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I 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 my ex-husban never cheated on me (and needless to say given the tone of this post, I didn’t cheat on him). 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.