13年的“销声匿迹”之后,莱温斯基近日突然公开露面发表演讲。从28岁到41岁,她谈到了这些年遭遇的种种舆论暴力,称自己是网络欺凌的首位受害者(patient zero),并表示希望能够帮助那些同样的“屈辱游戏”的受害者们找到出路。
My name is Monica Lewinsky. Though I have often been advised to change it, or asked why on earth I haven't. But there we are, I haven't. I am still Monica Lewinsky.
Overnight, I went from being a completely private figure to a publicly humiliated one. I was patient zero. The first person to have their reputation completely destroyed worldwide via the Internet.
When I ask myself how best to describe how the last 16 years have felt, I always came back to that word: shame. My own personal shame, shame that befell my family, and shame that befell my country, our country.
When the report was released online on Sept 11, 1998, I was holdup in a New York hotel room, staring at the computer screen. I spent the day shouting "Oh my God" and "I can't believe they put that in", or "that's so out of context". And those were the only thoughts that interrupted a relentless mantra in my head: I want to die.
There was a rotation of worsening namecalling and descriptions of me. I would go online, reading the paper,or see on TV, people refering to me as tramp, slut, whore, tart, bimbo, floozie, even spy. The New York Post's page 6 took to calling me almost daily the portly pepperpot. I was shuttered.
I lost my reputation. I was publicly identified as someone I didn't recognize. And I lost my sense of self. Lost it, or had it stolen. Because in a way it was a form of identity theft.
Today, I think of myself as someone who, who the hell knows how, survived. Believe me, denial can be pretty useful still. But these days, I need it less and less, and in smaller and smaller doses. But having survived myself, what I want to do now is help other victims of the shame games survive too. I want to put my suffering to good use and to give purpopse to my past.
(字幕翻译:管鑫Sam,英文字幕整理、编辑 Helen)