Twenty years before the Harvey Weinstein scandal became a catalyst for a global anti-abuse campaign, a 24-year-old White House intern was making international headlines over her affair with the 42nd president of the United States.
Back in 1998, Bill Clinton faced impeachment proceedings over the scandal before being acquitted, while that intern, Monica Lewinsky, was the subject of universal vilification; the hussy with the scarlet lipstick who had thrown herself at a president while his long-suffering wife looked bravely on.
Monica Lewinsky embraces Bill Clinton during White House lawn party in Washington.
Ms Lewinsky spent the next two decades almost as a recluse, suffering from PTSD even as she took responsibility for a two-year affair which, she said in a Vanity Fair article four years ago, she had come to view as a “consensual relationship.”
But in a new, poignant Vanity Fair essay, Ms Lewsinky, now a fashion designer, writes that in the age of #MeToo, she has re-evaluated that affair, realising that while she was certainly complicit in it, the relationship was an extraordinary abuse of power by the most powerful man in the world over an impressionable girl just out of college.
“I now see how problematic it was that the two of us even got to a place where there was a question of consent,” Ms Lewinsky writes. “Instead, the road that led there was littered with inappropriate abuse of authority, station, and privilege.
“Now, at 44, I’m beginning (just beginning) to consider the implications of the power differentials that were so vast between a president and a White House intern.”
A TV still from of Monica Lewinsky (L) greeting Bill Clinton at the time of their affair.
She goes on: “I’m beginning to entertain the notion that in such a circumstance the idea of consent might well be rendered moot. (Although power imbalances — and the ability to abuse them — do exist even when the sex has been consensual.)
“But it’s also complicated. Very, very complicated. The dictionary definition of ‘consent’? ‘To give permission for something to happen.’ And yet what did the ‘something’ mean in this instance, given the power dynamics, his position, and my age? Was the ‘something’ just about crossing a line of sexual (and later emotional) intimacy? (An intimacy I wanted — with a 22-year-old’s limited understanding of the consequences.) He was my boss. He was the most powerful man on the planet. He was 27 years my senior, with enough life experience to know better. He was, at the time, at the pinnacle of his career, while I was in my first job out of college. (Note to the trolls, both Democratic and Republican: none of the above excuses me for my responsibility for what happened. I meet Regret every day)”
Monica Lewinsky has re-evaluated her affair with the former president. Picture: AFP.
The Weinstein scandal has led to allegations from scores of women — and men — against powerful men in Hollywood and the media. Kevin Spacey, Al Franken and Matt Lauer are among many celebrities who have seen their careers crushed. In Australia, former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce, who resigned on Monday, is facing allegations of sexual harassment as well as scrutiny over his relationship with a former staffer.
But Ms Lewinsky points out that in the late 1990s, when her affair became public knowledge, it was she, not the president who was punished; left isolated and abandoned “most of all by the key figure in the crisis, who actually knew me well and intimately.”
Yet even she felt that the only “abuse” she suffered was the bullying tactics of then independent counsel Ken Starr who “turned my 24-year-old life into a living hell in his effort to investigate and prosecute“ Mr Clinton: and the aftermath of the affair, when “I was made a scapegoat in order to protect (Clinton’s) powerful position.”
She adds: “Isolation is such a powerful tool to the subjugator. And yet I don’t believe I would have felt so isolated had it all happened today.”
Women involved in the #MeToo campaign have reached out to her, and she says; “I don’t believe I would have felt so isolated had it all happened today. One of the most inspiring aspects of this newly energised movement is the sheer number of women who have spoken up in support of one another.”
Perhaps, she writes, her experiences with Mr Clinton might be re-evaluated in the light of the revelations of the past year.
“Until recently (thank you, Harvey Weinstein), historians hadn’t really had the perspective to fully process and acknowledge that year of shame and spectacle,” she writes. “And as a culture, we still haven’t properly examined it. Reframed it. Integrated it. And transformed it. My hope, given the two decades that have passed, is that we are now at a stage where we can untangle the complexities and context (maybe even with a little compassion), which might help lead to an eventual healing — and a systemic transformation.
