She was absolutely taken advantage of. At best, the whole thing is unseemly. But there is a very large gap between “sexually assaulted” and being taken advantage of.
That’s the debatable part. Given the absolutely massive power imbalance, can it be consensual?
From my perspective, I think it’s important to take Ms. Lewinsky’s opinion and consider it to not be sexual assault, she’s had about 30 years of reflection on it and where she landed is consensual.
But I can understand, given the power imbalance and how that has been used historically to force others into a sexual relationship, how it can be viewed as sexual assault.
That’s a hard one to delineate though. Is any sexual contact with the President of the United States consensual? Can the President only get a reach around from Xi Jinping?
Can the President only get a reach around from Xi Jinping?
Oh my! I just had a disturbing mental image.
The easy answer is the person he was already in a relationship with before becoming President.
We aren’t talking about just any citizen though, she was literally working for him. This is no different than a CEO and a secretary. The power imbalance is… Blatant.
She says it was consensual. So I go with that, because even decades later it’s her view on the situation. That said, any President (just like any CEO, etc) having any sort of sexual relations with people they literally employ is a sexual predator. So yes, Bill Clinton is a sexual predator. I won’t go so far as to say she was sexually assaulted though, because she doesn’t consider it to be so.
I would agree except for the fact that she actively pursued him. He didn’t just pick her out of a crowd. She made it a point to be near him. He should have known better than to go there but she initiated the whole thing.
Expert manipulators and sexual predators are very good at using power imbalances to make people think they want this and pursue it, when i fact they are manipulated into making advances.
Now whether that was the case is debatable, but there is no blanket “she wanted it” check to hand out here.
