The Clinton Affair:
Rethinking the Personal as Political

WHEN THE FRONT PAGE OF A MAJOR NEW YORK NEWSPAPER CAN PROCLAIM "Clinton Love Juices on Monica's Dress," readers can perhaps be excused for concluding that the less said (and investigated) about the sexual allegations regarding President Bill Clinton the better. But beneath the salacious headlines are important issues that feminists, and progressives more generally, should not simply ignore.

In attacks by conservatives that reek of hypocrisy, feminists were accused of remaining silent during much of Clinton's early travails. For many years, Republicans have been unrelenting in their opposition to efforts to outlaw workplace sexual harassment, discovering the issue now only because the alleged perpetrator is a Democratic Party president. But conservative hypocrisy does not completely explain the reticence of many feminists about the Jones-Lewinsky-Willey cases. Certainly part of the initial silence was a sensible hesitancy to pronounce judgment before further facts are known, that is, a legal cautiousness. Silence also reflected the awkward political position in which feminism finds itself. After years of arguing in favor of the lesser evil, they and other progressives are now too weak to move Clinton to the left Since his record on abortion and other women's issues is better than the Republicans', many feminists feel compelled to defend Clinton.

I would argue, however, that there is a third source of feminist silence on the White House sex scandals, a problem within feminism that goes well beyond this situation: an often unwitting tendency to think in terms of overly simplified dichotomies.

Like all living movements, feminism is marked by internal debates. This is as it should be. These debates have polarized the movement, leading the contenders to adopt either/or positions where more nuanced theoretical and political approaches would be preferable. Consider, for example, two of the most divisive and rancorous "sex debates" of recent years.

First, the debate over pornography. Women Against Pornography argues vehemently that pornography incarnates the objectification of women in a sexist society. A leading protagonist for the other side, Nadine Strossen, in her recent book, Defending Pornography, holds that pornography can be pleasurable for women and to censor it would be repressive.

Second, the debate over sadomasochism. As far back as the 1982 Barnard College Scholar and Feminist Conference a number of feminists insisted that sadomasochistic sex was inseparable from a patriarchal society built around relations of dominance and subordination. The other side, no less adamant, as reflected in the writings of Pat Califia, argued that sadomasochistic sexuality between consenting adults was part of sexual freedom, and that its stigmatization would be repressive.

There is some merit on both sides of these debates. Pornography is enjoyed by many women and men. For that reason and because we value civil liberties it should not be censored. On the other hand, the ownership and profits from the pornography industry are largely in male hands, leading to unequal control of its imagery. On the second debate, sadomasochistic sex between consenting adults can be seen as part of sexual freedom. On the other hand, this is not to deny that relations based on dominance and subordination are common in contemporary capitalist and patriarchal societies, not only in the bedroom but in all spheres of economic, political and social life.

Feminism needs a theoretical and political approach sufficiently complex to embrace questions of sexual pleasure and of feminist agency at the same time that it indicts ongoing sexist inequities and the abusive exercise of power. Unless false dichotomies are transcended feminists may find themselves more heavily engaged in battling one another than in moving beyond the defensive political position which handicapped them in the 1980s and 1990s. In short, we need a third wave of feminism better able to accommodate differences for the sake of creating a feminist movement as energetic and passionate as the previous wave.

HOW WOULD A MORE COMPLEX FEMINIST ANALYSIS DEAL WITH the Jones-Lewinsky-Willey cases? To answer this we must not only incorporate simultaneous consideration of sex and sexism, but return to the important concept of "the personal as political," as originally conceived by radical feminist thinkers like Kate Millett and Shulamith Firestone. But, as current commentary on the White House sex scandals reveals, there is considerable confusion about exactly what this phrase means.

The early implication of the phrase, so revolutionary in its historical context, was simply that power pervades both realms, the personal and the political. A New Leftist (or Old Leftist for that matter) who demeans, mistreats or physically abuses his wife or lover in his "private life" is engaging in anti-social political behavior that is not mitigated by his theoretical gifts in exposing the contradictions of capitalism or the evils of racism. And by extension, any political movement, no matter how impeccable its ideological credentials, is politically culpable and should be judged accordingly, if it ignores or in any way condones such anti-social acts committed in the presumed sanctity of one's "private life."

But now, nearly 30 years after Millett and Firestone, what does the personal-as-political mean specifically? How does it connect to the relationship between private and public in the explosive Clinton "affair"? Broadly, there are three ways of thinking about the personal-as-political, as it applies to the Lewinsky-Jones-Willey cases.

A first approach, that rejects the personal as political concept implies that Bill Clinton's troubles demonstrate that feminists were wrong to tie the personal so closely to the political. In this view (and the country appears to agree), whatever Bill Clinton does in the "privacy" of his bedroom has nothing whatsoever to do with politics, and feminists should have accepted the notion that sometimes the private is just the private; as Freud said, a cigar is sometimes just a cigar. But this response that cavalierly ignores the charges against Clinton has the potential to undo important gains of the women's movement, to contribute to what Susan Faludi has called a multi-faceted backlash against feminism.

Let us take this argument further. To say that anything Clinton has done or does in private is not of legitimate public concern must have limits. What if he had engaged in domestic violence, or clear-cut sexual harassment, or physical sexual assault? Since most domestic violence and sexual harassment take place behind closed doors, in private, separating the personal from the political in the early feminist sense has its decided dangers. Indeed, after the Lewinsky matter was made public, male French ministers and Russian heads of state cynically and scornfully derided those crazy American feminists who just don't understand that men have always had mistresses, that it is part of ordinary and unobjectionable male behavior. Thus, despite the strength of U.S. feminism as a social movement (compared to those abroad) challenging patriarchal privileges itself becomes perceived as objectionable. This first position is untenable and might be nicknamed "Patriarchs of the World Unite" or the "Sexual Harassers Rejoice: You Don't Have to Worry About Being Sued Anymore" position. In fact, several newspaper reports quoted corporate officials expressing relief that scrutiny of workplace sexual harassment, including harassment precisely defined in law, was likely to diminish in the aftermath of the White House "sex scandals."

The second approach to the personal as political (and the relation between public and private) is the polar opposite of the first. Here, the personal and the political are so completely enmeshed that there is no distinction between them. This too is a problematic concept. If no distinction exists, and the two are symbiotically enmeshed, there can be repressive social consequences. We should keep in mind that the Christian Right also believes that the public and the private are inseparable, but they conclude that, therefore, everyone's private life ought to conform to their notion of propriety. The personal-as-entirely-enmeshed-with-the-political could thus be used to justify invading people's freedom to live and love whom they want and how they choose, telling us that we ought to live only as nuclear heterosexual couples, married and/or engaging only in certain kinds of sexual acts. This position is also clearly unsatisfactory and can be dubbed the "Oppressive Family Values" position.

A third approach, which I advocate, could be captioned the "Toward a Feminist Rethinking of the Personal as Political" position which neither renounces all early radical feminist insights into the personal-political connection nor accepts the two dimensions as indivisible. Rather it could be characterized as a less dogmatic version of the radical feminist attitude, recognizing that much of one's personal life is not political but autonomous and entitled to privacy in its fullest sense.

What differentiates my feminist position from the earlier radical feminists' (in such a way that it cannot be coopted or appropriated into Family Values right-wing form) is clearly specifying that connecting the personal and political is not to deny the legitimacy of privacy. This third position would insist on individual freedom in the "personal/private" realm. It is not contradictory to, but consonant with, the feminist belief in the interconnectedness of these two spheres to demand that the state not interfere in people's personal lives, that we resist any and all efforts by government to pressure people to live as straight couples, while penalizing or deriding those who choose to live as gay or lesbian couples. Similarly, feminists must combat legal restrictions and all other pressures to repress sexuality. Feminists believe in promoting sexuality and sexual freedom to enrich people's lives, and reject the conventional notion of the private, isolated nuclear family as the only acceptable and valued model. In brief, this feminist conception proposes "privacy" that is liberatory rather than repressive or smacking of authoritarian controls.

A MORE COMPLEX FEMINIST FRAMEWORK IS THEREFORE NECESSARY for analyzing the Lewinsky-Jones-Willey cases, rethinking not just the personal-as-political (and private/public) dimensions of the case but also questions of sex-and-sexism. I would suggest that "both/and" rather than "either/or" formulations better encompass their multi-faceted nature.

Isn't it possible, on the one hand, to acknowledge, at least in the Lewinsky case, that if there was a sexual relationship, Lewinsky possessed sexual agency in her relationship with Clinton. To deny this autonomous agency is decidedly troublesome from a feminist perspective. Simultaneously, though, the context of that interaction was still one of differential gendered power. In other words, both issues of sexual freedom and structured sexist inequities may have been involved. In that case, isn't it possible to acknowledge that women are not necessarily "pure" or incapable of lying (such an essentialistic view was vividly belied by Linda Tripp's unconscionable betrayal of friendship). But "pure" or not, there was something sexist about the campaign against the various women involved, attacking their credibility in ways reminiscent of the "bad woman" "good woman" dichotomies often used against women in rape cases.

Also, shouldn't we acknowledge, on the one hand, that how Bill and Hillary Clinton handle their own relationship is and should be their "private" business (in the best sense of the personal-as-political). On the other hand, shouldn't feminists challenge double standards by calling attention to sexist (and heterosexist) hypocrisy: would the American people have responded so tolerantly if Hillary Clinton's sex life was involved or if Bill Clinton had been accused of sexual involvement with a younger man instead of a younger woman? A consistent feminist position would demand that Hillary be accorded the same sexual freedom her husband has enjoyed.

Regarding the Jones case, it has been made apparent that based on the criterion of sexual harassment law (which feminist legal theorists have contributed to developing) Paula Jones was not a victim of sexual harassment since there was no evidence of damage to her career, or subjection to a hostile work environment. These precise criteria are important to maintain, lest sexual harassment become too wide a category, losing its meaning and legitimacy. On the other hand, this does not mean that there was nothing objectionable about the Jones and Willey cases from a feminist perspective. Given a system of patriarchal privileges from which Clinton's actions as governor and president cannot be extricated, abuses of power seem to have been involved even if these abuses did not constitute sexual harassment in a legal and more egregious sense.

THE SEX SCANDALS MAY MOTIVATE FEMINISTS TO REVIEW EARLIER NOTIONS about the relationship between the public and private, and the political and personal dimensions of our lives. In my view, it is important not only to reconceive the relationship between the personal and the political but, conversely to understand the political in terms of personal ethics; to recognize that politics-as- personal is also a feminist matter. By that criterion, Clinton's performance in the supposedly separate "political" sphere has been extremely harmful to the personal welfare of the vast majority of women, cutting across diverse class, race and ethnic lines. Clinton, stealing Republican thunder, has made deep cuts in welfare victimizing millions of women, men and children. Even after allowing for the fact that Clinton has been strong on the question of women's reproductive rights, clearing the political atmosphere of all the fog generated by the President's rhetoric, it becomes apparent that America is burdened by a nominally Democratic Administration committed to a program similar to the Republican agenda.

For the feminist movement to rally behind Clinton because Gingrich Republicans are even worse than Clinton Democrats is to repeat the fallacy of "the lesser evil." As history has repeatedly revealed, the lesser evil proves to be a slippery slope, not only neutralizing potential opposition from feminists and other progressive movements, but removing obstacles to Clinton's steady drift to the right and shifting the political landscape even further toward conservative and mean-spirited values.

This article is based on a speech given at the 1998 Socialist Scholars Conference.

Contents of No. 25