Women do not always support one another, as Monica Lewinsky knows
The recent death of Linda Tripp reminded us of a shocking act of betrayal, writes
MORE than two decades on, there’s still something about what Linda Tripp did to Monica Lewinsky that makes you gasp at the femaleonfemale betrayal and also makes you wonder whether this is the most painful kind of betrayal.
Tripp has just died of cancer. When Lewinsky learned that Tripp was sick, she said: ‘‘No matter the past . . . I hope for her recovery. I can’t imagine how difficult this is for her family.’’
A graceful response and one in stark contrast to what Lewinsky said when the thenUS President Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about their affair: ‘‘I’m really sorry for everything that’s happened. And I hate Linda Tripp.’’
Her loathing for the older woman was understandable.
Taken into Lewinsky’s confidence about Clinton, Tripp secretly recorded the conversations (giving them to the independent counsel, Kenneth Starr) and encouraged the former White House intern to keep the semenstained dress
(for evidence).
Even after relentless censure, ridicule and disgrace, Tripp continued to view herself as a righteous whistleblower.
However, 22 hours of secretly taped conversations suggest something less edifying: one woman (naive, obsessed) spilling her secrets to another woman, who coolly gathered information, then used it to jam her young friend’s head on to a spike.
Too simplistic? Maybe. The truth is always more complicated.
After all, it was Clinton who put the main wrecking ball through the lives of the three women involved: Monica, Hillary and Linda. The same Clinton who recently said he’d had the affair with Lewinsky to ‘‘manage his anxieties’’. (Do at least try to stay classy, Bill.)
Women are also complicated — as human and fallible as any male betrayer. Certainly, women shouldn’t be held to idealised standards of behaviour, which have a nasty habit of turning into bear traps anyway.
Nevertheless, a woman betraying another woman so completely, in such an intentional strategic manner, is shocking and, in most female lifetimes, rare.
While all betrayal is devastating, maybe because of entrenched sexism the femaleonfemale variety has an extra whiff of sulphur. It goes against the unspoken code, the feeling among women that ultimately we look out for each other, that it’s them and us.
It’s the impulse that makes little girls pinkypromise their eternal devotion and teenagers keep secrets until they die.
It’s the young woman bursting into tears in the nightclub lavatory and finding herself comforted by a bunch of strangers who are her instant best friends. It’s there behind workplace mentoring schemes.
It’s what makes younger women turn to older women for advice and older women feel proud to give it. And it’s been there throughout #MeToo, with women giving testimonies and supporting each other, whatever the personal cost.
Whatever was going on between Tripp and Lewinsky all those years ago, this crucial element — of instinctive warmth and trust between women — was missing, but only on one side.
Lewinsky went to Tripp believing that the sisterhood exists; Tripp lied to her that it didn’t. — Guardian News