Infidelity, sex work and “She is a good and honest person, the sweetest and most caring woman one could ever hope to meet.”
Published by Lisa Kansas August 9th, 2008 in He stuck his WHAT in her WHERE!?, Relationships, Sex, SoapboxI hate infidelity.
My hatred does come in degrees. For instance, if your marriage is essentially over and you both know it, then my hatred is practically nonexistent. Moving up on the scale, if your marriage is essentially over but you’re the only one who “knows” it and as far as your spouse knows you are both slaving away like fiends to save it when in actuality you are porking someone else while waiting for some more opportune time to bail, I start to feel some genuine negativity towards you. Progressing on, if you have a plan to end your marriage someday (say, when the kids are grown or you’re just waiting for a terminal spouse to die) and in the meantime you feel like you’re owed some fun and games in the name of whatever your supposedly self-sacrificing reason for delay is, I call bullshit. You’re not owed anything, my friend. If you need the strange pussy or cock THAT bad, get a divorce. Nobody has to get married–if the desire to fuck more than one person is that necessary to your happiness, stay single. It’s that easy. At the farthest end of the scale is, of course, the person who does not plan on divorcing at all, ever, and (when found out) sits and cries of their own “weakness” and “stupidity” and blah, blah, blah. Yep. That, I absolutely hate.
To clarify my stance from a personal standpoint, to the best of my knowledge neither of my previous spouses ever cheated on me (and needless to say given the tone of this post, I didn’t cheat on either of them). This is not the bitter voice of a woman scorned speaking–I can’t say I’ve had no experience with anything like infidelity, as I did once have a chronically cheating boyfriend–but it isn’t something I’ve ever had to deal with in the context of marriage.
What brings this blog post on is two other blog posts I’ve read in the past week. The first was on Feministe, about and by a self-described sex worker blogging there called “Lessons from the Magic Carpet.” I’ve read other articles by sex workers that touch on feminism and this one was fairly typical of the genre. What always interests me, though, is the one aspect of sex work that these folks absolutely never touch on, and that’s the fact that they know full well that a lot (I suspect the majority) of their customers are married. If you are a stripper, and that’s all that you do–no lap dancing or prostitution on the side–or if you act in pornographic movies or pose for pornographic pictures, that genuinely doesn’t matter. Looking at persons not your spouse is not now and never has been infidelity. However, touching them sexually or having them touch you sexually most certainly is. It is immoral to do so with someone who you know is married. I believe that we all know this. Now, you the sex worker are not the gatekeeper of anyone else’s morality–that they are committing infidelity at all is not YOUR responsibility–however, once you become the person enabling them to do so, you are now condoning and approving infidelity as a way of life. And when sex workers start talking about how it’s really very feminist of them to be taking money from married men to cheat on their wives–talk about enabling the patriarchy far more so than that paying customer ever has alone. He wouldn’t be able to be commoditizing both you AND his wife without your eager cooperation. They are certainly aware that it is cheating, and they wouldn’t themselves tolerate that behavior in a man with whom they were having a committed relationship…and yet, this utter silence on their own complete immorality in making it so available and their defense of its feminism.
The second blog post was about John Edwards–of course I’ve heard the Edwards’ “love child” gossip, but honestly hadn’t been paying it much attention–I was never an Edwards follower and he’s not my state’s Senator so he’s rarely been at the forefront of my thoughts at any given time. However, it does turn out that at the minimum, he had an affair in the recent past (whether or not the child the woman involved recently produced is his appears to still be up in the air). I perused the article, had my usual thoughts in that situation of Fucking loser and the corollary for this specific one of Thank God he didn’t get the Democratic presidential nomination (not that there was ever a real chance he was going to) and started to move on, til a related article caught my eye: Mistress’ Family Challenges Edwards to Take DNA Test. And under the title, in bold: “Sister of Other Woman in Edwards Affair: ‘Stop Bad-Mouthing My Sister’
Excuse me?
Upon further reading, I gathered that this broad’s objection is that her sainted sister is being painted as some kind of ho who has doubtless fucked so many men that the father of her child could be ANYBODY, not necessarily Edwards–I must agree, that’s completely wrong–frankly, there’s nothing wrong with fucking as many men as you like (with just one caveat). This is much like the character shredding of rape victims on the stand–if you have sex with ONE man that must mean you’ll willingly have sex with ANY! Such bullshit. However, the rant unfortunately continues:
“She is a good and honest person, the sweetest and most caring woman one could ever hope to meet,” the sister said. “Do you think it’s easy for us to just sit back and let everyone rip her to shreds and not defend her honor?”
Excuse me. What honor? This woman had a blatant affair with a married man, whom she obviously knew was married, for at least a year. She’s a “good and honest” person? What on earth is your definition of good or honest? “Sweet and caring?” What, towards the married man she was regularly fucking? Or when she decided to start talking about it, unless she was absolutely dumb as a stump knowing that his terminally ill wife was eventually going to find out?
Frankly, I’m completely sick of so-called feminists maintaining a tomblike silence on the females who engage in this behavior and the damage it does all those female spouses. So I’m speaking up. Until a lot of us start to do so, it’ll continue without a hiccup on its merry way. Of course, maybe I’m the only one who cares if it does or not anyway.
Blaming sex workers and girlfriends for enabling infidelity from married men! This is a great day for feminism!
I suppose it’s true, if women just kept their legs crossed except for their husbands, there would be no one around for men to have sex with but their wives. Somehow that line of reasoning makes me feel disgusting inside.
Can we ever blame the married couple themselves? I mean really, agreeing to be monogamous is about as stupid of a relationship idea as not blaming husbands for breaking their vows.
It would be a great day for feminism. Would you like to explain exactly how sex workers and girlfriends in these situations aren’t enabling infidelity from married men? Or are you agreeing with me?
Oh no, you narrow my meaning far too much with “women keeping their legs crossed except for their husbands.” If everyone regardless of gender kept their legs crossed for nobody at all except other people’s spouses, then THAT would be awesome. Does that line of reasoning make you feel disgusted inside?
Can we ever blame the married COUPLES? Not hardly, unless both of them are engaging in infidelity, then of course we can. If only one of them is, we can and should (and do, I’ve noticed) blame the one so engaging, and for even more than we blame their enabler sex worker or girlfriend/boyfriend–not only are they behaving immorally in general, they are also specifically deeply wounding someone they purportedly love more than most other people on earth.
I have no problem with people who don’t agree to be monogamous, as long as they are in a relationship where they’ve both agreed to that in advance. I agree that it’s stupid for anyone who thinks mongamy is stupid to agree to it ever, under any circumstances.
“Would you like to explain exactly how sex workers and girlfriends in these situations aren’t enabling infidelity from married men? ”
Because the lives of sex workers and girlfriends don’t revolve around the bullshit vows of married couples. She is minding her business, living her own life which occasionally (almost always?) involves taking men’s money to pay the rent - what business is it of hers if he’s married? How is it her problem if he can’t keep his vows? Why should she give two shits about another couple’s relationship? And what a way to alienate your market if you avoided dealing with husbands? Or, because she didn’t take any vow of monogamy, she’s just sleeping around for the fun of it, which is absolutely her right because she didn’t promise something she can’t deliver on or extract a similar promise from another person. They are not sitting around contacting married men and convincing them to screw them.
I can’t be the only person who has been around more cheaters than non-cheaters. I can’t really be sympathetic to people in a relationship who continue to think that monogamy is the default, that their relationship will be different from every other relationship.
Can I ask why you’re conflating the girlfriend with sex workers here? Because as far as Edwards goes, who sex workers sleep with is not even slightly a related issue. He (as far as we know) did not purchase sex; he had an extramarital relationship. Why are the hookers even in this article? *genuine confusion here* That they are in this article puts the emphasis firmly on men who cheat and the women who enable that, so I’m not surprised the above commenter thought you weren’t so bothered by men who sleep with married women.
What always interests me, though, is the one aspect of sex work that these folks absolutely never touch on, and that’s the fact that they know full well that a lot (I suspect the majority) of their customers are married.
Then you don’t read a lot of writing by sex workers. A really quick tootle around turned up this piece, and I know I’ve read others on the subject in the past. ‘absolutely never touch on’=/=’I haven’t read it yet’.
Thene, I probably haven’t read enough writing by sex workers–the majority of the writing I’ve read by them is in the context of feminism, and in that context they do not bring it up. However, the blog post you linked to STILL does not, ever, discuss that sex workers own immorality–only that of her customers. It’s rather like a person who owns a store selling goods that they know perfectly well have been stolen–that’s immoral, because they’re knowingly enabling someone else’s theft. Don’t you find it a really unfortunate thing that this woman acknowledges that infidelity is really wrong but is clearly planning on helping as many more men as possible commit it?
The reason sex workers are in here is honestly just because I read the blog post and the article fairly close together and they stuck together in my mind as examples of how we (feminists) as a group seem to completely excuse people who enable infidelity because the people who so often do so are women. And I hate infidelity, as I’ve said.
Rachel–so basically you think vows of monogamy are bullshit and so don’t need to be taken seriously by anybody. That means we don’t have anything to discuss, really. If you don’t think that someone cheating is immoral, then no argument of mine based upon the central pretext that it is immoral is going to make any sense to you. My blog post is really more for people that acknowledge that infidelity is immoral; it doesn’t really have anything to say to anyone who does not.
Last time I checked, mistresses aren’t the ones on the altar with their lovers’ wives.
Also, give credit where credit’s due: from what I can tell, in North America it’s the the institution of marriage that damages female spouses, not infidelity.
1) Monogamy =/= Marriage. Both are problematic, but in different ways and for different reasons.
2) Your argument eerily parallels evangelical Christians’ arguments that Internet porn can breakup marriage, and people should therefore condemn porn.
3) Immorality is immoral, but why, exactly, is the mistress the immoral one? Why is she obligated to sacrifice her happiness for someone who she never even met? Isn’t this just slut-shaming?
Like it or not, marriage is still a profoundly misogynist institution. Consequently, supporting it is ultimately supporting an anti-feminist objectives — and this is further exacerbated when your support is “slut-shaming” with an empowerful rhetorical veneer.
I don’t think anyone is “slut-shaming” here, but, to continually equate sex work with feminism is getting old. True, the sex worker (male or female) shouldn’t have to care if the person is married or not, if the wife is a tireless progressive advocate battling a terminal disease, or if there are young children involved that can find their lives destroyed by a cheating daddy (or mommy), but do we have to call it feminist? I don’t find sleeping with married men especially feminist; you are an object to him, and you’re only hurting the woman at home. This doesn’t mean you have to keep your “legs shut”, but if you’re a sex worker, you pretty much know you are sleeping with married men. This is fine, thats the profession you have chosen, but to call it feminist is like calling Britney Spears a feminist icon. You are working a job decided by the patriarchy where you are rewarded for your body and ability to please, if you can take some money from these men thats fine, but just stop calling it feminist. I don’t think hurting other women can ever be called feminist, it actually seems to me to be the opposite.
And if you don’t believe in monogamy, good for you, but can we at least have some respect for people who do? It seems decidedly unfeminist to dismiss another woman’s idea of her relationship, because you believe in something else.
It’s true that mistresses are not guilty of harming someone they’ve professed to love. However, they are guilty of harming someone in a way that they could have quite easily avoided and simply didn’t feel like bothering to do so, and the majority of them no doubt expect that should they marry, their husbands should be faithful to them, therefore also making them guilty of immorality and hypocrisy.
If you think that married people, regardless of gender, are not damaged by the infidelity of a spouse, you are surprisingly poorly informed. If you’d like to be better informed, here’s some reading for you:
http://psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-19930501-000028.html
http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=main.doiLanding&uid=2005-12090-014
1. There are marriages where monogamy is not part of the deal, agreed to in advance by both spouses, and in those situations there is no infidelity. I am of course speaking only about spouses who have both agreed to be faithful.
2. My argument is very different from objecting to porn because someone thinks it might lead to infidelity. Having sex with someone who is married IS infidelity; there is no guesswork involved.
3. The mistress is not the immoral one; both she and the husband are the immoral ones. He is worse than her, as I’ve said, because he is also specifically hurting someone he purportedly loves. If someone’s “happiness” requires that she have sex with someone who is married, then she has serious internal mental problems, that her happiness can ONLY come at someone else’s expense–you don’t and can’t know if a particular person will be the one who makes you happy til you get really emotionally intimate with them, and it’s easy as pie to prevent that happening with someone who you know is already married. There is no way to “accidentally” fall in love with someone. Now, if by her “happiness” you’re referring to her “horniness,” am I supposed to buy that she just HAS to fuck this one particular married guy or she can’t be happy..? Again, that mindset points to serious internal mental problems. There are millions of unmarried guys to fuck. Seriously. And I have absolutely no problem shaming women like that. Zero.
I don’t particularly support the legal institution of marriage. However, I do support keeping one’s word and trust to another person, and I do support refraining from harming others when it’s entirely avoidable and one is only doing so because it’s convenient–I believe that violating the first situation and engaging in the second are completely immoral behaviors. Again, I have no problem with “slut-shaming” if we are defining “slut” as either a person who has vowed fidelity fucking someone else anyway or someone who is fucking someone that they know has vowed fidelity to someone else.
Sabrina:
I agree — which is why I focused on her comments as they directly pertain to the Edwards situation, where sex work isn’t an issue. (As far as I know.)
With that caveat in mind, isn’t condemning other women for their sexual practices — particularly when those practices subvert a fundamentally misogynist institution — the very definition of slut-shaming? If not, what is?
Sabrina:
Strawman. Condemning slut-shaming =/= condoning cheating.
I get the impression most feminists don’t really care about the Other woman…well, one way or the other. Again, let’s put credit where credit’s due: Edwards. He was the one who married Elizabeth, he was the one who chose to cheat, he was the one we should be focusing on.
Sabrina:
No, he’s hurting the woman at home. Like it or not, if the Other woman says no, he’s just going to find someone else. Fundamentally, the problem is his internalized Western masculinity, not the existence of the Other woman.
Sabrina:
Then isn’t it impossible to be feminist, is it?
Sabrina:
Not when you’re defining “respect” as “publicly vilifying Others for refusing to adhere to your moral standards.”
I respect marriage. One of my best friends is getting married next weekend, and I’m respecting her beliefs by attending the ceremony, helping her with last minute details, and — most importantly — by couching my criticisms of marriage in funny, self-depricating terms. (E.g., “$150 a head for 500 people? I had no idea. I guess if I ever do get engaged, I’ll have no choice but to elope. w00t $350,000 school debt! Who knew med school loans could actually be helpful? For something aside from med school, that is.”)
However, there’s a difference between respect for other people’s marriages and holding singletons accountable to the institution against their will. Slut-shaming Edwards’ lover is the latter.
Further, let’s try to see the situation from the Other woman’s POV. A fundamentally compassionate woman — particularly one in love — could easily trick herself into believing that concealing the relationship to support a stressed-out husband might actually be good for both the dying wife and the young children. After all, haven’t good and compassionate women been known to believe far nuttier things about their lovers in fundamentally less dire situations?
Okay, as near as I can tell, the only thing immoral about infidelity is the lying/breaking promises part. The “other woman/ other man” made no promises about marriage. Assuming I was still single, and I met a guy and we started to have a physical relationship, and I later found out he was married, I haven’t done anything wrong. I never promised anyone to stay single. If I find out that person was married, I still haven’t done anything wrong- I don’t know what their marriage vows are- if it’s an open marriage or not. Personally, I don’t think I’d do it. But, other’s people vows are not my own. I have no moral obligation to respect other people’s promises.
I agree that if you later found out he was married, you didn’t do anything wrong up to that point. However, I disagree that you have no moral obligation to avoid harming others. If you see someone drop money and you find it, do you think also you have no moral obligation to return it? If you were a shopkeeper and you received goods that you knew were stolen, would you also have no moral obligation to return them or would it be “not your responsibility”–after all, you didn’t do the stealing in the first place? Aiding and exacerbating someone else’s loss, theft or infidelity is quite immoral. Unless of course your world philosophy is “every person for him or herself,” in which case, again, my blog post wouldn’t have anything to say to you–a null argument.
Marriage is a contract, with certain default rules. One of those rules is that you don’t sleep with anyone else, but that is subject to change by mutual agreement. According to my wife, I’m allowed to have an affair, with some restrictions. I’ve known other people with the same privilege, although none of us that I know of have taken advantage of it.
It isn’t up to the mistress (or the single man sleeping with a married woman) to verify the details of the marriage agreement, or even to worry about them. It isn’t a saintly thing to do, but it doesn’t quite reach the point of being unethical.
I believe that the commitments we make with one another are the glue that bind us. We make commitments every day — to finish a project at work, to meet a friend for lunch, to feed the neighbor’s cats, to be honest with our partners… When we fail to honor our commitments, however small, we chip away at that glue. When we aid others in failing to honor their commitments, we contribute to the same destruction of community, of trust, of help. Some commitments are big, public ones. Some are little, quiet ones. But they are commitments just the same. If we do not all show respect for the commitments being made around us, then we devalue our community and the people within it.
Sevesteen: “Marriage is a contract, with certain default rules. One of those rules is that you don’t sleep with anyone else, but that is subject to change by mutual agreement. According to my wife, I’m allowed to have an affair, with some restrictions. I’ve known other people with the same privilege, although none of us that I know of have taken advantage of it.”
I have no problem with any of that; I don’t see why anybody would.
“It isn’t up to the mistress (or the single man sleeping with a married woman) to verify the details of the marriage agreement, or even to worry about them. It isn’t a saintly thing to do, but it doesn’t quite reach the point of being unethical.”
I agree that no one has a responsibility to verify the details, but I do believe that there’s a responsibility to ask the person you are getting involved with what their marital status is, and to refrain from getting involved if they are married and it is not an open marriage of any description. However, that’s my moral belief; if someone else doesn’t hold it, then there’s nothing more I can say to them on the subject.
Anne: At least I’m not the only person who thinks that it’s immoral to help people violate their word to others. Thanks.
(sigh) though I must say, this pervasive attitude amongst people I would normally be in agreement with in terms of what’s “moral” and what isn’t is going a long way to explain to me a lot of things I’ve had trouble understanding about the state of the world today.
Frankly, if I had a blog I’d post it there. But I’m online so infrequently — and I’ve been seeing feminists ignoring Marriage Privilege that needs to be checked as much as Straight or White Privilege — that I feel it’s important to address this topic in depth, even if it’s a bit longer than most comments.
So? We do this every day. By spending $1.50 on coffee instead of $3.50 free trade blends, we are guilty of harming someone in a way that we could have quite easily avoided and simply didn’t feel like bothering to do so. Same is true for adding milk to the coffee instead of soy (in terms of animal pain and suffering), or even foregoing the coffee entirely and giving the money directly to UNICEF.
The question is why is your rage in this situation so much worse than in the thousands of other daily situations which have a demonstrably worse impact on anonymous other people — and which involve far less personal sacrifice? I suspect it’s because morality fundamentally isn’t about logic: it’s about who’s Us and who’s Them. Virtually everyone, feminists included, usually experience a knee-jerk, reactionary dislike to anyone whose status threatens a core component of their identity. Further, this knee-jerk dislike morphs into intense rage when a person’s mere existence strongly suggests one or more key components of a person’s identity fundamentally irreconcilable.
Further, I question whether the Other woman really could have “easily avoided” the situation. Unrequited love is a special circle of Hell. (One which produces atrocious poetry that its inmates should be forced to read for all eternity.)
Lisa:
http://www.amazon.com/Choosing-Unsafe-Sex-AIDS-Risk-Disadvantaged/dp/0812215532/ref=ed_oe_p
Yes, there are differences between disadvantaged minority women in inner-city settings and privileged white politicans’ wives and girlfriends. But watch what happens when you assign it to a class of rich white Ivy Leaguers with trust funds larger than the GDPs of some developing nations. In America, sexual hypocrisy isn’t about immorality so much as it is about the desperate need for self-esteem in a misogynist world.
Lisa:
Strawfeminist. Pointing out that your argument conflates the harm done by marriage with the harm done by divorce with the harm done by infidelity =/= claiming infidelity is harmless.
Second, I’m in grad school for Epidemiology & Biostatistics. There are a number of reasons why the vast majority of epidemiologists and biostatisticians think psychology is a methodological wasteland, and your links beautifully illustrate, well, all of them. If you want me to believe that infidelity is harmful per se, I’m going to have to see studies without severe design flaws.
Lisa:
My point is that your argument rests on assumptions that have only been true in a) the West and b) only true in the West for the past two or three hundred years. (I was also thinking about how differently Senegalese women describe what we would call “infidelity,” but I don’t think I directly alluded to that in my post. A lot of the women I met were irritated with the amount of money their husbands spent on gifts for girlfriends, but were quite happy when he actually got married: it increases her status and provides more hands to help around the house.)
Lisa:
…Except that’s not the argument I’m referring to. I’m referring to the arguments that porn is bad for the marriage in and of itself: http://noblevine.wordpress.com/2008/08/02/r-u-born-again-or-porn-again/
And like your intense reaction to the Other woman, I suspect their reaction to porn is because the mere existence — or perhaps persistence — of porn in their communities suggests that the body cannot be transcended.
Lisa:
Isn’t monogamy a zero-sum game? In zero-sum games, isn’t it true that if one person wins, another person loses — particularly in developed nations where a disproportionate percentage of men die before the age of 30? If Elizabeth wins, the Other woman’s unhappy, no? Why should the women who are able to marry a certain man first be entitled to happiness? Isn’t that just supporting the Patriarchy’s obsession with forcing young women to become economically dependent on men? After all, if morality encourages the “whoever’s there first wins!” philosophy, then women who spent their twenties and thirties becoming economically independent are effectively forced into a stereotypical life of spinster solitude.
Lisa:
Is it a serious internal mental problem if anywhere between one-sixth and one-half of the population is in the same boat? (http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/national/2008/03/27/how-common-are-cheating-spouses.html) If such a large proportion of people’s happiness requires violating an arbitrary social bond, doesn’t that really suggest that there’s something fundamentally wrong with the arbitrary social bond, not with the individuals?
I don’t know many women who’ve been involved with affairs with married men, but the few I’ve known don’t match this description at all. For the ones I’ve known, happiness doesn’t depend on having sex with just any old guy who’s married: it depends on having a relationship with a specific man who they’re intensely attracted to — and usually love. Take a step back and re-read what you wrote. Sometimes armchair psychoanalyses of unknown people says far more about the analyst than about the analysand — particularly when its done with such a categorical and normative tone.
Lisa:
…And the Western Romantic Love Myth pops up yet again. Why is this universal? Why does emotional intimacy require such an extant time investment? And if emotional intimacy is so closely connected to time, then why is Edwards cheating in the first place — and why do so many women ignore clear signs that their spouse is unfaithful? What’s true for you may not be true for Sue. Or Sally, or Sam, or me.
Lisa:
I’m not conflating happiness with horniness. Why would I? I’m not out to demonize anyone involved.
Second, if you’ve been lucky enough to avoid the quagmire that is unrequited love, I have to admit: I’m quite jealous.
Lisa:
Men are fungible commodities? If there are millions of unmarried guys around, then it’s silly to be upset about infidelity. After all, you can just go out and get a shiny new version, right? I suspect that men are roughly as interchangeable for Other women as they are for married women.
Where, exactly? Black men are incarcerated and murdered at such extraordinary rates that there’s a real dearth of available men in certain communities. Even in rich white suburbs, boys and male adolescents are more likely to die and wind up incarcerated than their sisters and girlfriends. Add to that the fact that a) the patriarchy conditions men with high status to prefer younger women, so women who’ve spent their twenties and thirties working in lieu of husband-hunting have serious difficulties finding single men their age, and b) the fact that men of all ages have higher mortality rates from disease, and you’re in a situation where there may be millions of unmarried guys — but they’re still outnumbered by single women.
See for yourself:
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/hus.htm
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/hh-fam/cps2007.html
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/pim07.pdf
Lisa:
If you have no problem with slut-shaming, then you have absolutely no business calling yourself a feminist.
Lisa:
So do I. But I think it’s more important to check our privilege by trying to see things from the demonized individuals’ perspectives before we come to a moral conclusion. And in this case, thinking about it from her POV doesn’t just put us into a moral gray zone: it suggests that our intense emotional reactions to the case were right, that the ethical standards we’re using to judge her are fundamentally patriarchal. As such, I don’t see how your argument that feminists should condemn her holds: if anything, feminists should be doing what they’re doing, and focus on criticizing Edwards and marriage as a social institution, while simultaneously extending their sympathies to both women, who were just trying to do the best they could in a fundamentally lose-lose game.
I don’t understand this callous and cold attitude towards other people. I don’t know the woman who is being cheated on, I don’t have any obligation to her, and of course it is TOTALLY the guy’s fault, but, I could never imagine causing another person that much pain? Just the thought of some woman sobbing and crying over something I did makes me ill. I don’t ask that people share my morals, your life choices are your own, but does it really have to be called feminist? Is it feminist to hurt other woman, and then callously dismiss their pain because we think its stupid or old fashioned? Is it feminist to let ourselves be used as pawns by married men looking for a cheap thrill, as it seems this affair with Edwards was? On national TV he said he didn’t love her, and had no attention of leaving his wife, how the hell is that empowering? She was a tool he used to get off; I doubt he even sees her as a person. The only thing this woman did was cause pain to a good woman, a woman we all respect and admire, and this is what we term as feminist? To me, feminism is a sisterhood, we’re all in it together, and the last thing we should do is hurt our sisters, or help men hurt our sisters. I am not pressing my morals on anyone, and if you want to do this, good for you, but do we have to call it feminist? How does someone who only hurts other women, get to call themselves feminist?
are you fucking kidding me? casting women as the gatekeepers of [sexual] morality = anti-feminist. and yeah, it *is* slut-shaming.
Oh sigh. Nope, I don’t differentiate between men and women when it comes to my sexual beliefs–I fully expect women and men to be the gatekeepers of their own morality and I have no problem whatsoever shaming people who aren’t regardless of gender. Nope, I am adamantly opposed to women being cast as gatekeepers for anyone else’s morality. Nope, I don’t think that women who fuck anything and everything they want EXCEPT married men are sluts. Yep, I think that people who knowingly fuck married people who are not in an open relationship are disgusting pieces of shit. Yep, I think that everyone on here who has expressed the opinion that it is just too, too much! to expect the ladies to not fuck someone they feel like when they know he’s married are being extraordinarily and disappointingly lame. And if all the above beliefs are anti-feminist, then I will be perfectly happy to become anti-feminist. However, I’m not even remotely convinced that that’s the case.
Yeah, I think that sleeping with a married person (man or woman) is unethical. I don’t see how my belief is anti-feminist. Are we really THAT selfish a society if we think it’s okay to disregard other peoples’ vows and commitments if they conflict with our own desire? Don’t answer that.
To me, there are two completely different issues being addressed. 1. The sex worker. 2. The extra-marital affair.
I don’t necessarily think it’s a sex worker’s job to ask her clients if they are married and have “permission” to be with him or her. In the same way that it’s not a hotel clerk’s job to confirm the marital status of the couples to whom he rents rooms.
However, I do think you have to choose a certain disregard for committed monogomous relationships if you choose to be a sex-worker. Obviously, there are a lot of reasons a woman (or man) may choose to sell sex for money, and I have no input on that. But the reality is that you will likely have a lot of clients who “shouldn’t” (as per their committments with their partners) be hiring you.
What a sex worker chooses to do with that knowledge is up to him or her.
On the flip side, there’s the woman John Edwards had an affair with. This woman was not a sex worker. She knew Senator Edwards intimately. She knew his wife. She chose to have a long-term sexual relationship with a married man.
She is as much to blame for the devastation of the affair as Senator Edwards is. She is a grown woman who made a CHOICE to disregard another man’s commitment to his family.
She may now regret that choice. I’m sure she is suffering as a result of the media coverage. And she may be a very nice person — if I met her on the street I’d probably think she was a great woman.
Great women make mistakes every day. Great men make mistakes every day. The important thing is that we OWN our choices, and fully claim responsibility for the results of our actions.
For ANY woman who has knowingly had an affair with a married man to play the victim is absurd. We should all own our decisions, good or bad, and not try to pass the buck like damsels in distress. It’s embarrassing to women everywhere.
So, do I feel sorry for Edwards’ mistress? Yes, in the same way that I feel sorry for him and his family and everyone who gets hurt when people fail to honor their commitments, or respect the commitments of others. It’s sad to see people suffer needlessly. And I believe that we can help prevent that suffering if we will be a little less selfish, and a little more in tune to the bigger picture.
Well, I just want to chime in and say: I think you are right, Lisa Kansas. ALso, I think Sabrina is right on too.
These issues of sexual morality are confusing for people, I think, because “sexual Morality” has been used since time immemorial as a tool of the Patriarchy to oppress women. So, clearly, some people end up thinking that any degree of morality or ethical behavior re: sexuality=oppression.
This is not so.
If you think of sexual morality in the same terms one would think of any other sort of morality, it will clear things up. Morality and ethics are at base about promise-keeping. (I am not making this up! Promise-keeping is the cornerstone of college-level ethics instruction.) Many religious fundamentalists mistakenly think that morality is about doing what the old testamant of the Bible says to do, and they are mistaken as well (If for no other reason than their prophet, Jesus Christ, quite explicitly said that the laws laid out in the old testament are no longer important. This always makes me wonder: Can they READ?)
Anyway, if you take the “ooooooSCARY@!” aspect of Sexuality out of the equation and think of it like any other ethically-problematic situation, it will become much clearer.
If your neighbor promises to feed your cat while you are out of town, and breaks their promise, and your cat starves to death, have they done something morally wrong? Why yes! (In fact, I think most people would have no problem stringing a neighbor UP for such a wrong action!)
If someone steals your car, is it wrong? Yes. If someone else knowingly works in a chop-shop, dismantling your stolen car, is that wrong? Yes.
If someone rapes your child, is that wrong? Yes. If someone else knows about it, and covers up for the rapist, is that wrong? Yes. (If someone writes copy for the local paper, and says that your child “had sex with” the rapist, instead of using the “r” word, is that wrong? YES!)
So you see, you don’t have to be the Main Perpetrator of a wrong action to have some culpability. You can be an accessory, or an accessory before or after the fact. You can be doing some completely different unethical action related to the initial one, even. Like the newspaper guy.
So as Lisa has clearly (and bravely) pointed out, a man or woman engaging in infidelity is behaving unethically. If the person they are having extra-monogamous-relationship sex with KNOWS they are in a monogamous relationship, that person is behaving unethically as well, by helping them to break their promise.
If money changes hands, it is unethical as well, because when you financially benefit from an immoral act, it is immoral.
If a person has sex with a married/monogamous person UNKNOWINGLY, they are not culpable, that should be obvious. And anyone, male of female, can have all the sex they want to have with as many people as they want, as long as no one involved is breaking a promise to someone else by doing so, and all the sex is consensual.
Gosh, I really didn’t set out to give a speech! All I wanted to say is: Lisa, what you are saying is correct. ALso, Sabrina: You are right too. There is nothing “Feminist” about helping to break up, someone else’s marriage. (Is it “Feminist” for a MAN to assist in breaking up another couple’s relationship? Is it “Feminist” for a woman to be instrumental in breaking up a lesbian monogamous relationship?)
Feminist thinking is much more complex and thoughtful than that.
Response here.
KTMBERRY, you rock. No, seriously–you have put your finger right on the problem. And it’s partly my fault–I could’ve made the point myself if I’d just lengthened the post and included non-sexual examples of the same behavior I hate so much in the body. I think that would’ve made where I was coming from a lot clearer.
Epi Grrl, that is quite the comment, length-wise. I will try to do it justice in reply.
True ’nuff. It all depends on what issues you personally care about to devote your interest towards and also, how far up the causality chain you like to go (for example, the direct impact of our actions to each other versus trying to untangle how the teaspoon of milk put in your coffee got there at all and how many cows this may or may not ever have affected).
I hate infidelity, as I said–it’s simply one of a set of issues I personally take the time to care deeply about. I consider it to have terrible impact on people both anonymous and well-known to me and I don’t consider avoiding it to involve any real personal sacrifice at all, so those arguments don’t strike me as meaningful. But my choice of it as an issue is just that, my choice–I couldn’t argue with anyone who didn’t feel like it was important, as I think I said to somebody else ‘way up top.
I’m not sure I’m entirely getting what you’re saying here, but it sounds like you’re saying that an individual’s moral beliefs are based primarily upon a fear of encroachment, which I find an interesting idea but not applicable to me, honestly. In this particular case of hating marital infidelity, for instance, I’m not married and when I was, I not only didn’t suffer from it, I didn’t worry about it on a personal level. What it’s really about is my hatred of what I consider all forms of dishonorable behavior that people engage in to get something that they don’t really need or even have an excuse for particularly wanting and are utterly indifferent to the harm they cause others in the course of obtaining it–they at that moment want it, it might require them to actually have to exert effort to get it some other way and they just can’t be bothered to do that. It really…just…disgusts me. It doesn’t really have anything to do with anybody’s status or anything like that.
I’m sorry, but neither of your statements concerning underprivileged women or the one beginning with “strawfeminist” make any sense to me at all, so I can’t really answer them. I AM sorry!
No. Just a personal choice, like being a vegetarian or anything else that people choose to do that involves personal behavior modification to some internal standard.
No, there’s nothing wrong with the concept of monogamy–from what you say above, between one-half and five-sixths of the population don’t have a problem with it at all. People who do, need to simply be honest about it and not try to practice it at all–and yes, that does mean that they don’t get to lie their way into a relationship with someone who DOES want to practice it. They simply need to stick to others like themselves, which according to what you say above again, there are plenty of like-minded birds to flock with for them. Seems like the easiest fix in the world to me.
Again, if your happiness depends on fucking one particular guy, you have problems. Sorry. Sex is an amazing and compelling thing, but you won’t suffer any damage if you don’t get to fuck somebody no matter HOW much he turns you on.
Self-inflicted. You can’t get to love someone without allowing that degree of emotional intimacy to occur, and if you did so knowing that person was married, then you chose to screw yourself over. Sorry. Suck it up. Or, of course, you can choose to be immoral, but you can hardly expect anyone to cry over how you not only fucked yourself over, but thought that fucking over additional people into the bargain was a super solution to the problem.
Who knew that the Western Romatic Love Myth consisted of the belief that you have to actually get to know someone before you can be considered to genuinely “love” them, as til you get to actually know them, what exactly kind of emotional attachment to their mentality and psyche could you possibly be referring to? As to why Edwards cheated, he said why–not only did he specify he hadn’t “loved” her at all, he did it because he was on an ego trip.
I’m not lucky; I’m just not a complete moron. Why would I ever let myself become genuinely deeply emotionally attached to someone who didn’t love me back? That’s a process and you have to allow it and boy howdy, it’s one that I do strongly recommend everyone be very careful about allowing ’cause it’s a HELL of a lot harder to reverse than it is to go forward.
I haven’t managed to avoid unrequited LUST, though…I wish.
Sorry you feel that way. I’ll doubtless continue to do so, though.
I have, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the majority of them haven’t got a moral leg to stand on.
Anne: “However, I do think you have to choose a certain disregard for committed monogomous relationships if you choose to be a sex-worker. Obviously, there are a lot of reasons a woman (or man) may choose to sell sex for money, and I have no input on that. But the reality is that you will likely have a lot of clients who “shouldn’t” (as per their committments with their partners) be hiring you.
What a sex worker chooses to do with that knowledge is up to him or her.”
And my take is, they are choosing to be immoral when they disregard it.
“For ANY woman who has knowingly had an affair with a married man to play the victim is absurd. We should all own our decisions, good or bad, and not try to pass the buck like damsels in distress. It’s embarrassing to women everywhere.
So, do I feel sorry for Edwards’ mistress? Yes, in the same way that I feel sorry for him and his family and everyone who gets hurt when people fail to honor their commitments, or respect the commitments of others. It’s sad to see people suffer needlessly. And I believe that we can help prevent that suffering if we will be a little less selfish, and a little more in tune to the bigger picture.”
You put it much better than I did. Thanks.
Lisa Kansas, your argument only makes sense if you believe:
a. that sex workers are generally in a position to make choices,
b. that it is women’s job to be the guardians of male heterosexual morality, and
c. that moral values are absolute and universal.
I don’t believe any of those things myself. So I’m having trouble not reading your post as a big bad slice of woman-hating. Because, in a situation where a married man visits a prostituted woman (let’s say, like 95% of prostituted women she has a drug problem, or like 95% she was a victim of childhood sexual abuse, or like 90% she wants to leave the industry immediately but can’t, or like 60% she was trafficked, or like 30% she is under 18) - in any of those situations, actually, I’m unable to see how or why you think it’s realistic to expect the prostituted woman to “take responsibility” for anything. Or why you think her “enabling” of her john’s infidelity is the salient point. Or how you can argue that blaming her for exactly who pays to rape her is something that feminists should be doing.
Hi Bee–
A. You’re right, I should have been more specific–I am referring only to sex workers who have a real choice of profession in my blog post, exemplified by those who spend time writing about how very feminist and/or empowerful their sex work is.
B. I believe that each woman should be a gatekeeper of her own morality, as each man should be gatekeeper of his own morality, and no one else’s. I am sorry to see that so many women seem to think that while it is perfectly moral to expect men to show a degree of sexual restraint when not doing so would result in harm to others, expecting women to is making women be the gatekeepers of male heterosexual morality.
C. I admit I’m surprised to see how many people think that people shouldn’t have to be bothered worrying about how their actions harm others, and I also admit I think that doing so really ought to be universally considered moral, but I have neither any way nor any desire to force this upon anybody.
I can’t control your desire to find my post woman-hating, but I can laugh at you for it, and I am. Too bad you can’t see me.
Seriously, at the minimum, anyone who obviously cares so much about all those fucked-over wives could hardly be considered to hate women en masse, eh? Do I hate selfish bitches? Absolutely. Do I hate them any more than I hate selfish bastards? Absolutely not.
A. Thank you for clarifying.
B. There isn’t a difference in how I view male and female sexual morality. It is your post that identifies female sex workers, and a female mistress, as jezebels.
C. Of course it is moral to avoid hurting others. However, what you’re not considering is the enormous potential for grey areas. I’m not familiar with John Edwards’ situation, but I do know that in some situations where one partner is terminally ill there is a tacit or overt agreement that it is acceptable for the other partner to move towards a new life. Such situations aren’t easy for anyone involved but, in life and in morality, things are very rarely as clear-cut as your post seems to think they are.
If you care about wives getting fucked over, there are a few issues you might want to consider that are less of a right-wing cliché than vicious, husband-stealing b****es. Such as the inherently patriarchal culture of marriage; the cultural perpetuation of a romantic myth of marriage; the status or lack of the same of wives; the different social reactions to male and female extramarital sex and promiscuity; the designation of women as a sex class; the inequality created by the control of the means of reproduction; and the fact that, in the situations you’ve mentioned above, you’ve chosen to focus on the wickedness of women tempting men into immorality rather than the incontinence of men who break their promises. Why do you suppose that is?
I’m sorry that you’re laughing at me. I’m not laughing at you.
B. The blog posts that inspired me to write this were about female sex workers and a female mistress.
C. I would recommend that you familiarize yourself with the specific situation I am writing about before you complain about the injustice of my perceptions regarding it. Both John and Elizabeth Edwards have now made fairly extensive statements to the press about her illness and the status of their marriage at the time that he had the affair, making it quite clear that there was no such agreement for him to fuck around and that he did so simply because he was on an ego trip. I certainly haven’t assigned the situation a more clear-cut moral status than the principles themselves have. Also, the very beginning of my blog post states quite clearly that my negative feelings about cheating and cheaters come in degrees and provides examples–maybe you somehow skipped over that part. (Seems unlikely, given it’s the first thing I say, but there’s always that faint possibility.)
I have considered marriage as a tool of the patriarchy quite extensively; it in no way impacts my feelings about people and their obligations to one another in terms of honor, honesty and the avoidance of doing harm whenever possible. I have absolutely nowhere in my post made any mention of women enticing men to commit immoral acts and have not only not remotely attempted to excuse male behavior, I have outright stated that the men in these situations are worse, combining as they do immoral behavior with the deliberate infliction of harm upon someone they have professed to love above all others.
I chose to focus in this blog post on this particular situation for the same reason I have chosen to focus in other blog posts on various other particular situations–I was inspired to do so at that particular moment in time by an issue I had read about or encountered some other way in a moment near in time to the time I wrote the post. If you were genuinely wondering if this is some sort of female-bashing trend of mine, you’d obviously have read a good sampling of all my other blog posts and would rather quickly have come to see that I have indeed spent proportionally a far greater amount of time addressing the inequalities that women face at the hands of men and society in general than anything else. Since you haven’t, seems pretty obvious that you’re more interested in venting your spleen on a convenient target than making a faint effort towards accuracy in your critiques. Of course that’s your choice, but I’m not going to help you out in doing it–come back when you’ve bothered to research the things you’re babbling on about, eh? Otherwise you’ll likely be ignored in future.
To say that one should ask if your sex partner is either unmarried or has permission is silly–If someone is willing to lie to their wife, they are certainly willing to lie to a mistress. It is like the fireworks stores around here where you have to claim to be taking them to a state where they are legal to set off. The agreement is between the primary couple, and third parties aren’t generally responsible.
Lisa — thanks for the link to my Feministe post.
I’m wondering if you read the same one I wrote, though.
You say: “I’ve read other articles by sex workers that touch on feminism and this one was fairly typical of the genre. … And when sex workers start talking about how it’s really very feminist of them to be taking money from married men to cheat on their wives–talk about enabling the patriarchy far more so than that paying customer ever has alone.”
The article explicitly said that its goal was not to argue that sex work is feminist, as I don’t believe it is affirmatively feminist. But instead, to argue that as a focused area of capitalist activity, various sales/marketing techniques emerged that could be useful in other areas of endeavor.
So it was not the sex work I was arguing was feminist, but the application of these techniques to OTHER professions offering more long term career security for women. Empowering women professionally and economically, I would argue, is most certainly feminist.
I’ve read a high % of the sex work literature out there and do not believe this kind of discussion is “fairly typical.” Query also as to whether mischaracterizing other women’s articles is feminist.
One of the many reasons a long term career in sex work was not a choice I made was the married-men issue. I agree with you that, while not the procuring cause, the availability of sex workers does enable infidelity.
But I think the larger issue is that as long as options for women’s employment are limited, especially for lower-income women without the same access to education, sex work will remain the most viable option for some. As a former lawyer, I had the option to make it a 2-year stint to develop funding for an entrepreneurial venture; others do not. Blaming them will not solve the underlying problem.
Not to mention, blaming women for the scarcity of their options isn’t feminist either…
Clearly all individuals who choose to marry should be microchipped directly after signing the license. The microchips should be programmed to A) respond to touch in such a way as to alert all prospective sex partners to the individual’s marital status prior to a specific level of sexual activity, and B) alert the spouse of said individual to acts of infidelity-in-progress. The chips should also record all sexual activity and archive the data in such a manner that it can be examined in the event of suspected infidelity, by spouse/lawyer/religious leader/political party/whoever else has a vested interest in knowing whether or not a given individual has adhered to their monogamy vow.
Unless you don’t make a vow of monogamy when you get married, in which case you don’t get a chip. Or you can’t get married, in which case you have to find some other way to chip yourself and your spouse. I’m assuming the post-ceremony chipping will be conducted for free by the religious or state rep officiating the marriage, so I bet they’re gonna charge same-sex couples a lot of coin for the priviledge.
If my husband ever decides to cheat on me, I would much rather he do so in a fair business exchange with someone who’s choosing to provide sexual services for pay than to mess with someone’s emotions just to get laid. And he better tip well, or I’m going to kick him twice — once for cheating, and again for disrespecting a worker.
Hi Octagalore,
I agree that you explicitly stated that you weren’t going to put forth a “sex work is feminist” argument. However, you did put forth a “sex work isn’t antifeminist either” argument, and I disagreed with that.
I agree that I haven’t read a massive amount of sex workers’ writings, but I’ve read some, and it is pretty common in the ones that I’ve read for them to liken it to other small-business or entrepreneurial enterprises. That’s what I was referring to when I said “typical of the genre,” not that you specifically were arguing in your article that it was feminist of you to engage in sex work. I genuinely don’t think I was mischaracterizing your writing, but if you feel I was I apologize–I do feel bad if what I wrote came over as any kind of personal attack on you directly–that was definitely NOT what I was shooting for.
I agree that sex work is viable as an income-generating job for many women and that it’s much easier to succumb to the patriarchy in this way than fight it by putting yourself through school by working a shit job for practically no money or exchanging the next 20 years of your finances for student loans, if you can even get them. I don’t blame them for the patriarchy, and I sympathize with the fact that this IS the situation–after all, I’m a woman myself, one from a very low socioeconomic bracket myself, it was just as much MY situation as it was for any woman who chose to become a sex worker rather than choosing the path I took instead. However, I cannot sympathize with those who flatly refuse to acknowledge the damage that their choices are doing, both to other women and in reinforcing the patriarchy. As they are helping women remain in the situation of having few choices by reinforcing those few–how is it unfeminist of me to point that out..?
Some sex workers put themselves through school and/or pay off their student loans with sex work. Some sex workers are academics themselves, or work other forms of “straight job” in addition to sex work. It’s not necessarily one or the other, or at least it isn’t for a segment of sex workers. The industries are as diverse as the people who work in them.
Can you explain in more detail what you mean by “helping women remain in the situation of having few choices by reinforcing those few (options, I’m assuming)”? Is this part of your argument that sex work (at least as performed by women) is inherently anti-feminist?
I can but it would probably be so long it would turn into what should really be a separate blog post, rather than just a comment. I will put it on my list of blog posts I am writing–do you mind waiting a week or two?
Sure — always a topic I myself enjoy discussing, and if you feel it belongs on your blog, I for one will look forward to it. I come to conversations about sex work from a Queer perspective, which I am coming to realize is quite different from a conventional hetero-feminist perspective. You and I may never agree on the ethics of sex work or the role it can play in dismantling patriarchial & heteronormative sexuality constructs, but I feel the discussion is always a worthy one.
Don’t want to tangent your post further, so I’ll hold the Annie Sprinkle/Scarlet Alliance/Touching Base-style sex worker stuff for another post. Later!
PS: Microchipping! It’s the way of the future!