Sex Scandal Redux

There have been a lot of significant things going on in the world during the last few weeks that I could write about. The Arab revolutions are still ongoing, and there have been new developments in Yemen, Syria, Libya and Bahrain. I would like to comment at some point on the various positions taken by politicians in the US and Israel on resolving the Israel-Palestinian conflict. There was an important election in Turkey. There has been unrest in China, including protests by ethnic Mongolians in the Chinese-occupied part of Mongolia. But rather than talking about any of these things, I'm going to comment on another tempest in a teapot, namely the troubles of Representative Anthony Weiner, who was forced to resign after being caught sending racy pictures and messages to various women over the Internet. I don't want to talk about this because it deserves even half the attention it got from the American media, but because it shows some interesting and mostly depressing things about the way a lot of Americans think (or don't think), and because the questions involved are related to those I discussed in my earlier post on other recent sex-related scandals.

But before I get started, let me repeat a point I made in a post a long time ago about another supposed scandal (though in that case the only real scandal was the lengths some people tried to go to in an attempt to discredit legitimate science). One of the most irritating habits journalists, commentators and other such people have is randomly attaching the suffix "gate" to every scandal or controversy that comes along. Whoever first started referring to the Anthony Weiner scandal as "Weinergate" should be forced to eat a complete transcription of the Nixon tapes, as should anyone who sticks a "gate" onto the name of any future scandal.

I'm not going to go over all the details of Weiner's supposed deeds, how they came to light (though I hope some journalist will be able to dig up more on the group of people on Twitter who were practically stalking Weiner in an effort to catch him), and his handling of the affair. Here's an analysis of the political aspects of the affair from relatively early on (though I have a few problems with this one, as I'll point out), and here's a slightly more detailed look at how Weiner supposedly interacted with these women online. This latter point is actually important, not because of any thrills people may get from reading the salacious details (there's a lot of far more erotic stuff online, for those who want it), but because if people are going to try to pass judgment on Weiner's actions, they should be taken into account.

With the recent scandals about Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dominique Strauss-Kahn still fresh in the public memory, and other scandals involving prominent American politicians to provide parallels (Chris Lee, John Ensign, Larry Craig, Eliot Spitzer, Mark Foley, Bill Clinton), it is not too surprising that many commentators have tended to lump them all together, as if they all fit into the same moral category of "male politicians' sexual misbehavior". The analysis linked to above, for instance, refers vaguely to Weiner having "behaved badly towards women". But is what Weiner did equivalent to the alleged actions of, say, Strauss-Kahn? For that matter, are there no differences between Weiner's case and those of, say, Craig, Foley, and Spitzer?

The first of the above questions is easy to answer. As I said in my other post, if Strauss-Kahn is guilty of what he has been accused of, his actions were reprehensible and there is no excuse whatsoever for them. If he really did commit sexual assault of the sort he is being charged for, he should go to prison. If Weiner sent erotic photos of himself and sexually charged messages to women who had not indicated any interest in such things, he was at the least extremely foolish, considering his position. At most, if any of the women had clearly expressed that they were not receptive to such messages and he had persisted in sending them, he may have crossed the line into harassment. However, while this is rather a fine line, it's not clear that he really crossed it. It's true that sending even one picture to a woman who it turned not did not welcome receiving it might be considered sexual harassment by many, but it's quite possible that he honestly, though mistakenly, believed she would react positively, in which case I wouldn't really call it harassment (though, as I said, he was very foolish to do it without being absolutely sure). If she had indicated disapproval and he had nevertheless sent more (something he didn't do, from what I've read), that would more obviously constitute harassment, though even then I don't think it would be as serious as, say, a manager doing the same to an employee. After all, none of these women had any contact with him other than online, and it seems they weren't even constituents, so they could simply break off contact if they didn't like what he did. What's more, it seems that a number of the women did in fact reciprocate and engage in sexual banter with him. In those cases, he can hardly be accused of having "behaved badly towards women".

Some might object that he also acted interested in some girls who were under 18. But from what I read there was only girl under 18 that he was confirmed to have had contact with, and he, the girl and her family all emphasized that in that case there was nothing sexual in the messages they exchanged. For that matter, I've always found it a bit odd that Americans get all excited about any hint of sexuality in people under 18, as if 16 and 17 year olds are children in the physical sense, and any adult who acts even remotely interested in a 17 year old sexually is a pedophile (except in music, as few people seem bothered by songs like "Sweet Little Sixteen", "You're Sixteen", or "I Saw Her Standing There"). But really, there's not a huge difference between a middle aged man flirting with an 18 year old and doing the same with a 17 year old. Girls of that age are physically speaking adults, so it's not abnormal for men to be interested in them (while a serious sexual interest in any girl or boy obviously younger than 16 or so is another thing altogether, and is certainly not normal or healthy). Of course a line has to be drawn somewhere, and a man with any sense of decency will at least keep in mind that the average 17 year old (or 18 year old) is not mature emotionally and so he shouldn't take advantage of her (or him). But even if Weiner had done some mild online flirting with a high school girl (and again, there's no real evidence that he did), it would fall far short of what Strauss-Kahn is accused of (or even some of the things Schwarzenegger has been accused of).

In fact, while I have serious problems with French talk about American prudishness in the Strauss-Kahn case, where we are talking about assault, in Weiner's case the criticism is right on. So a US congressman, like a billion other men on the planet, has a strong libido and engages in foolishly risky behavior. Why should anyone else care? Maybe his wife should care, but if all the relationships were online and he didn't actually neglect her in order flirt with them, I'm not even sure that she should care that much either. Certainly it shouldn't matter to anyone else. The only reason Weiner perhaps should have had to resign is because when he was first confronted with the evidence he lied about it. This was his real "sin", if we want to use that word; the same can be said in Bill Clinton's case. But to be perfectly honest, while I think they were wrong and, well, stupid (despite being otherwise very intelligent men) to get themselves tangled up in convoluted denials which they should have known would not work, I have to admit that if I were in that kind of situation, I'd be strongly tempted to lie too, and I think the same would be true of many if not most people. As such, if I had been in the Democratic leadership, I wouldn't have been calling for Weiner to resign. Unfortunately, in this kind of situation a kind of mob mentality takes over, and Weiner was a victim of it.

Ah, but wait, I hear some say, you only say that because Weiner was one of the leading liberals in the House. It's true that I find it a particular shame to lose him because from what I know he was good at his job, and fought hard for good causes. But to take a similar case, I didn't think the Republican Chris Lee should have been forced to resign for sending shirtless pictures of himself to a woman he met on Craigslist either. Sure, I am happy with the ultimate result, since a reasonably progressive Democrat managed to win that seat, despite it being a Republican district, and so someone better than Lee ended up in the seat (though to give Lee credit, he did say some things that showed he was at least more moderate on a few issues than most Republicans). But I didn't think he should have had to lose his seat for that reason (not when all sorts of crackpots, bigots and corporate lackeys are able to keep theirs).

I have a somewhat different view of cases like those of Larry Craig and Mark Foley. Craig in particular deserved to be kicked out (though he ultimately was stubborn enough to stay till the end of his term), not so much because he was actually arrested and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, or even because he also tried to make all sorts of convoluted explanations of his action and made ridiculous attempts to backtrack on his guilty plea, but because he was a hypocrite. He was arrested for soliciting sex with a male undercover officer, yet his voting record was very anti-gay. The same could be said of Foley, who was caught sending sexually explicit email messages to a young man who was a former Congressional page, though Foley's record was not as totally anti-gay as Craig's and he has come out as homosexual since resigning. To extend the analogy to non-politicians, any of the various conservative Christian leaders who have been caught having affairs or paying for sex with either female or male sex workers also deserve condemnation mainly for hypocrisy.

On the liberal side, despite generally liking his politics, I had to conclude Eliot Spitzer pretty much deserved to be driven out of office, again for hypocrisy. I didn't think it was a big deal that he had paid for sex with a call girl, but then I read that, along with his prosecutions of Wall Street crime as NY Attorney General, he had aggressively pursued several call girl rings, even making his usual outspoken statements about how he was going to nail them. I will say that if the rings he prosecuted were involved in human trafficking (rather than being made up of women who voluntarily got involved in sex work, like the one he actually had a transaction with), then he would not be a hypocrite, but I don't recall reading anything indicating that was the case. But if it weren't for the hypocrisy involved, I wouldn't think that Spitzer (or the majority of the other politicians discussed here) should have been forced to resign. On the contrary, my own opinion largely matches that expressed by American philosopher and ethics professor Martha Nussbaum in this piece on the Spitzer affair -- parts of which apply equal well to Weiner's case.

In conclusion, I just have to say that I hope Americans can grow up a bit about sex, and that they'll start caring a little less about what kinds of sexual activities their leaders engage in and more about what kind of policies they support. For some of them, at least, their voting records and public statements contain plenty of things more reprehensible than anything Anthony Weiner did on Twitter or Facebook. If Weiner has to go, then why should they all get to stay?