Adele M. Stan is a contributing editor to Ms. magazine and a contributing writer to Mother Jones.

If you listened to the House managers, the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton was about the president's misdeeds and the rule of law. If you listened to the president's defenders, it was about little more than sex. But while those elements all factored into the chain of events that led to the trial, the assertions of each side offer only the small truths of particulars. For the impeachment trial was nothing less than a fin de siècle convulsion over the social issue that has defined the century -- feminism.

Sexual politics

NOW members protesting Packwood

If you don't believe me, just ask House manager James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) who, in a fit of pique two weeks ago on Fox News Sunday, let the cat named Big Truth out of the bag. "[T]he hypocrisy of the radical feminists is now on the table, because their darling, Bill Clinton, did something that got (former Sen.) Bob Packwood (R-OR) booted out of the Senate and has destroyed the lives of a lot of people," Sensenbrenner told Brit Hume. "And I think that when they start shoving their agenda down the throats of the American public, people are going to say, 'Where were you when Bill Clinton was sexually harassing an intern in his office?'"

It was a rant stunning not for its clarity or accuracy (of which it had neither), but for the rush of raw emotion with which it was delivered. And therein lies the truth of the right's motivations, even as the congressman mischaracterized what had taken place between the president and the intern.

As Patricia Ireland, president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), noted on the same show this weekend, the allegations against Packwood involved a number of clear instances of sexual assault. The impeachment case against Clinton never alleged any sexual harassment of Monica Lewinsky, who engaged in a liaison that she herself had sought. But the case against the president did bring us into that unlegislatible gray area of sexual politics, and his behavior revealed, at best, a disregard for women and, at worst, contempt for them.

Paula Jones and the gender wars

It is a situation fraught with irony. I have long believed that the outward vestiges of Clinton's feminism are what, more than anything, has driven the Republican right into its frothing hatred of the man. That a man destined for the presidency of the world's only superpower nation would marry a woman who, for a number of years, declined to take his name, was a bit too much for them.

The right has always won adherents by stoking fear of change. With the Cold War over, feminists and gays have replaced communists as the clear and present danger to the status quo. (Phyllis Schlafly, after all, who won national prominence for her campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment, got her start in conservative politics in the 1964 Goldwater for President campaign.)

As the most outwardly feminist-friendly president in modern memory, and one with an apparently long history of sexual misbehavior, Clinton represented a bonanza for the right -- a shot at neutralizing the feminism that continues to reshape the landscape of American society. From his handling of the Paula Jones matter to the manner in which he sought cover from the revelation of his relationship with young Monica Lewinsky, the president willingly played into the hands of the feminists' foes.

The Paula Jones sexual-harassment lawsuit proved to be a strategic coup for the right, not because of its merit (it was eventually thrown out of court for its lack thereof), but for the way in which Clinton bungled it.

It was always a suit of dubious value, if only for its embrace and propagation by a group of political activists who had devoted their lives to a fiercely anti-feminist agenda. Where Clinton went wrong was in thinking that the suit was about him, and not the legacy of women's rights activists who had numbered among his most stalwart allies throughout his political career. Despite the case's lack of merit and the life support accorded it by his enemies, he had an obligation to play it straight in his testimony for the sake of those who had fought in the trenches to bring sexual harassment into the realm of civil rights law. It was a task, alas, that ultimately proved to be larger than the man.

A different kind of censure

For this feminist, the most awful moment of the impeachment trial was White House aide Sidney Blumenthal's testimony about the president's account of his relationship with the intern -- his famous characterization of Lewinsky as a "stalker." Not only did Clinton put on the puritan's mask of the helpless male victimized by virulent female sexuality; he insulted thousands of women who have suffered real stalkings by violent men.

For their part, the House managers found in Lewinsky an opportunity to promote the myth of the frivolity of female love. After their initial meeting with her, the prosecutors were careful to characterize Lewinsky as candid and intelligent. After her testimony added little new to the record, she was accused of protecting the man who had betrayed her because she still had a crush on him. It was assumed, of course, that the precision of her testimony had no other explanation -- not self-protection, and certainly not an unwillingness to play into the hands of men with a political agenda that would be detrimental to the future of all women.

In the aftermath of the president's acquittal -- a decision with which I agree -- I had hoped that a censure measure would be taken up by the Senate that would address not only the legal specifics of the case nor the moralism about disgracing his office. Instead a censure should have taken up some more feminist themes -- the president skirting the truth in a sexual harassment case, the disparity in age between him and the subordinate employee with whom he conducted his liaison and his attempt to cover himself by impugning her character. Censure, we're told, is now off the table, and that's a shame.

Still things could be done to help heal the wounds inflicted on the nation's women by the negative representations of them advanced by both sides in this unholy mess. First, the women's caucuses of the House and Senate could each draft statements that address the issues I have laid out in this essay, statements that would censure both sides. Second, the president needs to make one last apology -- to the feminists who stood by him as he sullied their legacy. It is they who came down on the side of the larger truth.