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Comment by gdy | Hacker News Reader

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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