Leftisits/democratic supporters of Lewinsky/Paula Jones in the 90s?

March 27, 2022 7:00 AM

I am looking for anecdotes or articles, opinion pieces, etc, or even knowledge of leftist feminist groups or people, who, in the 90s (I know there are plenty now), spoke out in support of Monica Lewinsky, Paula Jones, or Juanita Broderick, etc. When these incidents became known.

I've been watching American Crime Story: Impeachment and have been googling these questions but haven't found much. I know about Steinam's article defending Clinton/against Lewinsky. It's all pretty depressing (although I understand the political reasons behind lack of support for them on the left) so I am hoping to find some evidence from that time of leftist feminists who supported these women. Or maybe even articles about this topic generally.

Note: I'm a leftist feminist myself and this is a genuine question

posted by bearette to Society & Culture (12 answers total)

Opinion piece by Gwendolyn Mink
Steinem also wrote this in the NYT.
Summary of different views in this Irish Times article

Having lived through it, I view it now as a horrible conundrum where women were forced to negotiate between their principles and their support for maybe the very first President to take (some) women's issues seriously. We didn't have critical distance on this frame and its basic calculus of unfairness for some time thereafter.
posted by Miko at 7:27 AM on March 27, 2022 [12 favorites]

The focus of Andrea Dworkin's Dear Bill and Hillary from The Guardian (January 1998) was more Hillary than Monica.
posted by Rash at 7:35 AM on March 27, 2022 [2 favorites]

related. she's a spiritual hero of mine. a model of good cheer and strength.
posted by j_curiouser at 7:44 AM on March 27, 2022

This Vox article cites Linda Hirshman and Donna Shalala as supporting Lewinsky at the time: Every version of the Monica Lewinsky story reveals America’s failure of empathy
posted by at at 8:10 AM on March 27, 2022 [3 favorites]

Here's a not-spectacular article from 1998 about post-Clinton feminist thinking about sexual harassment.

Here's a reprint of a better article from two third-wave feminists that appeared in The Nation in 1998: In Defense of Monica.
posted by box at 9:38 AM on March 27, 2022 [2 favorites]

Not exactly a public statement of support, but my mom did not vote for Clinton a second time - the only time in her adulthood that she did not cast a presidential vote. She is a textbook 2nd wave feminist.
posted by Lawn Beaver at 12:07 PM on March 27, 2022

The Slow Burn podcast dedicated an episode of their season about the Clinton Impeachment to feminist reactions at the time - here’s the transcript.
posted by scorbet at 12:21 PM on March 27, 2022 [2 favorites]

I remember NOW coming out with a statement on support of Broaddrick — this link seems to be reporting of that statement but I’m not sure what the linked publication is: This
Overall, I have seen a lot of discussion of feminist reaction to the Clinton scandals as evidence of feminist hypocrisy or indifference to sexual assault, that I think understates the specific contingent features of those scandals in the context of the media atmosphere around Clinton at the time. Throughout the Clinton administration, there was a constant flood of “scandals” that really were pure fiction, or harmless facts spun up into giant structures of nonsense. Clinton was smuggling cocaine into Arkansas at a private airport; Clinton had Vince Foster murdered because he knew too much; the Clintons decorated the White House Christmas tree with gingerbread men wearing cock rings; everything about Whitewater that ultimately proved to be nothing at all. It was relentless. And so specifically in relation to Clinton, it was hard at the time to pick out scandals from the flood and say “even though so much about Clinton is invented nonsense, this is real and important.” Lewinsky and Willey and Broaddrick were treated dismissively and cruelly by the media and the public in general, and by many feminists as well, but I think that says more about the contemporary attitude to “Clinton scandals” than to how feminists thought about sexual assault or harassment in a different context.
posted by LizardBreath at 6:09 AM on March 28, 2022 [2 favorites]

LizardBreath is right. I was only a teen, but I read a lot of news, and I remember that no one seemed to believe that Bill Clinton had done anything more than inadvisable. (I believed them myself.) The few feminist commentators that did were considered the ultra-pure ivory tower leftists that both liberals and conservatives liked to pile on and make fun of, like Dworkin. I remember people saying that the Clintons were "fortunate in their enemies" -- some of the worst Americans on earth, then and (where still living) now.

MoveOn.org, which is still politically active, was formed in response to Clinton's impeachment, and its name reflects that -- a demand that we "move on" from the Lewinsky scandal.
posted by Countess Elena at 6:52 AM on March 28, 2022 [2 favorites]

Came in to say Andrea Dworkin!!!!
posted by Dressed to Kill at 8:43 AM on March 28, 2022

I thought I remembered Alison Bechdel addressing this in Dykes to Watch Out For, so I looked up the strips from 1998, and sure enough, the event is in there, though Lewinsky isn't mentioned, which tells you something in itself. I can't find them online so I've written some of the dialogue below - since the strip is kind of a record of what was happening and being talked about in North American lesbian/feminist circles at the time - she published one a fortnight for decades! - I thought you might be interested. They're from my copy of The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For.

The first reference I found was in 1998, a strip numbered #282, it's called 'divert and conquer'.

Mo: The man's clearly a sex addict. He's out of control. Lying, suborning perjury...
Sydney: It's this puritanical culture that's the problem. Do people really expect someone with the ruthless lust for power it takes to become president to spend evenings at home with his stamp collection?
Mo: Oh please! You wouldn't be quite so indulgent of it if it was Newt Gingrich getting blowjobs in the oval office.
Sydney: Thank you for that image.

A couple of pages later there's another 1998 strip that addresses it, 'Where is the slush of yesteryear?' #288

Mo: Feminists can't win! If we criticise Clinton's behaviour, we're prudes, and if we suggest his sex life is his own business, we're hypocrites. It's the same old virgin/whore trap. [The paper she's reading has two headlines: WILLEY VS WILLIE: N.O.W SAYS PREZ COMMITTED ASSAULT and STEINEM SAYS GROPING BY BOSS OK IF HE'S A DEMOCRAT]
Sydney: Actually, I was just thinking that all this obsession with our fearless leader's wenching has had the interesting ancillary function of expanding the discursive demarcations of women's sexual subjectivity.
Mo: WHAT?
Sydney: The more open discussion there is about sex, the more we move beyond the false polarity of women as either sexual prey or frail virgins in need of protection.
Mo: Somehow, I think that point will elude your average Joe Molester. If this is progress, take me back to the fifties. Hey! That's the last banana!
posted by happyfrog at 1:32 AM on March 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

When I wrote "Lewinsky isn't mentioned" above, I was assuming that Bechdel wanted to discuss the broader imbalance of power and wasn't concerned with 'defending' Lewinsky. But it might be just as likely that she chose not to publish Lewinsky's name as a kind of defence.
posted by happyfrog at 1:45 AM on March 29, 2022