Joy Behar has spoken candidly about the horrific sexual harassment she faced while working as a teacher on Long Island, describing a shocking moment with her boss that left her “disgusted.”
The 81-year-old comedian, who recently joked on The View that she wants to seduce a woman when she’s 90, taught English at Lindenhurst Senior High School on Long Island from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, where she faced a series of sexual harassment incidents.
Joy wrote about the incident, citing the #MeToo movement, but claimed: ‘In 1969, we didn’t have hashtags. If you were being harassed by your boss, you had to be creative.’
The article in the first person, which was published on Airmail in February, begins with an incident that occurred in class, when a head of department came to watch one of Joy’s lessons and told her afterwards, “You were so good, I could have fucked you on the board.”
Joy, who was 27 at the time, described how she felt: “I was torn. On one hand, I felt disgust. On the other hand, I was an independent, single woman with no trust fund waiting for me, and the chair of the English department liked my class. My mind was racing.
Joy Behar has opened up about the time a high-status male colleague left her feeling ‘disgusted’ after he touched her inappropriately
The 81-year-old, pictured here in March, wrote about her experience in an article published on Air Mail
“I thought about reporting him, but I knew that wouldn’t get me anywhere. The principal was only interested in catching kids smoking dope in the bathrooms. And I really needed this job, so I decided to take it as a compliment.”
Joy recalls how a colleague of hers, Krystie, was also sexually harassed by another male teacher, who kept saying “how big her breasts were.”
The two women, together with another teacher from Germany, Bridget, discussed ways in which they could take revenge on the two men for their inappropriate behavior.
The situation reached a breaking point when, after visiting one of her classes, the head of department proposed to Joy and suggested they go for drinks after work.
Joy lied and told him she was “in a relationship with someone,” but she said this only turned him on more. When she tried to excuse herself and leave the room, the man in question put his hands on her and said, “Look at the hard cock you made me get,” referring to his erection.
On the exact same day, something similar happened to Krystie when the other male teacher entered her classroom and lifted up her blouse, causing her to “hyperventilate.”
Joy described Bridget’s reaction, saying the history teacher “sprung into action” as she led the man into the classroom.
“Bridget walked over to him, grabbed a measuring tape and said, ‘Excuse me, can I measure your dick?’” Joy wrote, before revealing how they tied his hands behind his back and pulled down his pants.
Joy, pictured in 1992, worked as an English teacher at a Long Island school where she was sexually harassed by a colleague
“You better not tell anyone about this or your dick won’t be so lucky next time,” Joy remembers Bridget telling him before they untied him and left the classroom.
When Joy was faced with her own situation, she decided to invite the head of department to another of her classes. This time, she turned the tables through her class.
During a grammar lesson, Joy decided to use the analogy of the “grammatically correct way to leave a bully alone” and asked him what he would do in such a situation.
When her students began suggesting that a bully in a “higher position” be reported to their superiors, or perhaps to the police, Joy recalled that the man “got up and slowly walked toward the exit” as she sarcastically suggested that he “come back next week.”
DailyMail.com has contacted the school for comment.
According to Air Mail, the story is taken from the first chapter of Joy’s upcoming memoir, which will be published by Regalo Press.
The upcoming nonfiction book was first announced in November 2023 and will see Joy share stories about a variety of topics including family members, hair, erections, bullies, and romance.
While the memoir isn’t due out until late 2024 or early 2025, fans of Joy can expect the TV personality to “take aim at everyone and everything, including herself.”