Time to grow up, girls

She has been portrayed as emotionally unstable, but Ms Lewinsky was not a victim. Young women should take responsibility.

THERE IS a train of thought that runs along the lines of: poor Monica Lewinsky. There she was, just an innocent young girl who arrived at the White House only to be pounced on by her evil boss - whom she fancied like mad because us girls are so weak and feeble we only have to look at a powerful man and all our sexual defences crumple like tissue paper.

Completely trapped, like a rabbit in the President's powerful headlights, she found herself performing oral sex on him and having phone sex with him. Quite naturally, the thinking goes, she believes this man might love her and actually marry her one day, and spends the days crying her eyes out when he doesn't ring. "He told me he'd call me," she said of one weekend. "I waited home all the time and I didn't do anything and he didn't call and then he didn't call for two weeks." Oh, poor, poor little Monica.

But how dumb can a girl get? Or, to go even further, how evil? Far from believing that it was Clinton who, with his power and position, abused Monica Lewinsky, it was surely Monica Lewinsky who abused him. Here was a man who apparently told her he had been having affairs all his life and was finally trying to curb his sex-drive because it was getting him into trouble. He didn't even make the first move - far from it. She admitted she started it all by lifting her jacket at the back and showing him the thongs of her panties. She then told him she had a crush on him.

If a man did the equivalent to a woman - for instance, showing her a bulging groin and telling her how much he fancied her, he would probably be out of the office and on probation before he could even jerk himself off in the gents. And that would be whatever age he was. So why are things different for Monica Lewinsky? Or is it just because she is a woman that she is seen as a vulnerable victim who should be protected? But protected from what, exactly?

She seems to have made all the running, and even gave Clinton twice as many presents as he gave her. She wrote him postcards that any man would interpret as saying: "Come and get me." At the end of the affair, she sent him in her own words, an "embarrassing, mushy note". When he tried to end the relationship, if it can be called that, she begged him to continue. She endlessly begged Clinton to have full intercourse with her, which, to his credit, he refused. He only came in her mouth twice during their liaison, and their sexual experiences together were never anything more than heavy petting. A lot of breathing and fumbling and gasping but never the full monty.

Worst of all, she even promised not to tell anyone about what was going on. Meanwhile, she was gabbling to eleven - yes, eleven - people about every single aspect of their grimy little sexual experiences. Despite being a mature adult of 22, she could not even keep her mouth shut.

She's reported now as being extremely depressed, and I bet she is. We've all fallen for married men and waited by the telephone and cried our eyes out when they don't ring. It's part of the pain of being an adult and having relationships. We've all dumped people and been dumped.

But Monica Lewinsky, after her unspeakable behaviour, deserves to be depressed. True, Clinton has power of a kind which no doubt he has used in the past to influence girls to fancy him. But Lewinsky has power too. Sexual power. In her own way she is an abuser of men. She is seductive, manipulative, and cold - what normal woman would keep back a semen-stained dress for examination later unless she were preparing some pretty powerful revenge?

What man will have her now, she is reported as asking herself? I expect that there are a few who will pursue her, but for just the same reasons as she pursued the President. As she crowed that she'd had sex with Clinton, there will be quite a lot of men who will want to boast that they have had sex with Monica Lewinsky. After she has experienced a few of those, perhaps she will discover just how unpleasant it is be sexually targeted for what you are, not who you are.