Feminists Can Receive A Lesson From Jones' Harassment Suit

It's hard to believe that President Clinton's feminist supporters didn't see it coming. When a man is known to have a penchant for chasing women, it's likely that he has chased a few who didn't want to be caught. Which is the operative definition of sexual harassment we've had since Anita Hill's charges against Clarence Thomas nearly cost him a seat on the Supreme Court in October 1991.

Now, the suit by former Arkansas state employee Paula Corbin Jones claiming that then-Gov. Clinton made unwanted advances toward her three years ago has unleashed a frenzy of mutual accusations of hypocrisy. Conservatives say that the feminists who embraced Hill are shunning Jones out of political and class bias. Feminists counter that right-wingers who never cared about sexual harassment until Jones came along are manipulating the issue for political gain. The funny thing is, they're both right.

New York Times columnist Anna Quindlen, having belatedly discovered that ''all women are not the same woman," concludes that Jones is no Hill

because (1) she is being aided by Clinton's political foes and (2) she did not come forward during the 1992 campaign. Yet Hill, too, was coaxed out of the shadows by Thomas' enemies; if they were less visible than Clinton's opponents have been in this case, it's a matter of savvy more than credibility.

Jones has a plausible explanation for coming forward when she did: a magazine story which suggested (wrongly, she says) that she was willing to have an affair with the governor. And Quindlen never asked why the charges plaguing the hapless Sen. Bob Packwood were not publicized until after his re- election - or why Hill remained silent when her alleged harasser ran the agency responsible for enforcing sexual harassment laws and when he was appointed to the federal bench.

If anything, as Alan Dershowitz (no right-wing ideologue) has pointed out, Jones has a much stronger case than Hill. She has far better corroboration: Several people have signed affidavits affirming that she told them of the incident the day it allegedly occurred. Her charges are also far more serious.