In the wake of bombshell reports about Harvey Weinstein's history of sexually harassing and assaulting women, dozens of powerful men have lost their jobs after being outed as sexual predators. Now liberals are turning their focus to one powerful man who didn't lose his job after being outed as a sexual predator: Bill Clinton. This week, writers at the New York Times, the Atlantic, Vox and Politico have returned to the allegations against Clinton and concluded that Democrats made the wrong call when they rushed to defend him in the '90s.
Clinton has been accused of raping Juanita Broaddrick in 1978, of propositioning and exposing himself to Paula Jones in 1991, of groping Kathleen Willey in 1993 and — most famously — of having an affair with an intern, Monica Lewinsky, in the mid-'90s. Clinton has continued to deny all the allegations except the Lewinsky affair, and Democrats have largely ignored or cast doubt on the other allegations. Until now.
On Monday, the Atlantic's Caitlin Flanagan published an essay called "Bill Clinton: A Reckoning," in which she argues that the feminists who came to Clinton's defense in the late '90s were "on the wrong side of history." Flanagan writes,
It was a pattern of behavior; it included an alleged violent assault; the women involved had far more credible evidence than many of the most notorious accusations that have come to light in the past five weeks. But Clinton was not left to the swift and pitiless justice that today’s accused men have experienced. Rather, he was rescued by a surprising force: machine feminism. The movement had by then ossified into a partisan operation, and it was willing — eager — to let this friend of the sisterhood enjoy a little droit de seigneur.
Flanagan returns to an opinion piece Gloria Steinem wrote about the Lewinsky scandal in 1998, in which Steinem argued that Clinton was guilty of no wrongdoing with Willey and Jones because he "seems to have made a clumsy sexual pass, then accepted rejection" — an unthinkable argument for a feminist to make by today's standards.
The notorious 1998 New York Times op-ed by Gloria Steinem must surely stand as one of the most regretted public actions of her life. It $#@!-shamed, victim-blamed, and age-shamed; it urged compassion for and gratitude to the man the women accused. Moreover (never write an op-ed in a hurry; you’ll accidentally say what you really believe), it characterized contemporary feminism as a weaponized auxiliary of the Democratic Party.