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Comment by Ididntdothis | Hacker News Reader

I never understood why Lewinsky got ridiculed that much. If anything she was a victim in the whole thing. Or am I missing something?

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I think the issue is that she kept the clothing with the semen, which speaks about planning and cunning.

People talk about the power imbalance, but at the end of the day there are a lot of people who sleep with their superiors because they want to rather than being coerced (explicitly or implicitly). I don't think we'll ever truly know if she was coerced or not, but we know for sure that she kept that clothing.

And I think this is the tipping point for most people. Everyone understands that she may have been a victim in it.

Actually, Monica only realized what the stain on the dress was several months after and it was her friend Linda Tripp who encouraged her to keep the dress: https://metro.co.uk/2018/11/13/monica-lewinsky-shares-x-rate...

That may be the reality, but I don't believe that was the narrative then, or common knowledge now. Certainly I wasn't aware of that, although I'm also not too particularly invested in it so don't follow things that closely.

It certainly was the narrative then. I was in college at the time and there were weeks where Linda Tripp was mentioned more than Monica.

I got the direct impression from the news that Monica Lewinsky was this pretty young thing, very innocent, who had a tryst with the POTUS and was freaking out. Linda Tripp came along and under a false veneer of sophistication and helpfulness, instructed Monica on what to do, move-by-move.

The story was of an ingenue who was, in turn, under the thrall of the POTUS and then Linda Tripp.

That she convinced monica to do what she did, yes. That monica didn't realize the stain was there, no rather than having kept it purposefully.... no.

>Everyone understands that she may have been a victim in it.

I think you might be being too generous with "everyone."

> Everyone understands that she may have been a victim in it.

You believe Lewinsky was a victim of what, exactly? She might have been extensively mistreated by the press but that's it.

> You believe Lewinsky was a victim of what, exactly?

Being pressured into a sexual relationship by her superior, who was by many standards the most powerful person on the planet at the time?

Like, regardless of whether you believe that's true or not it's pretty obvious how people might arrive at the conclusion that she was a victim and why there's debate about it.

> Being pressured into a sexual relationship by her superior

That baseless assertion was excluded from the onset of the case, was never a realistic assumption, and since then this conspiracy theory was put to rest.

So, besides made-up nonsense, you believe Lewinsky was a victim of what exactly?

exactly. We know the opposite happens too, being attracted to powerful people. We'll never know the truth and claiming you do know one way or the other, or that one of those possibilities isn't possible is intellectually dishonest imo.

Our culture still (and even more so a couple of decades ago) has a strong undercurrent of hating sluts and loving studs. This is where men are expected and encouraged to “conquer” many women and women are expected to resist it.

The following is how it gets interpreted by a lot of people and has no connection whatsoever to my own opinions of these two people:

Clinton having an affair with an intern was seen as bad because of the infidelity, but at the same time it makes him look virile and manly. It’s a mixed bag but he comes out looking pretty good overall.

An intern having an affair with Clinton is bad because it makes her a slut and she should have resisted her carnal urges. And she had an affair with a married man, so she’s a home wrecker too! There’s no positive aspect to this at all, and it’s all her fault for not behaving. And then her misbehavior gets plastered all over the national news, and she gets the shaming she deserves!

>Our culture still (and even more so a couple of decades ago) has a strong undercurrent of hating sluts and loving studs.

That's changing, it's now no shame for a woman to have multiple partners or one night stands, everyone's on tinder.

If you're more curious about this story. I highly recommend slate's slow burn on the Clinton Scandal.

https://slate.com/slow-burn

Impeccable journalism and incredible interviews are given.

I'm sorry to be pedantic, but I'm confused by what seemed to be a recommendation to read this link because it's going to be awesome, but then you say "incredible interviews." I'd feel a lot better if you clarified, before I read, "incredible" as in "extraordinary" or "difficult to believe."

I'm having trouble deciding whether or not you are being serious. Yes, technically, the word "incredible" originally meant "not credible." However, in common usage, it simply means, "very good."

I don't see why you would suspect them of not being serious. Not everyone on this site is a native English speaker. I know when I was first learning English I'd get tripped up by things like awful and awesome, terrific and terrible, being the only one left after your friend has left, turning the alarm off after it goes off, and so on. Plenty of things in the English language that can look like the opposite of what they actually mean.

knicholes is from Utah.

Says who? Merriam-webster's first definition is "too extraordinary and improbable to be believed".

Cambridge: "impossible or very difficult to believe:"

Dictionary.com: "so extraordinary as to seem impossible: incredible speed. not credible; hard to believe; unbelievable: The plot of the book is incredible."

Or is dictionary.com too incredible?

And, I know I'm risking hardcore my karma here, but I see "good" used as a moral measure. I doubt that "incredible" is referring to the interviewee's moral excellence, but I could imagine that perhaps the interviews are along the lines of becoming a better person.

Perhaps, I should have specified that it has come to mean good in this context. It probably started out as a short hand for something like "incredibly good" (as in, "it's hard to believe it's so good").

As long as we're quoting dictionary definitions (also from dictionary.com). We're using definition 2, here:

incredible adjective

1. beyond belief or understanding; unbelievable

2. informal marvellous; amazing

Good is definitely a judgment, but there is no reason to suppose it is a moral one. If I say a sandwich is good, it means that I like the taste not that I think it is righteous in the eyes of God. Ironically, perhaps, if I thought the sandwich was especially delicious, I might say that it is righteous. The vast majority of native English speakers would immediately understand my intended meaning rather than the literal one.

I find it somewhat incredible that I have to explain this.

That's incredibly pedantic, and in any event even the dictionary gives extraordinary as a synonym. But I'd never before considered the derivation of incredible before, so I learned something today :) On the other hand, you've ruined me as I'll never be able to unsee in-credible. :(

Vaguely related fun fact: “awful” used to be a synonym for “awesome.”

I used to confuse these for a long time.

Haha this wins pedantic cake of the month. Of course you know and everyone knows what they meant by incredible. Like how 99%+ people use the word.

She is a woman who spoke out about sexual harassment in the 90s. That’s how women got treated then. Take a look at the treatment Anita Hill and Paula Jones got sometime.

Did she even speak out? I thought she just got dragged into the public.

How was that sexual harassment. She had sex with Bill because she was attracted to him. It’s not sexual harassment just because a man with power has sex with a younger woman.

Sex, in a situation with a major power imbalance, is problematic. Also, do we know she had sex with him because she was attracted to him, and not because he pressured her into it?

Problematic is not the same as harassment. We don't have any indications that he pressured her into it.

The media played it as though she was reveling in her situation prior to the public exposure. Some of the public interactions she had with Clinton made it all the easier to sell that perspective to the public.

The political machine had an interest in smearing her. Democrats could never let her be seen as a victim, because if she's a victim Bill Clinton is a predator. Meanwhile, some of the right wing media-started mocking her as not what you'd expect the leader of the free world to get with, if for no better reason than it makes for better TV than lecturing about family values.

How is she a victim?

I think you'd have to be a 90s kid to really understand. It was the Lewinsky affair, or the Lewinsky scandal. Lewinsky's name was attached to the event more so than even Bill Clinton.

As such, it was Lewinsky's name who appeared in songs, raps, TV shows, movies, etc. etc. to describe the political drama at the time.

https://genius.com/Saint-jhn-monica-lewinsky-lyrics

Lewinsky also had to describe her sexual acts to Congress, publicly aired across television networks nationwide, before the age of social media. Lewinsky basically got to experience the entire "social media outrage" machine before social media even existed. EDIT: Of course, Bill Clinton just lied about it, so there's the whole Lewinsky is just "trying to get attention" angle as well going on.

It was Lewinsky's word vs the President's. It was very much a a big political drama at the time, and Lewinsky drew the short-stick of the arrangement as the 22-year old intern. And again: the powers that be were the Republicans pushing to impeach the President, and Clinton who was lying to defend himself. Etc. etc. It was a very big scandal, but I don't think Lewinsky actually did anything wrong throughout it all. But her name was unfairly attached to the whole event.

Not to dismiss the pressure she went through, but Bill Clinton got impeached over it and basically went incognito for many years due in no small part to both the scandal and impeachment.

It's not a victim olympics, but I don't think anyone can claim the repercussions for him were small or light.

Got any examples of songs from the 1990s? That songs seems to be from this year.

Not a song but to give you an example how ubiquitous the innuendos were in the 90s: There was even a download manager named Monica[1].

[1] http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/monica

Hmm, I just searched for the first song. I'm going to fully admit that I'm bad with music and don't listen to much. But 100% Lewinsky's name was used in a lot of stuff.

Instead of listing lyrics myself... I searched around for maybe an article + writer who is better than me at this sort of thing. This article may be what you're looking for: https://www.thecut.com/2015/03/every-rap-song-that-mentions-...

She's joked on Twitter when people don't know who she is that her name has appeared in something like 400 songs.

You can debate if Lewinsky was a victim of Clinton but she absolutely was a victim of Linda Tripp, who had her own vendetta against the Clintons. Tripp manipulated her, secretly recorded their conversations, lied, betrayed her confidences, and served her up to the machinery that was working to take down Clinton.

Totally agree. From whatever I have read Tripp was the real villain there. What kind of person behaves like that?

I almost agree, but Tripp didn't put that blue dress in the freezer.

When Lewinsky told Tripp that she wanted to have the dress cleaned, Tripp manipulated her into preserving it.

Whenever there is a huge power mismatch in a relationship - that is generally not a situation where you can't say someone is not coerced in any way. Especially when the person in question is the president of the United States!

It's also generally not a situation where you can say someone was coerced in any way without knowing more details. They are two adults engaging in consensual activity. I seriously doubt she thought there would be negative consequences if she said no. More likely she thought she might stand to gain something if she went along with it, but that's hardly coercion.

I don't know, I have somewhat different thinking about sex in professional settings. I tend to see women as more capable of using their own judgement in those situations and less needing of protection. That's not always the case though, like with Harvey Weinstein.

Edit: comment if you disagree, downvotes won't change my opinion.

The goal is to collapse your comment and prevent other people from seeing it, not to change your opinion.

Censorship of dissenting opinions should hopefully be abhorrent to most people here on HN. It goes against the hacker ideals.

<sarcasm> Oh, come on, they are just making hn a better and safer place. </sarcasm>

Arguably because of the power imbalance between intern and President.

But definitely because of how Ken Starr and the national media treated her.

Ha, in which direction was the power imbalance -- [old] men will risk their status and livelihood for a "pretty girl", and many a woman has used that to wield power over even the most politically powerful man.

The comment was about her being a victim of Clinton, not media.

Both.

Some would argue that she was coerced because of the vast power difference in their respective positions.

It's part of the reason you aren't supposed to have relationships with someone you manage.

Then it's not a stretch then to say all workplace romances between staff members and the people under them are coercive.

Yep. It's not a stretch at all. In the military it's strictly forbidden and there are rules in place in case two people accidentally fall in love where there's a power imbalance.

Sex/romance with a subordinate in any organization is such a bad idea for so many reasons. Possibility of coercion is one, favoritism and dissent among other subordinates is another.

I agree on the idea, but where to draw the line?

A direct report is definitely a bad idea, but what if it's someone who reports to one of your reports?

Or someone who report to another manager?

etc.

At some point it should become ok. Completely forbidding people to find romance at the workplace would make it feel so gray, especially given the time you sink in it.

People argue all kinds of things, it doesn't make them all true

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