At the Bar

Maryanne Trump Barry likes to joke that in New York she may be seen merely as Donald Trump's sister but that in New Jersey, where she has been a Federal judge since 1983, Donald Trump is seen primarily as her brother. That was arguably true last month, when her heterodox views on sexual harassment made page 1 of many of the state's newspapers.

Since President Ronald Reagan named her to the Federal District Court in Newark, Judge Barry, Mr. Trump's older sister, has won praise for her industry, intelligence and outspokenness. It was her outspokenness that was most evident on Nov. 20 when she told 900 Federal law-enforcement agents and officials in Washington, most of them female, that women should lighten up a bit on the subject of sexual harassment.

Judge Barry said that undue sensitivity and an excessively confrontational attitude of some women in the work place was poisoning relations between the sexes. Because of a few "professional hypochondriacs," she said, good and well-meaning men are afraid to be themselves, and the more serious problems women face in the work force remain unaddressed.

"I stand second to none in condemning sexual harassment of women," she told the Interagency Committee on Women in Law Enforcement. "But what is happening is that every sexy joke of long ago, every flirtation, is being recalled by some women and revised and re-evaluated as sexual harassment. Many of these accusations are, in anybody's book, frivolous."

Making a big deal out of slight slights, she argues, not only angers men needlessly but trivializes the serious problems women face in advancing in the predominantly macho male world of law enforcement.

It has also made work less fun, she said. "Frivolous accusations reduce, if not eliminate, not only communication between men and women but any kind of playfulness and banter," she said. "Where has the laughter gone?"

Judge Barry said she herself had been criticized by ardent feminists over the language she used. She related how, nine years after the fact, she still felt stung by the tongue-lashing one female lawyer gave her for calling a young woman a "girl."

Undeterred, she said, she asks prospective clerks today how they would react if she made a similar slip. Some, she related, "visibly coil up like cobras, narrow their eyes and their mouths, and spit out some answer which usually includes the word 'shocked.' " The smarter ones figure out where the judge is going and laugh it off, and they get the clerkships. "Needless to say, I don't want a woman working for me who's waiting for me to shoot myself in the foot," she declared.

The judge received a long standing ovation when she finished, along with dozens of letters, one from Helen Gurley Brown. Off the premises, and off the record, some critics said the judge's privileged background had insulated her from the sexual wars in the work place. Not everyone, noted one prominent female lawyer who wouldn't be quoted by name, "is tall, blonde, beautiful, rich and had Roy Cohn as a sponsor."

Judge Barry, a 1958 graduate of Mount Holyoke College who earned a law degree at Hofstra University 16 years later, described herself to the group as a "traditional woman" -- someone who married and reared a son before entering law practice at the age of 37. "I like a little chivalry, I like to receive flowers, I like taking care of a son and a husband," she said, "and in my judgment those who recoil from these things don't know what they're missing."

Judge Barry did not address whether she had been sexually harassed herself, but she well knows the disconcerting feeling of wearing the only blouse in a sea of men's suits. When she became a Federal prosecutor in Newark in 1974, she constituted half the women in a 62-lawyer office. She stayed there for the next nine years, becoming chief of the appeals division. She has never denied that luck and a Cohn connection helped her obtain a judgeship.

The judge chastised feminists for pounding on befuddled but well-meaning men for the slightest indiscretion or linguistic faux pas, particularly if it reflected cultural differences rather than malevolence. "Instead of throwing down the gauntlet at every opportunity," she said, "may I recommend the use of humor and gentle sarcasm -- the deft touch, the intelligent approach -- rather than the atom bomb?" That, she said, could consist simply of asking a man why he was such a jerk or had yet to grow up.

And, though she acknowledged it was heresy, she recommended for women the strategic use of their own sexuality. "There is no more potent weapon in any profession than a woman with a feminine exterior and a will of steel, and I defy you to find one man who will disagree."