I just accidentally ran across this piece<\/a> of weird voyeurism on the internet. (How I got there? I can\u2019t even remember.)<\/p>\n The body that drove John Edwards mad: Rielle Hunter struts in her swimsuit<\/a><\/p>\n Now, before you tell me that the Daily Mail is a piece of trash: The Daily Mail is<\/em> a piece of trash. Still. They reproduce the assumptions of the modesty doctrine, demonstrating its currency outside the Christian<\/a> patriarchy<\/a> movement<\/a>. I\u2019ve compiled several excerpts below to discuss the problem with the way John Edwards\u2019 affair is being framed here. I\u2019ve clustered them by issue.<\/p>\n This is the body that sank John Edwards\u2019 political career.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Edwards claimed Hunter had a physical and sexual confidence that made her irresistible.<\/em><\/p>\n Paid the price: Edwards lost his political career, and his shot at national office, because he could not resist Hunter, a leggy blonde<\/strong> who has stayed svelte<\/strong> even six years after her relationship with the two-time presidential candidate began.<\/em><\/p>\n Hunter claims she wrote the book, \u2018What Really Happened: John Edwards, Our Daughter and Me,\u2019 to publicly explanation the six-year romance<\/strong> to the couple\u2019s love child, Frances Quinn Hunter.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The first sentence here (and the title of the \u201carticle\u201d) reproduces the myth that men can\u2019t help themselves<\/a>. If a sexually alluring woman makes herself available to a man, he will inevitably have an affair with her. The magazine, trash as it is, can freely say what respectable people demurely imply: that Hunter\u2019s body alone had the power to topple Edwards. Indeed, the statement that her body alone could do this totally undermines any part of her personality that could have attracted him, or any particular decision on her part to seduce him. Which is ridiculous, because the Daily Mail points out not only that their relationship lasted\u00a0six years<\/em> (whereas infatuation tends to die after two), but Hunter was pretty obviously intent on involving herself with him:<\/p>\n Hunter says she caught Edwards\u2019 eye at the hotel when she followed him out of a reception and said, \u2018You are so hot.\u2019<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n But clearly<\/em> he just succumbed to her impossibly good looks because he\u2019s a hormone-driven male.<\/p>\n Now, lest Edwards himself start looking like a victim of her intentions as well as her looks:<\/p>\n But Hunter says she didn\u2019t give in easily to sleeping with a married man<\/strong> \u2014 it took Edwards telling her a story about having three other mistresses to get her into bed that first night they met<\/strong>. \u2018Clearly, this behavior of his was not going to change overnight\u2026 I also told him that if I was going to help him, he couldn\u2019t lie to me<\/strong>. He needed to have one person in his life that was safe for him.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n But Edwards did lie to Hunter. He lied that night about the three other mistresses \u2014 and used the lie to manipulate her for five years.<\/strong> He didn\u2019t come clean about his love life until 2011, she says.<\/em><\/p>\n Hunter attacks Edwards\u2019 wife Elizabeth<\/strong>, who died in December 2010 of breast cancer, calling her \u2018crazy,\u2019 \u2018venomous\u2019 and a \u2018witch on wheels.\u2019 She says her abusive behavior toward John Edwards drove him into the arms of other women<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Leaving aside the incomprehensible logic of sleeping with a man who sleeps with lots of women to \u201chelp\u201d him stop sleeping with lots of women, there\u2019s a classic sexist scenario playing out here. In order to defend her lover (and probably justify her own actions), Hunter blames his wife for his infidelity<\/strong>. This happens all the time: women are told that they need to stay slim and sexy to keep men interested in them, and that if they neglect this \u201cduty\u201d their husbands are justified (or at least understood) for cheating. Hunter also uses stereotypical attacks on women as \u201ccrazy\u201d and sharp-tongued to malign the woman whose place she usurped.<\/p>\n This shows an obvious lack of perspective (\u201cI\u2019m special, so he won\u2019t do the same to me\u201d) and self-sabotaging lack of respect (feeling superior to Elizabeth because she better satisfied John). But the egregiousness of the context \u2013 the fact that all of this took place while Elizabeth Edwards was\u00a0actually dying<\/em> \u2013 lays bare a bigger truth about patriarchy: that male sexual satisfaction trumps loyalty and that women are disposable. The same narcissism motivated Tess\u2019s husband in her story on NLQ<\/a>. The same narcissism told my father that he deserved a woman who would put his needs above her own commitments (in this case, my mom\u2019s commitment to her faith) and dress skimpily for his pleasure, so he was justified to have an affair. The same narcissism led John McCain to divorce his disabled wife<\/a>, who had remained faithful to him while he was a POW, and marry a young, svelte heiress as soon as he was back in his stride. This is hardly an isolated phenomenon.<\/p>\n <\/strong>That\u2019s what narcissistic men would like you to believe: they\u2019re the normal ones, it\u2019s unnatural to expect them to behave better. Probably all of the above men have personality disorders. The problem is that by reproducing these ideas (that a woman keeps a man with her sexuality, that a woman who fails to do so deserves to be cast aside and\/or cheated on), we contribute to a culture that\u00a0understands<\/em>, if not legitimizes, such behavior.<\/p>\n She describes waiting for hours at hotel bars for her lover to swoop in off the campaign trail.\u00a0They often shared hurried dinners over take-out before short, passionate romps. Then, Edwards had to leave and return to his cancer-stricken wife and his life in the public eye.\u00a0<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n These are calculated behaviors. John Edwards wasn\u2019t \u201cdriven mad\u201d by Rielle Hunter\u2019s body. He intentionally sought out sex with her, or at the very least failed to resist for six straight years.<\/em> That doesn\u2019t sound like a man infatuated with a sexy image. That sound like a man in control of his own actions, who does not care that his actions are emotionally abusive to his wife<\/strong>. Hunter\u2019s body only had power over him because he allowed it to.\u00a0He\u00a0<\/em>chose<\/em> to abandon his wife emotionally and sexually, and humiliate her in her last days. He chose to discard his commitment, to lie to his wife, to present a false public face as a good Christian man. He wasn\u2019t driven anywhere; his hands were on the wheel.<\/p>\n My point? Female bodies don\u2019t \u201cdrive men\u201d to do anything (other than possibly get aroused, which actually does not require female assistance to dispell). Men drive themselves over their own cliffs with their eyes wide open. Patriarchy claims their brake lines were cut, when the truth is, they never even tried to press the pedal.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I just accidentally ran across this piece of weird voyeurism on the internet. (How I got there? I can\u2019t even remember.) The body that drove John Edwards mad: Rielle Hunter struts in her swimsuit Now, before you tell me that the Daily Mail is a piece of trash: The Daily Mail is a piece of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1147,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,18,20,29],"tags":[36,108,122,136,187,212,239,299,333,348,383,958,970,418,960,527,543,551,969],"class_list":["post-1244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marriage","category-men","category-patriarchy","category-women","tag-abandonment","tag-broken-marriage","tag-cheating","tag-christian-patriarchy","tag-disability","tag-elizabeth-edwards","tag-feminism-2","tag-having-an-affair","tag-hypocrisy","tag-john-edwards","tag-lust","tag-men","tag-modesty","tag-morality","tag-patriarchy","tag-rielle-hunter","tag-sex","tag-sexual-attraction","tag-women"],"yoast_head":"\nThe helpless, hopeless, overwhelming lust defense<\/h3>\n
The lies and motivations<\/h3>\n
Are men just\u00a0like that? \u00a0<\/em>No.<\/h3>\n