Neither a slut nor a victim. Just a human being. I had an affair with my married boss almost 50 years ago. And then another one with the chairman of the board of the organization I worked for. Neither of these escapades advanced my career in any way, nor did they hold me back. They were just flings. I wasn’t a victim and I didn’t consider myself a slut, even then. I was just an ordinary young woman who used questionable judgment. Both men are now deceased. BTW, both men stayed with their wives, which was fine. I don’t know why the Lewinsky-Clinton story won’t just die a natural death.
I meant to use the word pejoratively. I haven’t used the “s” word in years. In fact I pretty well thought it was obsolete. I don’t know what else to call her for despicable behavior reported not by Bill but by the prosecution. I apologize .
However if a 25 year old man (by age 25 Alexander the Great conquered an empire) dropped his drawers to proudly show President Hillary Clinton his erect penis, I would have called him a pervert, which is even more pejorative.
I meant to use the word pejoratively. I haven’t used the “s” word in years. In fact I pretty well thought it was obsolete. I don’t know what else to call her for despicable behavior reported not by Bill but by the prosecution. I apologize .
However if a 25 year old man (by age 25 Alexander the Great conquered an empire) dropped his drawers to proudly show President Hillary Clinton his erect penis, I would have called him a pervert, which is even more pejorative.
I don’t buy “She’s a victim because of the power differential”.
The only power Bill had over Monica was her job. Which she is free to quit and go work elsewhere. Granted, this type of power power can be pretty compelling for an uneducated mother trying to keep her family fed. But an aspiring, educated young lady with her whole life ahead of her? Gimme a break.
All that said, I agree with others that she IS a victim of the public.
From what I understand, Lewinsky told Linda Tripp, who told Lucianne Goldberg and started recording their conversations before turning them over to Starr in exchange for immunity.
Literally everyone involved, with the possible exception of Hillary, was a raging asshole. If Hillary believed Bill (incredibly doubtful), she gets a pass.
Age is irrelevant. She’s an intern. He’s the President of the United States. There couldn’t be much more of a stark power differential. His fault.
I can’t agree with this, for several reasons.
First, “what’s the big deal - just get another job” is something I don’t want said to people who are the victims of sexual harassment. Which, AFAICT, Ms. Lewinsky was not, but it would be equally stupid to say to Paula Jones or etc. etc. etc. etc…
Second, it isn’t so much that it hurt Ms. Lewinsky. It hurts other women in the workplace. If offering sexual favors is a way to advance your career, not only does it make it more difficult for people who won’t offer such favors, it discredits them because it increases the risk of people assuming “she only got there because she was boinking the boss”, even when it isn’t true. Sexual relations have to be completely off-limits in the workplace. If you can’t keep it in your pants, even when tempted, then get the hell out and go to a different workplace. And that goes for everyone.
Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas. She got involved with a sleazebag, and it blew up in her face. That shouldn’t have been a surprise.
Did she deserve to become a punchline for the rest of her life? It doesn’t matter - that’s the sort of thing that can happen, especially when you get involved with a serial cheater and liar like Bill. “If I suck his dick, maybe he’ll fall in love with me and we will live happily ever after. Or after he dumps me, his rich friends will get me a job with Revlon. Or maybe I will spend the rest of my life trying to live it down.”
Ya makes ya choice and ya takes ya chances.
Regards,
Shodan
sleazebag is a pejorative word Shodan
Phrasing…
Keep in mind, just because I don’t think she Bill’s victim doesn’t mean I think ANY of this was okay.
Bill should have been booted from the WH for that nonsense and Monica should have been booted from the internship program as well.
This wasn’t sexual harassment. These were two people doing something they are BOTH well old enough to know better than to do.
What a fucking gross thread.
I’m not particularly interested in anyone’s apologia for why it was totes cool for them to dump such caustic shit on another person, either in the 90s or now.
It does matter – it’s yet another example of how misogynistic our society is. Young women (and women/girls in general, in fact) aren’t allowed to have sexual desire, except for under very, very limited circumstances. Women get the bulk of the blame for sex scandals (and indeed sex crimes). There are a dozen or more misogynistic slurs about women who dare to have a sex life beyond society’s very limited constraints of what is deemed appropriate, and not a single one for men. Just compare “gigolo” to “whore” or “hooker” – the connotation of the former is not nearly as negative as the latter two.
Who behaved more inappropriately – Bill or Monica? IMO it’s obviously Bill – he was the married one; he was the one who should have had more maturity and wisdom; he was the one with the power imbalance in his favor. But who has society treated worse afterwards? Monica, by orders of magnitude.
Yet another example of our misogynistic and patriarchal culture.
Bill acted more inappropriately with regards to his marriage. But his marriage is irrelevant to the job he was elected to do.
They BOTH were equally inappropriate when they started the affair. I knew as a teenager you don’t have sex at work. You don’t have to wait til middle age to realize this.
How about lecher, reprobate, perv , or dirty old man or peeping tom. You blame patriarchy, yet you have no response to the equivalent scenario of a man who exposes himself to a woman in public which is punishable with prison time.
Most of those describe criminal behavior. They’re not equivalent to slurs like “slut”, which are routinely used against women for things as trivial as their fashion choices.
The patriarchy hurts men in a very limited but real set of circumstances – this might be one of them.
But this response demonstrates that you really don’t understand this stuff, IMO. Lewinsky was treated like garbage for years. Bill was not. It’s a pretty direct comparison – two people made pretty much the same mistake, and the young woman with much less power was shat upon for a decade or more, and the older man with lots of power faced much lesser consequences over the same period of time (i.e. pretty much zero consequences after the immediate political consequences, which ultimately probably helped him after the short-term pain of impeachment).
But she wasn’t 14–she was 22. Are you saying that a 22-year-old female human is just as incapable of making informed decisions as a 14-year-old female human? I say “female human” for a reason–if I had said “girl”, there would be people calling out that she isn’t a “girl”, she is a woman. Yet when it suits one’s purposes, it is claimed that a 22-year-old is still a child like a 14-year-old? Do you really think that you get to have it both ways? She was absolutely in no way whatsoever any more innocent or any better than Bill Clinton in this–they were both immoral little shits.
There’s that. She read a book by Gennifer Flowers to learn how to seduce Bill Clinton, so I don’t see her as a victim of his. Unfortunately for her, people treated affairs far more seriously those days (especially if the guy is a Democratic president and not a Republican speaker) and the woman usually gets treated far worse than the man.
Of course, after years of being out of the spotlight (she fled to the UK for a time), Lewinski is back and specifically talking about this. I don’t really know why. Maybe she developed an addiction to attention? Shouldn’t she be doing something else, so we can say “she’s the person who does this wonderful thing” instead of “it’s that woman again”?
What sticks in my craw is that Lewinski’s mom wrote a book about women in history sleeping their way to the top. I think she influenced her daughter to think this was the way to go. After all, Lewinski’s the one who told her friends before she went to DC that she was going to Washington to earn her “presidential kneepads.” She’d also had an affair with a high school teacher and broke up his marriage. Not a victim. Just stupid and possibly swayed by her mom’s less than politically correct view of “success.”
“Slut” is a word used for a woman who has sex outside of her society’s approved bounds for doing so. I’ve heard it used for women who had sex with a lot of people, and also for women who had sex with only one but who weren’t married to that person. The words used for men who like to have a lot of sex are generally more complimentary.
The word ought to be obsolete, yes; but it’s not, and it still has power. I very strongly recommend not using it.
Bill Clinton and Lewinski both behaved badly. That said, Clinton behaved worse, for at least four different types of reason:
One, he was significantly older and had had more years during which he should have learned better;
Two, he was her boss and therefore he should have known better, both because that put him in a position of power over her, and also because bosses should be expected to know more about dealing with subordinates than subordinates – especially people just in their 20’s – should be expected to know about dealing with bosses; that’s part of what the bosses are supposed to be being paid for;
Three, he was the one who was married. Trying to get a married/monogomously partnered person to cheat is bad, but actually doing the cheating is worse;
And four, because he was the one risking screwing up his chances of pulling off the goals of his entire presidency – and he did to some extent so screw them up. He failed the people who elected him because he couldn’t keep it in his pants (or in Hillary’s) till he was out of office. Lewinsky had been elected to no such position of responsibility; she was responsible for no one but herself.
Lewinsky was very badly dealt with by the press and by the public. She hadn’t intended to put herself in that position; she just confided in the wrong person. That was naive, it wasn’t evil. She was 25. 25 year olds often are naive. If her mother had raised her to believe that screwing the boss was the way to get ahead, and she believed her mother, that was also naive.
What arrangement, if any, Hillary and Bill had between them is, or ought to be, a matter for Hillary and Bill; and whether, if Bill violated it, Hillary should have forgiven him is a matter for Hillary to decide. It isn’t any of our business.
Are you referring to Bill or Linda Tripp?