© AP Photo/Lionel Cironneau, File
"I am in awe of the sheer courage of the women who have stood up and begun to confront entrenched beliefs and institutions," Lewinsky wrote in Vanity Fair ahead of the 20th anniversary this March of independent counsel Ken Starr's investigation which expanded to include her relationship with president.
Lewinsky argued "something fundamentally changed in our society in 1998," when the affair first came to light, "and it is changing again as we enter in the second year of the Trump presidency."
But she acknowledged she was still unsure where she "fit in personally" within the movement.
"There are many more women and men whose voices and stories need to be heard before mine," Lewinsky continued. "There are even some people who feel my White House experiences don't have a place in this movement, as what transpired between Bill Clinton and myself was not sexual assault, although we now recognize that it constituted a gross abuse of power."
Lewinsky's affair with Clinton began in 1995 when she was a 22-year-old intern during his administration's first term. It culminated in Clinton's impeachment by the House of Representatives before the Senate acquitted him of perjury and obstruction of justice charges.
Lewinsky added that, at 44, she is only just becoming cognizant of the power dynamics at play at the time, in large part thanks to awareness inculcated by the #MeToo movement.
"I now see how problematic it was that the two of us even got to a place where there was a question of consent," Lewinsky wrote. "Instead, the road that led there was littered with inappropriate abuse of authority, station, and privilege."
Lewinsky, who claims to have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder in the aftermath of Starr's very public investigation, now speaks out against cyberbullying.
Comment: Women tend to be attracted to men who are above them on the hierarchy of success. In other words, men who have power. Thus the other side of the equation also tends to be true: men tend to attract women below them in the power hierarchy. What #MeToo has done is to pathologize this aspect of basic human sexuality. Actually, it pathologizes only the men's role, painting all women in this dynamic as passive, innocent victims of men's patriarchal power.
Lewinsky admits that she didn't see anything wrong with her consensual relationship with Bill at the time. It's only in retrospect that she sees it as an "abuse of power" on his part, and a "gross" one at that. No mention of her role in their adulterous relationship, her attraction to his success, and her willingness to consent. It takes two to tango in a consensual relationship.
The net result of all this? Anytime a subordinate woman "gets" a successful, powerful man, it is an abuse of power on the man's part. Full stop. Female hypergamy has nothing to do with it. And that pretty much makes the majority of men guilty.