Why men at the top sexually harass — the author of Penis Politics explains what goes wrong in business and government

Business of Business: First of all — given that your book has a lot to do with men in power and men abusing power — from your experiences, why do you think powerful men sexually harass subordinates?

Karen Hinton: Primarily because they can. You know, I just think that sexual harassment, sexual abuse, and misconduct has happened for so long. As long as there have been women in the workplace, and men who have authority over them [it’s happened], whether that's in politics, or in a corporation, or in a diner, or a grocery store, when men have authority — some men and I'm not talking about every man on the face of the Earth.

And so it’s happened for so long, without any kind of effort to stop it. And to talk about it openly, I just think some men who value that authority and control and want it and need it, that's why they do it. They sometimes flirt, touch, harass, talk dirty, and even go to the place of trying to have a sexual affair, or violence or rape.

Right. And can you tell us about the high-profile men that are featured in this book?

Well, I think of all the men I talk about in the book as high-profile in terms of the woman, the women and girls [who were abused or harassed]. They think of them as high-profile. I mean, I start the book with a story about a rape of a very close friend of mine by a school official. She thought of them as high-profile. 

In terms of what the public defines as high-profile, my book also talks about [former U.S. President] Bill Clinton, also Andrew Cuomo, and Bill de Blasio, the former mayor of New York, in a different way, but about sexual harassment or discrimination. And then there are some political people like James Carville, who helped elect Bill Clinton. He's from the South, the Deep South, Louisiana. I'm from Mississippi. And we both knew a lot about Southern politics. And we often talked about that. So there's some stories about him.

[I told these stories] so that other women feel empowered to tell their own. I mean, look, I'm older, I'm 63. Now, what do I got to lose, right? I'm not going to lose a job because I'm talking about all this. The reason I didn't talk about a lot of it when I was in my 40s or 30s was because I was afraid of what would happen in the workplace, that I'd lose my job, or that I'd get kicked out. 

So, you know, I want to try to empower women to tell their stories, whether they tell it to a good friend, or in a book or in an interview, but to let the public know about the sexual harassment so we can really get around to changing it.

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"I just think some men who value that authority and control and want it and need it, that's why they do it. They sometimes flirt, touch, harass, talk dirty, and even go to the place of trying to have a sexual affair, or violence or rape."

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Absolutely. How, from your experiences, how does this this trend of sexual harassment affect the functioning of organizations, both in business and in politics?

I've been doing research about sexual harassment, since I started working on the book because I wanted to learn more about it. And one of the things I found were studies that have been done about the corporations which have a high number of sexual harassment claims brought against CEOs, or other bosses within the corporation. And as a result, their profits and their stock prices are generally much lower than companies that really don't put up with it — that have very few cases of sexual harassment. So I think the impact on corporations that do nothing about a sexual harassment environment in the workplace is their [earnings and] stock prices don’t do as well. 

Women tend to, if they can't find another job, if they can't get away from the job, when the sexual harassment, discrimination, abuse, or misconduct is occurring, they're not going to work as hard. They're just going to do 9 to 5, “I'll give you what I can in that time zone, and then I'm going home and be with my family, and trying to get away from the nonsense from the abuse and the harassment.” And as a result, [companies with these problems] don't attract women to the job, because they'll hear about it, they'll know about it, and they won't take the job. So it impacts companies in so many different ways. 

So, it's like people who are working in these environments, they're not giving 100%. Does that seem like what you've noticed?

I don't think all women are like that. But I think some women, once they become so exhausted by the experience, and in some cases damaged and harmed and belittled, they want another job. They want to get out of there. So they're just giving what they can until they get out. 

And that's true, not just in large corporations, but in small businesses, as well as at the grocery store, at diners. I mean, think about it, low-income women really are harmed the most from this kind of dynamic, because it's very hard for them to find another job. That's the only job they have. They may have children, they need to take care of those children, they can't quit and say, “I'm leaving, I hate you, I'm leaving.” They can't do that.

That's just the filter that has to be cleaned up and changed so that women can be treated with respect, and treated as the women who they are and feel that they're valued in the company.

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"You know, there's a spectrum of sexual harassment from the flirting and the whistling to something violent and rape. And, you know, later on in my life, I had other experiences. Not that, but in that spectrum. And one of them, of course, had to do with Bill Clinton." 

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And so this book covers some experiences from other women, and also some of your own experiences. Right? So, can you describe and highlight one of the one or two of the most memorable experiences that either you experienced or observed firsthand, that comes to mind from your book? 

The first one that comes to mind is the first story in the book. And it's about a group of young girls in rural Mississippi. In high school, one of them is raped by a school official. And, of course, it devastates her, damages her, harms her in so many different ways. But we are her best friends. And she tells us not to tell anybody. She said, “if you tell somebody, he'll say that I had a crush on him or something. And I don't want to talk, I don't want to have anything to say about this. And you guys have to keep quiet.” And so we did. 

And as I got older, I saw that play out in so many different ways. You know, there's a spectrum of sexual harassment from the flirting and the whistling to something violent and rape. And, you know, later on in my life, I had other experiences. Not that, but in that spectrum. And one of them, of course, had to do with Bill Clinton. 

I was very young. I was 24. I was working in a congressional campaign in the Mississippi Delta. I saw Bill Clinton in a bar, and he came over and sat next to me. I had never met him before. He  was the governor of Arkansas. And I certainly knew about him and knew that he was considering running for president. This was 1984. And we had a very interesting conversation for about half an hour. He was asking me questions about the congressional race, and what was happening in the Delta around poverty and racism and illiteracy and health. And I was just fascinated, I was so honored that here's somebody who may be president one day, asking me questions and getting my thoughts and advice. And I'm 24. No one has ever done that before. Right? 

So, but then suddenly, he writes down on a napkin, folds it up and pushes it over to me. And it has his hotel room, the room number and a question mark. So I knew what that was about, right? And I just hightailed it out of there. There's no way I was going to get involved in something like that. 

But that's just another example of someone who definitely had power over me. He's the governor of Arkansas. He's a high ranking politician. And what am I supposed to do with that? I just left. I didn't know what to do. He humiliated me. Later on as I thought about it, I just got mad about it, right? He wasn't interested in my thoughts at all. 

Well, yeah, that's very interesting. Backing up a little bit about your career in general, I know you're very outspoken, very opinionated, and have a lot of strong convictions about a lot of things. But you started out as a journalist, how did you transition? And why did you transition from one kind of perspective to another when it comes to interacting with the public?

When I was a journalist, I worked at the Jackson Daily News in Jackson, Mississippi. And later on, went to work for the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Colorado.  I had opinions. You're right, I, I'm opinionated. I'm outspoken. I want more women to be that way. I love opinionated women who talk all the time. I'm happy to listen to them. So I just decided that I wanted to be part of the experience, not write about the experience. 

And I'm not taking anything away from journalists who do that, because God knows it's very, very valuable and important. And it's what keeps this country a democracy, even though that's been in question for the last three or four years. So I was very happy to make that move in that transition. Looking back. I'm glad I did, though I believe in journalism. 

And one of the things that happened to me and who knows, I may want to ask you a question about this. But when I was a reporter, I wrote a story about a Black man at a riot at Jackson State University in the 60s. He was shot and killed in the back. And the suspect was a police officer. But no one ever brought a charge, nothing was done. And I later discovered that information.

[At that time] the officer was the police chief in Jackson, Mississippi. So you know, all I know is that he was a suspect, and a highly-ranked suspect. And no charges were ever brought against him. So I was ready to file that story. I had written it, I had sourced it, everything was good to go. And they wouldn't run it. And, you know, I believe looking back, that what happened was the mayor then stepped in and called the editor and said, “Hey, I know she's about to write this. This is wrong. And here's why this is dangerous. And here's why.” So it got killed. And that really just disheartened me after that. 

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" I'm opinionated. I'm outspoken. I want more women to be that way. I love opinionated women who talk all the time. I'm happy to listen to them." 

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This isn't really in your book. But I first became aware of you when you were involved in the Chevron case, which was a very messy, long contentious litigation, all surrounding oil pollution in the rainforest in the Amazon. How did you get involved in that, on the side of the plaintiff lawyer, Steven Donziger. And how do you feel about how that drama turned out? [A federal judge in Manhattan found that Donziger had engaged in fraud, the Ecuador verdict was invalidated, Donziger was disbarred, and he was sentenced to six months in prison for contempt.]

Oh, my gosh, we need another hour to talk about this. That's one reason why I didn't land in the book. My book was at 150,000 words. And my publisher said, “you have to get it down to 90,000.” Because first-time authors rarely get to write more than 90,000 words. So there was a chapter about Ecuador in the book, but I let it go because of the cuts that I had to make. And because definitely powerful men play a role in everything that is related to the Ecuador story, and the Steven Donziger story. But again, there’s like a whole other book that needs to be written about that. 

However, let me say that the main characters in the story are the Ecuadorians. They're mostly poor, many indigenous, and living in the rainforest. And their living environment is very different from ours, right? I mean, they are living in shacks, they sometimes don't have running water, many times don't have running water. And, and on top of that, their land and their air is contaminated. And it is killing them and causing them to live shorter lives and giving them diseases. And there is no there are no hospitals. 

Now part of that is Ecuador's problem, the government's problem. But part of it also is Chevron's problem, because Chevron bought the company that started all of that contamination, and then hid it. And I won't go into all those details, but there was a lot of corruption going on within Ecuador. And did the government have something to do with it? Sure. But these indigenous people had to fight for their rights. And they did it by filing a lawsuit. 

And then Steven Donziger at a very young age got involved. And there were other lawyers involved. Chevron had the money and the influence in Congress and influence within the government of Ecuador, to delay, delay, delay delay until it's now what 27, 28 years later, since they filed the lawsuit in 1993. 

So it's heart rendering when you go there and see the mess. I mean, it is unforgettable. And I still have friends there. I had a friend who was a nurse in San Carlos, and she recently died of cancer. And it just, I'm getting chill bumps just talking about it because it breaks my heart to know that she was trying to take care of people who had no hospital to go to, and she gets cancer and dies. 

Now Donziger, he's worked very hard his entire career to try to move this forward. And Chevron has done everything it can to damage his reputation, call him a fraud, call him corrupt, accuse him of writing the judgment for the judge in Ecuador, when they ruled against Chevron [ed note: a federal judge in Manhattan later upheld Chevron’s claims]. And all these things they accused him of, I do not believe he did any of those things. And yet, they have continued to bombard him with all types of charges and damages. 

And you know, it's now 2022 and Chevron has not paid a dime. And the rainforest is about climate change, right? We need to keep our rain forests, without pollution, uncontaminated because what cleans up our air here in the United States is the rainforest down the Amazon. 

So the Ecuadorians didn't get anything out of this at the end? 

Nothing. Right.

Well, thank you so much for talking about all this stuff with us. We appreciate it.

Thank you for having me and letting me show off my book up there. And I want it to be a wake up call for women to speak out, and not shut up. And don't be afraid and give it your all because it's really important for our daughters to grow up and be in an environment where sexual harassment is not an issue for them.