WEEK AFTER SCANDALOUS WEEK, feminists remained conspicuously silent about the allegations of sexual misconduct facing President Clinton. Then, on March 15, National Organization for Women president Patricia Ireland spoke -- in a peep masquerading as a roar. On CNN's Late Edition, Ireland said of Clinton's alleged groping of White House volunteer Kathleen Willey: "If true, it's sexual assault. . . . Now we're talking about, really, sexual predators and people who in positions of power use that power to take advantage of women."
Ireland sounded fierce, yet her remarks were less a turning point for NOW than a statement of the obvious: If the allegations are true, then Clinton is a barbarian. Elsewhere, a few liberal congresswomen voiced cautious doubts about the president's character, but hard-core Clinton loyalists were still waiting for "the facts."
Despite appearances, NOW itself remains in the latter camp.
One who confirms this is Marie-Jose Ragab, president of a breakaway NOW chapter in Dulles, Va. Ragab dismisses Ireland's statement as "manipulation." "It made women in this country feel that there is a change in position on the part of the organization," she says. "There is no change. [Ireland] was trotted out by the national leadership, who are now terrified of losing their position of power."
It was Ragab who instigated her chapter's break with the national organization in mid-February, after NOW leaders failed to speak up about the scandal. "We were caught between the critical silence on the part of our leadership," she explains, "and the fact that we are supposed to go around in our community fighting sexual harassment." The Dulles group called on the national leadership to resign. According to Ragab, NOW is rife with " hypocrisy and double standards."
Ireland is not the only Clintonista whose public statements have appeared to represent a shift. "If what Mrs. Willey claims is true, sexual harassment occurred, and sexual harassment at any level is inexcusable," said Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana last week. Kate Michelman, president of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, adopted the tone of a disappointed parent: "As a woman and a woman leader, this type of story is troublesome -- it's very disturbing and sad."
The problem with all these expressions of concern is that they come so late. Where were the feminists on Paula Jones? Kathleen Willey's story has carried weight because she claims (like Jones, but unlike Monica Lewinsky and Gennifer Flowers) that Clinton's advances were unwanted; because she is a long-time supporter of the president and his party; and because her emotional performance on 60 Minutes struck a chord. Ireland herself called the interview "compelling" and said Willey had "a great deal of credibility."
But Anita Blair of the Independent Women's Forum insists that feminists are drawing false distinctions. "We ought to evaluate the claims of a Gennifer Flowers and a Paula Jones on the same basis as we evaluate the claims of a Kathleen Willey, without reference to what finishing school they went to."
Some feminists are willing to concede that the sexual-harassment issue is now in play, but others are still lying low. According to Anita Perez Ferguson, president of the National Women's Political Caucus, feminists cannot criticize the president's alleged behavior because, unlike the case of Clarence Thomas, Clinton is a defendant in private litigation. "This is grand- jury testimony with a gag rule on it -- a very different scenario," notes Ferguson. "If and when the time comes for the Congress to take this up after a judge has made a final judgment, then certainly the NWPC and other groups will be there."
Judith Lichtman, president of the Women's Legal Defense Fund, is waiting as well. As she told the Washington Post, "I'm too good a lawyer to step into the middle of an investigation." Likewise, Sen. Dianne Feinstein released a statement saying, "I am not in a position to know the facts . . . and am not going to make a judgment until I do." Bluntest of all, Geraldine Fertaro told the New York Times, "I can't assess what's real and what's not real. And I don't want to."
Liberals wanted to know the truth when Clarence Thomas was being grilled. And they were willing enough to draw conclusions about what was real when Bob Packwood was accused of making passes at women on his staff. "Feminists have given some lip service to the idea of learning all the facts in this case because it suits them," says Blair. "They did not wait to hear all the facts for the Republican men that they've marched against in the past."
Perhaps the greatest inconsistency is in the comments of Ann Lewis, White House communications director. In 1991, Lewis said she understood how Anita Hill could continue to work for Clarence Thomas after he allegedly harassed her. "You don't know what it's like to be a young working woman," Lewis said, "to have this really presitigious and powerful boss, you think you have to stay on the right side of him or for the rest of your working life he could nix another job." But when Willey described how she continued to work for the president after the encounter, Lewis was less understanding: "It is such a contradiction. What I heard her say last night about how she felt, using words like feeling 'pressured,' like feeling that she had -- that their friendship had been taken advantage of, simply is contradicted by the person I met with, who in 1996 was so positive about the president."
There are contradictions here, all right. Increasingly, Clinton's defenders are poised for a fall. In the wake of the Willey interview, female leaders are trying to position themselves to save face -- not yet actually jumping ship, but none too subtly eyeing the escape hatches.