What We Don't Need To Know About Clarence Thomas's Dick

This is something that never needed to happen, but we’re subjecting you to it anyway. A reader of the tell-all memoir by his ex-girlfriend Lillian McEwen (who previously made the rounds after Ginni Thomas called Anita Hill demanding an apology) divulges the following details from it:

McEwen gushes over Thomas’ prowess and “fantasy [package],” describing his body as “coffee-bean … velvet-covered cement.”

He was a “national treasure,” she said, one she shared with other women in ménages à trois and in a voyeuristic pleasure palace. And she described her then-lover as being “easily aroused,” with a “strong interest in pornography.”

Do you want to know what word originally was in the brackets? There’s a reason to pick up the book, we guess.

McEwan justifies this level of disclosure by pointing out that the door was opened when Hill testified against Thomas in his confirmation hearings. But she glosses over the main distinction between Hill and herself: Consent. Hill was hardly coming forward to talk about Thomas’ pubic hair merely for book-deal titillation.

Meanwhile, Sonia Sotomayor recently had some tough words about what she faced in her own confirmation hearings — sexism. According to an Atlantic account of her appearance at Northwestern,

“There were private questions I was offended by. I was convinced they were not asking those questions of the male applicants,” Sotomayor said, alluding to questions about her dating habits. It was unclear if she was referring to private sessions, prior to her formal nomination hearing, with individual senators.

Sotomayor, who is single, then cited her “many single male colleagues who are judges who date often, bring dates to court affairs and nobody ever talks about them. I knew if I did the same thing, my morals would be questioned. So I’m very careful about whom I date and how public it is.” It was unclear but presumably she was harkening to her experiences as a district court, appellate court and, now, Supreme Court judge.

And presumably she’s also referring to the justly-maligned New Republic piece before she was even nominated, which not only quoted an unnamed source saying she was “not that smart,” but also said that she lavished attention on her clerks because “she is divorced and has no children.” Or the low-level speculation that she is gay, a minor preview to what Kagan experienced.

Or the suggestion that she was a bully because she is aggressive in her questioning on the bench:

“I don’t like people talking about my private life,” she said, suggesting that there is a double standard in how single women and men are treated and portrayed. “There are expectations of how men and women should behave.” She added, “I’m probably a bit more aggressive than many like in a woman.”

Thank God her confirmation meant a lifetime appointment to speak her mind and issue her judgments.

Clarence Thomas Stars In Sexually-Charged Memoir [Afro, Via]
Sonia Sotomayor On Dating, Deciding, And Being The Newest Supreme Court Justice [The Atlantic]
Earlier: Elena Kagan: The Sexual Politics Of A Private Life