沉默羔羊物是人非 莫妮卡萊溫斯基回來了

Monica Lewinsky was sitting in a Manhattan auditorium last month, watching teenage girls perform a play called “Slut.” Ms. Lewinsky was in blue jeans and a blazer, her hair pulled out of her face with a small clip. She was wiping away tears.

上個月在曼哈頓，莫妮卡·萊溫斯基(Monica Lewinsky)坐在觀衆席中觀看一出名叫《蕩婦》(Slut)的話劇，演員都是十幾歲的女孩子。她身穿藍色牛仔褲和運動上衣，頭髮用一枚小夾子彆着。她抹着眼淚。

In the scene, a young woman was seated in an interrogation room. She had been asked to describe, repeatedly, what had happened on the night in question — when, she said, on their way to a party, a group of guy friends had pinned her down in a taxi and sexually assaulted her. She had reported them. Now everyone at school knew, everyone had chosen a side.

在一場戲裏，一個年輕女人坐在審訊室中，被要求一再描述某個夜晚發生的事情——她說，那天晚上，從派對回家路上，一羣男性朋友把她堵在出租車裏強暴了她。她舉報了他們。如今學校裏所有人都知道了這件事，所有人都對自己的立場做出了選擇。

“My life has just completely fallen apart,” the girl said, her voice shaking. Her parents were in the next room. “Now I’m that girl.”

“我的人生完了，”女孩的聲音在顫抖。她的父母就在隔壁。“現在我成了‘那女孩’。”

The play concluded, and Ms. Lewinsky fumbled through her purse for a tissue. A woman came and whisked her to the stage.

劇終後，萊溫斯基從手袋裏摸索出紙巾。一個女人走過來，很快引着她登上舞臺。

“Hi, I’m Monica Lewinsky,” she said, visibly nervous. “Some of you younger people might only know me from some rap lyrics.”

“嗨，我是莫妮卡·萊溫斯基，”她顯然有些緊張。“有些年輕人可能只是從說唱樂歌詞裏聽過我的名字。”

The crowd, made up largely of high school and college women, laughed. “Monica Lewinsky” is the title of a song by the rapper G-Eazy; her name is a reference in dozens of others: by Kanye, Beyoncé, Eminem, Jeezy. The list goes on.

臺下的觀衆主要是高中和大學女生，她們笑了起來。《莫妮卡·萊溫斯基》是說唱樂手G-Eazy的一首歌；另外坎耶(Kanye)、碧昂斯(Beyoncé)、埃米納姆(Eminem)、Jeezy等幾十個歌手也都唱過她。

“Thank you for coming,” Ms. Lewinsky continued, “and in doing so, standing up against the sexual scapegoating of women and girls.”

“感謝你們的光臨，”她接着說。“感謝你們反對女人和女孩成爲性事件中的代罪羔羊。”

She walked back to her seat after speaking, and a woman behind her leaned forward. “I saw you, but I didn’t realize I was sitting next to Monica Lewinsky,” she said.

說完這番話，她回到自己的位子上去，身後的女人湊過來對她說。“我先就看見你了，不過真沒想到你就是莫妮卡·萊溫斯基。”

A line of girls soon approached. “Thank you for being here,” said a teenager in a striped shirt and gold hoop earrings. She asked if she could take a photo, and Ms. Lewinsky winced a little, then politely told her no. “I totally understand,” the girl said.

幾個女孩很快走過來。“感謝你的光臨，”一個穿條紋襯衫、戴金色圈圈耳環的十來歲女孩說。她問萊溫斯基能不能拍照，萊溫斯基微微有些遲疑，之後禮貌地拒絕了。“我完全理解，”女孩說。

When she was asked later about her reaction to the play, Ms. Lewinsky said: “It’s really inspiring to hear people bring awareness to this issue. That scene in the interrogation room was hard to watch. One of the things I’ve learned about trauma is that when you find yourself retriggered, it’s helpful to recognize when things are different.”

被問到對這場戲的看法，萊溫斯基女士說：“看到人們意識到這個問題，這真的很令人振奮。審訊室中的那一幕非常令人難過。我從自己的創傷中學習到，當痛苦的回憶再度被觸發時，如果你能意識到如今一切都已經不一樣了，這會非常有幫助。”

A LOT IS DIFFERENT for Monica Lewinsky these days, starting with the fact that, until last year, she had hardly appeared publicly for a decade. Now 41, the former White House intern once famously dismissed by the president as “that woman” holds a master’s degree in social psychology from the London School of Economics.

現在，對於莫妮卡·萊溫斯基來說，很多事情的確都已經不一樣了，到去年，她已經十年沒怎麼公開亮相。這位現年41歲的前白宮實習生，曾是總統口中著名的的“那女人”，並因此遭遣散，如今她擁有倫敦政治經濟學院的社會心理學碩士學位。

She splits time between New York and Los Angeles, where she grew up, and London, and said it’s been hard to find work.

她從小在洛杉磯長大，如今在紐約、洛杉磯與倫敦三地居住，並說找工作很難。

Mostly she has embraced a quiet existence: doing meditation and therapy, volunteering, spending time with friends.

大部分時間裏，她安靜低調地生活：做冥想、接受心理治療、做義工，和朋友們在一起。

But the quiet ended last May, when she wrote an essay for Vanity Fair about the aftermath of her affair with Bill Clinton — the story a result of a years-long relationship with the magazine and its editor, Graydon Carter. (She was first photographed in its pages by Herb Ritts in 1998.)

但是去年五月，平靜的生活結束了，她爲《名利場》(Vanity Fair)撰文，寫了自己與比爾·克林頓(Bill Clinton)的性醜聞之後發生的事情——這篇文章是她與《名利場》主編格雷頓·卡特(Graydon Carter)合作一年的結果。1998年，《名利場》曾經刊登過她的照片，攝影師是赫布·李特斯(Herb Ritts)。

In the essay, which was a finalist for a 2015 National Magazine Award, she declared that the time had come to “burn the beret and bury the blue dress” and “give a purpose to my past.”

這篇文章最終入圍2015年國家雜誌獎，她在文中宣佈，如今已是時候，“埋葬那頂貝雷帽和那條藍裙子”，並且“爲我的過去賦予意義”。

That new purpose, she wrote, was twofold: it was about reclaiming her own story — one that had seemed to metastasize — but also to help others who had been similarly humiliated. “What this will cost me,” she wrote, “I will soon find out.”

她寫道，這個新的意義是雙重的——她的故事已經廣爲流傳，如今，她要對之進行重新講述；不僅如此，她也希望能幫助那些曾經遭遇類似羞辱的人們。“這樣做將會令我付出什麼代價，”她寫道，“很快就會知道了。”

It hasn’t appeared to cost her, at least not yet. In fact, the opposite has occurred.

這件事似乎沒有令她付出代價，至少到目前還沒有。事實上，完全相反的事情發生了。

Over the last six months, she has made appearances at a benefit hosted by the Norman Mailer Center (she and Mr. Mailer had been friends), at a New York Fashion Week dinner presentation for the designer Rachel Comey, at the Vanity Fair Oscar party and as her friend Alan Cumming’s date at an after-party for the Golden Globes. (Mr. Cumming has known her since the 1990s.)

在過去的六個月裏，她在很多活動中亮相，包括諾曼·梅勒中心主辦的慈善活動（她是諾曼先生生前好友）；設計師瑞秋·科米(Rachel Comey)在紐約時裝週上的晚餐招待會；《名利場》的奧斯卡派對；在金球獎的慶功派對上，她還作爲艾倫·卡明(Alan Cumming)的女伴出席，卡明是她的朋友，兩人90年代就認識了。

Recently, she took part in an anti-bullying workshop at the Horace Mann School, and joined a feminist networking group. (“I consider myself a feminist with a lowercase ‘f,’ ” she told me. “I believe in equality. But I think I’m drawn to the issues more than the movement.”)

最近，她到霍瑞斯曼高中參加了一個反欺凌的研討會，並參加了一個女性主義網絡組織（“我覺得自己是一個低調的女性主義者，”她告訴我，“我相信平等，但我更關注議題，而不是行動”）。

Perhaps most interestingly, in October, onstage at a Forbes conference, she spoke out for the first time about the digital harassment (or cyberbullying) that has affected everyone from female bloggers to Jennifer Lawrence to ... her: “I lost my reputation. I was publicly identified as someone I didn’t recognize. And I lost my sense of self,” she told the crowd.

最有意思的或者是去年10月發生的事，她在一次福布斯會議上登臺，討論網絡騷擾（或者說網絡欺凌）問題，這個問題影響着所有人，從普通的女博客寫手到詹妮弗·勞倫斯(Jennifer Lawrence)，乃至……她自己：“我名譽掃地，在公衆眼中，我成了自己也認不出的樣子。我喪失了自我意識，”她對聽衆們說。

She just took that declaration one step further on the main stage at TED in Vancouver, British Columbia, on Thursday, where she issued a biting cultural critique about humiliation as commodity. The title of her 18-minute talk (and, perhaps, the line that best sums up her experience), which received a raucous standing ovation: “The Price of Shame.”

星期四，她在加拿大不列顛哥倫比亞省溫哥華做了TED講演，把自己的宣言又向前推進一步，演講中，對於羞辱成爲一種商品這個問題，她做出了辛辣的文化批評。她的講演時長18分鐘，題爲“蒙羞的代價”，這句話或許正好可以用來總結她的經歷，講演結束後，聽衆們長時間起立，熱烈鼓掌。

THIS IS NOT Monica Lewinsky’s first attempt at reinvention. But it’s also not the Monica of more than a decade ago: the one who created a handbag line and tried her hand at reality TV.

這並不是莫妮卡·萊溫斯基第一次努力獲得新生，但是十幾年前的莫妮卡和現在還不一樣：當時她創立了一個手袋品牌，還開始涉足真人秀電視節目。

This iteration is a bundle of contradictions: warm yet cautious. Open yet guarded. Strong but fragile.

她的轉變充滿矛盾：既溫暖又審慎，既開放又警惕，既堅強又脆弱。

She is likable, funny and self-deprecating. She is also acutely intelligent, something for which she doesn’t get much credit. But she is also stuck in a kind of time warp over which she has little control.

她可愛，風趣，有些自我貶低的傾向。同時她也非常聰明，這一點並未充分被人稱道。但她同時也無法自拔地陷在一個時空隧道里。

At 41, she doesn’t have many of the things that a person her age may want: a permanent residence, an obvious source of income (she won’t comment on her finances), a clear career path.

41歲的她並沒有許多同齡人可能會渴望的東西：永久的住處和一份明顯的收入來源（她拒絕評價自己的財務狀況），以及一個清晰的事業藍圖。

She is also very, very nervous. She is worried about being taken advantage of, worried her words will be misconstrued, worried reporters will rehash the past.

她也非常非常緊張。她擔心被人利用，擔心自己的話被誤解，擔心記者會一味重複她的過去。

She is prepared, almost always, for doomsday: the snippet of a quote that might be taken out of context; questions about the Clintons, whom she declines to discuss. “She was burned ... in myriad ways,” said her editor at Vanity Fair, David Friend.

雖然並非時刻都在提心吊膽，但她的確常常準備着迎接厄運：她擔心自己的話被斷章取義地引用，或是被問到關於克林頓夫婦的問題（她拒絕談論他們）。“她受着……許許多多的煎熬，”《名利場》負責她那篇文章的編輯大衛·弗蘭德(David Friend)說。

Ms. Lewinsky wouldn’t call this a reinvention, though. This, she says, is simply the Monica who in spite of the headlines, in spite of the incessant paparazzi-style coverage, “was seen by many, but truly known by few,” as she put it on the TED stage.

不過，萊溫斯基並不把自己的經歷稱之爲脫胎換骨。她說，現在的她只是一個不在乎報刊頭條，不在乎沒完沒了的狗仔體報道的莫妮卡，“很多人都見過她，但沒有什麼人真正瞭解她”，在TED演講中她這樣說道。

“This is me,” she told me. “This is a kind of evolution of me.”

“這就是我，”她對我說，“這是我的進化。”

I had approached her after the Vanity Fair essay in part because I was intrigued, but also because I had a tinge of guilt. I had come of age in the Lewinsky era; my first job out of college was at Newsweek, where the story of the reporter who had uncovered the affair — then saw his story leaked to the Drudge Report — was legend.

《名利場》刊出那篇文章後，我開始同她接觸，因爲我對她感到好奇，不過也是因爲我心中懷有一絲歉疚。萊溫斯基事件的時代，我已經步入成年；我大學畢業後的第一份工作就是在《新聞週刊》(Newsweek)，正是《新聞週刊》的記者發現了這樁性醜聞，之後這個故事被泄露給網站“吉拉德報道”(Drudge Report)，這個故事如今已經成爲傳奇。

I distinctly remember my high school self, wide-eyed, poring over the soft-core Starr report with friends.

我還清楚地記得高中時代的我，睜大了眼睛，和朋友們一起狼吞虎嚥地讀着《斯塔爾報告》(Starr Report)中那些香豔的內容。

None of us had the maturity to understand the complexities, or power dynamics, of the president’s affair with a young intern. When I was 16, one dominating image of Monica Lewinsky seemed to overshadow all others: slut. Of course, that 22-year-old intern was only a few years older than me.

我們都不夠成熟，沒法理解總統與年輕實習生的風流韻事之中也包含着複雜的東西，或者說包含着權力的變數。我16歲那年，莫妮卡·萊溫斯基以蕩婦姿態出現，這樣一個顯著的形象似乎遮蔽了一切。當然，那個22歲的實習生其實只比我大幾歲而已。

And so I emailed her. I told her I was interested in her effort to re-emerge, and had been particularly fascinated by the reaction to it, as if there were a kind of public reckoning underway. Feminists who had stayed silent on the first go-round were suddenly defending her, using terms like “slut-shaming” and “media gender bias” to do it.

於是我給她寫了電子郵件，告訴她我對其嘗試復出的努力很感興趣，人們對她復出的反應也讓我覺得有意思，公衆對這件事的認識好像在不斷髮展。女性主義者們一開始對她保持沉默，突然又開始用“把女人貶爲蕩婦”(slut-shaming)、“媒體的性別偏見”等字眼爲她辯護。

The late-night host David Letterman was on air expressing remorse over how he had mocked her, asking, in a recent interview with Barbara Walters, “With some perspective, do you realize this is a sad human situation?” Bill Maher said of reading Ms. Lewinsky’s piece in Vanity Fair, “I gotta tell you, I literally felt guilty.”

深夜秀節目主持人大衛·萊特曼(David Letterman)公開在節目中表示自己爲曾經嘲笑她感到後悔，他最近訪問芭芭拉·沃爾特斯(Barbara Walters)的時候問道：“從某些角度看來，你是否意識到這是一種悲哀的人類處境？”比爾·馬赫(Bill Maher) 讀了萊溫斯基在《名利場》上的文章後說，“我得告訴你，我真的感到內疚。”

And young women were embracing her: rushing up to her after public events, messaging her on social media, asking if they could take selfies. (“Meeting her felt like meeting a pop culture icon,” said Amari Leigh, 17, a cast member in the “Slut” play. “It’s crazy to think that one thing she did, when she was not that much older than I am now, impacted her whole life.”)

年輕女人們接納了她：她們在公開活動之後涌向她，在社交媒體上給她留言，要求同她合影。（“見到她就像見到流行文化符號，”17歲的艾美莉·李[Amari Leigh]說，她在《蕩婦》話劇中出演角色。“她在比我大不了多少的時候做了一件事，結果影響了她整整一生，想想真是太瘋狂了。”）

“However you felt about the actual event, the way it played out was pretty grotesque,” said Rebecca Traister, a senior editor at The New Republic who was just out of college when the Clinton scandal broke and wrote about it later.

“不管你當時對真正的事件有什麼看法，它呈現出來的方式實在非常怪誕，”《新共和》(The New Republic)的資深編輯麗貝卡·特雷斯塔(Rebeccca Traister)說，克林頓醜聞曝光時她剛剛大學畢業，之後寫過關於這件事的文章。

Ms. Traister said she was taken aback when she reread her own article: “Whether it’s guilt, or sophistication, or thinking a little harder about sexual power dynamics, I think people have started to think: ‘Oh right, she probably does have a right to tell her story. And that’s a good thing.’ ”

特雷斯塔說，重讀當時寫的文章令她自己也感到吃驚：“不管是出於愧疚也好，還是因爲成熟了也好，抑或是對於性權力的變數有了更深入的思考也好，我覺得現在人們開始覺得：‘對啊，她可能確實有權利講出她自己的故事。而且這是好事。’”

This time, Ms. Lewinsky appears determined to tell it on her terms. She has a P.R. agent screening requests and approaches media as one may expect: with the caution of a woman who has been raked over the coals.

這一次，萊溫斯基顯然決心從她自身的角度來講述。不出所料，作爲一個曾經遭受公開譴責的女人，她有一個公關代理來幫助她，審慎地過濾各種媒體的要求和接觸。

She has reason to. Just weeks ago, a short interview with the artist Nelson Shanks was published online. In a question about which portrait subject he had found most difficult to capture, Mr. Shanks noted that his painting of Bill Clinton, which hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, had a shadow as a metaphor for Ms. Lewinsky — created from the shadow of an actual blue dress he had placed on a mannequin. The piece posted on a Sunday. By the next morning, it was everywhere.

她有理由這樣做。就在幾個星期前，網上登出了一則藝術家納爾遜·尚克斯(Nelson Shanks)的小採訪。採訪者問他，什麼樣的肖像畫最難處理，尚克斯提到了比爾·克林頓的畫像，這幅畫目前掛在國家肖像畫廊，畫上有一重陰影，是關於萊溫斯基的隱喻——他讓模特穿上一件藍色裙子，投下陰影，據此創作了油畫上的陰影。訪談是在週日貼出來的。翌日清晨，就已經傳得到處都是了。

Ms. Lewinsky woke up to a flooded inbox and panicked.

萊溫斯基一覺醒來，收到無數電子郵件，頓感驚慌失措。

She was really, really sorry, she told me, but she simply couldn’t move forward with an article.

她告訴我，她非常非常抱歉，但她真的沒法再接受一篇文章了。

We exchanged emails and calls. The article was back on, no it wasn’t, yes it was.

我們互相寫了幾封電子郵件，打了幾通電話。那篇文章被淡忘了，還沒有，哦，已經被淡忘了。

You want to know what it’s like to live in Monica Lewinsky’s world? This is it.

你想知道生活在莫妮卡·萊溫斯基的世界裏是什麼感覺？這就是了。

I MET MS. LEWINSKY the following Tuesday at her apartment.

一週之後的星期二，我來到萊溫斯基的家中。

She was rehearsing in front of a small metal music stand. Her speech coach, Pippa Bateman, was on Skype from Britain.

她對着一個小小的金屬製樂譜架排練。她的演講指導老師皮帕·巴特曼在英國，通過Skype指導她。

I quietly sat on the couch and noted the details in the room: a bookshelf blocked off the bedroom area; on it, photos of friends and family, Monica as a child. On an end table were roses, crystals and a lit candle.

我靜靜地坐在沙發上，觀察着屋子裏的細節：一個書架隔擋出臥室區，書架上有朋友和家人的照片，還有莫妮卡的童年照片。桌子一頭放着玫瑰花、水晶飾品，燃着一支蠟燭。

She handed me a script. “It’s changed a bit, so you can follow along,” she said. (By the time she appeared onstage at TED, in front of a packed room, she was on Version 24 of her speech.) On the back, she had scribbled a reminder: “Push in arm muscles, engage back and neck.”

她遞給我一份草稿。“改動了一點，你可以看看，”她說。（在TED的演講臺上對着滿滿一屋子人發言時，她的講稿已經改到第24版）在講稿背後，她寫下了一點小提示：“運用胳膊上的肌肉，繃緊後背和脖子。”

She was working through the middle of the speech, where she would describe her questioning by investigators in a room not unlike the one we saw portrayed in “Slut.” It was 1998, and she had been required to authenticate the phone calls recorded by her former friend Linda Tripp. They would later be released to Congress.

她當時在練習講演的中段，在這一段裏，她要描述自己當年如何在一間屋子裏接受調查者的提問，這情景有點像《蕩婦》裏的那一幕。那是在1998年，她被要求證實她以前的朋友琳達·特里普(Linda Tripp)錄下來的電話對話。這段話後來被送交國會。

“Scared and mortified, I listen,” she said.

“我聽着，又驚恐又窘迫，”她說。

“Listen as I prattle on …

“我聽着自己天真的喋喋不休……”

“Listen to my sometimes catty, sometimes churlish, sometimes silly self, being cruel, unforgiving, uncouth …

“我聽着自己的聲音：時而狡猾、時而粗魯、時而愚蠢、時而殘忍、不可原諒，粗俗不堪……”

“Listen, deeply, deeply ashamed to the worst version of myself.” She paused. “A self I don’t even recognize.”

“我聽着，爲自己最惡劣的一面感到深深羞恥，”她停頓一下，“這是我未曾認識到的自己。”

“How did that feel?” Ms. Bateman asked. “You’ve got to own it.”

“感覺怎麼樣？”貝特曼問道，“你得把它背下來。”

Ms. Lewinsky doesn’t have a speechwriter; she wrote the speech herself. But she has plenty of advisers: journalists, editors, new friends, old friends, her lawyer, her publicist, her family. Which is great, if everyone is in agreement. Except that no one is ever in agreement.

沒有人幫萊溫斯基寫演講稿，這是她自己寫的。但是有不少人給她建議：記者、編輯、新老朋友、她的律師、公關、家人。如果大家意見一致那固然好，但是根本沒法達成一致。

The major disagreement was over the opening: a joke about a man 14 years her junior, who hit on Ms. Lewinsky after she spoke at Forbes.

最大的反對意見集中在演講的開頭：是關於一個比她小14歲的男人的笑話，萊溫斯基在福布斯做過演講之後，他來向她搭訕。

“What was his unsuccessful pickup line?” she would ask rhetorically. “He could make me feel 22 again. Later that night, I realized: I’m probably the only person over 40 who would not like to be 22 again.”

“他到底是哪句話說錯了？”她自問自答，“他說他能讓我重拾22歲的感覺。後來我才發現：‘在年過40的人裏，我可能是唯一一個不願意重拾22歲感覺的人了。’”

It was funny, yes (even hysterical, judging by the reaction at TED). But did the joke sexualize her off the bat? For a woman ingrained in the public psyche as a “tart, slut, whore, bimbo,” as Ms. Lewinsky put it onstage, should she try to avoid the innuendo?

這話的確很有趣（TED講臺下的觀衆們的反應甚至有點過於激動了）。但這個笑話是否一下子讓她顯得性感了？正如萊溫斯基在演講中所言，她在公衆心理中已經被固定爲“輕佻女子、蕩婦、妓女、蠢女人”，她難道不應當避免做出這方面的暗示嗎？

Maybe she should cut that part and go straight to the next line, somebody suggested: a question for the audience.

有人建議，也許她應該把這段刪掉，直接說下一句話——對觀衆提出一個問題。

“Can I see a show of hands,” she would ask, “of anyone who didn’t make a mistake or do something they regretted at 22?”

這個問題是：“你們當中有誰在22歲那年沒做過錯事，沒做過令自己懊悔的事，請舉手好嗎？”

Ultimately, she stuck with the joke. (The question would stay, too.)

最後，她還是說了這個笑話（那個問題也保留下來了）。

She performed that opening later that day in a practice session downtown, then again a few days later in front of a large gathering of friends, over wine and cheese. She would practice the speech walking down the street, running errands, on a flight from Amsterdam to Oslo. As she joked on Twitter: “If you see me walking down the streets of nyc muttering to myself, don’t worry ... just practicing my TED Talk.”

當天晚些時候，她在市中心的家裏排練了這個開頭，幾天後又在一大羣朋友們面前說了一次，桌上有葡萄酒和奶酪。這段演講她走路也練、出去辦事也練、從阿姆斯特丹到奧斯陸的航班上也在練。正如她在Twitter上的玩笑：“如果你看到我走在紐約街頭，嘴裏喃喃自語，別擔心……我是在練習TED演講呢。”

TED approached Ms. Lewinsky about speaking at the conference, whose theme this year is “Truth and Dare,” after watching her Forbes speech. Kelly Stoetzel, TED’s content director, said, “Part of what I think makes this story interesting is that people will get to see all the dimensions of Monica, not just the person who was reported on 17 years ago.”

TED主辦方看了萊溫斯基在福布斯的演講後，邀請她在大會上發言，今年的主題是“真相與勇氣”。TED的內容編輯凱莉·斯托澤爾(Kelly Stoetzel)說：“我覺得這個故事會很有趣，部分是由於這樣可以讓人們看到全方位的莫妮卡，而不僅僅是17年前那些報道中的那個人。”

The idea had been marinating for years. Ms. Lewinsky often thought about the toll that shame had taken on her own life; in graduate school, she studied the impact of trauma on identity.

這個主意已經醞釀了很多年。萊溫斯基經常思考那件事如何讓羞恥佔據了她的整個人生；在念研究生的時候，她學習了有關身份創傷衝擊的課程。

Then Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers freshman, killed himself after being recorded by his college roommate being intimate with a man. It was 2010, and Ms. Lewinsky’s mother was beside herself, “gutted with pain,” as Ms. Lewinsky said onstage, “in a way I couldn’t quite understand.”

後來出了泰勒·克萊門蒂(Tyler Clementi)事件，這位拉特格斯的大一新生同一個男人的親密行爲被大學室友錄像，之後他自殺身亡。那是2010年，萊溫斯基的母親對此異常激動，“她內心充滿痛苦，”萊溫斯基在演講中說，“並且是以一種我不太理解的方式。”

Eventually, she said she realized: To her mother, Mr. Clementi represented her. “She was reliving 1998,” she said, looking out over the crowd. “Reliving a time when she sat by my bed every night. Reliving a time when she made me shower with the bathroom door open.”

最終，她還是明白了：對她的母親來說，克萊門蒂就像是自己的女兒。“她彷彿又重新回到1998年，”萊溫斯基擡起頭來望着觀衆們，“她彷彿回到那個每晚坐在我牀邊的時候，回到那個我淋浴她都要把浴室門打開的時候。”

She paused, becoming emotional. “And reliving a time both my parents feared that I would be humiliated to death.”

她停頓一下，語氣變得充滿情感。“她彷彿重回到那個父母都擔心我會因爲羞愧而死的時候。”

“It was easy to forget,” she said, “that ‘That Woman’ was dimensional, had a soul and was once unbroken.”

“人們很容易忘記，‘那女人’也有很多面，她也有靈魂，她也曾經堅強。”

She doesn’t like to talk much about the past, but she will talk about residuals of her trauma: having to leave the movie theater every time a cop on a screen flashed a badge (a flashback to being ambushed by federal agents in the food court of the Pentagon shopping mall); the studying and reading about it, as a way to ease it.

她並不願意談很多關於過去的事，但她願意談創傷帶給她的殘存影響：去看電影時，每當銀幕上出現戴着徽章的警察，她都會想起自己曾在五角大樓購物中心的露天餐飲場所遭遇聯邦探員埋伏的經歷，只得匆匆離開影院；爲了平復創傷，她研究和閱讀了許多相關材料。

“I had to do a lot of healing work and rehabilitation to get to what transpired over the course of the past year,” she said. “Anybody who has gone through any kind of trauma knows it doesn’t just go away with a snap of the fingers. It lives as an echo in your life. But over time the echo becomes softer and softer.”

“我得做很多事情來讓自己痊癒，想辦法振作起來，這樣才能做到去年那些事，”她說，“任何經歷過創傷的人都知道，這不是打個響指就能好起來的。它就像生命中縈繞的回聲。但隨着時間過去，這道回聲也變得越來越溫和。”

And yet this isn’t simply about her story, she said. This was about using it to help others. As she put it, shame and humiliation have become a kind of “commodity” in our culture — with websites that thrive on it, industries created out of it, and people who get paid to clean up the mess.

她說，她要講的並不僅僅是自己的故事，她想用自己的故事來幫助其他人。她說，羞愧和恥辱已經成了我們文化中的某種“商品”——有些網站就靠着它來興旺發達，有些工業在創造着恥辱，有些人專門靠着善後賺錢維生。

What happened to compassion? she asked up on stage. “What we need,” she said, “is a cultural revolution.”

人們的惻隱之心去哪兒了？她在演講中問。“我們需要的是一場文化革命，”她說。

THE WAY MS. LEWINSKY tells it, she was “Patient Zero” for the type of Internet shaming we now see regularly. Hers wasn’t the first case ever, but it was the first of its magnitude. Which meant that, virtually overnight, she went from being a private citizen to, as she put it, “a publicly humiliated one.”

按照萊溫斯基女士的說法，如今我們常常在網絡上見到各種羞辱事件，而她正是“第一位受害者”(Patient Zero)。她並不是第一例，但在重要程度上卻是空前的。也就是說，一夜之間，她就從一個普通公民，變成了“遭到公開羞辱的對象”。

“She couldn’t go to a restaurant and order a bowl of soup — literally — without it being reported the next day,” said Barbara Walters, who said her interview with Ms. Lewinsky was one of the most watched segments in television history.

“這麼說吧，哪怕她到飯館去點一碗湯，第二天都會上新聞，”芭芭拉·沃爾特斯說。她表示，自己對萊溫斯基的採訪是電視史上收視率最高的片段之一。

The story was the perfect combination of politics and sex. “It was like reading a really wonderful dirty book,” Ms. Walters said, “except it was her story and her mother’s story and her aunt’s story.”

她的故事完美地結合了政治與性。“簡直就像讀一本精彩的黃色小說，”沃爾特斯說，“只不過這是她的故事，是她母親的故事，也是她的阿姨的故事。”

It was before the days of the Internet sex tape, but barely: Princess Diana had been photographed with a hidden camera while working out at the gym; Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee’s honeymoon sex tape was stolen from their home and bootlegged out of car trunks.

當時網絡性愛視頻還沒出現，不過也快了：戴安娜王妃在健身房健身的照片被暗藏的攝像頭拍到；帕梅拉·安德森(Pamela Anderson)與托米·李(Tommy Lee)的蜜月性愛錄像從家中失竊，以盜版的形式被四處售賣傳播。

“It was at the tip of the spear of this invasive culture,” said Mr. Friend, who is working on a book about the 1990s.

“這是這種侵害性文化(invasive culture)首當其衝的武器，”弗蘭德說，他目前正在創作一本關於90年代的書。

And so it went from there. Ms. Lewinsky was quickly cast by the media as a “little tart,” as The Wall Street Journal put it. The New York Post nicknamed her the “Portly Pepperpot.” She was described by Maureen Dowd in The New York Times as “ditsy” and “predatory.”

就是從那時開始，萊溫斯基很快被媒體定位爲“輕佻的小妞”.《華爾街時報》就是這麼稱呼她的。《華盛頓郵報》(The New York Post)給她起外號叫“小胖胡椒罐”。在《紐約時報》上，莫林·道德(Maureen Dowd)說她“愚蠢”、“掠食成性”。

And other women — self-proclaimed feminists — piled on. “My dental hygienist pointed out she had third-stage gum disease,” said Erica Jong. Betty Friedan dismissed her as “some little twerp.”

還有一些女人——有些自稱是女性主義者——也加入進來。“我的牙醫說她有第三期牙齦炎，”艾麗卡·榮格(Erica Jong)說。貝蒂·弗裏丹(Betty Friedan)說她是“小蠢貨”。

“It’s a sexual shaming that is far more directed at women than at men,” Gloria Steinem wrote me in an email, noting that in Ms. Lewinsky’s case, she was also targeted by the “ultraright wing.” “I’m grateful to [her],” Ms. Steinem said, “for having the courage to return to the public eye.”

“這種性恥辱針對女人遠勝於針對男人，”格勞麗亞·斯坦尼姆(Gloria Steinem)在給我的電子郵件中寫道.她指出，在萊溫斯基的事件中，她也成了“極右翼”的靶子。“我很感謝她有勇氣重新回到公衆視野之中，”斯坦尼姆寫道。

Had the Lewinsky story unfolded today, certainly the digital reality of it would have been worse (or at least more pungent). “They would have dug up her private photos,” said Danielle Citron, a law professor and the author of “Hate Crimes in Cyberspace.” But there would have also been avenues to push back: more outlets, more varied voices, probably even a #IStandWithMonica hashtag.

假如萊溫斯基的故事發生在今天，網絡曝光肯定會更加嚴重，至少會是更加刺激。“他們肯定會挖出她的私人照片，”法律教授丹妮爾·希特倫(Danielle Citron)說，她還著有《網絡空間裏的仇恨犯罪》(Hate Crimes in Cyberspace)一書。但是，也同樣會有人回擊：會有更多人出來說話，會有更多不同的聲音，twitter上甚至會有“#我支持萊溫斯基”的標籤。

“If it happened today, I think the consensus that she deserved to be thrown under the bus would be considerably weaker,” said Clay Shirky, a journalism professor at N.Y.U. who studies Internet culture. “And the key thing that’s changed is not information — there were credible press reports about Cosby for years, just as Clinton’s denial was ridiculous on its face — but the ability to coordinate reaction.”

“如果這件事發生在今天，我覺得不會有那麼多人覺得她活該被扔到汽車底下去，”紐約大學專門研究網絡文化的新聞學教授克雷·舍基(Clay Shirky)說。“最重要的改變並不是信息——關於科斯比（Cosby，指影星Bill Cosby強姦案——譯註），多年來也有可靠的媒體報道，正如克林頓的矢口否認非常可笑——但是人們的相應的反應能力已經發生了變化。”

In that respect, Ms. Lewinsky may finally be in a unique position to tell her story. “I don’t know … exactly how you combat cyberbullying,” Ms. Walters said. “But at least she’s fighting back. … I do think it’s about time we gave her a chance.”

因此，現在的萊溫斯基可能是置身一個獨一無二的處境來講述她的故事。“我不知道……你們是如何應付網絡欺凌，”沃爾特斯說。“但至少她反擊了……我覺得現在應該給她機會。”

THE NIGHT BEFORE TED, Ms. Lewinsky began a ritual. She lit candles. She set up a table of crystals. She debated which necklace to wear, then ordered dinner and tea.

TED演講的前一天，萊溫斯基進行了一項儀式。她燃起一支蠟燭，在一張桌子上擺滿水晶飾物，仔細盤算該戴哪條項鍊，然後叫了晚餐和茶。

She would be in bed by 9:30 and up at 5 a.m.; Amy Cuddy, the Harvard researcher whose TED talk on body language clocked nearly 25 million views, was meeting her in the morning. They would power-pose together.

她應該在晚上9點半上牀，上午5點起牀；哈佛大學研究員艾米·卡迪(Amy Cuddy)關於肢體語言的TED演講有將近2500萬人觀看，翌日，她倆將會見面，一起擺出“高能量姿勢”(power-pose)。

Ms. Lewinsky had a friend from Los Angeles there with her, and Ms. Cuddy stopped by to wish her luck. The two had never met in person.

萊溫斯基身邊有個從洛杉磯趕過來陪她的朋友，卡迪過來拜訪，祝她好運，兩人之前從未私下見過面。

“If you had told me a year ago I was going to be delivering a TED talk, I would have laughed in your face,” Ms. Lewinsky said, seated on the carpet.

“如果一年前你告訴我我會做TED講演，我肯定當時就覺得很可笑，”萊溫斯基坐在地毯上說。

She looked at her friend.

她望着那個朋友。

“A year ago. …” she choked up. “Well, you were there. It was so, so hard. There were times I thought I wouldn’t make it.”

“一年前……”她聲音哽咽。“啊，你也在，實在太艱難了，有時候我覺得自己實在挺不住了。”

“I’m just so grateful,” she said. “I’m at once grateful and surprised.”

“我很感激，”她說，“我現在又感激又驚喜。”

Earlier, I had asked Ms. Lewinsky what she hoped to accomplish with a platform like TED. She asked if I had read the David Foster Wallace book “Brief Interviews With Hideous Men.” In it, there is a chapter about suffering, and the story of a girl who has survived abuse.

早先，我問萊溫斯基，她希望通過TED這樣的平臺取得什麼樣的效果。她問我有沒有看過大衛·福斯特·華萊士(David Foster Wallace)的書——《對醜陋人物的簡訪》(Brief Interviews With Hideous Men)。書中有一個章節是關於痛苦的，講述了一個挺過虐待的女孩的故事。

What the young woman endures is horrific, said Ms. Lewinsky, but by going through it, she learns something about herself: that she can survive.

那個年輕女人的經歷非常可怕，萊溫斯基說，但是經歷了一切，她也更加了解自己，她明白自己可以挺過去。

“That’s part of what I thought I could contribute,” she said. “That in someone else’s darkest moment, lodged in their subconscious might be the knowledge that there was someone else who was, at one point in time, the most humiliated person in the world. And that she survived it.”

“我覺得這就是我能做的貢獻，”她說。“在其他人生命中最黑暗的時刻，他們或許會在某個時刻下意識地想起，有人曾遭受世上最大的恥辱，但是她活下來了。”