Remember when Senator John Edwards ran for president of the United States? The National Enquirer was first to report an extramarital affair, and as the story unfolded, there was a scandalous pregnancy, the birth of a child supposedly fathered by Edwards, and even a plan to steal a diaper to confirm DNA.
That’s the kind of story I expected when I read the words, “pregnancy scandal.” Instead, these two words were the subject line of a daily email I receive from the New York Times, highlighting recent coverage of a story Elizabeth Warren tells on the presidential campaign trail. No, Senator Warren is not pregnant, nor did she give up a three-legged baby for adoption at the age of fourteen, the kind of story found in the pile of True Confession magazines at the beauty parlor of my childhood. Click bait, perhaps, but a more factual title would be: “Workplace discrimination remembered.” Unfortunately, that description, while more accurate to the article, doesn’t entice our voyeuristic fingers to click and skim the connected article.
In case you missed this story in today’s rapidly evolving news cycle, Senator Warren has spoken about her own experience of workplace discrimination as a young mother-to-be. When pregnant with her first child in the early 1970s, she faced a policy that refused to renew the contract of female teachers “with child.” Those wishing to cast doubt on the Senator’s candidacy question her recollection of this occurrence, because school board minutes didn’t confirm her account. Here’s why: her contract renewal was approved before news of her pregnancy was revealed, then revoked before the school year started when word got out. That’s how it was in those days.
Amy Rankin, terminated from her real estate job as a new mother in the 1960s, told the Washington Post: “I can’t believe that there are people out there who do not believe Elizabeth Warren. If you are a woman and you are a woman of a certain age, you have been discriminated against, whether it’s pregnancy-related or whether it’s job-related.”
I’m not ashamed of being a “woman of a certain age,” and I too have stories to tell about gender discrimination. But more than that, I struggle to understand why we are so ready to condemn another’s experience, to try to poke holes in their story.
Shortly after the dress code at my junior high was changed to allow girls to wear pants in school, I was sent home for wearing “inappropriate” pants – in eighth grade. Too tight? Too bright? To this day, I don’t know. This was particularly traumatic for me because I had proudly sewn those pants myself, but can I prove it actually happened? Probably not. If someone challenged me, should I be expected to offer evidence of the veracity of my tale, down to the color of my trousers?
Yet in our twenty-first century culture, we are seemingly consumed with “digging up dirt” on people who have given years and years in service to our country. Or, if unable to find verifiable dirt, we seem willing to latch on to whatever rumored dirt is floating around the internet. Consider the awful lies spread about the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School – twenty death certificates for the five and six-year-old children were faked, the grieving parents were paid actors. Bizarre, right? But people read the posts, bought the books, and believed them.
The challenge, especially for public figures but also for ourselves, is how to combat these baseless accusations and blatant lies. Once the toothpaste has been squeezed out of the tube, then what? Ignore the claims, and they could fester underground, suddenly bursting forth like a giant zit on prom night. Use precious time, energy and resources to prove your account is true? Speak clearly to the issue: “I have done nothing wrong.” Yeah, right – they all say that. Even a crisis management PR team has no easy answers.
Warren’s supposed “pregnancy scandal” reminds me once again to read past the headlines. But larger questions linger. Is our default setting “guilty” instead of “the benefit of the doubt”? Why are we so eager to believe the worst of each other? Enquiring minds want to know.
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