Women end up as pawns in power game

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 anythingmore than a pawn in the power game. Here, Lewinsky has borne the brunt of the most unpleasant comments 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 people’s private lives, even if they were public figures, remained 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, eitherfor 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.

The case of Paula Jones, the precursor and catalyst of the scandal which has brought Clinton on to the threshold of impeachment, is another important ingredient in this new use of women in politics. Irrespective 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 Americanemployees, 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 faith – as opposed to Clinton’s – and 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, provided a sarcastic argument for those who do not think sexual harassment should be classified as a crime, stating it can be used for other ends than for getting justice after an attack.

Hillary Clinton 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 to earn themselves a position of equality and respect in the public sphere and who cannot escape the syndrome of reification which pursues them.