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Comment by celticmusic | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

> 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?

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