Amanda, I can only speak for myself, but I never questioned your commitment to consent. I don’t think that you dismissed it in the Weiner issue at all. You raised some *other* good questions both in that post and here.

I agree with you that, absent the issue of consent, this sort of “scandal” is a prurient tempest in a prudish teapot. Weiner should have *known* better, not because what he did (again, if all had been consensual) playing around online is such a moral issue, but because in this country, at this time, it will BECOME a big deal. Is it right that the media and/or the public expect politicians to be sexually “perfect”?? Absolutely not, but the reality is that it works this way.

Weiner is the sort of lecher that you or I could deal with quickly, via a quip or a withering comment. But society doesnt appear to be that grown up yet….there’s a junior high school level of prurience in the media which continues to sadden me. I think the “instant media” and 24 hour news have contributed greatly to the tabloidization of the country. If we aren’t tittering about some politician’s dick or mistress or wide stance, we’re looking at pictures of young celebrities without panties. Sometimes I feel like we live in a large schoolyard.

And you are correct that all of this is intimidating to women who want to run for office….good gods and little green monsters, can you imagine the uproar if Hilary Clinton tweeted a picture of her genitals to a 21 year old guy?

What Weiner did was stupid, juvenile and egocentric, but it does not rise to the level of the crimes committed by many in congress on both sides of the aisle. And yet, they still serve, and Weiner appears to be toast. Corruption is apparently ok; sexting is evil.

It seems to me, that as often happens, anytime the Right bleats, the Democrats cave. It’s been that way for quite a while, and I think it makes this sort of nonsense worse. Pelosi should, right from the start, said that if there were no issues of consent, no misuse of office, that what Weiner did in his own time was his own business. It comes down to the same way I saw the Clinton-Lewinsky “scandal.” No, Clinton should not have lied. But no one should have asked those questions in the first place - it was not any of our business.

The problem for me is that American politics (and the media that covers it) likes a nice binary debate. Weiner’s attackers, conservatives and Republicans, who say this is indecent and disgusting, vs. Weiner’s defenders, liberal Democratic partisans who say this is Bill Clinton and Ken Starr all over again and that people’s sex lives, including any cheating, are a private matter.

But in reality, these scandals are often complicated. Some are more complicated than others. Elliot Spitzer’s is pretty simple, for instance; it just comes down to how you feel about sex and how you feel about prostitution. And Dominique Strauss-Khan’s is also pretty simple—if the charges are true, he’s a rapist and there’s just no justification in the world for that.

But with Bill Clinton, for instance, our discourse left little room for people who thought that Ken Starr went way too far and the Paula Jones suit was brought by right wing ideologues but who also thought that Clinton still shouldn’t have been having sex with interns, lying to the country about it, and perjuring himself about it. With Larry Craig, our discourse left little room for the view that Craig was definitely a hypocrite and deserved scorn for voting against gay rights while secretly trolling for anonymous gay sex, but on the other hand wishing that we were no longer in an era when men get arrested for stuff that goes on in the men’s room. With John Edwards, our discourse left little room for the distinction between having an affair while your wife is dying of cancer and running for President, cynically using your wife to cover for your acts, and taking people’s money and efforts and risking them all if the press finds out about the child you fathered with your mistress and the sex tape you recorded with her before Election Day.

And so it is here. I just can’t bring myself to defend what Anthony Weiner actually seems to have DONE. And because of that, even though I think Amanda’s points about the gender politics are well-taken, I end up in a wishy-washy place wishing that people would speak up and say that what the scandal should really be about is consent and male privilege and power, not whether “sexting is cheating” or not.

I would be surprised if there wasn’t someone on that list who didn’t give consent.  It’s totally common for people to miss cues online.

Of course, one should do their best not to do things like hit on someone who doesn’t want to be, or send lascivious pictures to unsuspecting people… But if you are hitting on people or sending out pictures, mistakes will happen.  It matters how frequent they are.  And that part of sexual ‘deviancy’ is totally learned behavior:  You can ask first.

One reason it is complicated is our society doesn’t have a lot of discourse about consent beyond just “non means no”. We conflate sex and sexual abuse constantly.  Think about the well-worn argument about abortion exceptions for rape and incest.  Look, some incest is consensual, but that’s pretty much never the problem when someone who is pregnant from incest needs an abortion.  “Incest” is a category that conflates consensual but icky sex with rape.  Consensual incest is so perverse that people just round up. 

One reason men start harassing is that the line between harassment and hitting on someone is deliberately blurred in our culture, often by aggressively sexist people who don’t want women to have complete control over their own sexualities.  Every time an MRA moans about how feminists make in impossible to hit on women, that line gets blurrier.  I’m guessing Weiner is someone who convinced himself that the line was blurrier than it is.

My concern that I’ve been on about is bigger than a single politician who is probably going to be redistricted away anyway.  It’s about the future of politics and placing such prudish standards on private behavior that no one will actually be able to meet them.

One fairly major correction: no Democratic politician will be able to meet them. The IOKIYAR rule is in full force with these media witch-hunts.

Also, Broce@1 - “Weiner (/Clinton/Edwards/Spitzer/any Democrat) should’ve *known* better” is just your standard bullshit blame-the-victim rationalization. These kind of scandals (and I use the word loosely) only come out when a)someone in power gets ticked-off at whatever random thing and pulls the strings to let the scandal out, or b) the Conservative Movement witch-hunt machine sets its sites on someone and sics someone like Brietbart on them to throw shit at the cable “news” shows until something sticks. See above and Amanda’s point that what Weiner actually did is totally irrelevant to the media circus.

Is there a way for Weiner to deal with real consequences WITHOUT Andrew “I know what women want” Breitbart and his goon squad of women-harassers looking as though they’ve been vindicated? Because I’d be all for that. Like, maybe Weiner resigns or is censured, but Andrew Breitbart is strapped to a rocket and shot directly into the sun?

I think your points are well taken.

One thing about the incest prong of the pro-life trinity (rape, incest, and the mother’s life); I’d like to think I know a lot about the history of abortion argumentation (I’ve certainly read a lot about it), but I actually have seen very little as to how that got in there (it’s pretty obvious why the other two did). I guess I always assumed that it was out of some quasi-eugenic concern about congenital disorders, but when you think about it, that actually makes little sense given that those sorts of genetic issues are generally NOT seen as justification for abortion in any other context other than incest. So you might be right about the real reason it is there.

In any event, you are right we are very far from having a consistent ethic of consent when it comes to sex. We have some established categories that involve lack of consent, including rape, certain forms of non-rape sexual assault, and sexual harassment (and one might count statutory rape / child abuse as well, if you assume the legal presumption that children can’t consent), and cases that involve those issues can sometimes be discussed on a “did she consent or didn’t she” basis, but the rest of sexuality seems to be judged by a group of people with extremely prudish standards, who are then opposed by a bunch of libertines who properly identify the prudery but (like the French intellectuals defending DSK) don’t care enough about consent. And as long as that’s the state of things, the public debates on this subject are going to be deeply problematic.

And to be clear, my #7 post was in response to Amanda’s #4 and when I say genetic issues are generally not seen as justification for abortions, I mean among pro-lifers who adopt the “rape, incest, mother’s life” formulation.

I think a woman should be able to get an abortion in this country for any reason whatsoever.

Well said, agreed and I’m pretty sure I’d never run for office given my sex positive “lifestyle” and the hate that would come with it. I don’t know how anyone can tolerate it. Which is why I do my politics in activism rather than administration. Chicken move? Probably. But I think you are right, Amanda, that things are gonna get harder for women, and for men, who want to be real people and also serve. I don’t know what to do about it though.

Oh, I don’t mean at all to “victim blame” here… but then Weiner isn’t a victim, except of the media. What I’m saying is that we live in the world as it is, rather than as we wish it to be. Right now, any hint of sex attached to a politician’s name is going to be fodder for the media. That’s a given. It sucks, but it’s a given.

One reason men start harassing is that the line between harassment and hitting on someone is deliberately blurred in our culture

Kind of in the very phrase “hitting on” no? I hate that phrase.

Thank you, Amanda.  It’s something.  I never questioned your commitment towards consent, but the silence from the majority of the feminist blogosphere had become deafening, and you were still covering it as a “anything-between-two-consenting-adults” thing, with which I agree excepting that this wasn’t entirely a case of that.  There seems to be a certain amount of cognitive dissonance about the Weiner scandal in regards to the consent aspect, and I don’t think that it’s possible to continue to cover this as if he did nothing wrong when it’s clear that a) he objectified women who contacted him about politics which, as has been pointed out, served to silence women and b) there was not always consent.  If you had been ignoring the Weiner scandal altogether then it would have made more sense not to cover that, but it was confounding to see it covered by feminists without any notice whatsoever of that aspect.  So, I appreciate the something.  Thank you.

The title to this article could easily have been, “Why Talk About X When Y Is So Much More Important?”

I remember this book by Daniel Bell:

http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Contradictions-Capitalism-20th-Anniversary/dp/0465014992

Capitalism - the side of production - requires the “protestant work ethic” of production, saving, accumulation.

Capitalism - the side of realization/consumption - requires “retail therapy”.

We live in a society which is fully moralistic (about work, about motherhood) and fully decadent (about consumerism, about sex on the brainbrainbrainbrain).

Makes for a lot of strange people.

It’s the Internet. People always demand a few hundred more words.

Not really, Eileen.  I think both issues—-consent and American puritanism—-are important.  They’re just separate issues, and I’m uneasy conflating the two.

@Dilan Esper #7

I don’t know how incest got in there, but I have a theory on why it’s so easily perpetuated that probably ties back: when I think of rape, I fairly automatically think of two people who are strangers/friends/aquaintances/dating etc.  When I think of incest, I think of familial situations where one or more people may have grown up with it in ways that twist even the concept of consent, and who have life-long issues of authority.  It’s the difference between “consent could have been given, but wasn’t” and “this is a girl who grew up with her family and all their quirks and expectations, both silent and spoken, and she did not have the emotional or intellectual space to figure out consent”.  In both cases, yes, it’d be rape.  But the latter just seems so much more horrible that it feels, emotionally, like it should be a different category.

Of course, this ignores all the potential incest between people who don’t have incredibly fucked up family dynamics driving it, but it’s very much an emotional response, not a logical one.

#1 broce,
I can understand why we want to make sure our leaders arent being sexual hypocrites. It Hillary and he had an open relationship-so what, but they didnt and cheating isnt a good thing to boast about. I dont want America to have a Berlusconi like president in which were reading about “bunga-bunga” parties and the like.  He also did exploit a power-relationship over Lewinsky and it was nauseating to have to hear about the details everywhere. Essentially if Weiner and his wife didnt have an open relationship then he’s treating her like shit and he’s not trustable or honest.

#10 broce,
I think youre confusing sex and sexual harrassment. It would sound just as erroneous if a politician were accused of rape and you said that any hint of sex to a politicians career is damaging. It wasnt sex it was harrassment. For me, I’d like to see him step down.

If you don’t see penises on the Internet, you’re doing it wrong.

#6 liz,
Yeah Brietbart is a douch-wibbler but Weiner shouldnt of put his harrassment crap out in full-frontal view. I mean, what the hell was he thinking? Of course your Breitbarts are going to grab it and ride it. Weiner actually helped the career of Breitbart! I mean, hello, its politics!

#5 geo,
Oh give me a break. Weiner was sexually harrassing women and acting like a douch-bag ONLINE where everyone could read and see it. It wasnt a witch-hunt and I think its perverted of you to try and put him in the category of actual victims like the women he was harrassing. He’s not a victim, he’s a victimizer who had a power trip, thought he could do it without consequences and duh, got caught since thats how politics is played. Everyone over the age of 5 knows that opposition politicians are always trying to win at whatever expense and he doused himself in blood and went swimming around the sharks.It would be one thing if he was having “pre-marital” relations and some sleaze Repub decided to label him a ‘slut’ or something but thats not what happened. Quit putting him in the category of victim nonetheless trying to compare him to women whose private sexual lives get put in public view for slut-shaming by patriarchal dick weeds.

#3 crissa,
You seem to think these were all just accidents. They werent accidents, he was doing it deliberately and why cant you just acknowledge that? Many posters have shown links where its obvious he was sexually harassing women. Quit the excuse making.

I think what I’m getting at here is that this isn’t about defending Anthony Weiner. This is about how much power we give to right wing fucktards like Andrew Breitbart who are completely unconcerned with consent, and whose sole purpose is to start up sexual witch hunts.

Thank you; this is something that’s been bugging me for a long time about this.

I’ve heard some people blasting him, seemingly without any concern for consent, and without questioning whether maybe his wife is okay with this.

On the other hand, I know a great many women have been the victim of e-flashing. I can’t exactly blame people for thinking the worst.

But it does bother me that it’s not even brought up as a possibility.

Dilan:

For what it’s worth, I like to think of Spitzer’s situation as a “Republican” sex scandal because of his whole law-and-order thing. I mean, unless I’m wrong about his attitude towards prostitution, that definitely makes him a moral hypocrite.

Come to think of it, apart from Spitzer I can’t remember the last time a prominent Democrat has had a sex scandal that actually involved serious, provable ethics violations, except maybe for John Edwards (though wasn’t he out of office when he hooked up with Rielle Hunter? So that might not count). Personal ethics problems, sure. But it seems like the prominent Democrats tend to stay away from anything involving moral hypocrisy and keep their ethical fails generally either nonsexual (William Jefferson, James Trafficant) or nonprofessional.

not to be nit picky or anything but, um, what sex? in order to be a “sex scandal”, i do believe something resembling actual sex must happen (actual sex being defined as two or more people being in close physical proximatey to each other, and having some contact with each others genitals). so far, “weinergate” consists mostly of andrew breitbart exhibiting a rather creepy interest in pics of some other guy’s dick. pics that were sent privately to a woman not the guy’s wife.

the real question here is, why is andrew breitbart, a raging homophobe, so interested in looking at pics of other guy’s dicks? andrew, do you have something you’d like to share with the rest of the class?

I might point out that there are zero such links here, masturbatory troll with no links in their post.

Why do we have a troll named after male masturbation?

PS, ‘consensual’ incest isn’t, because it’s like ‘consensual’ sex between a doctor and patient, or a boss and underling (or those police on duty and the drunk victim who called them) - there’s no way to verify consent because of the discrepancy in power and informed-ness involved.

Also, Broce@1 - “Weiner (/Clinton/Edwards/Spitzer/any Democrat) should’ve *known* better” is just your standard bullshit blame-the-victim rationalization.

When considering genuine victims of sexual assault, I find the characterization of Weiner/Clinton/Edwards/Spitzer as “victims” a little offensive. I know that wasn’t what you were suggesting, but you seem to be suggesting that none of them had any agency whatsoever with the actions that got them in trouble.

Do I think 99% of the sex scandal garbage is blowing things out of proportion? Yes. Do I think there is a double standard in how Democratic politicians are treated compared to how Republican politicians are treated in these sorts of scandals? Yes. Do I think it’s silly that we have to have a collective national meltdown because somebody sent a picture of their dick to someone else? Yes.

Yes, it’s stupid that Weiner is getting crapped on by as many people as he has been getting crapped on by, particularly many of his fellow Democrats, and it’s even more stupid that a guy like David Vitter did something objectively more offensive (and illegal) and more or less got off with a slap on the wrist.

Having said all of that… the only thing Anthony Weiner is a victim of is his own naivete in not realizing that all of this would eventually bite him in the ass whenever he started sending these pics out to complete strangers on the Internet. He’s a victim of his own idiocy.

I no longer discuss Weiner with anyone, precisely because people are so unable or unwilling to parse the issues; the media has merged all of it into a big blurry ick and almost all of the reactions I hear are revolted shudders. Amongst my officially feminist friends, “this is about sexual harassment” is the shut-down response to any real discussion. Pointing out that the harassment gets lost in the larger moral posturing doesn’t help. Even those gym photos that emerged - from the mockery and revulsion that followed, there is apparently no sin worse or more laughable than a middle-aged man who wants to look sexy. At this point, I’m waiting for Goody Putnam to step forth and accuse us all of onanism.

#25:

Clinton lied in a deposition and in grand jury testimony. He also may have raped Juanita Broaderick. Edwards may have violated campaign finance laws (although I am skeptical of that). Spitzer violated prostitution laws. (I don’t really think the hyocrisy angle works, by the way. At the very least, Clinton had many of the same hypocrisy issues that Spitzer did, on sexual harassment cases, the rights of suspects, and drug laws.)

I tend to have a really low opinion of politicians. I think a lot of them get into the business because they are narcissistic and power-hungry. That doesn’t mean some of them don’t get public policy right; some do. But on a personal level, these people are generally assholes; their specific asshole qualities vary from politician to politician.

We like the ones on our side because, in general, they vote for policies we favor. But that doesn’t make them better people. There are liberal assholes, and there are conservative assholes. And there are also a few people who are reasonably decent people—and not all of them are liberals either.

In the end, most of these scandals don’t lend themselves to easy answers, because they usually combine some amount of actual inappropriate conduct, sometimes illegality, and sometimes hypocrisy, with a big scoop of prudery and regressive gender politics.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn is a consent scandal, for instance.  But can anyone look deep into their heart and say that this would be going down any differently if every single woman involved was saying, “I was completely into it.  Cock pictures, yum!” No, we cannot.

Yeah but that’s the fault of the media and of the sexist culture in which it exists. I’ve seen articles where DSK and Weiner are spoken of like they’re the same thing. DSK’s just another “sex scandal” and nobody seems to care who actually wanted to see pictures of Weiner’s dick. Some of the women apparently did, but there’s at least one who didn’t.

The women calling for his resignation, the rationale I’ve heard is that this whole thing is too much of a distraction for Weiner to be effective. Which is probably true but again, it wouldn’t be an issue if the media wasn’t so titillated by it all. I wonder if part of it is women in Congress know they wouldn’t get away with anything like this and are in a sideways fashion calling for men in Congress to be held to the same standards.

I’m not so sure that consent and puritanism are absolutely separate issues. Puritan culture views women as an inferior category, bound to be subservient to men so transitioning from that gender worldview to rape-culture is a quite expectable outcome.

This and scandals like it are the result of living in a patriarchal rape culture.  Women are used to policing their sexuality.  We are used to not wanting to “look like sluts” and having the rest of general society keep its figurative eye on us.  I don’t care what the ratio is of men to women, I would be surprised if you ever saw a woman involved in a scandal like this.  This is a privileged fuck thinking that all the ladies ever wanted was a load of his dick and he’s just doing them all a favor.  What a nice guy!

I used to be confused about why male politicians seem to be so stupid.  I used to wonder why they would do dumb shit like this and then be surprised when they get caught.  Now I don’t wonder.  It’s privilege.  They’ve never had to question their sexual actions, so they just don’t know the limits.

This case is the biggest IOKIYAR ever.  Not only did Weiner not even have sex, but this firestorm has completely drowned out Clarence and Virginia Thomas’s financial shenanigans.

It’s all a big “hey!  Look at the dick pix!  Only horrible slimy democrats take pix of their dicks for *women*! resign resign resign!!eleventy” and not even Pelosi is willing to say someone else is ready and able to do Weiner’s job of holding SCOTUS members accountable.

The actual case where he apparently harassed one woman?  Completely irrelevant to the people screaming scandal.  They’re just really sad that his texts to the 17 year old were all above board and appropriate.  They’ll just have to see if they can goad his wife into divorce to ease that wound.

Again, not actually giving a shit about the teen, but wanting the firestorm to continue for fun and to protect Thomas.

@Broce: Nope.  IOKIYAR.  Remember, the media’s been actively covering up Boehner’s affair for years.

#36.  I, too, am very disappointed in the 99.9% silence about Sup. Ct. Justice Thomas’s financial/conflict of interest issues.

#37.  Boehner?

There’s going to be an interesting evolution of media treatment for these types of pictures over the next decade.  As more men and women who are 35ish and younger begin running for office, it will become almost expected that that person has a digital sexual history.  Will there be a distinction in how the media treats pictures from the past versus pictures from the present? 

If it is truly an issue of current judgment or a power/consent issue that the “public” has a problem with, there will be less justification to run the story on a news site.

Will certain factions of the media troll more viciously for these pictures if its a woman rather than a man?  Or will they simply troll based on politics?  Or will it be like celebrity photos, where the public really wants to only see the hot naked people, thanks much? 

Also, Bill Clinton must be watching the Weiner story unfold and thinking, “there but for the grace of God and the lack of cameraphones go I.”

Hate to name-check then Enquirer, but then, they were right about Edwards…

http://www.nationalenquirer.com/celebrity/john-boehner-sex-probe

Also, the lies Thomas filed regarding his wife’s income were amazingly horrible, and yeah, not a peep from the media.  IOKIYAR.

CW21:

It’s very possible that sexuality will be less and less of a liability—after all, Bill Clinton made politics safe for “former” pot smokers.

@BrianX - that’s partly true.  He also awkwardly equivocated by claiming he didn’t inhale.  And I wouldn’t say politics is safe for former pot smokers.  Video has a way of making things seem way more real and relatable than descriptions. 

I definitely believe that if there was a video of Clinton getting stoned out of his gourd, or of W. Bush drunkenly going all Mel Gibson on a Texas state trooper during a DUI stop, neither would have won their presidencies.

Following up on #42…

But I do think that a sex tape reflects on a different kind of behavior and judgment than drunk driving or doing drugs.  Despite some valid claims regarding American’s vestigial puritanism, I’m not sure that a sex tape or sexting are inherently frowned upon and viewed as deviant behavior by the majority of Americans.  It’s the context that matters, and that’s why I’m not convinced that a sex tape from the past will always sink a future candidate.

From Dan Savage’s response to Weinergate:

“While I hope Weiner comes clean, I hope [he] comes out swinging: He didn’t do anything wrong, he didn’t do anything millions of other Americans aren’t also doing… He is the victim here.”

Wow, just stunning.

Bean Slap:
@ 18 - how do you know whether their relationship was open/flexible/whatever?
@ 19 - The 3rd sentence clearly had nothing to do about Weiner.
@ 21 - So, no helpful suggestions to what appears to be a serious question?
@22 - still ignoring the point that no one throwing a fit about this cares about consent - they only care about gotcha.
@ 23 - again, how the hell do you know?

Helping hijack one thread trying to discuss the problem of sex being a poisin pill in politics against Dems wasn’t enough for you?  Consent is a different conversation.  INTPagan managed to get that going in the first thread where people wanted to discuss prudery.  I, for one, would like to have the other conversation AS WELL.  NOT X or Y, but one conversation about each.  Both are important.

Gansta @44:  What’s stunning?  What law was violated?  Should we put a woman on the spot of prosecuting him for sexual harassment of sending an unwanted photo if she doesn’t want to?

I don’t get it.  What’s so important here that he should resign?  What about Clarence Thomas, Vitter, Boehner?  Where’s your outrage against them?

CW21@39 - all good questions.  I’m curious about all that myself.  I hope you are right @ 43.
Gangsta - yeah, Dan Savage can really miss at times.  All the things that are wrong with most of the people on the lefts’ reaction.

Crissa,

I don’t think Weiner should resign.  Let the voters decide if he should keep his job.

I can’t have outrage at all of them? 
Not that I saw Gangsta say Weiner should resign; I thought that was a disagreement of the nothing wrong.  Nothing millions of other Americans aren’t doing could apply to people who are harrassing other people or purposely cyber stalking them. 
I’d really like to have the other discussion though.  I really meant that.  Is there something we can do that makes it so when someone brings up “X did this Y sexual thing” everyone just shrugs or says “so what?”

It’s not always OK if you are a Republican. Mark Foley and Mark Sanford are no longer politicians, John Ensign is facing a prosecution, and Newt Gingrich and Bob Livingston both lost the speakership of the House over sex scandals. Some people’s memories are so clouded by Vitter that they don’t remember all the right-wingers who DID suffer serious consequences as a result of sex scandals.

At best, it’s sometimes OK if you are a Republican.

Helen, my problem with the first thread, and with the entire conversation in general, was the framing that made it appear as if the only possible complaint one could have against Weiner was prudery.  It was the last straw.  Prudery is a HUGE problem in our political system, and I think I made it pretty clear in my responses on that thread that I agree with that.  However, acting as if prudery is the only reason someone could possibly have to take offense is grossly inaccurate.

I disagree with the idea that we can possibly know about if the relationship was open, for reasons I went into on the other thread, and I agree that some, if not the majority, of the contacts were admittedly consensual.  I also don’t think that personal behaviour in a marriage is our business because the violation done by cheating is not violation of your partner’s body so much as violation of an implicit or explicit trust (with the exception of contraction of disease).  If he had just cheated on his wife (and, again, we have no way of knowing what their boundaries are because it is politically impossible to come out as part of an open relationship) then that would not be an issue with me politically.  The harassment of women, however, is.

I also think that every Republican who has ever been involved in a financially unethical situation should resign, that Thomas should have recused himself from all kinds of cases and that his relationship with his wife poses serious ethical issues, and that we can both call for the heads of people on the other side who fuck up AND for an actual analysis of people on our side who have gone completely against what their principles should demand (e.g. not harassing women).  We have room for a lot of things to say, and the only reason you’ve only heard me on Weiner here is because I was flabbergasted that there hadn’t been a damn thing said about consent while the issue was being discussed, and that it was being framed as a two-consenting-adults thing.

Gangsta:

Pretty sure that was made with a presumption of consent in mind, in which case it’s a reasonable enough thing to say given that level of information. Truth is, the whole situation is too muddy to make a clear decision either way.

CW21:

I’ve seen the “didn’t inhale” clip. That wasn’t equivocation; he was kidding around, and it was pretty clear both he and the audience knew it.

Agreed with BrianX at 52.  Before it came out that the picture was sent to a recipient who didn’t expect it I wasn’t at all worked up about Weiner’s part in this and I was totally onboard with the people who were defending him.  I do think that there’s a lot to be said about the negative impact of Weiner objectifying and sexualizing women who express interest in his politics, and about how that harms women and discourages them from participation in the public arena, but I don’t think that that kind of dick behaviour warrants resignation, or we’d probably lose most of our politicians.  (Which, come to think of it, may be a good thing, so maybe I should raise my standards a little.)

I think Amanda sort of buried the lede here:

One of the reasons that I wasn’t completely aware of the compromised consent issues is that it’s been treated like an irrelevant aspect in the media.

That strikes me as more exculpatory than this:

I honestly hoped that my long track record of being all for consent would spare me the need to write a few hundred more words, but alas.

I can hardly blame Amanda for not digging deep enough into this story to find the buried nugget that the original Friday Night cock shot was unsolicited and unexpected. Or for wanting to engage the prudery arguments that are dominating the public discourse. You go to culture war on the battllefield that exists. It seems to me the blunt answer to INTPagan’s original question “why not the consent angle?” is because Amanda had no clue it existed, she took the media at its word that these were all consensual encounters. Now this:

This isn’t a consent scandal.

No, it isn’t. It isn’t a consent scandal because feminists don’t control the discourse. I’m personally immune to random cock shots on the internet, but it’s my understanding that most women *really don’t like them* and they might appreciate this being used as a teachable moment to all those clueless dudes who think it’s appropriate to approach women on dating sites and other venues with cock shots. The fact that this behavior is common enough for women like me (I have a high tolerance for, or I suppose indifference to, sexual harassment directed at me) to have developed defense mechanisms to it *should* be scandalous. Just, you know, one day… if we ever manage to take the offense in the culture wars.

INTPagan, you had reasonable arguements, but still hijacked the other thread.  Bean Slap, not so much. Note every one of those comments was directed at Bean Slap, not you.
I still want that other conversation.  So tell me, has it restarted, or did you manage to kill it?

No, it hasn’t.  I just checked that other thread, nothing in a day and most of it about…consent and how Amanda is ignoring something that she had not been aware of and how dare everyone ignore that aspect. 
So, no discussion on prudery and how any non-hetronormative/non-vanilla sex is a poisin pill in politics.

Helen, if the discussion was going to happen at all then someone had to point it out.  The hijack happened because I was attacked for pointing out that consent is important and has a role in this story that was being neglected.  Had the point not been attacked then I would have left it.  And, had there not been a hijack, the discussion of consent never would have happened.  I also still find it difficult to believe that Amanda was unaware of that aspect, although I’ll allow that it’s a possibility; however, if someone is going to cover these from a journalistic standpoint, and I think of professional bloggers as journalists, then it is incumbent upon them to make themselves aware of as much of the story as possible, and that detail was right out there for anyone to find out without even making an effort to find it.  I think, plain and simple, that it was convenient to ignore it, and I’m saying that about pretty much everyone on the left right now.  I’m actually surprised, and glad, that Amanda addressed it, and I appreciate it.

Now, let’s see where I say that our political system is prude:

Comment 17:

I could give two shits if he cheats on his wife because that’s not related to his job.  I don’t care where he puts his junk or who he sends pictures of it to,

Comment 25:

No, we have no reason to give a shit if he sends a thousand pictures a day of his junk to consenting partners, but ONE OF THEM WAS NOT CONSENTING.  Consent changes EVERYTHING.

Comment 38:

Yes, Dilan.  Amanda has the gender politics right, as she usually does,

Comment 51:

The fact that he sexually harassed women is not the GOP narrative, Punditus.  They’re saying that he’s a dirty, dirty adulterer who should wear a chastity belt.  I’m talking about an actual narrative about something that he actually did wrong and that the left is actually ignoring, including on this blog, while pretending as if the only possible controversy to be drawn from this is that he did something unauthorized with his junk.  It’s not.

Comment 54:

Blackbloc, that was exactly what I thought had happened at first, and I was really surprised and disappointed to see that it was otherwise.  I think it’s shit that people can’t have open relationships and open marriages and be public about it because of the Morality Police getting all up on them.

Comment 112:

It’s obvious that they’re saying the things to the media that they would if they didn’t, but those are the things that have to be said to the media in order to reassure them that this is a Properly Approved Heterosexual Marriage.  This narrative demands that the cheated-upon partner be hurt and the cheater feel guilty, and so they act that way, and whether or not it’s accurate is none of our concern.

If you can’t see how these comments make it clear that I think that our political system has its head up its ass in regards to sexuality then I don’t know what to do for you.  Comments 54 and 112 are particularly obvious.

Or, to make it clear, I would have been willing to have that conversation separate from the Anthony Weiner narrative because the story about Anthony Weiner is irrevocably altered by the consent angle.  I understand that the media narrative is that he’s a bad, dirty man because he did dirty things, but I’m wondering since when the feminist blogosphere was dominated by the media narrative instead of pointing out things that the dominant narrative leaves out.  It wouldn’t have been a hijack if it had actually been discussed, but it wasn’t, and it wouldn’t have been, without someone hijacking and pointing this out.  I don’t think it ever would have been mentioned.

IF this had been a case of two-or-more-consenting-adults then hell yes, it’s a problem with our system, but I think it’s more indicative of our consent problem that this is pointed out as a simple sex scandal despite the sexual harassment aspect than it is of our prudery problem.  I also think that the silence on it, and the level of attack that happened when I pointed out that silence, makes it pretty clear that there’s a tribalism problem as well.  Stories about prudery are important.  This just isn’t one of them.

INTPagan, I think you’re ignoring the signal to noise ratio if you find it hard to believe that a person could easily miss the quote about the first cock shot being unexpected by the intended recipient.

Perhaps, but it was easy to find, and it was obvious enough to be posted about in two places that I seldom read (although I just added Ta-Nehisi to my blogroll because I wonder why the hell I wasn’t reading him) while ignored thunderingly in the feminist blogs that I read much more regularly.  Maybe the fishiness is erroneous; I don’t know, but it was easy to find.  I don’t take in a lot of regular media.  I read blogs.

INTPagan, I’ve registered to comment here to thank you for your steadfastness and patience in this thread and the previous one re Weiner in explaining, carefully and consistently, why this really is, above and beyond banal political posturing between parties, an issue of consent, harassment, and double standards—not shockhorror fainting couch-style prudery which for some reason is being used by and accepted as both an argument and a legitimate insult by self-styled feminists here and elsewhere. Similarly, I was well aware from the moment I first heard about the photograph sent to Cordova that was bewildered and confused by it because she said so, and therefore had little trouble concluding, on my own and without further comment from the peanut gallery, that she had been flashed for no apparent reason, that this was Weiner’s fault entirely, and that the meedja clearly wanted to spin this story into OMG Sexy Young Temptresses and the Dude Incapable of Resisting Them rather than a somewhat pitiful illustration of a man incapable of seeing women as anything more than fuck objects. Anyhow, thanks, again.

Thank you, Saurs.  Yes.

And, by the by, Weiner’s resigning.

My first reaction was no way do women go away taking pictures of their ‘nasties’ and sending them around. And then I remembered that my trainer has an inbox full.

i must say some people here are quite hysterical here (eg. Bean Slap # 22) if they genuinely believe its a consent issue or harassment.

women send nude unsolicited pictures of themselves to men a lot.
one question pops in my head….

why are men less likely to make a big deal out of it?

I call troll on biwinning already.

Also, TNC discusses a) that another woman was not a willing participant and b) how this kind of behaviour marginalizes women.  Here.  It’s good.  Read it.

I second the troll call.
But you still killed the other discussion by screaming consent-consent-consent until that’s all anyone could see.  Again, I said your arguements were reasonable.  Excessive, but reasonable. 
You couldn’t just send Amanda an e-mail asking her to do a post on your prefered topic?  See, here it is; and the other thread is now dead.

And, as my last thought on the subject - I haven’t posted here much in years and don’t plan on becoming a regular again - Melissa McEwan on the problem with all of this.  She also gives my reason for threadjacking the earlier one:

And among the several regrets I had upon reading that news, despite my agreement with the decision, is this: That his resignation will go down as a man badgered out of Congress by enemies and prudes, and not as the fair consequences for a person who abused his position and ignored consent to harass women who believed in him.

So, hijacking a thread?  Worth it.  It got discussed here, and it is not going to be discussed in many more places.  This is a heavily-trafficked blog, and I’ve posted about it on my Facebook and I could post it on my blog until I turn blue in the face, but it would never be discussed in a larger medium.  If that’s what it takes then so be it.  It’s bad enough that the media is more excited that a former porn star is involved (and her default is consent, amirited00dz) than about the fact that she claims that he was repeatedly ignoring her attempts to steer it back to sex, too.  And it’s bad enough that, even on this blog, a lot of people think that it’s not harassment because, after all, she could just say “no” directly, despite the many conversations about how a blunt no is very difficult for a lot of women to give.  But this needed to be discussed, somewhere where people would read it.  If that makes me an asshole thread-jacker then so be it, but it’s being discussed, not that poor Anthony Weiner is the victim of meanie prudes, but that he harassed women.  The prudery discussion needs to be had, but this is a one-hundred percent wrong context for it, and these two things should not be associated.  The media’s reasoning isn’t wrong in this case because they’re prudes.  It’s because they don’t think that consent matters.  Framing it in the other way lends credibility to the idea that this was entirely about consenting adults, and that’s not what we should be hitting the media on as it becomes more and more clear that he had a pattern of taking women who had contacted him about politics and sexualizing the conversation, with or without their interest and consent.  I hope that you don’t honestly think that the biggest problem with this dialogue is the prudery of the media.  There are loads of other contexts in which to have that conversation.  Have it in those.  I won’t argue against it.

You couldn’t just send Amanda an e-mail asking her to do a post on your prefered topic?

Why bother? Isn’t that what comment threads on blogs are for, to hash out the remaining important issues not covered by the blogpost itself? Besides, INTPagan, snobographer and others did more than admirable work at uncovering both the consent problems with Weiner’s behavior and why it ought to matter to feminists. If folk here want to make it about salvaging the democrats’ reputation, have at it; why can’t there be room for both? It is just about possible to condemn both slut-shaming prurience and a dude’s fondness for sexual harassment in a single cohesive thought—feminist folk do it all the time when the dude shills for the wrong political platform.

Thanks from me as well, INTPagan.  Ironically, for me the consent issue came to the forefront because the prudery was pointed out so clearly by Amanda.  (Like her, I found it hard to get answers about whether or not there was consent.  Just didn’t find it’s way to the blogs I read or TPM, though I can’t say I’ve been spending a lot of time doing research)

how can we make a distinction between Anthony Weiner the Senator engaging in sexual banter and sending unsolicited pictures to women who contacted him to discuss political matters, and Anthony Weiner the person doing the same? 

in the latter case, can we judge him like ordinary men/women who often dont regard a persons consent before sending them such pictures?

im not defending him here. i understand most women did contact him to discuss political matters and he abused his position

how serious is the consent issue in itself, in case of sending pictures to people ?

Then biwinning, sexual harrassment is a serious problem in society-it doesnt make it okay. Clearly youre a troll and have been pointed out as such. Not to mention but what kind of perv sends unsolicited naked pictures of themselves to random people? You arent going to find anyone on a feminist page who does that. Your #73 comment is sexual assault apologistics. Youre probably weiner himself, lol! I’d also like to point out I was the first one who brought up the consent issue when everyone else was talking about techno gadgets I pointed out the hypocrisy of Amanda. BTW, crap job trying to make excuses for not discussing the consent angle. Plenty of posts show Amanda clearly salivating over making excuses for him, describing his behavior as a “non-issue,” and trying to toss a red herring in there to make it about prudery when in fact its about harassment. Partisan politics is so ugly when you have people with popular blogs willing to shell out principle for partisan ass-kissery.

Looks like harassment by way of prudery is picking up steam:

http://blogs.forbes.com/timworstall/2011/06/16/harassment-by-twitter-and-blog/

“The media’s reasoning isn’t wrong in this case because they’re prudes.  It’s because they don’t think that consent matters.”
No, the media’s reasoning is wrong in this case both because they’re prudes & because they don’t think that consent matters.

“I’d also like to point out I was the first one who brought up the consent issue when everyone else was talking about techno gadgets I pointed out the hypocrisy of Amanda. BTW, crap job trying to make excuses for not discussing the consent angle.”
What I’m managing to make out over the deafening sound of your rhetorical self-gratification is that you’ve never read anything that Marcotte has written re: consent.  Ever.  Anywhere.  That, & how the whole point of this & the “schoolmarm” post - how the Weiner “scandal” fits neatly into the rising sexual prudery & how said prudery gives the bluenoses & sheet-sniffers free licence to police everyone else’s sexual behavior & how this policing is always disproportionally focused on women in the long run (& the fact that it was a man this time makes this example the exception that proves the rule) - flew several leagues over your heads.  All because Comrade Marcotte violated Order 227.

So INTPagan & the rest of the wayward Shakers successfully jacked threads by pushing & shoving & bullying & painting the discourse into the “consent” corner.  3 Cheers!  They got their scalp w/ Weiner’s resignation.  Huzzah!  While they whoop it up with their victory dance (a rhetorical, nominal victory, granted.  But a victory nonetheless.), the rest of us have lost a sharp, clear progressive voice in the House, David “The Shitter” Vitter still has his Senate seat, SCOTUS Justice Clarence “Uncle Tom” Thomas still fails to recuse himself from cases that he has a vested financial interest in, many of the women on Weiner’s tweet-list have suffered genuine online staking & harassment from said bluenosed sheet-snffers & a lying pig like Breitbart now has some actual journalistic credibility.  Nicely done.  Who’s the next target of this mob grown out of the dregs of the Circular Firing Squad / Cheap-Shot Brigade / Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight?

Yeah, a coupl’a minority voices squeaking from a teensy corner of the interweb has now made right-wing folk plausible and has killed the democrats but good. This is the same refrain played the exact same way whenever women want to talk about women’s issues in a way that inconveniences dudes in charge.

I’m not sure why there’s any confusion about the chain of events here, but it goes something like this: Weiner’s activities become somewhat front-page news; a fair amount of feminist democrats cry foul (or, really “prude!”) before reading up on the fact that Weiner violated the consent of some of the women he tweeted, while a fair number of other feminists elsewhere calmly discuss the consent issue; readers of aforementioned feminist democrats try to hip bloggers about shit they apparently don’t know (since why would they be on Weiner’s side when he’s just another misogynistic dickbag?); those readers, like INTPagan, are now being accused of “sabotaging” the democrats and freedoms and the future of America, et al, because… why again?

Look, I understand Amanda is not the guardian of the feminist webisphere, and is not beholden to anyone to make a statement she’s not comfortable making. But the fault for failing to note that Cordova and the like weren’t up for receiving dick shots is hers. No one is complaining that she has a record of not speaking about consent, in general, just that she chose to write about a topic that she apparently didn’t know much about. I knew about Cordova from the word go, which was why it struck me as fairly odd days later Amanda was still acting like anyone who thought Weiner was a dick was just A Big Prude. You all get that calling women “prudes” when they want to talk about sexual harassment feels like just another anti-feminist silencing strategy, right?

This issue warranted a discussion of consent, since consent was violated. Why is that a problem? ‘Cos dude’s a democrat, and The Party needs us to be quiet little girls about one of their own?