From Salon:
Don’t let the URL fool you. The headline is: “The women in sex scandals are rarely forgiven”
Here’s the telling graf:
Monica Lewinsky has gotten by but she remains the butt of jokes. Ashley Dupré, one of the women Spitzer cheated with, remains a punch line and struggles to make ends meet. Her dreams of becoming famous are mocked while Spitzer’s ambitions are lauded at least enough for him to believe he has a shot at running for public office. Paula Broadwell has been painted as crazy and clingy while Petraeus — well, he’s a powerful man.
Why is it telling? Because it’s the only paragraph in the whole piece that mentions these women as separate from their roles as illicit sex partners. Everything else is either a summary of the scandals or the history of the male politicians involved. Even writer Roxane Gay can’t get away from the ugly fact that these men are more important than the women.
Bill Clinton is “still one of the most revered political figures of our age” because he was President of the United States. Monica Lewinsky was an intern who gave him oral sex. Who’s more deserving of public attention? It takes a lot to become President, or Governor of a state or the head of a government agency. It doesn’t take much more than saying “Yes” to have an affair.
General Patraeus’ lover Paula Broadwell was in a different situation than the human stress-relievers of the graf; what she did was actually worse, at least for her employers. By sleeping with the subject of her biography, Broadwell raised concerns about her professional behavior. If she had an affair with one of Patraeus’ assistants or even her co-writer, the situation would have been viewed much differently. It’s not sleeping with a Soviet spy, of course, but it’s on the spectrum.
Also, notice the terms “redemption” and “forgiven” in the headlines. Note also that nothing of the sort is addressed in the article. Gay seems to think that because these men haven’t been abandoned on an ice floe they’ve been told, “All is forgiven.” The only reason Eliot Spitzer’s peccadilloes are Page 2 news is because Anthony Weiner’s are on page one. Patraeus has been shunted to positions that are out of the public eye and peripheral to public policy; a big step down from running the CIA. And all of these men have an asterisk in their CVs: caught in a sex scandal. They haven’t been redeemed; they’ve been tagged and released to their natural habitat.
Gay can’t be bothered to find out what Lewinsky is doing these days. Instead, she wants us to be ashamed that a woman who was paraded as the nation’s Head Intern, for well over a year, can still be a punchline when referencing blowjobs. I hadn’t gotten the impression that Broadwell was “crazy and clingy,” but then, I don’t pay a lot of attention to those details. Finally, Ms. Gay, have you considered that prostitution might not be the most successful way to become famous and that one who believes so should be mocked?
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