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Monica Lewinsky's Defy The Name Campaign to End Bullying Reaches Millions


Nearly one in three American students in grades 6–12 have experienced bullying. And that bullying, a study in the journal Pediatrics estimated, causes 1 in 5 teen suicides. It’s an experience that’s all too real for young people around the country, but it’s also one that can be carried long into adulthood. And perhaps nobody knows that reality better than Monica Lewinsky and her plethora of A-list friends.

Lewinsky, now a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, kicked off the anti-bullying campaign, #DefyTheName in October with a PSA featuring Andy Cohen, Lena Dunham, and Kelly Rippa. The goal? Take the power out of name-calling and the discuss the damage it can cause. And though the campaign officially ended, it’s made a massive impact, reaching more than 1 billion media impressions and growing, the campaign tells Glamour.

“It’s been extraordinary to see the snowball effect of people bravely stepping up to participate in this campaign—whether they changed their names on social media, mentioned the names they had been called in their posts or shared the PSA,” Lewinsky shared in a statement with Glamour.

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And it didn’t stop at the video. Throughout the month, celebrities came out in droves to support the cause by changing their handles on their social media to include the names they’ve been called.

Lewinsky herself kicked things off by changing her own handle to “Monica Big Mac Ditzy Bimbo That Woman Lewinsky.”

Stacey London, host of What Not To Wear, added in her own with “Stacy “Uglier than Elephant Man” London.”

Olivia Munn jumped in with “Olivia The New Girl In School No One Likes Munn.”

QuestLove shared his with “Quest Superdweeb Love.”

Rachel Bloom added in hers with, “Rachel Weird Loser Who Needs A Bra Bloom.”

And Alan Cumming added in his own, defying the name, “Alan Useless Cumming.”

Lewinsky is no stranger to name-calling—following the national scandal involving then-President Bill Clinton more than 20 years ago, Lewinsky became a target. Today, she still deals with the aftermath of what she calls a “traumatic” experience.

“For some people, [the campaign] was even the first time they had ever talked about the pain of having been bullied with name-calling. I’m incredibly grateful the campaign was healing for many—that’s exactly what I had hoped for,” Lewinsky says. “We don’t have to let the words other people choose to call us, define who we are or how we see ourselves.”

Related Content:

Monica Lewinsky’s New Anti-Bullying Campaign Tackles Name-Calling Head-On

Monica Lewinsky Walked Out of an Interview After Being Asked About Bill Clinton

Monica Lewinsky Reckons With #MeToo in a Powerful New Essay: ‘I’m Not Alone Anymore’





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Hillary Clinton Says Her Husband's Affair with Monica Lewinsky Wasn't an 'Abuse of Power'


In the year since the Harvey Weinstein story broke and the #MeToo movement took center stage, many women (and men) have spent time reflecting on events of the past and how they might be perceived if they happened today. We saw this most recently during the Brett Kavanaugh nomination hearings, when Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony drew obvious comparisons to Anita Hill‘s during the Clarence Thomas hearings back in 1991.

Another public figure who has been subjected to this reassessment is former President Bill Clinton, who, when asked about #MeToo this summer, said he doesn’t “agree with everything.” Now his wife, Hillary Clinton, has weighed in on the matter. On CBS’ Sunday Morning, Clinton was asked about her husband’s relationship with former White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, more than 20 years ago, and whether it should have led to his resignation. Her answer: “Absolutely not.”

But it is the follow-up to the initial question that many see as problematic.

“It wasn’t an abuse of power?” asks CBS News’ Tony Dokoupil. “No,” says Clinton. Dokoupil continues, “There are people who look at the incidents of the 90s and they say, ‘A president of the United States cannot have a consensual relationship with an intern; the power imbalance is too great.'” Clinton interjects, “Who was an adult.”

“Let me ask you this,” she continues, “where’s the investigation of the current incumbent, against whom numerous allegations have been made, and which he dismisses, denies, and ridicules? So, there was an investigation [of President Clinton], and it, as I believe, came out in the right place.”

Let’s break this down: She is indeed correct about the allegations against President Donald Trump, but what Clinton says in defense of her husband is so deeply disappointing for those who understand how power works. To argue that because Lewinsky was an adult at the time there could be no power imbalance is just wrong and negates the workplace harassment experiences of women of every age.

It saddens me that the Clintons don’t seem to have evolved their points-of-view on the matter since the ’90s, as so many others have in the wake of #MeToo. In that June 2018 interview where Bill Clinton said he had questions about the movement, he also took a defensive (and questionable) stand. “Nobody believes that I got out of that for free. I left the White House $16 million in debt,” he said. “But you typically have ignored gaping facts in describing this. And I bet you don’t even know that. This was litigated 20 years ago, and two thirds of the American people sided with me.”

Lewinsky herself has done some re-thinking about the relationship. “Now, at 44, I’m beginning (just beginning) to consider the implications of the power differentials that were so vast between a president and a White House intern,” she wrote in a Vanity Fair essay in February. “I’m beginning to entertain the notion that in such a circumstance the idea of consent might well be rendered moot. (Although power imbalances—and the ability to abuse them—do exist even when the sex has been consensual.)”

“He was my boss. He was the most powerful man on the planet,” she continued. “He was 27 years my senior, with enough life experience to know better. He was, at the time, at the pinnacle of his career, while I was in my first job out of college.”

Social media users quickly called Clinton out for her failure to recognize the power dynamic between Lewinsky and her husband.

We cannot make necessary progress if we refuse to look at our collective past and learn from it—as hard as it may be to face. That’s true for everyone, even Hillary Clinton.

MORE: This One Quote From Bill Clinton’s Latest Interview Says a Lot About His Feelings on #MeToo and Monica Lewinsky





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Monica Lewinsky Walked Out Of An Interview After Being Asked Question About Bill Clinton


Monica Lewinsky is no stranger to media scrutiny, having endured a national scandal involving then President Bill Clinton more than 20 years ago. In the advent of the MeToo movement, she’s discussed reckoning with that moment and moving on, but on Monday the affair was back in the news after an Israeli news anchor asked her an “off-limits” question about Clinton at a public event, prompting Lewinsky to walk offstage just moments later.

Lewinsky attended a conference in Israel on Monday to deliver a speech on online harassment and cyberbullying—a cause she has taken up recently and that she discussed with Glamour last year. However, the event took a turn when she sat down for a scheduled 15-minute talk with Yonit Levi, who referred to remarks Clinton made on the Today show in June when asked about Lewinsky. (Clinton told interviewer Craig Melvin that he apologized “to everyone in the world” when asked if he offered a personal apology to Lewinsky.) When asked if she was still expecting an expression of regret from the former president, Lewinsky paused and then said, “I’m so sorry, I’m not going to be able to do this,” before getting up and walking away.

On Twitter, Lewinsky explained that there had been “clear parameters” set before the interview about “what we would be discussing and what we would not.”

“I left because it is more important than ever for women to stand up for themselves and not allow others to control their narrative,” she said via a note posted in a tweet. “To the audience: I’m very sorry that this talk had to end this way.”

Lewinsky also took media outlets to task for the way they reported the incident. In several articles, Lewinsky is described as having stormed off stage and becoming “angered” by Levi’s questions. Lewinsky clarified these characterizations, writing, “stormed? not quite. politely said i was leaving? yes. walked as fast as i could off stage in heels? yes.”

Lewinsky revisited her time interning in the White House in a powerful op-ed for Vanity Fair in which she described the post-traumatic stress that the highly publicized affair caused and questioned whether or not the relationship was truly consensual, given Clinton’s position of power. Still, she has worked to move past Clinton’s narrative being so entwined with hers, and on Monday, it was clear that she wasn’t going to let someone else steer the conversation for her.

MORE: Monica Lewinsky Reckons With #MeToo in a Powerful New Essay: ‘I’m Not Alone Anymore’





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This One Quote From Bill Clinton's Latest Interview Says a Lot About His Feelings on #MeToo and Monica Lewinsky


Former President Bill Clinton is raising eyebrows after a Monday appearance on the Today show in which, during a segment to promote his new book, The President Is Missing (cowritten with James Patterson), he maintained that his decision to fight impeachment after the Monica Lewinsky scandal was the right thing to do.

But there was one quote in particular that says a lot about how he views the #MeToo movement, which was referenced in a segment of the conversation when NBC News’ Craig Melvin asked whether Clinton would have done anything differently had that scandal happened during the #MeToo era. In one swoop Clinton managed to praise the movement while simultaneously casting doubt with his own concerns.

“I like the Me Too movement, it’s way overdue,” he told Melvin. “I think the…it doesn’t mean I agree with everything. I still have some questions about some of the decisions that have been made.”

In the 20 years since the Ken Starr investigation that turned her into a household name, Lewinsky appears to have done a lot of thinking and analysis about her role in the scandal, as evidenced by her February essay for Vanity Fair. In the wake of the #MeToo movement that is changing cultural views about sexual harassment, Lewinsky opened up about being able to look at the situation differently, while still accepting responsibility for her own decisions. “Now, at 44, I’m beginning (just beginning) to consider the implications of the power differentials that were so vast between a president and a White House intern,” she wrote. “I’m beginning to entertain the notion that in such a circumstance the idea of consent might well be rendered moot. (Although power imbalances—and the ability to abuse them—do exist even when the sex has been consensual.)”

“He was my boss. He was the most powerful man on the planet. He was 27 years my senior, with enough life experience to know better,” she said. “He was, at the time, at the pinnacle of his career, while I was in my first job out of college.”

Clinton, however, is still making it about him.

“One of the things that this Me Too era has done is that it’s forced a lot of women to speak out. One of those women is Monica Lewinsky,” interviewer Craig Melvin says. “She wrote in an op-ed that the Me Too movement changed her view of sexual harassment….Looking back on what happened and through the lens of Me Too now, do you think differently or feel more responsibility?”

“I felt terrible then. And I came to grips with it,” Clinton said. When asked if he’s ever apologized, Clinton said that he hasn’t talked to Lewinsky personally, but has apologized “to everyone in the world.”

“Nobody believes that I got out of that for free. I left the White House $16 million in debt,” he says. “But you typically have ignored gaping facts in describing this. And I bet you don’t even know that. This was litigated 20 years ago, and two thirds of the American people sided with me.”

The conversation was an uncomfortable watch, albeit an important one. Two decades have passed, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look back and reflect on what happened in hopes of learning from the situation. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be Clinton’s point of view.

Yes, it’s great that he has supported women in many ways during his political career, but that doesn’t absolve him from bad behavior, especially as it relates to Lewinsky. Doing good work and behaving inappropriately are two things that can be true at the same time. But the defensive and smug tone of his responses indicates to me that Clinton is unchanged in looking at the role he played in the situation.

And that’s incredibly disheartening.

As women, we can continue to tell our stories, to speak our truth, to call out bad behavior that has been tolerated for far too long. But when men, especially leaders, refuse to acknowledge their own roles in the culture of harassment, progress will come much more slowly.





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Monica Lewinsky Take on Trolls With New Antibullying Campaign


“It’s a stab in the gut. A punch. Someone hammering you on the head.”

Monica Lewinsky is describing what it feels like to receive the humiliating comments and mocking memes she still gets nearly 20 years after her affair with President Clinton threw her into the unwanted spotlight. Here she is, a columnist, entrepreneur, social psychologist, and activist; yet people still can’t stop clicking and clucking over what happened when she was an intern? It’s hard to believe. But in many ways, she was the first target of what would become America’s favorite leisure sport—cyberbullying. Before Gamergate, before Leslie Jones, before this year, when 41 percent of Americans are [harassed online], Lewinsky was the canary in the troll-mine.

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Despite becoming somewhat inured to the vitriol, Lewinsky has committed to using her voice for all those who haven’t. Today she’s launching a new campaign called “In Real Life” for Bullying Prevention Month, and talks to Glamour about how personal it is for her:

On being patient zero: I kind of tripped into being a public person in 1998. All of the sudden, people who had never met me were taking about me online, on air, making judgments, analyzing me, assuming things about me. It was really challenging. There was no handbook. There was no understanding of what it meant or the consequences. There wasn’t really anyone else in the online space to look at and say, What did they do? How did they get through this?

What it’s like to be cyberbullied: The punch, the stab, the hammer—they are some of the visceral feelings. But the most damaging part is how incredibly isolating it can be. Social ostracizing is at the core of what we all, young and old, feel the most. There was a 2015 study showing that for both targets of bullying behavior and the people who perpetrate it, the risk for suicidality is higher. So this affects us all deeply.

For me, I utilize all the filters on my social media where I can. But even then, I’ll get people I know saying, “I’m so sorry that happened [online].” So it’s hard to ignore. When a meme [of me] is going around and people close to me follow the person who posted it, there’s an additional layer of humiliation and pain. Or when I retweet someone and they get harassed, I know that I’m affecting and hurting other people, even though it’s unintentional; if anything makes me cry it’s those things.

But (and this might be shocking) when you think about all the things that have been said about me online, or in print, or in the news—which over the past 20 years must be in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions—I can count on one hand, maybe two, how many times people have been rude or said something cruel to my face. So we did a video for the campaign to make people aware of the disparity between how we behave online and in person. I think that there is a decency that wells up in most of us when we’re face to face with someone while the anonymity of the Internet has made people feel free to be their worst selves.

Troll Control: If people behaved online more like they do in real life, we’d reduce cyberbullying. Sometimes it doesn’t feel safe to step in when you see someone being picked on, but reaching out to the target even afterwards and offering support is important. That’s what the #Bestrong emojis are about. I conceived them over dinner with a friend and worked with experts to make sure they were recognized as images of support and solidarity around the world. (You can download them free for your phone at Apple Store an Google Play.)

Imagine a gang picking on one girl in the playground and all of the sudden 50 kids come around and just stand by her. The bullying not going to continue. The same is true online. If you see a volley of harassment happening on social media and you flood it with images of support and compassion, that’s going to change the tone.

For the person being attacked, even a small morsel of care and support can make a huge difference. Going back to 1998, there was a period for me when one of the highlights of my day was going to get the mail. Even though some of it was not kind, a majority was from strangers sending support and expressing compassion. And I can’t tell you how there were days that those letters were a lifesaver for me.

#ClickforCompassion. Share the video with that hashtag or join the conversation on twitter (#BeStrong emoji plus hashtag). All of us are collateral damage when it comes to this trolling behavior, even bystanders. You can’t unread what you saw, you can’t unfeel what you’ve felt. Cyberbullying is obviously a complex issue that’s not going to be solved quickly. But looking ahead, I’m excited about how VR is being developed to foster compassion and empathy. And there’s a TED fellow, Rebecca Brachman, who is working on a drug that increases resilience. These are the kinds of broader ideas that give me hope that we will shift the culture.

In the meantime, every one of us can help do that by finding ways to stand up for someone—in real life and online—and let them know they’re not alone.



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