by Kathryn Abrams

About the author: Kathryn Abrams is a professor of law and women’s studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

Is sexual harassment understood differently by men and women? If so (as seems likely), whose understanding should set the standard for court decisions? These questions, which lawyers have argued about for almost a decade, reached the general public with the Senate testimony of Anita Hill. [Hill alleged she had been a victim of sexual harassment at the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas.] But the ensuing debate—between partisans of a universal common sense and those who see perceptions of sexual harassment as gender-differentiated—has thus far produced more heat than light. Although the debate has offered a fascinating window on movements within feminist theory, it has...