“Don’t pay any attention to me, I’m just a silly old fool,”
the 39-year-old professor said as he leaned over and gently kissed
his 19-year-old student while moving his hand down the front of
her white silk blouse.

She was glad she’d worn that blouse. She’d been saving it for special
occasions. When he leaned over again and opened the car door, she
walked out without saying a word or looking back.

A year later they were married. Three years later they were divorced.

That she was me. I had been in the professor’s class all Freshman year.
I idolized him.  When I walked out of that car, I was walking on Cloud Nine.

I was star-struck and in love. How could I not be flattered? A brilliant
Harvard Ph.D had chosen me even though I wasn’t the type that the professor usually chose. I’m not 6’ tall, blonde, and Nordic looking.

I didn’t feel exploited. I was a Monica Lewinsky but wore a white silk blouse I’d recently bought on sale at Bonwit Teller not a blue denim dress from the Gap. The professor was my Bill Clinton.

It wasn’t unusual in the 1950s for college professors to seek out students, particularly at an all- girls school like mine, and to have a flirtation or even a romantic interlude. Those relationships were known about by the faculty and by many students but kept quiet. Several girls envied the chosen girls.

I recently read a book about the very private life of J.D. Salinger, author of the very memorable book “Catcher in the Rye.” It included Joyce Maynard’s memories of her relationship living with Salinger. Joyce was also star-struck and in love. She was 18. Salinger was 53.  Like my professor, Salinger was adoring and kind until he wasn’t.

An older powerful charismatic man capturing a naive young girl’s heart is not that uncommon. Is it a fairy tale romance? A way of a man holding on to his youth? Exploitation?  Psychological harassment? Or just life happening?

Would the professor have been fired for sexual harassment if that happened today, in 2021?  Can you judge 1950s morality by today’s moral standards?

Did you watch the AMC series “Mad-Men” about Madison Avenue advertising agency men in the 1950s and their appetites? Lunch was booze and secretaries, staying late at the office was booze and secretaries, Christmas parties were booze and secretaries. And most of the men were married.

Were all the secretaries and other working women looking forward to these relationships? Of course not. But in those days, if a woman wanted to get ahead, she needed to please powerful men in an office, or on a casting couch in Hollywood, or wherever she worked.

Are we still living in an age when men feel entitled to sexual favors because of their position in the office, in politics, or wherever they work—or just because they’re men? Are we still living in an age when out of fear women become silent victims?

Or is male sexual aggressiveness biologically inescapable and something that will always be with us? Turns out in certain animal, bird, fish and insect species, there’s sexual menacing, violence, and harassing of females by males. But human males are cleverer than other species. They can come up with non-violent means of coercion, like threatening one’s job or career if a woman won’t submit.
Life is not easy for a female chimpanzee or a young woman working for a human male animal. 

Why have women always been up for grabs by the bragging boys’ club? When does male entitlement start? Are boys raised to think that they should be macho, aggressive, and entitled?  Why have women kept silent and felt embarrassed, ashamed, and fearful instead of “mad as hell?” If a dog bit you, you wouldn’t feel it was your fault.

If one of my daughters or granddaughters worked for Cuomo, I’d be concerned. If one of them were approached by a Cosby, Epstein, or Weinstein–well, does Lorena Bobbitt ring a bell? If women are from Venus and men are from Mars, let’s send all those jerks back to Mars.

The three-martini lunches may be gone but the sexual exploitation of girls and women is still going on. Are things really changing?

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