# Phyllis Schlafly — "virtuous women" > [!quote] "Non-criminal sexual harassment on the job is not a problem for the virtuous woman except in the rarest of cases." > — Phyllis Schlafly, U.S. Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee testimony, April 21, 1981 ## Context Delivered in sworn testimony before the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee, where Schlafly was attacking the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's 1980 guidelines defining workplace sexual harassment as sex discrimination. As founder of [[Eagle Forum]] and architect of organized [[Antifeminism]] — the movement that killed the [[Equal Rights Amendment]] — Schlafly used the hearing to argue that federal harassment rules were unnecessary and that women's own conduct, not men's, determined whether they were harassed. ## Why this matters The cleanest single-sentence statement of the victim-blaming logic at the core of organized antifeminism: harassment is recast as a moral failing of the woman ("virtuous" women avoid it) rather than an abuse of power by men. It tied a movement's gender politics directly to the machinery of [[Patriarchy]] — locating responsibility for male misconduct in female behavior. The line resurfaced repeatedly in later decades as a touchstone for how the right framed harassment and assault claims, and it sits at the head of the lineage that runs through later religious-right and manosphere rhetoric in this collection. ## Verification - **Contemporaneous reporting:** [Washington Post, Apr. 22, 1981](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1981/04/22/schlafly-sex-harrassment-on-job-no-problem-for-virtuous-women/d3defdf6-19fa-4db2-b307-4c40ff592455/); [UPI, Apr. 21, 1981](https://www.upi.com/Archives/1981/04/21/Schlafly-Sexual-harassment-no-problem-for-virtuous-women/9257356677200/). - **Primary-document reader:** [The American Yawp Reader](https://www.americanyawp.com/reader/29-the-triumph-of-the-right/phyllis-schlafly-on-womens-responsibility-for-sexual-harassment-1981/). - **Status:** Verbatim, undisputed; from prepared Senate testimony. ## Related quotes - [[Pat Robertson - the feminist agenda]] — the religious-right successor framing feminism itself as a civilizational threat. - [[Rush Limbaugh - feminazi]] — the talk-radio register of the same antifeminist project. - Featured in [[Misogyny on the Right]].