What would it look like to slut shame a middle-aged, heterosexual man? The Anthony Weiner scandal is giving us a clue.
After all, when women are slut shamed, they aren’t just being punished for having sex. They’re being punished for sexual desires and acts seen as disturbingly un-feminine. And in the seemingly endless stream of vitriol directed at Weiner, it’s not hard to see a made-for-men analog taking shape, a special form of repugnance that stems from the sense that Weiner’s transgressions are just not masculine enough.
But let’s be clear. I’m not talking about the vitriol directed at Weiner by family values folks or Fox News pundits (or anyone really who can say the word “fornication” with no trace of irony).
I’m talking about the invective coming from people I turn to for reasoned thinking on matters of gender and sex. The ones who recognize that, even though marital infidelity sucks, it can’t be a litmus test for public office because then we’d be hard up for candidates. The ones who gave Clinton a pass—critiqued him, perhaps, but eventually sighed and signed the petition that made MoveOn a “thing.” These are people who don’t bat an eye at consensual kink; who favor sex education in schools; who as a rule, I suspect, would love to make it a crime to stand before any legislative assembly and use the term “legitimate rape.”
These people are my people. But they’re confusing me right now. Because under all their scathing condemnation of Weiner, I sense a deeply buried mess of sexist logics.
Consider Salon’s Mary Elizabeth Williams, who writes often and persuasively from an explicitly feminist position.
Intriguingly, Williams has made her peace with former New York governor Eliot Spitzer. Indeed, she’s glad to know he calls himself a feminist. And why not? The term “feminist” is so very amorphous, reasons Williams, it’s hard to say who belongs. Plus which, we’ve just lost Susan Sarandon, so we could use an extra (deep) voice in the chorus right now.
No matter to Williams that Spitzer reportedly got rough with sex workers who don’t engage in rough trade. She sees no clear-cut harm in that. Possibly the only unfeminist thing a man can do to a prostitute, Williams speculates, is prosecute her—not beat her up.
No matter to Williams either that Spitzer reportedly refused to wear condoms. (Indeed, he reportedly refused so firmly with so many women that his long-time Madam was forced to drop him as a client.) Sure, you could look at condoms as a central, life-and-death issue for sex workers, and for unsuspecting spouses. You could even view sexual protection as part and parcel of a sex worker’s human right to health. Then again, like Williams, you could decide it’s a little too frivolous to mention.
Do these things disqualify Spitzer as a feminist? Who knows! Williams muses, but probably not. In the end, she assures us, it’s really the same kind of question as whether you can be a feminist “if you dress your daughter in pink.”
But don’t mention the name Anthony Weiner to Mary Elizabeth Williams. Not unless you’re braced for a non-stop stream of invective. Spitzer is a feminist—right on! But Anthony Weiner? Weiner is a “predatory jerk with a bulge,” a “class-A narcissist” whose actions “suggest an unnervingly escalating level of compulsive behavior.” Because Anthony Weiner . . . Anthony Weiner . . .
Anthony Weiner did what exactly?
Now, let’s remember what we’ve taken off the table. We’re not prudes here; we get that sex is raucous and comes in fifty shades these days. As for marital infidelity—we don’t like it, but we’re mature enough to look away and let the spouses work it out. We do hate when politicians lie, but then again we’re okay with a little lying sometimes (like, say, the quantum of lying equal to Clinton’s denial of “sexual relations,” or the sum of all the little bits of lying Spitzer must have done over the years to protect his paid sex habit).
So what did Weiner do that makes stand-up feminists like Williams—as well as so many of my stand-up feminist friends—nearly apoplectic?
He sent sexy texts to adult women who also sent sexy texts to him.
He had no power over these women. He didn’t work with them; he wasn’t the source of their rent money; he couldn’t have tried to get rough with them physically because he never, you know, actually met them. If any of them wanted to get Weiner out of their lives, all they had to do was block his cell, or unfriend him, or just quit following him on Twitter.
It looks like Weiner did send one explicit photo of himself, the infamous boyshorts bulge, to a woman who had never expressed sexual interest. A gross affront to be sure, with emphasis on gross. But barring new information, it looks like Weiner stopped after one and apologized—which is, take note, pretty much the opposite of escalation. As for the pic in question, it was less pornographic than the average Calvin Klein ad.
It may be the worst we can say about Weiner (once we’ve taken off the table all those things like infidelity and sex-related lying that lefties routinely take off the table when discussing cheating, male politicians) is that Carlos Danger was a totally dorky choice of names—and manifestly unfair to Latinos.
If you’ve been brave enough to read whatever leftover Weiner tweets attorneys have failed to get scrubbed from various internet sites, you’ll know that Carlos Danger is not a creative sexter. He’s certainly no romantic, and his prime ask from a sexting partner appears to be copious amounts of praise for his beloved One-Eyed Carlito.
Also, sometimes? Weiner’s longings sound kind of sad.
Just like all our human longings sometimes do.
It’s curious. Mary Elizabeth Williams is flush with anger over the slut shaming of women who sexted Weiner, but she’s part of the chorus hating on him with abandon for doing the very same lust-addled, cyber things those women did—and for doing them in contexts far less lopsided, power-wise, than the contexts we’ve all apparently forgiven Clinton and Spitzer for doing some actually physical, lust-addled things in.
What’s more, my FB feed is telling me, Williams is far from alone.
So here’s my working theory, my way of making sense of it all. Weiner’s badness wasn’t any more bad than the badness of men we give a pass. The real problem is that Weiner’s badness just wasn’t manly enough.
Let’s face it. Spitzer did bad in such a normative way, with bucketsful of self-entitled confidence and a piquant hint of violence. Lord help us all, but apparently a man like that is particularly easy to forgive, even for feminists.
That’s because Spitzer’s brand of sexy acting out feels familiar to us. It’s routine. Perhaps if Weiner had merely accepted nude pics from women, we’d all have MovedOn by now—because what straight man hasn’t gotten off on looking at sexy images of women?
But those mini-me selfies of Weiner’s? They really stick in the collective craw. Men sending explicit pics of themselves to women may be an everyday occurrence in the world of online affairs, but it’s still shockingly new in the annals of hetero sex, and we haven’t quite figured out what box of human behaviors to put it in. It makes us think of flashing. Yet it’s certainly nothing like flashing, where a perp controls the place and time and length of the exposure.
Just the opposite: it’s a remarkably vulnerable act.
Indeed, it tends to make Weiner look weak . . . sexually eager . . . not particularly manly at all.
And deep down, I think, that’s really what’s driving our special repugnance for Weiner, what leads us to suspect something ultra-creepy in his deeds—even if, objectively speaking, his deeds were far less dismissive of women’s lives and bodies than the deeds of men we routinely forgive.
In any event, I floated this theory via Facebook, and the responses were utterly revealing.
One smart, tenured professor of English—a woman who teaches Cultural Studies—derided Weiner as laughable and sexually clueless, since no woman could ever be turned on by photos of a hard, substantial cock. “I don’t know of any woman anywhere who wouldn’t laugh out loud at a dick pic,” she wrote. “There’s nothing erotic about them. Weiner’s problem isn’t that he seems immoral; it’s that he looks ridiculous.”
Another woman, a highly educated stay-at-home mom with deep, feminist convictions, suggested that showing a woman your penis is pretty much always harassment, even if the woman (actually, truly) asked for them. Now, on the face of it that’s an old-school, anti-porn kind of take. I get it. But tellingly enough, this woman didn’t cast Weiner as macho aggressor. She just wailed on his lack of manliness, calling him “juvenile,” “lame,” “insecure.” And she seems to agree with the professor that he’s sexually clueless:
“It’s something I would expect a junior high schooler to do . . . to be insecure enough to want/need approval and to think that’s the kind of thing that’s sexy.”
If a woman politician had done this, maybe we’d forgive her. Maybe we’d be up in arms at the attempts to shame her repeatedly over the raw evidence of her sexuality, her willingness to show off parts of her body and write dirty things for men who wanted to see and read. (Though sadly I suspect we’d be particularly quick to forgive her if she wasn’t enjoying it so much as attempting to please a man like Spitzer—a man who isn’t “ridiculous,” “juvenile,” “lame,” “insecure” and sexually clueless. . . in brief, the kind of man we like in political life.)
But if a heterosexual man texts and talks dirty and gets off on showing his body to partners who claim it actually turns them on? Well, ugh.
That man is clearly a slut.
27 responses
Thank you for a thoughtful look at a topic that rendered most writers/pundits brain dead. It seems the response to a “revelation†like this has less to do with the actual person (or people) involved and more with the impressions we’re encouraged to carry of them (i.e. their brand). Had someone leaked Brad Pitt sexts, the discussions on MSNBC would be entirely different. But, then again, Brad Pitt is not sold to the public as a schmendrik.
I think Weiner’s first scandal was about marital infidelity and lying. This one is about being caught making the same mistake twice. To screw up in such a public manner, while in the midst of re-subjecting himself to intense scrutiny so that he might convince millions of skeptical people that they can trust him to make good decisions, makes him look like a fool. I think what he’s really being shamed for is having so little self-control or self-awareness.
Not all of Weiner’s pics were sent to people who were happy to receive them. That’s what takes this into a different place than slut-shaming for me and moves it into the realm of flashing. Comparing him to Spitzer doesn’t make much sense to me in part because I find both of them to be pretty horrible when it comes to their treatment. I mean, if the best thing you can say in defense of one is that the other is worse, you’re not really doing the conversation any favors. Even if, by Galtz’s calculations, Weiner is somehow not quite as sleazy toward women as Spitzer, neither is a prize. “Better than Spitzer” is a pretty low bar to clear.
This scandal clearly shows the left’s tolerance to their ‘own’.
While he is indeed getting some passing chastisement and attention by liberal left, it is nowhere close to what we’d see if he had been a republican. The hand-wringing is clear as to whether or not he should be looked at just another mischievous overly horny guy.
“Also, sometimes? Weiner’s longings sound kind of sad.
Just like all our human longings sometimes do.”
Pretty much sums it up.
Slut shaming?
How about cheating on your pregnant wife-shaming? Liar-shaming? The man repeatedly lied about his guilt, dragged his wife through a completely unnecessary cover-up, pretended that he got hacked and even spent a lot of donor money on a private investigator to try and locate the ‘hacker’.
Then he went and did it again, apparently multiple times after his wife had just given birth to their child.
It’s not slut shaming. It’s shameless asshole-shaming.
I’m a little tired of reading these confident pronouncements that women don’t like dick pics. Speak for yourself. The male body is beautiful, and never more so than when naked and aroused. I know I can’t be the only woman that thinks this. Yet I keep seeing writers assert that professional, successful women all scoff at the phallus-as-instagram. Speak for yourself, penis haters.
Bravo! Great article! Something that I think should be noted is that Weiner’s wife actively spoke up and forgave him and while people pass judgement on how wronged she is, only she can know how this really feels for her. Married, hetero couples may share the kink, forgive the kink, not care about the kink, and so on. And really, this is just a kink! I did not see anywhere that he physically cheated on his wife (and some hetero couples may be open!). Like the author indicates it is just a more interactive way of looking at porn. Yes maybe it became more obsessive than what he wanted but he is so open about putting a stop to it and putting it behind him. This is the first time I, as a hetero feminist woman, have been watching more in admiration than despair over the dynamic between this man and his wife, for all the reasons this author just articulated.
I hate to harp on this point but this?
“It looks like Weiner did send one explicit photo of himself, the infamous boyshorts bulge, to a woman who had never expressed sexual interest. A gross affront to be sure, with emphasis on gross. But barring new information, it looks like Weiner stopped after one and apologized—which is, take note, pretty much the opposite of escalation. As for the pic in question, it was less pornographic than the average Calvin Klein ad.”
This isn’t kink. Kink involves consensual partners, and if he sent one pic to a person who didn’t ask for it first, then you can bet he did it to others. That the others (apparently) didn’t mind is irrelevant.
Could it be that Anthony Weiner is the target of such vitriol because, well, he is, well, a Weiner, or weener, as the case may be. I am quite serious. Could it be that Spitzer apologists are willing to cut him slack because they choose to judge his personal transgressions in the context of his public persona. I know he was remakably intelligent for a politician, but he made his name as an aggressive federal prosecutor who took down the mob and took on wall street. There is an unmistakable machismo to Spitzer’s political persona. Impressed as we may be with his oratory, his directness, his obvious intelligence, my impression of Spitzer as a public figure will always be influenced by his reputation as the fearless prosecutor of he worst of the worst – as a bona fide bad ass. Could it be that some are willing to accept Spitzer’s behavior because it was consistent with the macho qualities they admire in Spitzer-fearless, aggressive, afraid of nothing and no one (the utlimate dom in nerd’s clothing?) Whereas Weiner is the anti-Spitzer; he never took down a mobster or faced down a Wall Street Lawyer. Most of us outside of New York didn’t even know who he was. Maybe its was not the nature of the scandalous behavior that was not manly enough, but the persona of the man. Spitzer, notwithstanding his fall from grace, still exudes power. And powerful people frequently get a pass, especially when they are on our side, are OUR bad ass. Anthony Weiner is, well Anthony Weiner, a man who is probably hearing the same jokes about his name that he endured as a kid. The powerful and aggressive among us will always be admired, and forgiven by our admirers when we transgress. (Except for the powerful and agggresive women, of course. Crazy bitches.)
Perhaps, it is the only PC thing that outrage addicts can latch on to without backlash. It most certainly is a sign that while women will defend a woman for being a sexual creature, we still have issues with men being sexual creatures. It buys into all the old stereotypes, that women are not “visual” creatures, and only men are. Think about the fact some of those feminists you quoted making fun of him buy into the preconceived notion that only the female form is a beautiful, the male ugly and laughable – this standard set by a patriarchal society that in and of itself set those ideas into our collective narrative by centuries of art and fashion. It closes the door on even considering a female could enjoy looking at a semi-clad man. Really? Don’t speak for me, sisters… while Anthony is not my cup of tea, there are plenty of men I would enjoy seeing that way.
We are still trapped in some archaic web that refuses to free us all – we are all just naked animals with a very sexual nature. This peeping and shaming, this judging and obsession with one another’s bedrooms and “privates” is what really is juvenile. In a truly equal and adult society, his story wouldn’t have had a market; would have gone nowhere.
His VOTING record would.
You hit it out of the park on this one, Roz. Brava!
I love this take on the whole overblown brouhaha. I feel very impatient with the storm and the fury surrounding a few extra-marital sexts. If his wife is over it, why should we care? Thank you, Roz Galtz, for a smart well-written thought-provoking piece.
Interesting analysis of the Weiner / Spitzer divide, but my lingering question:
Is it too much to ask for an elected official who doesn’t lie to us, regardless of whether they’re discussing personal issues or public ones? Is honesty now beyond us?
I’d vote for neither.
What he did is ridiculous because HE IS MARRIED and HE LIED. I always find it ridiculous when people lie and they (or worst others) try to justify bad behavior. What he did was selfish and disrepectful, that is why the majority of people find his behavior absurd.
“marital infidelity sucks” is an attitude that exists only because of Patriarchy. Today it’s become an attitude that stereotypically Women care about more then men, but to me that happened because of a distraction in priority as Feminism rose to power.
Monogamy was not enforced gender neutrally for most of human history, especially in the West. Where men where not allowed allowed to but expected to get sex on the side elsewhere, and often have more then 1 wife. While a Women sleeping with anyone but her husband, or losing her Virginity before having one was an unpardonable Sin.
This happened because it was necessity of an inheritance system that considered it the Male line that mattered, even though Biology gives men far less certainty if they even are the father back before DNA testing was possible.
The problem was, as society grew to acknowledge this was an unfair double standard, the reaction was to put the same restrictions on men. While what we should have done is liberated women. Monogamy is unhealthy and destructive because it encourages the Sin of Envy.
Cyberdactyl, you may be right about the grief served up by the left and the right press to transgressors of opposing politics, but I think if you look, Repubs who do this kind of thing are almost always re-elected, and Dems are usually not.
Thank you for writing so eloquently what I have been feeling about this situation. YOU spoke truth. I have the highest praise for your writing. I look forward to reading more from you. I was laughing and cheering as I read and insisted on reading it to my husband who enjoyed it as much! We are FANS and would follow you on twitter lol(if we were twitter types) Ultimately, tho I am weary of wieners and would rather read about the bees….wish I could think of a way to create a sex scandal for them, apparently sex sells.
“It’s something I would expect a junior high schooler to do . . . to be insecure enough to want/need approval and to think that’s the kind of thing that’s sexy.â€
Which is to say that Weiner himself isn’t sexy? Sexy as Spitzer and Clinton?
Spitzer was a law enforcement offical fighting crime and knowingly broke the law (prostitution), which to me is hypocritical. It leads me to believe that he is more interested in a career of attaining power more than the upholding of laws. Is he above the law? If people give him a pass (not me) maybe it is because he was “going rouge”, and that is somehow attractive, but not because his transgression was more “manly”. As for Weiner, he was sold to the public as a family man, clean cut, boy wonder, yadda yadda yadda, and presented himself that way. I doubt there is any infomercial that is bragging about him having an open marriage. He got caught the first time,lied about what happened, and promised to seek help. Then once “cured”, began to run for Mayor of N.Y.C., again as the “family man”, etc… Then came the latest, he lied (again), dragged his wife into it, etc… No Shame, just going for Power, with a wife that must want that power and $ too, as she is bearing all the media attention. Shame? What is that! Jeez, if I have to explain, then it is useless. So Weiner is worse than ‘ol Spitzer. It is obvious. That is why he is not getting a pass…he is a total liar, not less “manly”. The idea presented in your essay is entertaining in some ways, but you are trying to mix in too much cultural theory. Both guy should not be in public office, for different reasons, but also for the same reason…
One thing missed …
Spitzer broke the law.
Maybe it’s a law we don’t like,
but breaking the law is far worse than
sending ridiculous TwitDickPics around…
This is a thought-provoking read. I like that it forced me to consider my position. Ultimately, I find it complexly amazing that feminism brought our culture to a place where a man who imposes his sexuality on women could be shamed, and it’s now also feminism that’s providing him with potential cover. And probably, feminism was right both times.
I can’t help but think that the real meaning of the piece is that if Weiner had been a woman, her life would be ruined (she’d be slut shamed into irrelevance) and while Weiner hasn’t exactly been slut shamed he is offering a kind of disturbing preview of what we can expect when, inevitably, someday a woman in a position of power is revealed to be a sexually expressive person.
It occurs to me though that the real line that’s been drawn here is simply between people who have, or would, send blushworthy pics to their lovers and would-bes, and those who would not. People who do or would communicate their affections and lusts this way are surely more likely to empathize with Weiner, while those who find it ‘icky’ or ‘inappropriate’ are judging him based on those feelings.
I’m not sure I’ve been shaming Wiener exactly, but I have pretty much dismissed him as a candidate (what kind of mayor spews his energies into that sort of immature distraction?).
Last night’s lead news story on NY1 had to do with moments preceding a mayoral debate hosted by AARP where Wiener stood face to face with a Republican candidate, poked him in the chest, accused him of anger issues and called him “grandpa”. My immediate reaction surprised me once I read this article — more than mere amusement, and rather visceral, I found myself cheering Wiener for showing some aggresiveness, toughness, and devil-may-care.
It makes me wonder if your argument could go even one step further — Not just that we give the Clintons and Spitzers a pass because we may admire so many of their acheivements that have been cloaked in the garb of power and masculinity, but maybe also because some of us insert ourselves into an imagined power dynamic with these guys before completely articulating our response to them. I mean, everyone knows it’s a lot safer to pick a fight with a weakling — maybe lots of people simply lack the guts to fully call out presidents and governors with the same strength of conviction that they might feel if ranting at a “clueless”, “insecure”, yet liberal, boy-man.
He didn’t just cheat on his wife. He bought a prostitute. You can’t help falling in love with someone, but you have to make a conscious choice to treat pussy like a commodity product.
Yes, I went there.
And I didn’t give Bill Clinton a pass. I’ve been a cheater in my life and every single time it was a conscious choice. I have never in almost 40 years *accidentally* impaled myself on a guy. Every single time, it was something I chose to do. And to do it I had to, at minimum, break a promise, if not actually lie as well.
This is why some of us are concerned about relationship cheaters becoming politicians. When you have a significant other they are supposed to be one of the most important people in the world to you. If a politician will lie to his or her own romantic partner, supposedly one of the most important people in the world to them, they’ll lie to us too.
Are you okay with that?
This isn’t about sex. You wish it were.
I do not agree to begin with, wiht this idea that Infidelity is the worst betrayal you cna commit in a relationship.
Everyone is a willing participant in Prostitution.
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/5/29/slut-shaming-study.html
Any update on your opinion after latest Weiner news?
Why’d he take his Twitter account down? Now he can text all he likes.
The public became aware of this when Weiner sent an unsolicited dick pic in response to a college student who asked him advice about her major.
There was no consent. Nothing mutual. No indication that she might be at all interested in his dick pic.
That’s a form of sexual assault, yet your concern was whether or not he was being slut shamed.
Get back to me when the biggest problem women face is being called a name when they commit a criminal act.
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