Let's be clear about one thing: no one deserves to be the victim of sexual harassment or rape. Rape is not a punishment that fits any crime, and anyone who claims such a thing is a sexual sadist masquerading as someone seeking justice. At the same time, there are people who have been revealed to be victims of rape or sexual harassment who themselves have been apologists for rape. In the case of Andrea Tantaros, who once referred to the case brought against Corey Lewandowski for grabbing former Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields as a "big nothing burger," it is difficult to reconcile the Fox News pundit's history of defending men against rape and assault charges with the lawsuit that she filed on August 23rd in which she alleges that she was the victim of a steady stream of sexual harassment while employed at Fox.
It is challenging to try to understand the cognitive dissonance that must have been at work in Tantaros' head while she was denouncing Michelle Fields for bringing charges against Lewandowski for what she and her co-hosts on Outnumbered kept trying to minimize as "nothing" more than "grabbing her arm" (despite the fact that Fields purportedly had photos to show bruising from the assault) with the Tantaros who alleges in her lawsuit:
"On or about August 18, 2015, former Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown (“Brown”) appeared on Outnumbered. Brown made a number of sexually inappropriate comments to Tantaros on set, including, and in a suggestive manner, that Tantaros “would be fun to go to a nightclub with.” After the show was over, Brown snuck up behind Tantaros while she was purchasing lunch and put his hands on her lower waist. She immediately pulled back, telling Brown to “stop.” Tantaros then immediately met with Shine to complain, asking him to ensure that Brown would never be booked on the show again. Shine said that he would talk to Scott. Thereafter, Shine and Scott ignored Tantaros’ complaint, and continued to book Brown on Outnumbered."
Andrea Tantaros recognized that she was entitled to her own bodily integrity, the boundaries of her own body, but she continually denied that same sense of body ownership to any other woman. Fox consistently used Tantaros much the same way that conservatives use people of color who happen to be conservative or gay people who happen to be conservative. As David Ferguson wrote in the Guardian recently, it is hard not to see someone who consistently speaks against their own interests as driven by a desire for the notoriety and attention that being a minority within conservatism can bring. "Fans of resentment-driven politics have a bottomless appetite for content that fuels their throbbing hatred of uppity liberals," Ferguson wrote.
It's why Tantaros could gesture toward her own heart when describing how, despite Donald Trump's long history of sexist words and deeds toward women, he still spoke for "us," (whom she identified as members of the middle class and blue collar workers who had been voiceless until Trump came along). In fact, Tantaros was so confident that Trump's sexism was not going to matter to Trump's grateful followers, who feel that "both sides don't represent them," that the general election would turn into an enormous "gender war," with Hillary Clinton having the support of "the mainstream media and women's magazines." The glee with which Tantaros makes such an assertion is troubling, especially since this was at least seven months after the alleged event with Scott Brown had taken place. And yet, Tantaros, for whatever reason, did not see a connection between the misogynist words of Donald Trump and the sexist atmosphere at Fox that made it okay for guests to sexually harass her and for her to have no recourse.
Tantaros was consistently tone deaf in her comments about other women. In response to a Glamour article that had suggested yet another list of "how to keep your man happy" but which the magazine had retracted a few days later because of criticism that the list was misogynistic, Tarantos was happy to proclaim that it was a woman's role in life to keep her man happy.
"Look at this list, it has great suggestions in here!” she exclaimed. “After you engage in a little horizontal hula, make him a sandwich. That’s not called 1950s. That’s called kindness. And frankly, I think women should do a little more of that.”
In 2014, Tantaros piled on in the criticism of the story by Rolling Stone magazine that reported on the prevalence of rape at the University of Virginia. The inconsistencies in a single case that was cited by the reporter created a lot of controversy around the article. Tantaros took this as an opportunity to attack the notion of "rape culture," arguing that the use of the term constituted a "war on boys." Tantaros spoke condescendingly to feminists, offering to speak slowly so that feminist bloggers could transcribe her words, but she alleged that reporters were "looking" for rape stories to report and were "making them up."
In her lawsuit, Tantaros details conversations with men at Fox such as Roger Ailes, who used Tantaros as a sounding board to vent his offensive and sexually degrading opinions about the people with whom both Ailes and Tantaros worked. Tantaros went to Fox News Executive Bill Shine to voice her concerns. He told her that nothing was going to be done. As she alleges in her lawsuit:
"Perhaps the most shocking encounter of all was a Spring 2015 meeting between Tantaros and Fox News Senior Executive, Defendant William Shine (“Shine”), during which Tantaros sought relief from Ailes’ sexual harassment… In response, Shine told Tantaros that Ailes was a “very powerful man” and that Tantaros “needed to let this one go.” Yet, after Ailes was revealed to be a sexual predator and forced to resign, Shine was promoted to Co-President of Fox News. Shine’s inexplicable elevation sends the message that it will be “business as usual” at Fox News when it comes to the treatment of women."
And yet, despite being bullied into dropping her complaint against Ailes, Tantaros continued to bully other women from her pundit's chair. She seemed unwilling -- or unable -- to make the connection between what was happening to her at Fox and what was happening to other women out in the wider world.
She must have felt a terrible sense of betrayal when Bill O'Reilly, whom Tantaros claims had been a "good friend" started harassing her, despite her telling him "no." When she complained about his behavior, Fox adopted the same sort of nonsense "solution" that Stanford announced in reaction to reports of rape on its campus when, instead of educating young men about consent, it chose to ban alcohol as a solution to the problem. Fox's solution to the problem of O'Reilly harassing Tantaros was to ban her from appearing on his program, rather than speaking to the man whose former producer had sued him in 2004 for a pattern of sexual harassment.
Again. It is important to note that no one deserves to go through what Andrea Tantaros suffered at Fox News. Like Gretchen Carlson and other women who have come forward to speak about the environment there, we have learned that the boys' club at Fox declared open season on the women who worked there, denigrating their intelligence but also subjecting them to unwanted touching and a steady stream of harassment that made working at Fox difficult. When the women complained about their treatment, they found themselves demoted to shows that were not as highly rated as the ones they have previously appeared on. Gretchen Carlson is a Conservative woman, but she was never a rape apologist. Andrea Tantaros made her bones on insisting that the unequal treatment that women receive in our culture was somehow the women's own fault.
There are no perfect victims. And Tantaros' ugly views do not make her less of a victim. But what separates her from other victims right now is that she does not seem to recognize her commonality with them. Up until she left Fox, Tantaros preached at women that if they ignored men's barbs and somehow, just tried harder, that they too could "make it" and be as successful as Tantaros.
The truth was, even for someone who played by men's rules, Tantaros was still subject to the plays by men who thought that their power included access to any woman's body that they felt entitled to.
It will be interesting to see whether this public cracking of the facade that Tantaros constructed around herself at Fox will change Tantaros in terms of increasing her empathy for other women who, just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, were hurt. Rumi the 13th-century Persian poet, told a story that later, Leonard Cohen would make the chorus of his song, "Anthem." "The wound," Rumi wrote, "is the place where the light enters." Or as Cohen wrote in one of his best songs, "There is a crack in everything/That's how the light gets in."
May Andrea Tantaros find some light.
