Lewinsky
did a pretty awesome TED talk that I recommend everyone check out. And she starts it off pretty early on saying that her mistake as a 22 year old was falling in love with her boss, which yeah, she definitely was not the first person to have done that. This is also of course why most places I've ever worked at forbid workplace relationships between a boss and underling- it's definitely not a Weinstein-gate because there was consent, and Monica has never said there wasn't, but I think most reasonable people realize that is a terrible imbalance of power that can spectacularly backfire for the underling (and, of course, did).
Hearing about PTSD does not surprise me either if you listen to the rest of the TED talk- so many terrible things were said about her, there was a period where her mom made her shower with the door open because she legit was at suicide risk. Most people probably would be if we had our sex lives and characters dissected by the national media, and got all the threats and speculations with it that she surely had to endure. I find myself having great sympathy for her,
reading the piece she wrote that prompted the article CG posted, where she says that she made mistakes, but how terrible being so publicly abandoned and isolated was. Whatever those mistakes were, she definitely doesn't deserve to live the rest of her life as the punchline of a joke:
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. 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.)
I don't think the media coverage would have played out the same way had this all come out today, for sure. (Even if Clinton was president today, to be clear.) But I think the Lewinsky case is going to take a little while for us to parse and unpack, even if it was 20 years ago.
Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2018 10:40 pm
