After taking a 16-year hiatus from the public world, Monica Lewinsky has returned with a mission to end cyberbullying.

Lewinsky gave her first public speech in over a decade at the Forbes Under 30 Summit on Oct. 20, chronicling her dark past with cyberbullying and calling herself “Patient Zero.” The relentless cyberbullying that Lewinsky faced was a result of her affair with President Bill Clinton.

The problem isn’t just that Lewinsky faced backlash and exposure by having an affair with a U.S. president. The problem is that it has been 16 years and Lewinsky still has not been able to live it down. Meanwhile, Clinton has gone on to have a long and fruitful political career. The fact that our society continues to shame Lewinsky — but not Clinton — about an affair that happened 16 years ago is unfair, hypocritical and sexist.

Lewinsky’s affair with Clinton was exposed in 1998 and erupted on a national and global scale, with both Clinton and Lewinsky facing immense criticism. Clinton undoubtedly faced consequences for the affair, as he was impeached as a result. Lewinsky, however, has experienced the amount and extent of shame that can only exist in a sexist society that somehow views the woman with whom a married man cheats as more responsible than the married man himself.

Even today, Lewinsky is still being shamed. Timothy Stanley, a columnist for CNN, said believes Lewinsky should continue to live her life in shame, saying that “what she did all those years ago and what she’s doing now makes her a perfect candidate for a good, old-fashioned shaming.” He believes Hillary Clinton is the only true victim of this situation and that Lewinsky should continue to feel ashamed for a mistake she made when she was 22 years old.

Both Lewinsky and Clinton were wrong for engaging in their affair. It was unprofessional and immoral. But one could argue that Clinton should have used better judgment in this situation. He was our president, he was a political professional for much longer than Lewinsky and he was the married one. Yet there are somehow people like Stanley that still paint Lewinsky as the evil temptress that caused this scandal.
Stanley’s argument that Hillary Clinton needs to be able to put this scandal behind her is also pointless because she has. When people hear Hillary Clinton’s name, they think of someone who could potentially become the first female U.S. president. That’s a long way from being thought of as the former first lady whose husband caused a national scandal when he cheated on her.

Hillary Clinton is fine. In fact, she’s already molded a political identity separate from that of her husband and will likely go on to do more incredible things. Bill Clinton, likewise, is doing fine; today he is seen as a lovable former president, not a man who put his marriage in jeopardy and lied to the American people. But Lewinsky has not been awarded this luxury; instead, she is still trying to combat a mistake made 16 years ago.

Regardless of anyone’s personal moral code, what happened between Clinton and Lewinsky was a situation of two consenting adults making a decision they both wanted and agreed upon. Perhaps this wasn’t the smartest or most professional decision, but what’s done is done. This is not the type of decision that should haunt Lewinsky for 16 years, especially not if Clinton has been let completely off the hook.

Mandisa Shields is a sophomore newspaper and online journalism major. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at meshield@syr.edu and followed on Twitter @mandisashields.

Published on October 30, 2014 at 12:01 am