UNITED STATES: Women as Political Merchandise

By Estrella Gutiérrez Reprint | | Print |

Commentary Estrella Gutierrez

CARACAS, Jan 27 1998 (IPS) - An unfortunate consequence is rearing its ugly head over the wall of skirts surrounding US President Bill Clinton, quite independent of the progress of the scandal itself: the use of women as political merchandise.

Until last week, no one in the end-of-the-century global village knew who Monica Lewinsky was and it doesn’t seem she had any interest in changing that situation, and less so in the way this has taken place.

Now everyone knows her face, her supposedly intimate conversations with a treacherous friend and the most salacious twists of her private life, which, recorded without her permission, have provided a daily dose of morbid pleasure through the media world.

Everyone is judging her, and this young woman who never wanted to be a public figure in the good sense of the term, has hit the headlines in a far worse fashion.

“She will be marked for the rest of her days,” said one of her lawyers.

But neither Clinton’s friends nor enemies see Lewinsky as anything more than a pawn in the game of either getting him out of, or keeping him in, power.

Here, Lewinsky has borne the brunt of the most unpleasant comments of both camps in the parallel, superficial and hasty trial by the press and television in an episode which would be improbable and farcical if so much were not at stake.

“Monicagate,” “Flygate” and “Zippergate” are only some of the nicknames given to the scandal which threatens the presidential future of the most powerful man of this unipolar and globalised world stage.

The times when peoples private lives, even if they were public figures, were just this: private, are long past.

This has been due to a combination of two factors which have already been used in the world, particularly Latin America, but which have reached their full explosive potential in Washington: the judicialisation of politics and the use – and abuse – of the private sphere in this.

And nothing good appears to come out of this rummaging through trousers, skirts and underwear, amongst treasured semen stains and the tallying of oral sex episodes, either for the legal or political systems, or for individual and collective values.

But it does appear that individual women and women as a whole are being used, by resorting to the theft of their private comments, in a way of doing politics – and/or justice – where self- righteousness mixes with the dirty underwear.

The case of Paula Jones, the precursor and catalyst of the scandal which has brought Clinton onto the threshold of impeachment, is another important ingredient in this new use of women in politics.

Irrespectively of whether Jones was really a victim of sexual harassment by the supposed “Casanova,” elected to decide the destiny of the country and the American people twice over, his case and the way it has been handled have provided a heavy blow to women’s interests.

The hundreds of thousands of women who are victims of sexual harassment and who fought in various countries for legislation to punish a crime based on power in the workplace now see the problem rendered banal and distorted.

The current and future victims of “operation mattress,” as harassment was dubbed a good time ago by Latin American employees, will have to confront the image and action of Jones, apparently unhappy enough over what she claims happened to her in an Arkansas hotel room years ago.

Jones, like the attorney general, the secret-robbing friend and other protagonists of this end of the century novel do not hide their Republican party – opposed to Clinton – faith, do not appear concerned over what could be thought of it and even less of the banalisation of harassment they have provoked.

But leaders of the women’s movement in various parts of the world have already noted how Jones has, in many countries, provide a sarcastic argument for those who do not think sexual harassment should be classed as a crime, stating it can be used for other ends than for getting justice after an attack.

On the battlefield of Washington where those who secretly tape their enemies are no longer judged like Richard Nixon was, and in fact such recordings are now being used as evidence against the President, the victims here have women’s names.

The names of three women employees in the White House appeared in Lewinsky’s taped confessions, while another former woman employee was investigated following a denunciation by the woman who did the taping, Linda Tripp. None of these women asked to be caught up in the scandal.

Nor did some of those in the “telephone directory” of names sent up from Arkansas which added to the list of the former loves of its most illustrious figure and present day president, some of whom went to prison for denying this relationship.

Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton’s wife, has a lot to suffer too, for while some see her as an insensitive woman who is beyond being considered as a cheated wife because she continues living in the White House, others believe she is the “long suffering” faithful wife who continues to believe her husband has been true all along, making her the world’s “queen of cuckolds.”

Difficult days for so many women who fight, day after day, to earn themselves a position of equality and respect in the public sphere, for what they do as a person, professional, social or political player, and who cannot escape the syndrome of reification which persues them.