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Monica Lewinsky: ‘I was branded a tramp, tart, slut, whore, bimbo’

MONICA Lewinsky has spoken very candidly of the humiliation she suffered after her sex scandal with President Bill Clinton.

‘I was branded a tramp, tart, slut’
‘I was branded a tramp, tart, slut’

MONICA Lewinksy has vowed to stop tiptoeing around her past as she continued her personal quest against cyber-bullying at a TED Talk gathering this week.

Lewinsky, 41, spoke candidly of the humiliation she suffered after the infamous 1998 sex scandal with then-US president Bill Clinton.

After a decade out of the spotlight, the 41-year-old fronted a Forbes Under 30 summit in Philadelphia late last year to launch her cyber-bullying campaign.

And during her TED Talk this week, she said her years of silence had nothing to do with politics.

“It is time to stop tiptoeing around my past,” a visibly emotional Lewinsky said.

She joked about being “hit on” by a 27-year-old man whose unsuccessful pick-up line was that he could make her feel like she was 22 years old again.

Monica Lewinsky at the 2015 Vanity Fair Oscar Party. Photo: Pascal Le Segretain.
Monica Lewinsky at the 2015 Vanity Fair Oscar Party. Photo: Pascal Le Segretain.

“I am probably the only person over 40 who does not want to be 22 again,” Lewinsky quipped.

At 22, Lewinsky said she fell in love with Clinton. Yet two years later, she found herself in the middle of one of the biggest political scandals in history.

Few hands were raised when Lewinsky asked those at the prestigious gathering who among them didn’t regret something they had done at that age.

She spoke of being swept up into a political, legal, and media maelstrom unlike anything seen before. Pictures and stories centred on the scandal were hot commodities online.

“This scandal was brought to you by the digital revolution,” Lewinsky said. “This rush to judgment enabled by technology led to mobs of virtual stone throwers. I was branded as a tramp, tart, slut, whore, bimbo, and, of course, ‘that woman’.”

She said she was motivated to campaign against cyber-bullying by the 2010 suicide of an 18-year-old New Jersey freshman who was bullied online after being secretly filmed kissing another man.

Former US President Bill Clinton and former White House intern Monica Lewinksy in a White House photo, dated November 1995.
Former US President Bill Clinton and former White House intern Monica Lewinksy in a White House photo, dated November 1995.

“The landscape has become much more populated with incidents like mine, and now it is for public and private people,” Lewinsky said.

“Millions of people, often anonymously, can stab you with their words,” she said. “And, that is a lot of pain.” She noted high-profile hacks in the past year that resulted in embarrassing photos or messages being released, and rapaciously consumed, online.

“A marketplace has emerged when public humiliation is a commodity and shame is an industry,” Lewinsky said. “The more shame, the more clicks. The more clicks, the more advertising dollars.”

She urged an end to “shaming as a blood sport” by resorting to compassion and empathy instead of bullying and ridicule.

“Imagine walking a mile in someone else’s headline,” Lewinsky suggested at the close of a talk met with a standing ovation.

After news of the affair broke, Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives in December 1998 but was acquitted by the Senate.

His wife Hillary, a former secretary of state widely tipped to run for president in 2016, says she has “moved on” from the scandal.

Original URL: https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/true-stories/monica-lewinsky-i-was-branded-a-tramp-tart-slut-whore-bimbo/news-story/1407e6dc0dfee82074d7f6786f5e9232