Refusing to accept a woman’s testimony

“That women lie habitually is confirmed by the common custom of refusing to accept, or accept much of, women’s testimony. This custom grew out of not only primitive man’s disdain for women’s weakness but also his experience with her untruthfulness.”

From the Criminal Woman, the Prostitute and the Normal Woman, by Cesare Lombroso and Guglielmo Ferrero, 1893

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In 1991, when Clarence Thomas was nominated for the Supreme Court in 1991, attorney Anita Hill Hill told the all male, all white Senate Confirmation Committee that Thomas had sexually harassed her when she worked for him at the United States Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. “I had important information about an individual who was picked to sit for a lifetime appointment on our country’s highest court,” she later explained. “It was not just a professional duty as a lawyer, but I believed it was my ethical responsibility to come forward in the best way and the most effective way that I could — and that’s what I did.” Anita Hill as quoted on NPR

When the hearing was over, Hill was harassed and received death threats. Thomas became a Supreme Court Justice.

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