think you sort of laugh it off and say, oh, you just don't get it. It's all fun. Which I do think was his attitude. Which I know was his attitude. So a couple months ago, when Don told Vivian that BuzzFeed News was writing a story about him, Vivian was not surprised. People who used to work for Don at alternate were accusing Don of sexually harassing them. Vivian read the article, "A number of women detailed encounters with Don, unwanted advances, inappropriate touching, sending them explicit emails. Vivian recognized Don in some parts. Others felt like they were describing a person she'd never met. Mostly she had a particular experience reading that story that actually had nothing to do with Don. A memory came back to me from when I was 28, that I'm sure I hadn't thought about since it happened. She was training to be a psychologist with a bunch of young trainees at a clinic. She was in the back room where the staff took breaks and wrote notes. The supervisor was a man as virtually all the supervisors at the time wore in his 40s. Maybe even early 50s. Vivian was on the couch with a friend, a woman in her 40s. And the two of them watched as many of the young psychology interns, women Vivian's age in their 20s, crowded around the supervisor. They're surrounding him and sort of hanging on his words and leaning in. And it's just
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