Monica Lewinsky opened up about her infamous affair with former President Clinton during her speech at Forbes' Under 30 Summit in Philadelphia on Monday. The 41-year-old, who joined Twitter earlier today, was invited to speak about the “scourge of harassment in the digital age.”
Here is a summary of her speech:
“My name is Monica Lewinsky - though I've often been advised to change it,” she began, “Overnight I went from being a completely private figure to a publicly humiliated one. I was Patient Zero. I was the first person to have their reputation completely destroyed worldwide via the Internet.”
‘Sixteen years ago, fresh out of college...I fell in love with my boss. I lost my public self, or had it stolen,’ she said of her ruthless treatment by journalists and late-night comics. “In a way, it was a form of identity theft. In 1998, "public Monica, that Monica, that woman" was born. I was publicly identified and someone I did not recognize.”
“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 no Facebook, Twitter or Instagram by then. But there were gossip, news and entertainment websites replete with comment sections and emails which could be forwarded. Of course, it was all done on the excruciating slow dial-up. Yet around the world this story went. A viral phenomenon that, you could argue, was the first moment of truly ‘social media.”
Lewinsky said that 2010 suicide of 18-year-old student Tyler Clementi, inspired her to take action and start working to end cyber bullying. Clementi jumped from the George Washington Bridge after his roommate secretly recorded a private moment with a man.
“The tragedy is one of the principal reasons I am standing up here today,” said Lewinsky. “While it touched us both, my mother was unusually upset by the story, and I wondered why. Eventually it dawned on me: She was back in 1998, but to a time when I was periodically suicidal; when she might very easily have lost me; when I, too, might have been humiliated to death.”
“Having survived myself, what I want to do now is help other victims of the shame game survive too,” she said. “I want to put my suffering to good use and give purpose to my past.”
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