Monica Lewinsky Persuasive Speech

After a decade of silence Monica Lewinsky, who had an affair with the president of the United States back in 1995, decided to step back into the public eye. This time lending her well-known voice to a course, which she feels very passionately about: bringing public humiliation to an end.

The decisive factor in her coming forward was the tragic story of the college freshman, Tyler Clementi (18) , who jumped off a bridge to his death, after footage of him being intimate with another man was uploaded to the internet. This attracted an extreme amount of negative attention.

The story resonated in Monica and especially her mother, who was reminded of the horrible time of humiliation Monica went through as the affair was disclosed in 1998. A time
Her story was the first mayor one to ever break online. And before anyone could predict it, Monica was whirled into a maelstrom, which grew only stronger by the hour. The internet-monster had been awoken for the first time. People commented, e-mailed and posted jokes about her everywhere. Overnight she had gone from being a private person to being the one everyone belaughed and ridiculed. Globally.

Since then many people have been dragged down similar paths. She started looking into it, and was horrified by what she found. For instance, ChildLine, a UK-charity, experienced a shocking increase in the amount of requests for help dealing with cyberbullying from 2012 to 2013. Dutch analyses reported that more children and young people become suicidal because of cyberbullying now than of offline bullying.

She says that this is a picture of an unfortunate culture: a culture revolving around public humiliation, a culture, where famous actors are hacked only to find their very private pictures leaked, sometimes to attract millions of
One thing, which I believe has definitely changed the face of public humiliation, is that something once posted on the internet will stay. An embarrassing picture can reemerge, a hurtful comment be reread.

I also believe, that while few people have the courage to say affronts to someone’s face, many dare to, hiding under the invisibility cloak of anonymity. In addition, they can’t see the pain they induce. It can then seem quite virtual, as a good and convenient game of letting out frustration.

Earlier, a humiliation was shared by the people present. When leaving that particular social arena, one wasn’t necessarily forced to take the situation home. Now it is impossible to escape, phones and social media make it possible to get bullied all day. On the internet, there is no censorship of any kind, in earlier times the News would decide, what to bring. Now everything is brought.

Fixing this, however, could become hard as it is anchored deeply in our culture, but I believe, that everyone has to start with themselves. Becoming aware of this. I wouldn’t consider myself a bully, but Monica Lewinsky’s speech made me think about my own