A veteran comedy writer and producer from New Jersey is among the latest to tell a story of blatant sexual harassment in Hollywood.

Janis Hirsch, a Trenton native who worked on Showtime's "It's Garry Shandling's Show" in the 1980s, wrote about the traumatic episode for The Hollywood Reporter. Hirsch says that after the harassment came to light, she was asked to leave her job.

Hirsch's account follows a long and continuing stream of stories of sexual harassment and assault from women in Hollywood. The outpouring of decades of allegations follows bombshell stories about producer Harvey Weinstein this month in The New York Times and The New Yorker, in which actresses and other women he worked with alleged rape, sexual assault and harassment over a period of about 40 years. Since then, women in Hollywood and beyond have come forward with their own stories of harassment and assault.

Hirsch, 67, whose work includes "The Nanny," "Frasier," "Will & Grace" and "Murphy Brown," got her start at the National Lampoon humor magazine, though she says she was not given the chance to write, in part due to the pervasive sexism amongst the male-dominated staff. Shandling invited her to work on "Shandling's Show" in 1986.

While she was off to a good start on the show as the only woman writer on staff, with the two episodes she wrote having been well received by press, Hirsch soon noticed that she was being excluded from meetings. She was assigned what staff lewdly called "slit scenes," their term for scenes that involved the only actress in the cast. After Hirsch realized their meaning, she would routinely cry in the stairwell and parking lot.

But the most glaring incident happened with a full audience of writers and Shandling himself, when she was sitting in his office, Hirsch says. An actor from the show was there, too.

THANK YOU, @Janis_Hirsch. Respect for you and your work. Oh, the places you must have been. THANK YOU. https://t.co/2lW5buglcq -- Kitty Sheehan (@KittyASheehan) October 18, 2017

"I felt a tap on my shoulder, I turned, and there was that actor's flaccid penis draped on it like a pirate's dead parrot," Hirsch writes. "Riotous laughter ensued from all but one of us."

After the obscene episode, Brad Grey, the show's producer, summoned Hirsch to tell her he thought she should quit, she says.

"Wait, what? This was my problem?" Hirsch writes. "Shouldn't he at least fire me so I could get paid? Nope. I was to do the smart thing and quit. Today."

She wanted to sue, but as a fledgling writer, she didn't have the money and knew the consequences of speaking out -- "I'd never work again," she says. Instead, she resorted to circulating her story in writers' rooms. While she often got laughed at, she was heartened to find that more than 30 years later, two younger women writers heeded her story.

"Thank you for getting that flaccid penis on your shoulder so we never had to," they said.

Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup or on Facebook.