Dis­co. ‘tute pres­i­dent Bruce Chap­man is upset. There are ladies with their bloomers in a twist over some­thing or oth­er that they claim Her­man Cain said. Let’s read Chap­man and see if we can guess what Cain is sup­posed to have done:

A num­ber of sig­nif­i­cant insights are emerg­ing from the charges of sex harass­ment lodged against Her­man Cain. It may be wise to with­hold judge­ment [sic] about the par­tic­u­lars so far. There are a num­ber of groups oper­at­ing behind the scenes to dri­ve the sto­ry one way or another.

Aha! Charges of sex­u­al harass­ment were filed, but we should be dubi­ous because shad­owy groups are try­ing to destroy this inno­cent man.

How­ev­er, it’s not too soon to note the way job prob­lems in our times are con­vert­ed into legal prob­lems. I have com­ment­ed on the ten­den­cy of lawyers for busi­ness­es and even gov­ern­ments to dis­count charges of sex dis­crim­i­na­tion and sex­u­al harass­ment by set­tling out of court–the sup­pos­ed­ly “cheap­er” out­come for oth­er­wise cost­ly law­suits. Obvi­ous­ly, if there real­ly has been an ille­gal action or pat­tern of behav­ior the busi­ness or agency should set­tle, and effec­tive­ly admit wrong­do­ing. If not, the “cheap­er” out­come may become an expen­sive one–at least in terms of publicity.

Oh, it’s a job prob­lem. Like when Stephen Mey­er does­n’t make a new pot of cof­fee after he fin­ish the old one, or when David Kling­hof­fer writes anoth­er essay blam­ing Charles Dar­win for his hang­nail. Sure, some­one can sue over it, but it’s not a real issue, so busi­ness­es might decide, fool­ish­ly, to set­tle this friv­o­lous claim. For­tu­nate­ly, while Cain has had charged lodged against him, it isn’t like his for­mer com­pa­ny already set­tled these charges over a decade ago, “effec­tive­ly admit­ting wrongdoing.”

In The Amer­i­can Spec­ta­tor, Lisa Fab­ri­sio [sic] makes anoth­er rel­e­vant argue­ment [sic]: that the Cain issue reeks of hypocrisy. Here is a mod­ern media/entertainment cul­ture steeped in soft porn, where new break­throughs in low­ered stan­dards are accom­plished [sic] con­stant­ly. And yet it is this same debased cul­ture that acts offend­ed by some offi­cial’s con­ver­sa­tion­al gaffe or unin­tend­ed dou­ble enten­dre!

The prob­lem isn’t what Cain did (or if Chap­man’s to be believed, did­n’t do). The prob­lem is that there’s cleav­age on dis­play at super­mar­ket check­out lines. Hypocrisy! Women are allowed to wear reveal­ing out­fits, but an employ­er can’t grope an employ­ee? (Alleged­ly!) Besides, I bet this “sex­u­al harass­ment” is just a slip of the tongue, or a joke that was tak­en the wrong way. You know how women are.

Of course, those of us who’ve read the news­pa­pers in the last week (with­out being dis­tract­ed by the bra ads), know a few things that Chap­man doesn’t.

First, we know that Cain isn’t just charged with sex­u­al harass­ment, he and his com­pa­ny set­tled those charges over a decade ago. And his com­pa­ny added a gag rule to the set­tle­ment, so that he and his for­mer com­pa­ny can talk about the charges, but the women he assault­ed can­not speak pub­licly. Politi­co explains what we know about those cases:

The sources — includ­ing the rec­ol­lec­tions of close asso­ciates and oth­er doc­u­men­ta­tion — describe episodes that left the women upset and offend­ed. These inci­dents include con­ver­sa­tions alleged­ly filled with innu­en­do or per­son­al ques­tions of a sex­u­al­ly sug­ges­tive nature, tak­ing place at hotels dur­ing con­fer­ences, at oth­er offi­cial­ly sanc­tioned restau­rant asso­ci­a­tion events and at the association’s offices. There were also descrip­tions of phys­i­cal ges­tures that were not overt­ly sex­u­al but that made women who expe­ri­enced or wit­nessed them uncom­fort­able and that they regard­ed as improp­er in a pro­fes­sion­al relationship.

In addi­tion to the three women (we know of) whose suits were set­tled, a fourth woman came for­ward and dis­cussed a sim­i­lar inci­dent she expe­ri­enced. She had been fired by Cain’s Nation­al Restau­rant Asso­ci­a­tion, and asked to meet Mr. Cain to get help find­ing a new job:

After tak­ing her out for a night on the town in Wash­ing­ton, she said, he sug­gest­ed she engage with him sex­u­al­ly in return for his assis­tance — seiz­ing her inap­pro­pri­ate­ly when they were alone in a car and run­ning his hand up her skirt.…

As she described it, Mr. Cain ran his hand up her skirt, “reached for my gen­i­tal­s” and pulled her head toward his crotch. “I said, ‘What are you doing? You know I have a boyfriend; this isn’t what I came here for,’ ” Ms. Bialek said, her voice crack­ing. “Mr. Cain said, ‘You want a job, right?’”

Impor­tant­ly:

Joel P. Ben­nett, a lawyer for anoth­er of Mr. Cain’s accusers, called Ms. Bialek’s descrip­tion of the encounter “very sim­i­lar” to Mr. Cain’s inter­ac­tion with his client, who he has said received sev­er­al inap­pro­pri­ate advances from him. With­out going in details [as for­bid­den by their set­tle­ment], Mr. Ben­nett said, “It cor­rob­o­rates the claim.”

To dis­miss crotch-grab­bing, threats of forced oral sex, and offer to exchange sex­u­al favors for employ­ment as a “job prob­lem,” “a con­ver­sa­tion­al gaffe,” or “unin­ten­tion­al dou­ble enten­dre” stretch­es the legit­i­mate mean­ings of any of those terms. Chap­man is either clue­less about the actu­al cir­cum­stances at hand, or does­n’t under­stand sex­u­al pow­er dynam­ics and sex­u­al harassment. 

Mr. Chap­man runs a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar orga­ni­za­tion, han­dling admin­is­tra­tive mat­ters and a large staff. He seems to gen­uine­ly not know what sex­u­al harass­ment is and why it mat­ters. Clear­ly, sex­ism infects the Dis­cov­ery Insti­tute from the top down. Not many women work at the ‘tute, so maybe the issue has­n’t come up, or maybe this misog­y­nist atti­tude has sim­ply cre­at­ed an envi­ron­ment where few women are com­fort­able working.