Let me start off by saying I'm not a scandal kind-of-person. Or rather, I'm not the kind of person who cares much about them. Nor have I ever considered myself much of a feminist. I mean, I generally support women's rights, but only in the same way most Americans don't want to be called a chauvinist pig. Had you asked me a week ago, the most radical feminist notion I held was sometimes giving children the mother's last name instead of the father's.
Nonetheless, even I have managed to notice the recent surge of headlines involved powerful men taking advantage of women, from cheating husbands (Schwarzenegger) to allegations of rape (Strauss-Kahn). It might seem strange to suggest that Americans are overlooking these events--on the contrary, speculation about Weiner's photos, Strauss-Kahn's reputation, John Edward's affair, and new Schwarzenegger jokes have dominated the media in the past few weeks. However, my concern is not the nature of the scandals themselves--as long as people continue to have sex, there will be sex scandals--but rather what they reveal about lingering sexism in American culture.
Yes, we all know (or should know) that women continue to earn less than men for the same work. And yet, though most would acknowledge this as unfair, that same most (myself included) don't seem to give that much of a damn about this fact. And that's just the tip of the iceberg; this time.com article also touches on sexism in light of the scandals, and happens to mention that "America is one of only two industrialized nations, along with Australia, that do not guarantee paid maternity leave..." The shock is not that America does not guarantee paid maternity leave--with the share of crappy jobs I've had, I'm grateful for any sort of pay that doesn't involve actually showing up for work--but that most other first-world countries do. Really? So if I lived in England and was knocked up, I could count on taking time off to have a kid while still getting paid? Upon reading that I'm almost impelled to throw all my stuff in a lorry and move house: American women are farther behind than I thought.
And while many men seem to bounce back from even the most heinous accusations, the women don't always fair so well; the article from above mentions as much. Despite having a name almost as ridiculous as the scandal, Congressman Weiner is pretty secure from having to resign. Arnold Schwarzenegger will continue to star in movies. Granted, Strauss-Kahn did step down as chairman of the International Monetary Fund and may not be as likely a candidate for the French presidency anymore, but the French press has already had a heyday hounding the maid who brought on the charges, with several of Strauss-Kahn's closest aids implying that the whole thing might be a setup because they just can't believe the guy could possibly be that cruel. While we as a society might make a show of indicting or publicly humiliating some of these men, the women involved only seem to become cast as sluts or worse. Case in point: I was only six when the whole Monica Lewinsky thing was unraveling, but even I consider Clinton one of the better presidents in the past 50 or so years while Lewinsky is simply a girl who wanted some--and got a lot. Turns out she's been living in London since 2005 to try to escape this very reputation; at least she's guaranteed paid maternity leave.
Nor are these isolated incidents for the majority of the men. Apparently Weiner has been sending Twitter women photos of his weiner before and during his one-year-old marriage, and other women are now claiming affairs with the former Governator. But DSK is possibly the worst offender of all: not only did French journalist Tristane Banon already accuse Strauss-Kahn of behavior very similar to what he supposedly did to the maid, but her own mother suggested not saying anything about it because he was a fellow party member "en-route to greatness" and also related to her godmother.
So imagine being a woman, you're interviewing this pretty important guy in your country and all of a sudden he tries something fishy with you and you end up having to fight him off to avoid being taken advantage of. And you're thinking "I'm gonna get this sick bastard, I'll make him pay" when your mother comes and says "well, don't say anything, he's really important and from our party and he's your godmother's second cousin's husband" or some bullshit. "Look, I don't care if the guy's on his way to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, I had to fight him off to keep him out of my pants and I'm fucking saying something." And you do say something--except no one does anything. Hell, the guy might even be nominated for the presidency soon. This is what it means to be a woman in the 21st century?
According to this other times.com article, apparently DSK has a reputation for being rather, um, unreserved around women. And it takes some no-name New York maid to finally put her foot down on it. As if that weren't enough, two weeks later some former Egyptian banker is being accused of sexually assaulting another maid. In an expensive hotel. In New York City. I'm serious: look at this. You think he would have been a little more aware or at least more discrete.
I'm not saying that there aren't issues in the other direction, of course. There's actually a billboard in New Mexico put up by some guy that says "This would have been a picture of my 2-month-old baby if the mother had decided to not KILL our child!" Yes, many people have called this a huge breach of privacy for the woman involved. However, it doesn't state her name anywhere and does raise important questions about men's rights in the context of abortion and pregnancy. Now I don't know what their situation was, why they broke up, or how they each reacted to the pregnancy. I don't know, maybe she would have put up a billboard saying "This would have been a picture of my 2-month old baby if the father had decided to help RAISE our child." And frankly, if your ex-lover is going to such lengths as to pay for a billboard advertisement to publicly humiliate you, maybe it's better if you guys aren't together anymore. But details aside, it does kind of suck when you have no say in what's going to happen to your unborn kid simply because you're not the mother.
To be honest, I still don't really care what goes on in the private lives of politicians and celebrities; it's not any worse than what goes on in most people's private lives, only that the media hones in on the details of the rich and famous. I don't think male employees should be fired for telling a female co-worker she looks nice, people who cheat on their spouses can still make good leaders and diplomats, and the situation is far from black and white. Even Tristane Banon is now filing a separate complaint against Strauss-Kahn, though her lawyer has said she does not want her report to have any bearing on the New York case. But when we live in a world where the majority of sexual attacks go reported and it's the exception rather than the rule to speak out against a powerful man, it's a good sign we should reexamine, if not change, the way our society treats women's rights.
Read more at http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2076113,00.html?xid=feed-yahoo-full-mostpopular, http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2072521,00.html, and http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2072209,00.html.
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