Why Do We Cheerlead the Scandals of Male Infidelity?
Really, you might want to tear yourself away from whatever you're reading about and read this essay on sexuality, privacy, IM relationships, "emotional affairs," the state of cheating and everything else. It asks the question: what is so "primally reassuring in these stories of male infidelity and wronged female virtue"? You know: "These tales of hookers and half-hookers and gold diggers and fame diggers and 'soul mates'-it all presents itself as censure, but the sheer volume of media, the obsessive attention to it, represents a kind of cheering on. 'We really want to believe that powerful men have harems or the equivalent,' as a prominent female West Village writer of 50 put it to me, 'because it's reassuring us that boys will be boys. The alternative is unthinkable.' There is much much more.
If Tiger Woods can't have a harem, then I definitely don't have any hope. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say "corpus of hilarious comments" < "millionaire athlete", when it comes to harem-founding.
The headline alone!
There's a lot of interesting stuff in that article, but I have one pretty big question: It is asserted as fact that "secrecy is a more fundamental component of sexuality for women." Is this is a fact? Based on what evidence?
You mean you don't know?
Calling it 'fact' is troublesome, yes, but I think most of us can agree that women are expected to be much more circumspect about sex than men. (Much less so now in this, The Glorious Age of the Internet, but still.)
Seriously, though, that was my big problem with this piece as well. When it dealt with outside perceptions of (in)fidelity, it was great, but then on the third page it began the inevitable lazy listing into gender essentialism. Here's the biggest question: why does the contention that "different people fuck differently" seem to boggle the reportorial mind?
Ha! Multiphasic, awesome. I knew someone was going to burn me with that. (For all I know, you may be my wife's pseudonym!)
Jolie, I can understand why societal pressures would incline women to be more circumspect about sex than men (at least or especially in the pubic sphere) but it's been my experience that female friends actually want to talk about sexual experiences more than the guys. But maybe I don't have a good control group or something. Lastly, yes: different people fuck differently. And essentialism of any kind is always dangerous.
Dave, you definitely don't have good group control. You had people HANGING OFF YOU when we met.
But you're right actually! Women totally really do talk about sex more than guys and yikes I don't know what I'm talking about because math is hard. I'm a girl.
Jolie: I am opposed to female circumspection.
Beautiful typo in parens. Hats off!
I guess I should've just said that 'pubic sphere' puts this in new light for me.
Dave and jolie, my experience is completely opposite of yours wrt swapping sex stories. I rarely talk sex with my female friends yet all my male friends seem to know intimate details about each others.
> She was also surprised to feel some "admiration" for these women.
The scare quotes actually go around "surprised."
And, more importantly-I've RSVP'd myself plus guest to the Frank Bruni/Gail Simmons thing in DUMBO tonight. Will the Village Voice find it admirable if I invite two different ladies to go with me?
(though there will be no hanky-panky, since I haven't yet figured out how to keep my having sex with women a secret from them)
Now I really hope you're Dave Bry's wife's pseudonym!
I found the one thing more scandalous than taking two ladies.
I took a vegan.
Why do we cheearlead? Because we like our alpha males to "Be Aggressive, Be Be Aggressive. A-G-G,R-E-S-S-I-V-E. Aggressive."
When are you gonna shut the fuck up anyway?
Push him back, push him back — waaaaaayyyyy back!
Kiss me.
unrelated to this post: where is Balk? Who is going to fill us in on the latest studies in Science Magazine?
Take it to the Cathy Horyn post – I'm kicking up a fuss over there. Join me!
1. Cheating scandals in the celebrity realm are largely the fodder for gossip outlets.
2. The audience for most gossip outlets is largely female.
3. Females would rather read about how awful some male celebrity is for infidelity than a female for the same behavior.
4. Gossip outlets continue to publish stories of male celebrity infidelity completing the cycle.
5. Most men in a position of celebrity or political power are assholes.
That was awesome!!! Okay, now explain cheating!
Ugh a hyphen is not an m-dash.
Yeah, that made all kinds of no sense for, like, three reads.
Your bear is scary. I think it's the claws + head tilt.
Was the Nikki Haley thing just reported or did she admit it? Did she ramble on how she found true love after her affair in a super awkward press conference? Did her husband say that it was all his fault that she had an affair because he was supposed to take care of the sex? All the other ladies mentioned really aren't as famous as the cheating dudes. Isn't Larry David more famous than Laurie David? So her screwing the help isn't as newsworthy…
Why is the media reporting it? Because masses are eating it up. Why are the masses eating it up? Because media is force feeding them. It's the vicious cycle of capitalism: nobody does anything because that's what they want to do, they just do what the market dictates.