The confused hosts then rushed Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid onstage to keep the event moving along. Lewinsky later tweeted that it had been agreed before the talk that the subject was off limits and Levi had violated their agreement.
She said that things were better now, but that had only happened recently. In February Lewinsky wrote a personal essay for Vanity Fair on the 20th anniversary of the investigation into the affair, in which she admitted that she suffers from PTSD over the fallout from the investigation and publicity, and that the MeToo movement had changed her perspective on the affair and its aftermath.
Publicly alone. Abandoned most by the main figure in this crisis, who knew me well and intimately. That led to some very dark times for me. She blamed the web for spreading news of the scandal. No matter how these subsequent events dwarfed the impeachment and subsumed our attention, maybe, just maybe, the long, unimpeded derivation of this drama, ever since, is partly the result of having been a year of unremitting crisis that we all endured but never actually resolved—a low-grade collective trauma, perhaps?
While the events of in the United States do not fit neatly into such a definition, they may have led to some of the features we often associate with collective traumas: social rupturing and a profound sense of distress, the challenging of long-held assumptions about the world and national identity, a constricted public narrative, and a process of scapegoating and dehumanization.
Re-framed it. Integrated it. And transformed it. Who are we now? They were written in a recent private exchange I had with one of the brave women leading the MeToo movement. Somehow, coming from her—a recognition of sorts on a deep, soulful level—they landed in a way that cracked me open and brought me to tears.
Yes, I had received many letters of support in And, yes thank God! But by and large I had been alone. Publicly Alone—abandoned most of all by the key figure in the crisis, who actually knew me well and intimately. That I had made mistakes, on that we can all agree. But swimming in that sea of Aloneness was terrifying. Isolation is such a powerful tool to the subjugator. One of the most inspiring aspects of this newly energized movement is the sheer number of women who have spoken up in support of one another.
And the volume in numbers has translated into volume of public voice. Virtually anyone can share her or his MeToo story and be instantly welcomed into a tribe. In addition, the democratizing potential of the Internet to open up support networks and penetrate what used to be closed circles of power is something that was unavailable to me back then. Power, in that case, remained in the hands of the president and his minions, the Congress, the prosecutors, and the press. There are many more women and men whose voices and stories need to be heard before mine.
My response has been the same: I am in awe of the sheer courage of the women who have stood up and begun to confront entrenched beliefs and institutions.
But as for me, my history, and how I fit in personally? Over and over and over again. There have been so many barriers to this place of self-reckoning. What it means to confront a long-held belief one clung to like a life raft in the middle of the ocean is to challenge your own perceptions and allow the pentimento painting that is hidden beneath the surface to emerge and be seen in the light of a new day. Instead, the road that led there was littered with inappropriate abuse of authority, station, and privilege.
Full stop. Although power imbalances—and the ability to abuse them—do exist even when the sex has been consensual. Very, very complicated. 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.
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