Mink, in a scathing rebuke to Clinton's feminist supporters, charges that they raised the politcal and legal thresholds for taking sexual harassment seriously and so undermined those laws that women may not use them in the future.... Here is a logical, passionate, and provocative answer to one of that era's most puzzling questions.... This is a valuable resource for all collections.
"A lucid and interesting history of sexual harassment law; recommended for academic and large public collections."Library Journal
"Hostile Environment defends the rights of sexually harassed women and explores the ways in which the current administration, political climate, and legal system are undermining sexual harassment laws especially as few women dare to use them."Feminist Bookstore News. Fall, 1999.
"Mink, in a scathing rebuke to Clinton's feminist supporters, charges that they raised the politcal and legal thresholds for taking sexual harassment seriously and so undermined those laws that women may not use them in the future. . . .Here is a logical, passionate, and provocative answer to one of that era's most puzzling questions. . . . This is a valuable resource for all collections."Choice, July 2000
"Hostile Environment provides a solid legal history of sexual harassment. It also offers a truly stunning indictment of how feminists and others threatened to turn sexual harassment into a completely trivial offense both by betraying 'trailer trash' Paula Jones and by effectively raising the bar for what constitutes 'genuine' harassment during the Clinton impeachment episode. The book also contains a horrifying description of Mink's own experiences of sexual harassment as a grad student at Cornell."Robert Johnson. H-Labor Listserve, 2/13/01
"Mixing passion with logic, this brave book exposes the regime of disbelief that envelops survivors of sexual harassment with yet another 'hostile environment.' After Gwendolyn Mink's defense of the rights of sexually harassed women, there is no excuse to confuse the abuse of power with consensual sex."Eileen Boris, Professor, Studies in Women and Gender, University of Virginia, Coordinating Editor, Iris: A Journal About Women
"Hostile Environment brilliantly combines searing personal narrative, meticulous scholarship, and unwavering feminist principles to reveal one aspect of the Clinton scandals' damage to women's rights."Barbara Smith, author of The Truth That Never Hurts: Writings on Race, Gender, and Freedom