I wrote a comment on wecandoit7's insightful diary about Anthony Weiner, entitled "A Gay Man's Perspective on Anthony Weiner" and several who commented on my comment suggested I make it a separate diary. I normally wouldn't, but I think it raises issues that wecandoit7 didn't raise directly and that perhaps we should talk about.
The original diary made me think about the way sometimes we don't understand each other when we talk about the intersection of sex and politics, and this diary in particular and my reaction to it, may provide some insight into the backlash against not only Anthony Weiner's "scandal" and other politicians' infidelities, but the modern American anxiety over marriage, and how politicians exploit the gay marriage issue to stoke that anxiety.
So here was my comment, slightly expanded.
Let me say that I appreciate your diary. It is well thought out and well reasoned, and on some level I agree with it, in its general desire to puncture some of the artificiality that surrounds our rituals of sexuality.
On the other hand, I would say the theory of this diary, even if the theory were correct, would not be something that a gay man, particularly one who I assume supports gay marriage, would want to propagate.
I would go even further and say the theory behind this diary is somewhat dangerous and heterophobic. I don't want to throw around epithets, but I use the term because I think we need to have a serious talk and maybe provocative words will spur it.
Here's an idea that I think you may want to rethink or rephrase:
As a gay man, I live in a community that has embraced sexuality with more maturity and groundedness than most other communities in the history of our species.... Gay male society has evolved a different set of rituals - rituals that embrace sexuality as a part of the human experience, and celebrate it and take joy in all its best permutations.
That exalted - and, dare I say, quite positive - state of affairs has yet to fully prevail in the mainstream American consciousness...
I assume you mean to contrast gay sexuality with conventional straight sexuality. But what you are doing is valorizing one set of sexual norms over another.
Many who have experienced different forms of sexuality and sexual mores would say that your community has embraced sexuality that is different and that you prefer, but is no more mature or grounded than anyone else's sexuality. Below, I am going to try to explain how, for much of the straight, married, including married male, population, monogamy is just as "exalted" as free love, how monogamy "embraces sexuality" and is "quite positive." As you can see, by contrasting one particular community's hard won sexual freedom, you have tended to slight the pleasure that sexual traditionalists get from their sexual culture.
In other words, you are being prescriptive about sexuality, which is not something you want to introduce into the debate, particularly while gay people are striving to overcome the final obstacles to full acceptance.
I think you are saying that the gay male community accepts that infidelity or even open relationships, and flirting, are part of normal sexuality, even in a committed relationship -- and we are talking about Anthony Weiner who is recently married, so we are talking about committed relationships and marriage.
This valorizing of one set of sexual mores over conventional straight sexual will not be well received by the larger community especially while the right wing makes the ludicrous accusation that gay marriage will destroy straight marriage. But some of the things you are suggesting, that straight people can learn from looser gay sexual mores plays right into the hands of those right wing claims.
It's better to just say we have different sexual mores that can be accommodated in an inclusive legal marriage framework.
Moreover, and more importantly, I think you are dismissing or misunderstanding straight sexuality, and in particular straight male marital sexuality, which many practitioners would consider very "mature" and "grounded."
As many people have pointed out, and your diary seems to assume, there is supposed to be a basic difference between female and male sexuality -- to put it crudely and simply, with females seeking monogamy and males seeking variety. (I don't know whether it's biologically true, but it's true enough culturally, that why it is this way is less important than that it is this way.)
Because of this, marriage is thought to be some sort of sacrifice of male libido, a kind of imprisonment for the sake of a fake propriety and "the children." Gay relationships are not a compromise between fundamentally different sexual urges, but straight committed relationships are thought to be such compromises.
I think that looking at this compromise as either fake, hypocritical or prison-like to the male, fundamentally misreads the way many straight men in committed heterosexual relationships see it, and without meaning to, your approach denigrates the sexual mores of millions of straight men.
For many men, despite the evolutionary urges they may have, a long term, monogamous relationship with a woman is the preferred form of sexuality. It is not a sacrifice, nor does it represent false piety imprisoning male sexuality.
In fact, for many, the very best sex a man can have is sex with a wife of many years. In other words, sex rather than getting boring, gets better and better over the years, and reaches levels of satisfaction that single men "in the dating scene" or even newly married men, can't imagine. This is why married men often pity single men, even those that get to sleep with different women.
In this paradigm, straight male marital sexuality is comparable to a practice like yoga, meditation or long distance running. At your first yoga class, being told to try to twist yourself into a painful position seems ludicrously unsatisfying. The first day of meditation, repeating meaningless words does nothing. The first run is exhausting and painful. Only after many years of practice do these disciplines become profoundly gratifying -- so gratifying that the practitioner can barely imagine living without them.
Straight male marital fidelity is sometimes analogized to a discipline. The wife is the teacher or master (or mistress? haha) and fidelity is the practice. At some point after the initial excitement, fidelity seems less satisfying than playing the field. Then after the initial blossom of passion, followed by boredom, comes forms of intimacy that could not have been conceived of before. The initiates, husband and wife, become adepts.
If you listen to what a lot of male Christian marital preaching is saying, this is what it is about. It is about men who have become adepts counseling patience and discipline to younger men, telling them about the real rewards that lie on the other side of this practice. You might dismiss the hypocrisy of the many preachers who we know are not actually practicing this, but please don't dismiss the reality that many married men are in this state. It's real despite the hypocrisy and failures or many who proclaim it as the norm.
Any suggestion that gay male sexuality has something to "teach" straight males in marital relationships plays right into the hands of the right wing ideologues who claim that gays are trying to destroy marriage, particularly for the large population of married men who have found bliss in this situation.
Many straight married men will not reach the goal, many will fail and try again, and hypocrisy surrounds many failures and many frauds who aren't even trying. But you should not dismiss the existence of the discipline nor its rewards -- nor the extent to which it is an underlying more of marriage and a goal people strive to reach.
There are many communities who reject this model of sexuality -- which is fine for them. That's the point -- tolerance of each others sexual mores, which are private decisions.
But if you want the straight world to be as tolerant of the sexual mores that part of the gay male world has adopted, you really need to be as tolerant and non-dismissive of the mores that part of the straight world has adopted (and I would guess a significant portion of the lesbian world as well).
These mores are what cause so many people to condemn Anthony Weiner. Sure many of the (male) people condemning him are probably not faithful and are hypocrites.
But the overall idea of marital fidelity as leading to bliss is not something to be dismissed and is an underlying assumption in the condemnation of Weiner's mere flirting.
And, to put it more concretely, the guy just married a really, really hot wife, beautiful and brilliant. According to local media, when single, she was one of the most desirable women in the region.
If you sit around with happily married men, instead of the usual sexual tropes and metaphors we usually associate with male sexuality, especially single male sexuality, you may hear that the best situation one can possibly be in, is having a "hot wife" -- and by "hot" I'm not implying constrictive, media driven, standards of beauty -- or being "pussy whipped" into bliss by one's wife or long term partner.
If there is an "ick factor" in this scandal, it's that Anthony Weiner married his accomplished, "hot wife" less than a year ago, and he is already flirting with strangers over the internet.
That's why to some of us, Weiner's "scandal" is much more "icky" than, say, a middle aged guy in a failing marriage who falls for another woman in the hopes of finding bliss.
He didn't even have the sense to enjoy his first few years of bliss having his "hot wife." He didn't even try to get to the second or third year when boredom might kick in, and the real discipline starts, even as a second form of bliss is appearing on the horizon.
This makes him appear not just stupid, disloyal and dishonest, but in some fundamental sense, weak as a husband and narcissistic.