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No Difference

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Clarissa

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There is absolutely no difference whatsoever between saying,

“He cheated on his wife; he is an abuser and a freak who put his family to shame”

and

“She had sex before getting married; she is such a slut”

or

“He had sexual relations with a man; has he thought how this will shame his parents and how abusive this is towards them?”

No difference. None.

If you pass judgment on people’s legal and consensual sexual activities, you are a horrible, vicious prude. It doesn’t matter a bit what those activities happen to be. Go stand in the same corner with slut-shamers and homophobes. Just don’t call yourself a feminist because that’s such a joke.

34 responses to “No Difference”

  1. el Avatar
    el

    There is some difference imo: a parent in the two last examples is not a participant in their children’s sexual life, while a wife in the first example has all rights to be furious, f.e. because of a risk of getting disease.

    // If you pass judgment on people’s legal and consensual sexual activities, you are a horrible, vicious prude.

    I am not invested in Hugo’s private life, here want to make a general point: imo cheating is a force of destruction in the world, while honest consensual sex is not. And I don’t think it makes one a prude.

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      “There is some difference imo: a parent in the two last examples is not a participant in their children’s sexual life, while a wife in the first example has all rights to be furious, f.e. because of a risk of getting disease.”

      – Of course, she does. But have you noticed that the statement is not written in the wife’s voice? What right do the people who are not in any way implicated in the situation to get outraged on her behalf? Are they at risk of getting any disease? This is fake outrage, just like the kind that drives homophobia masking as a fear of an HIV epidemic.

      ” imo cheating is a force of destruction in the world”

      – And there are crowds of people who think the exact same thing about homosexuality, abortion, and single motherhood. The only solution here is for all of us to apply these opinions we are definitely entitled to to our own lives and leave others out of the whole thing. Don’t like abortion? Don’t have one but don’t police the reproductive choices of others. Don’t like gay sex? Don’t have gay sex but don’t judge people who do. Don’t like cheating? Then don’t cheat or allow cheaters into your life but let others figure out how they want to handle the issue.

      I, for instance, will never allow cheating to be any part of my life. Any partner of mine who as much as looks with sexual interest in the direction of another person will be kicked out of my life immediately. Because that is who I am, that is my sexual scenario. I do, however, recognize the right of other people to not be me and to have their own sexual scenarios in their own lives. In the same way as not being gay doesn’t prevent me from respecting gay people.

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  2. Titfortat Avatar
    Titfortat

    Yeah, el is right. I think for most people they can easily see the difference. One involves exploring your sexuality the other involves deception and lies. If people judge those equally they are not prudish but stupid.

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      “One involves exploring your sexuality the other involves deception and lies.”

      – Have you heard the expression “being in the closet”? It refers to gay people who conceal their sexuality because of fear of persecution. Have you heard of women who undergo the restoration of the hymen to conceal their loss of virginity from controlling parents? Teenagers who go to great lengths to pretend they are not having sex? Older people who conceal their sex lives from their controlling adult children? People who fear that their sexuality will be policed often resort to deception and lies. This is obviously not limited just to cheaters. So no, there is absolutely no difference.

      It would be amazing if you tried to think before posting comments.

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      1. Titfortat Avatar
        Titfortat

        But in many of those situations the individuals have not taken a public oath to be faithful to one. Hugo was a Christian and did so when he publically married his wife. If the gay individuals you point out are married then of course they are engaging in lies and deception. If they are single adults or teenagers then they are just trying to keep their private lives, well, private. Im sure you can see the difference in the behavior. Im thinking you need to teach me some more of your views. Im almost there, the cool aid looks good, lmao.

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        1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
          bloggerclarissa

          “But in many of those situations the individuals have not taken a public oath to be faithful to one. Hugo was a Christian and did so when he publically married his wife.”

          – Maybe Christians can figure out how to practice their religion without your input, eh? Many Evangelicals have their children make public virginity pledges, many gay people have to give public oaths not to practice homosexuality in front of their congregations. So once again, there is no difference between the described situations. Please, try to think through your response before posting it. I feel like I’m having a discussion with a first grader.

          “If the gay individuals you point out are married then of course they are engaging in lies and deception.”

          – They are not lying to you. Can’t you see how idiotic your outrage on behalf of a supposed deception of complete strangers is?

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    2. Avatar
      Anonymous

      My ex turned out to be a cheating spouse (somewhere around 100 affairs, whom he secretly taped), who was extraordinarily good at being sneaky and manipulative. I have to admit that my experience colors the light in which I see spouses who are serial cheaters (vs those who have one affair, whether it ends a marriage or not; and not including those in poly relationships where everyone is aware of the extra relationships). Untrustworthiness in one area seems to indicate untrustworthiness in others.

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      1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
        bloggerclarissa

        The adult thing for you to do would be to analyze why you chose not to notice 100 affairs. Obviously, there was a reason you felt the need to stick around while he was doing all this.

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  3. Titfortat Avatar
    Titfortat

    Many Evangelicals have their children make public virginity pledges, many gay people have to give public oaths not to practice homosexuality in front of their congregations.(Clarissa)

    I would think of all people you would see how abusive this type of behavior is against children. But then again, maybe not.

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      “I would think of all people you would see how abusive this type of behavior is against children. But then again, maybe not.”

      – And another non sequitur.

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  4. Kathleen Avatar
    Kathleen

    I agree with you, Clarissa. I can understand that it’s tempting for people to be judgmental, but I have dear friends who I love a lot (and who I am NOT in a sexual relationship with) who cheat on their spouses/significant others. I certainly don’t condemn them and cut off my friendship with them! They are wonderful, amazing people in a lot of ways. They have a right to make whatever sexual decisions they want to, it is none of my business. I would, however, have the right to cut MY significant other out of my life if he cheated on me.

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  5. valter07 Avatar
    valter07

    Please, this discussion is quite meaningless until we agree to use some common definition of “abuse”…
    Will this experience be hurtful to Hugo’s children to some extent? Most likely yes. Children tend to pick it if there is tension in the family, and that makes them anxious. But Hugo is not a celebrity, his life is not in People magazine or on MTV. Where would his kids learn about his transgressions if not from his family members? From other kids on the playground? Because other kids, at age 4 and 2, respectively, read feminist blogs? Of course someone may “enlighten” his kids… But then it is totally legitimate question – who is more abusive (as in causing harm with the awareness of causing harm) – Hugo or someone feeling the need to “enlighten” his children this way?

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    1. el Avatar
      el

      When they grow up, both they and their friends will find all the info on Internet. Today 6-year-olds surf the Net.

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      1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
        bloggerclarissa

        So? Let’s not impute any non-existent prudery to today’s 6 year olds.

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      2. Stille (@aperfectbalance) Avatar
        Stille (@aperfectbalance)

        This is a great argument for everyone to stop talking about Schwyzer. Let us not further traumatize his kids 😛

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        1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
          bloggerclarissa

          But he started it first! And he has cooties!

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      3. valter07 Avatar
        valter07

        –When they grow up, both they and their friends will find all the info on Internet. Today 6-year-olds surf the Net.

        Yeah, they surf the internet looking for juicy personal details about the parents of their friends… That’s exactly what my daughter was doing when she was 6 years old… Who cares about Pokemons at the advanced age of 6…
        Seriously, there are all kinds of weird people out there, and some kids of extremely weird parents can indeed be into such kind of things. But such people will find the reason to judge and reject and harm their’s and other’s (in this case – Hugo’s) kids anyway… Living whole one’s life in fear of what such people can do to you is likely a bigger trauma that actual occasional contact with such people.
        Well, this is going to be an even bigger tangent, but I find this widespread obsession with creating perfectly non-traumatic experience for one’s children a bit over the top. I do not mean one should not care about one’s children’s experiences. But striving for perfection here is as problematic as in any other area of life. And frequently just a way to prove that “I am better parent than thou”… While in many cases such perfectionists are blind to some ways they are harming their children anyway.

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  6. el Avatar
    el

    // So? Let’s not impute any non-existent prudery to today’s 6 year olds.

    You see the level of prudery in your students, who think a 19-year-old woman is a slut for having a boyfriend or, “of course”, sleeps with a man for money, even if the text says nothing on the topic. Have they become more concervative in their old age? 🙂

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      The real damage to children is caused by parents who have no sex lives.

      As for students, I explained many times that in class they say what they think they should say.

      I really find all of this preoccupation for Hugo’s children to be completely fake. First, people drive him to a mental breakdown and place bets in whether he will kill himself and then go all “But what about the poor kiddies!”

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  7. Benoni Avatar
    Benoni

    @titfortat

    “If the gay individuals you point out are married then of course they are engaging in lies and deception.”

    What kind of strange sub-human creatures do you think we are to hide our sexuality purely to deceive straight people? Clarissa is right that fear of persecution can drive someone into the closet , and if you’ve never had to live with those kinds of social pressures, it’s extremely ignorant of you to judge them. Desperation and fear can do funny things to people, to understate it massively.

    It’s also possible, however, that a closeted person can be perfectly approving of homosexuality, have completely honest intentions and absolutely nothing to fear from their peer group. I was in the position of being raised by a decently moderate family in a cushy liberal environment where I had no reason to be scared of coming out. The only missing piece was my own acceptance – having lived most of my life assuming I was straight, the creeping suspicion I was attracted to men did not sit well with self-image. Of course I had no problem with homosexuality, even from the little I knew about it, but it was almost impossible to see me – myself – as a gay person. Gay people were the alien race I see on television and in bars, and I didn’t look or act like them, so how could I have been gay? It happens that I wasn’t old enough to marry before I came out, but I did go through two relationships with girls at that time. Marriage is a common coping mechanism to prove to themselves, not their partners, that they are straight. I completely understand why someone would find themselves doing that. Doesn’t this, at least, seem a much more credible explanation for this behavior than lying for the sheer malicious pleasure of deceiving straight people?

    It takes someone who’s been through this (like me) or someone who’s simply intelligent and empathetic enough (like Clarissa) to realize that this is real life and you can’t afford to be so fucking judgmental towards real three-dimensional human beings. Especially when you know so little about them.

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    1. Titfortat Avatar
      Titfortat

      @Benoni

      Feel better now?

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      1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
        bloggerclarissa

        Titfortat: one more condescending and aggressive comment of this kind and I’m banning you for good.

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  8. NancyP Avatar
    NancyP

    There’s a huge difference between “cheating on your spouse” and having premarital sex. You can’t cheat unless you have made a promise. The default contract between spouses has been sexual exclusivity, or at least the public appearance of sexual exclusivity. Part of the pain that may be felt by the cheated-on spouse is humiliation, of being seen as “not worth the effort to keep a promise” (loss of face). Spouses in an “open” marriage have a harder time cheating because “cheating” is defined differently in the contract between spouses. Part of the contract may be “don’t have extra-marital sex with the spouse’s friends or family”, “keep it discreet”, or some such, if one or both spouses dislike being the object of public speculation. The outsider to the relationship doesn’t know the exact contract between the married couple. What may look like cheating to the outsider may not feel like cheating to the couple, and vice versa. The cultural assumption is that the spousal contract is the default one, and any deviation from sexual exclusivity is equivalent to breaking the contract, going back on a promise, not being trustworthy, etc. The cultural correlary assumption is that someone who breaks a marital contract is more likely to break other contracts. This may or may not be true, but does explain judgmental attitudes toward spouses who cheat in spectacularly public ways.

    Personally, I like to laugh at politicians and preachers who demean others for sexual activity outside traditional marriage, but then are caught schtupping their secretary or vacationing with a rent boy or (favorite new slang) “hiking the Appalachian Trail” (Republican Gov. and now Sen. Mark Sanford’s excuse for being out of touch with his office and out of the country with his mistress).

    There is no formal promise or contract involved in pre-marital sex.

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      What you are describing are simply rationalizations. The real reason that people get so emotional about the cheating in the relationships of others is the intolerable anxiety they experience when seeing others exercise the freedom they have relinquished. They sold their own sexual freedom and gate everybody who hasn’t, that’s all.

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      1. SunSwordTiger Avatar
        SunSwordTiger

        In the majority of cases, a marriage is a contract where the terms are formally agreed to in front of witnesses. Violation of contract terms makes such a person suspect in other ways. After all, if someone agrees to do or not do something in front of a whole crowd of witnesses including (usually) both families and some agreed upon religious authority — and then willfully violates the contract terms — well then can they be otherwise trusted? It is not a question of “prudishness” it is a question of trust.

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        1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
          bloggerclarissa

          The fact that many people choose to create a pseudo-religious show around their marriage ceremony is irrelevant. People are free to organize parties, dress up, and act in a variety of silly ways. A marriage ceremony per se, however, does not require this dog and pony show you are describing.

          Your empty verbiage doesn’t even manage to conceal your desire to police the lives of people who entered into no contracts whatsoever with you.

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  9. Lightning Round – 2013/08/07 | Free Northerner

    […] of private and public sphere by sex and the appropriation of individual sexuality by the community. She’s consistent on the latter. It seems like it might be the basis of a good working […]

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  10. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    Two points,

    1. I’ve never heard anyone say anything like:

    “He cheated on his wife; he is an abuser and a freak who put his family to shame”

    I’ve heard lots of things like

    “He cheated on his wife, again, and the damn fool didn’t know any better than to take him back in.”
    “He cheated on his wife and when she found out she piled all his stuff in the front yard and had a wienie roast”
    “He cheated on his wife, which is only fair since she’s been goin’ at it with his best friend for the last four months”
    “He cheated on his wife in front of the whole town and she’s actin’ like it never happened. I can’t figure out if she’s being a good Christian or just stupider than a can of beans”

    People, neurotypical people at least, enjoy talking to each other about other people and the sex lives of those other people is going to be a part of that. Getting rid of everyday gossip is going to require a fundamental change of most human beings at the genetic level.

    2. If someone says “Oh my god, he cheated on his wife, on their kid’s birthday! with her sister! Who gave him the clap!” they’re not necessarily being a prude, they’re expressing emphathy, imagining what they would feel as various participants in that sordid little train wreck, and maybe expressing relief that their own personal lives aren’t so dysfunctional (or trying to distract people from realizing it that their own personal lives are even gorier).

    “If you pass judgment on people’s legal and consensual sexual activities, you are a horrible, vicious prude.”

    Or…. human, we are fundamentally a judgmental species.

    “just don’t call yourself a feminist because that’s such a joke.”

    I don’t call myself a feminist. I wouldn’t call myself anti-feminist either, if anything I’d call myself afeminist since the current dominant incarnations of feminism seem increasingly irrelevant to me or anyone I know.

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      Just read the threads about Hugo. I took the comment almost verbatim from what people said. One actually declared that Hugo abused his mother -in-law by cheating on his wife. In those very words.

      This is SO not about empathy. Especially when these same people have bullied the guy into a psych ward.

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      1. cliff arroyo Avatar
        cliff arroyo

        “I took the comment almost verbatim from what people said”

        But I think you took different things people said and cobbled them together in a single sentence. That’s what I meant, the sentence you wrote goes all over the place.

        I assume you’re writing about over-involved emotional reactions and getting offended on other people’s behalf, which are profoundly bizarre behaviors.

        But people can and do pass judgement without those. I myself pass judgement on other people’s sexual behavior all the time, but I don’t get all emotionally riled up, it’s more from a position of detached distaste, bemusement or amusement, depending on the circumstances.

        Getting back to HS, I now think that maybe he’s addicted to disapproval and can only be sexually and/or emotionally fulfilled through transgression, a modern version of Il Bell’Antonio and the Madonna/whore complex.

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        1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
          bloggerclarissa

          I can only repeat that I didn’t invent that statement. I don’t have this kind of imagination. Dozens of people keep insisting that he is an abuser (of multiple women) because he cheated on his wife. I wouldn’t be able to invent something this insane.

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      2. musteryou Avatar
        musteryou

        “Getting back to HS, I now think that maybe he’s addicted to disapproval and can only be sexually and/or emotionally fulfilled through transgression, a modern version of Il Bell’Antonio and the Madonna/whore complex.”

        Then he has something going for him at least. He may be rather dull and predictable in some cultural ways, but he is riding his own wave at least.

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  11. Emily Avatar
    Emily

    Thank you for your perspective on Hugo S. I’ve never been a huge fan of his, though I’ve read his blog and other writings. Many of his perspectives on feminism drove me up a wall. Even so, he doesn’t deserve this treatment. None of us know FOR SURE what his personal life is like. I’m not going to judge. I wish him speedy recovery, for what it’s worth.

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      Thank you for this comment, Emily!

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