What Sex Scandals Mean

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Political sex scandals force us to face the sexual reality.
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Whether or not Eliot Spitzer wins the race for comptroller of New York, his run serves as a reminder that in 2008 he got caught in a prostitution scandal and turned the media's spotlight on a sexual reality which our society otherwise denies with gritted teeth.

In that spotlight we saw that female sexual power matters. We saw how much it matters. And we saw, through media commentary, just how far we will go to avoid admitting the reality of female sexual power.

Eliot Spitzer showed us that even a wealthy, successful, Ivy-league lawyer and politician—a so called "Alpha male" if there ever was one—found it necessary to pay if he wanted no-strings sex.

And he showed us just much he had to pay. The $1,000 an hour he gave call girls (and "an hour" for a prostitute means thirty minutes or until the client has an orgasm) is just the beginning. The $80,000 total he is thought to have spent on prostitutes is trivial. The real price was the governorship of New York, whatever good he hoped to do in that office, the legacy he might have had, his professional integrity (it is said he used campaign funds to pay for the hotel rooms), the respect of his colleagues, perhaps a chance for the presidency, and, among other things, his family. He got to keep the last item on the list (many men aren't so lucky) but the rest he forked up—for half an hour of sex. With his fall, Spitzer gave us a graphic illustration of just how much female sexual power matters. Or I should say he gave us yet another illustration in a never ending series. Bill Clinton, Anthony Weiner, Herman Cain, John Edwards, Newt Gingrich, David Vitter, and all the other politicians who get caught with their pants literally down drive the lesson home again and again, as do movie stars, such as Hugh Grant when he was arrested for picking up a streetwalker back in the 90s.

Female sexual power is real.

Female sexual power influences the lives of men in ways that even the women who wield it can scarcely imagine, or at least admit to themselves. Female sexual power can, and frequently does, drive men to self destruction.

As Norah Vincent writes in her much underrated book Self-Made Man, "If you have never been sexually attracted to women, you will never quite understand the monumental power of female sexuality, except by proxy or in theory, nor will you quite know the immense advantage it gives us over men."

Old-school feminists (as opposed to difference feminists like Vincent) will balk and say that Spitzer's actions have less to do with desire than misogyny. The truth is the opposite. As Camille Paglia writes, "The prostitute is not, as feminists claim, the victim of men, but rather their conqueror. . . "

A pop feminist will claim, as Hanna Rosin does in a fatuous article for the Wall Street Journal, that female politicians will become involved in more sex scandals just as soon as they have the sexual freedom of their male colleagues. But as Rosin herself admits, half a century has passed since the so-called sexual revolution, and history has yet to support her argument. She must seek examples from fictional TV shows.

Others will change the subject by saying, "I wish the media would focus on the issues," as though Spitzer et al have not made it clear that female sexual power IS one of the issues.

The various reactions all have the same purpose: to deny the differences between male and female sexualities and especially the female sexual power these differences create. The male-oppressor/female-victim narrative that supplies the foundation for today's pop feminism depends on this denial. Admit the reality of female sexual power, and a truer narrative falls into place, not a simplistic morality tale of male oppressors and female victims, but a complex history of men's and women's attempts to balance their respective powers. By denying women's traditional sources of power as we do now, we ignore at least half of the equation. We make true equality impossible. We move away from, rather than towards, feminism's professed goal.

None of this is to excuse Eliot Spitzer's actions. I believe prostitution should be legalized and regulated. I also believe Spitzer was weak, and many of the other politicians who get caught in sex scandals are dead wrong.

But men who are weak and wrong have a way of revealing just how strong the man who does the right thing must be—just how hard he must try to resist the pressures created by female sexual power. We should hold up this man up a model—a gentleman, both in the old, un-ironic sense of the word, and "the gentle man" Anais Nin had the courage to praise. When we deny female sexual power, we pretend this man has done nothing more than behave himself as most women do as a matter of course. We belittle both him and his efforts, and we rob men who might have emulated him of his example.

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AnonymousAnonymousover 10 years ago
I see what your saying.

Ok, I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your main point. Men will do crazy shit for sex with women. There is a power there. Women can manipulate men with sex. But, the relationship created by the utilization of this power is the barter of sex for goods. The female's perceived usefulness becomes more and more purely sexual in a culture that embraces this. Meanwhile, the man uses his various skills to get sex from the female. The female, exploiting her talent, acquires shelter, security, food, etc. from the male. But at some point the power shifts; the female becomes dependent. She must provide sex or lose her shelter, her security. The power becomes a hindrance.

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