(Announcer) For a conversation on ho cultural influences and societal expectations have shaped women of this generation.

Please welcome activis and podcast host Monica Lewinsky with Atlantic staff writer Sophie Gilbert.

I know I'm not who you were expecting, however.

I'm Candace Montgomery, Executive Vice President of Atlantic Live.

And welcome.

We are delighted to invite you to the Final Ideas session of the festival.

[applause] As you heard, first, Monica Lewinsky will sit down with Atlantic staff writer Sophie Gilbert to discuss ho cultural influences and societal expectations have shaped things for women, and to explore how we can rewrite the narrative for future generations.

Then we will.

We are excited to debut an exclusive first look at seaso three of Netflix's The Diplomat, followed by a timely conversation about gender and power with the actor Keri Russell and Allison Janney.

The series creator Debora Kahn and Atlantic staff writer Shirley Leigh.

Enjoye the program.

[instrumental music] [applause] (Sophie Gilbert I'm sorry for the false start.

They had to move a podium, but they've moved it, so we really are here, I promise.

Thank you all for coming, Monica.

I'm so thrilled and honored to be here with with Monica Lewinsky, who is so many things, and anti-bullying activist, a TV producer and advocate, and the host of the podcast “Reclaimed.” There's a quot I've been thinking about a lot this year, and I know a lot of women have too, which is from Gisèle Pelicot and it's about shame.

Must change sides.

And we're very much in a moment now of reconsidering the way that women have been treated i media, particularly in the 90s.

In the 2000s.

We've had looks that we've sort of looked back at how people like Britney Spears, Amanda Knox, who made a show about, Anita Hill, Tonya Harding were treated and in my own research on this the moment when people started being willing to do that, it began with an essay that you wrote in Vanity Fair in 2014 calle “Shame and Survival”, which is, if you haven't read it, an amazing piece of writing.

It's acutely honest, it's ver profound, and it's very funny.

I don't, I don't know how you able to be so funny but it's it's a fantastic work.

And I wanted to know what spurred you to write that piece after having sort of been silent for a long period of time, what made you want to come out and tell your story?

(Monica Lewinsky) Well, first of all, with the humor, gallows humor is, probably one of the main ways that I was able to survive to still be here, today.

And thank you for having me.

So I think that that with the Vanity Fair piece, I, I had gone to graduate school in 2005 and had really hoped that that would provide, a new scaffolding upon which I could have a different identity.

I very naively thought I could leave Monica Lewinsky in the beret you know, in the United States, and move to London and just be a student.

And, I was wrong.

And it wa it was really that sort of led into a period where I was trying to, have, get back on a more normal developmental path.

So I wanted to try to get a job and, and that didn't happen.

I wasn't able to do that.

And so I entered into a period, where both I started to step into my anger about what had happened, and also began a decade of very deep, and difficult healing work.

So where we, I think where I ended up towards, the Vanity Fair piece was having tried to find ways to move forward, having tried to find a purpose in life and, and not being successful at that, but I guess it was a few years before then I had had a, a real turning point moment with my mom where, I had learned about Tyler Clementi, who many may remember, was an 18 year ol freshman at Rutgers University, and he was, secretly filmed being intimate with a man.

And, and when that video, got out, he was shamed to a point where he jumped off the Georg Washington Bridge to his death.

And I learned about that news from my mom.

I had been away for the weekend, and she was upset in this way that I just, I couldn't understand at first.

And then I eventually realized that she was reliving in many ways, what she had gone through in 1998, even though these these situations were vastly different.

But the worry about your child and the worry about what shame does.

It led me to look a the new landscape of the world.

We now had social media, and there wer so many more people, you know, I had made a mistake.

Tyler had not, And there were so many more people, especially young peopl who were being publicly shamed.

And I thought, well, maybe I can be a poste child for having survived shame.

So I tried a few things.

They didn't work, and.

Sorry.

Oh, and, and then from there, it was really, I met with Graydon and, David Friend, who is my editor became my editor at Vanity Fair and talked about my inability to move forward, but that I really wanted to try to become an advocate.

Around anti-bullying issues.

And so I said I had written some things.

Graydon said, well, we'll take a look if they're good enough, you can do a first person essay, and if not, we'll do an interview.

And I was, I was dead set on having my writing be of the level that it could be a first person essay, because I felt it was so important and I hadn't said anything publicly for a decade.

And it was so important to me and for me that I be reintroducing myself directly to people, not through the mediated lens of an interviewer, no matter how kind or generous they might have been.

It's just different.

It's a very different thing to present yourself directly.

And I had no idea what was going to happen when the essay came out, and, very fortunately because of younger generations like yours and below, I, my story was revisited through a new lens.

A more modern lens.

So that was a very long answer.

I'm sorry.

(Sophie Gilbert No, it was amazing.

I mean, I love that idea that you had to tell your own story because no one else would get it right.

And also because your your words are your truth.

You know that what you have to say when you published the piece what was the immediate response?

Could you feel anything changing?

(Monica Lewinsky) The early responses came in, I think from the older generations.

The ones who had been around during what we cal the brainwashing in my family.

And I think that it was mixed at first.

There were, discussions among women but there was a little bit of a, a frisson of like, okay, another 15 minutes sort of thing.

But it, it, it was then the shift came when younger people who hadn't lived through it were coming to the story with just the facts, and they looked at this and said, how is it that the 24 year old person, in with the least amount of power in this situation, had the largest consequences for what happened?

And that began, that began the, I'm very grateful to these younger generations because that began the change for the last decade for me.

So, yeah.

(Sophie Gilbert) How did, how did it make you fee when other women started getting the same kind of treatmen that you had really kicked off?

Like when we had started to reconsider for example, the media treatment of people like Britney Spears, did you, did that.

How did that make you feel?

Oh, I you know, I think that there, there is like an invisible thread that connects all of us women who go through an experience of public shaming, and that is it, it doesn't matter how big or how small.

And so I think it's one of those things that that when any of us has some sort of collective recognition of what we went through or that revisiting that, I think it heals all of us in many ways.

So I was very happy to see that and, I, I think that it's so important for so many different reasons that we could, you know, spend hours talking about what it means for women to be able to reclaim their own voice, what it means for a woma to be able to present themselves on their own terms and to be judged that way.

So I'm not perfect.

People don't have to like me.

But at least judge me for my true self rather than for a version of me that was created for political reasons, for clicks.

That shit.

(Sophie Gilbert) I mean, it's it's so fascinating to me that you talked about writing because, the 90s in the 2000 were really this period of real dehumanizing, cruel treatment of women in the public eye.

And then in the two thousand tens, because of all this new technology, things like blogs you saw this outpouring of women telling their own stories, i book form, in journalism form.

It was this really important wave, I think of first person narrative in which women were like the ways in which we are being portrayed are not accurate.

And we will take some of that back.

Do you have any sense of why that was, like, how and what does writing do for you and what is it?

How does it empower you?

(Monica Lewinsky) Well, I think the t the first part of your question, I don't know if anybody else here has read Sophie's incredible book, “Girl on Girl.” Monica: But Sophie: You had to say that.

(Monica Lewinsky) Yeah.

(Sophie Gilbert) She didn't.

(Monica Lewinsky) It's, it's really brilliant.

And and I think, to answer your question, it's very much what you do in your book, which is pulling out and looking at the cultural context in which we have some of these bigger moments that happen.

So, I think for me, when you look at that, I mean, you wrote about this, so I, I feel like you could say it as well.

But when you look at the, the culture of the 90s around women and in particular young women, you start to see how how we end up and the, the kind of changes that were happening in from second to third wave feminism.

I think that you start to see this clash of women owning their sexuality, but but still being shamed for it.

Trying to move forward in the work force, but still being held back.

We're still being paid less money to today.

So, I think that that we also saw the rise of the religious righ at that point during that time.

But as, as you talked about in your book, it it really kind of comes together.

I think it's so fascinating that 1998 happened.

And in 1999, American Beauty came out.

And it's, so I think that's the cultural context.

And then you have the technological context to have this confluence of, you know, 24 hour medi that had for a very long time, right, as most here know, CNN was the only 24 hour news channel for a very long time.

And it was in ‘96 and 97 that MSNBC and Fox started.

And it was the competition that changed that 24 hour landscape, I think.

So the competition with the 24 hour landscape.

Now we have the internet, we have websites.

So it it's just the the ability for story to live on, the ability for it to travel so quickly, is just something that was that was so new.

Pivoting to your second half of your question, I tried to be a very good student.

(Sophie Gilbert) I asked a very bad question so youre being very good.

(Monica Lewinsky) No, no.

They're great.

With writing, I both love and hate writing.

So, when I think it's, I think of it, not that I'm a golfer, but I played golf a little bit before, and, I've had the experience of sort of the club hitting the ball just where it's supposed to, and there's that crack, and every once in a while when you write, I'm sure you know this, it's, it just flows through you and it's, typing is electric.

Those are very few and fa between those, those experiences and I usually find it torturous, but, I do, I do appreciate and love the ability to pull ideas together.

I think a guiding principle for me and in everything I try to do now is aroun moving a conversation forward.

And that's really interesting to me.

And I think it's I think it's important for cultural discussion (Sophie Gilbert) No, it's really important.

And I should say that al writers love and hate writing.

I mean, we love when it's done.

We hate the process of doing it.

Your Vanity Fair story came out in 2014, as I said, and then in 2017, MeToo happened.

And it seems not unconnected that we had had this wave of stories.

Like you always have people saying, please pay attention to my version of things like, see my humanity, understand what was happening to me.

And then in 2017, it was almost like we were more primed to take women at their word.

I think because we had heard so many versions of that.

How, how did you feel when MeToo happened and when that outpouring of stories came out?

(Monica Lewinsky) Well, I think, you know, when you, if you take a a step back, you know, Tarana Burke had, had started, right the MeToo movement before the online 2.0 version, right.

And so I thin what you're talking about is how she had baked some of this into the, it was like we hadn't seen what was coming that helped foment this groundswell.

I guess foment, I think, is the wrong word there.

But just perimenopause.

So, I think that what, you know, what we saw was, once again, this was the the positive side of the change in technology and the ability to hold on to stories and narratives.

I was, I mean I can't imagine that there was, a woman alive who didn't feel something.

I think we all took that time to really revisit, not just some of the worst moments of our lives, but all the moments of our lives.

And it was so interesting to me.

I mean, my, background is in psychology.

My master's in is in social psychology.

So I'm always fascinated by people even when they do awful things.

It's still horrible but, but it's fascinating to me.

And it was interesting that when I too tweeted hashtag MeToo, most people assumed I was talking about 1998 as if I hadn't have had any other experiences in my life, which was interesting, and it took me a while to process and I remember Tarana Burke being, you know, just as th as the leader of this movement and, and her talking abou how 1998 was an abuse of power.

And I felt like, which makes me sad, I think for, for me a bit that I felt I needed her permission.

I didn't want to, make me a little emotional.

I didn't want to, I didn't want to crowd a landscape that so many, I felt so many other women deserved to be on, but I think that is also a reflection of what happened to me, you know?

So, I wrote a piece again for Vanity Fair, in 2018, called, “Emerging From the House of Gaslight.” And I think that that that's, that's what happens to women in, in these public stories and private stories when, when we are not, able to be seen and heard.

So I, I think, like probably everybody else who's here, I wish change happened really quickly and linearly and was binary.

You know, there's the before and after.

But, you know, we see the pendulum swinging now.

And, I think all we can really hope is that it it hasn't swung back farther than where it was.

So (Sophie Gilbert) Do you think that people generally are more empathetic, have become more empathetic, especially to young women since the ‘90s?

I mean, obviously there's a lot of real profound cruelty online still, but it does seem like there's more sensitivity and more understanding of abuses of power.

For example.

(Monica Lewinsky) I think that it's a combination of things.

I'm now trying to articulate this.

I think on, o one side is what you're saying.

Right.

So that I think empathy is something we're even thinking about more.

They're certainly wa farther ahead of us in Denmark, where they teach empathy in kindergarten.

Which I would have rather learned than the alphabet, baby.

But so, but I so I do think that we are we're finding ways to have more empathy online or offline and be supportive of people.

Awful things are also happening.

So, but what I also think is happening that that has helped move things forward are the younger generation of women, right?

They have been raised differently.

They see themselves differently.

It doesn't mean they don't experience shame in the same way because they do.

But I think their, their ability to, I don't know if this makes sense, but their ability almost.

It seems like it my experience, it seems like they have more self-worth then I think what Gen X had.

So and your millennial, right?

So... (Sophie Gilbert) I'm an old lineal.

but they also have the language (Monica lewinsky) Right.

(Sophie Gilbert) which I never had.

Like, you use the word gaslighting.

(Monica Lewinsky) Yeah.

No, I mean, I think the, so in ‘98, you know, slut shaming wasn't a word.

Fat shaming wasn't a word.

Cyberbullying wasn't a word.

I, you know, I remember it was less than a decade ago when I was in my therapists office, and talking about something difficult that had happened to me as a teen.

And, and she said, that' an unwanted sexual experience.

And we didn't have language for that.

(Sophie Gilbert) Yeah.

(Monica Lewinsky In the same way we didn't have anxiety growing up.

It was just my tummy hurts.

I mean, that's it.

No, but its true.

I mean, we didn't even have the word consent.

I don't think that know back in 1999.

(Monica Lewinsky) No, no.

(Sophie Gilbert) I'm glad you mentioned the 2018 piece, because there's a quote that I took from it.

Because I think it's really powerful.

“An important part”, you wrote, “of moving forwar is excavating, often painfully, what has gone before.” And it gets that the idea that you to have progress and to force change, you really do need to reckon with the past and to recko with what you've been through, which is painful and is, you know, sometimes really unpleasant process to go through, but... (Monica Lewinsky) And expensive.

(Sophie Gilbert) And expensive.

(Monica Lewinsky) No, but, but I mean, it is but I say that too, because I think one of the things I guess the conversation that I felt didn't happen, when, when we were talking about MeToo more was how are we going to help people and get the help they needed to heal?

You can't just erupt all this trauma into society and then not have people have access to, to move forward that way.

So yeah, sorry I jumped in.

(Sophie Gilbert) No, this is your panel.

(Monica Lewinsky) I but I but I think it's I think you know we're what we're both saying is also that the process of healing I mean that's what I mean by that in the piece was that, a few things.

One is I think that part of the deep pain and realization that I had to go through when I came ou of graduate school and my plan didn't work of getting a job was I ultimately realized I couldn't run away from being Monica Lewinsky and I had to integrate that experience.

Her, all of that.

That was me.

That it is me.

All of those things.

I had to find a way to hold all of it and to be okay with it and b proud of the person that I am.

And try to be gentle with myself for the times that I wish I had made different choices.

So, but I think that process i we all find that I mean, anybody who's here today who is on any kind of a self-awareness or healing experience, I think knows it's once again, not linear.

You know, I think of it like a spiral kind of tilted on its side.

And, and it feels like we will go back and revisit these old things, but we're actu going back to go higher.

And, I don't know if it ever end you know, until our last breath, I don't, I don't, I don't know, I mean, I, I, I hope there's, I hope maybe there to find more plateaus where I can sit back and just go, okay, where I am right now is okay.

I don't have to keep doing the work, the personal work because it it's, it's hard, it's tiring.

It's, it depletes you, but it's so important.

(Sophie Gilbert) Yeah.

(Monica Lewinsky) So important.

(Sophie Gilbert) But you haven't just done it for yourself.

You've also had this new arc of your career where you help other women tell their stories, and you listen to people, obviously on your podcast, but also your series with Amanda Knox about her story.

What was the way you call yourself the Shame sisters?

Was that it?

(Monica Lewinsky) Oh, I think Amanda had a, Let me, oh, gosh, a sisterhood of something.

So, But it was great.

(Sophie Gilbert) So was, was this wanting to sort of projec that outwards to other people?

Is that what's allowed you to to do all these new creative projects?

Well, I think that, you know with the, with the podcast, I, you know, reclaiming was this idea that I started to notice than mysel in, in reclaiming my narrative, what I had set out to do.

And I thought that I might write about it from, from personal experience.

And it it soon became way more interesting to turn the lens outward and to be able to have conversations with people because it's, it's on the podcast.

We, we, we use the very elastic definition of reclaiming, which everyone knows is, you know, getting something bac that was lost or taken from you.

And when I really looked at my own life and my own healing experiences I, I could see how it actually permeate almost everything we do in life.

And it, it encompasses too.

You have loss and grief and healing and resilience and ultimately triumph.

That's all living underneath the the concept and the ethos of reclaiming.

So having those conversations, that that are not just deep and authentic, but also funny because if you can't laugh you are so fucked in this life.

And so I think, I think for me, that's it's just been an incredible, an incredible opportunity.

And thankfully, it's gotten a little easier because it's really hard in the beginning, as you know, as an interviewer.

But, and in terms of, with the twisted tale of Amanda Knox, which is a limited series, dramatic, scripted series that Grace Van Patten is portraying, Amanda and Amanda is the executive producer on the show as well.

It was, you know, there was this micro interest for me in feelin like what we were talking about before of other young wome having their stories revisited.

I felt Amanda deserve that of her story.

And on a micro, I mean, macro sense, it was really I think what felt important was this is another young woman who is thrust onto the global stage and and consumed by the media, created, she was created to be a monster, and she ended up wrongfully convicted and wrongfully imprisoned for four years.

So it's, it's very much one of those stories that we think we know that we don't.

And I felt it was important because and you talk about this in your book, to have this sense that what happens t one woman happens to all women because we all become collateral damage.

We're all, internalize the misogyny.

And so that is, it's such an important part to to just look back i and whether you change your mind about how you thought about something or not, it' it's the witnessing, you know?

(Sophie Gilbert) Yeah.

No.

And also the moments, I think, when women have been able to make the greatest changes in society have always been the ones when they're able to work as a collective and not just as a sort of thinking on individual gains.

It's always... (Monica Lewinsky) Yeah, agreed.

(Sophie Gilbert) Through everything what have been the most profound lessons that you've learned that you carry with you?

(Monica Lewinsky) Oh my gosh.

(Sophie Gilbert) Easy question.

(Monica Lewinsky) Yeah.

I would say probably that, you can survive the unimaginable and you can move forward.

You can thrive.

As I said in my TED Talk, you can insist on a different ending to your story.

And, I think that's almost the the most important because none of us realize this, how strong we are until we're tested.

And, and other than that, probably, the importance of investing in true relationships, family, friends, romantic whatever, whatever that is the places I think half of the reason I was able to survive was, you know both the support of my family.

But how my family and my friends would reflect back to me my true self, you know?

So my younger brother, said to me one time we were in the car, it was in ‘98, and this was afte I had gotten immunity because I couldn't talk to hi until I got immunity for months.

And he said to me, you know, to the rest of the world, you might be Monica Lewinsky, but to me, you're still Monca, which is my family nickname.

And so that, that anchoring was important.

And, and the third thing would be what I already said, that if you can't laugh at yourself, you are so fucked.

I say that a lot.

So.

And I laugh at myself a lot and, I, I, I think laughter is an incredible, an incredible, healing frequency.

(Sophie Gilbert) Yeah.

I think that's suc a wonderful place to wrap up it.

Thank you so much.

(Monica Lewinsky Thank you.

Sophie, thank you so.

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