Thread by @xian649

I think we ought to consider that people’s attachment to their resentment on this subject works similarly to nostalgia. It happened a long time ago and it was a matter supposedly worthy of national attention & scrutiny on a deeply personal level.

https://twitter.com/SER1897/status/1437797676284727296

In those days, the Clintons were unquestionably beloved (especially in black circles), and in those days, public attitudes regarding men’s complicity in affairs and their (presumably lacking) capacity for resisting sexual seduction of any kind were very different.

It was all too easy to look at ML as an insidious vixen against whom Bill had no chance of resisting once she’d set her sights on him. Or so went the narrative at the time. I always think of “Hamilton,” the lyrics to “Say No To This,” and how I’ve heard straight men discuss…

…the experience of having any perceived opportunity for sex and their inability to remotely turn down any such opportunity. Besides coming off as utterly pathetic, it speaks to the conventional “boys will be boys” attitude of the time where this is what we’ve come to expect—

(Straight) men are simply intrinsically incapable of turning down any form of sex presenting itself. Consider that up until the last ~3 yrs, the scandal was officially named exclusively after ML—a subliminal reminder of who was at fault in the eyes of our culture & history.

The narrative of the time surrounding what happened was largely centered on what **she** did. How she caught Bill in a moment of weakness and he was taken advantage of, as though he, at 49 yrs old, was never capable of ever making the responsible choice in that circumstance.

Though this type of narrative in sexual relationships has been mostly challenged over the last decade, the event in question and our emotional response & attachment to it still lingers. People were encouraged by the national discourse of the time to form their own opinions…

…also leading to most of us taking sides, forming justifications, and ultimately conjuring animosity and finding some way to direct it in a constructive way, ML being presented as the logical target at that time. Everyone having their own opinions on this, led inevitably…

…to people having incorporated those feelings as a part of their identity, in much the same way that asking how people voted in the last election is usually perceived as a sort of identity litmus test (I was 11 when the scandal first broke, so though I was aware of the event…

(…I consider myself to have largely been insulated from this dynamic because I wasn’t expected to have had any such opinion let alone be politically conscious, and honestly, it wasn’t something relevant in my life at that time to warrant any personal feelings or attachment.)

Anyway, what I’ve seen, particularly this year, is not exactly a rational discourse on this topic. It feels much more like people working intensely to preserve those ingrained attachments cultivated over a prolonged historical period. The application of a more modern…

…nuanced context of those events is a direct challenge to the personal feelings people have established and as we’ve seen in similar contexts, that challenge is predictably met with an emotional animosity that overrides all other considerations.

What ML did was wrong, and that’s the end of the story. And though our ideas regarding men’s involvement in sexual acts (particularly regarding extramarital affairs), it is largely perceived as preposterous to apply these more modern sensibilities to what she did…

…even if anyone were to cite more recent examples where the public have generally, unanimously responded with more deliberate consideration than they did for ML 26 years ago.

It’s indicative of a clear bias and double standard.

And don’t get it twisted—this analysis isn’t meant to be some sort of defense of ML’s past actions. This is an analysis of the history *following* those actions and how regarding the two involved parties, the consequences have largely been overwhelmingly disproportionate.

Making that observation is in no way mutually exclusive from recognizing ML’s complicity in that affair and the damage caused as a result. What she did was wrong, but she’s the only mistress in the world who’s had to suffer public harassment for decades as a consequence…

…and the other involved party has largely been forgiven for *their* part in the scandal and allowed to move on. That should be regarded as a problem. And after decades of harassment, if ML decides to say something of her experience in that time, she’s well within her rights—

—she’s the one who’s had to find a way to live with those clearly biased, disproportionate consequences, and the fact she continues to mention that doesn’t hurt anyone, only the feelings of those who feel some personal vendetta at her expense in some twisted delusion that they…

…must continue to stand up and fight on behalf of Hillary & Chelsea as though anyone in the Clinton family, 26 yrs later, even still gives 2 shits what ML does with her life.