There's this thinky little essay-let out in "The New Yorker" titled "Understanding Huma Abedin," in which author Emily Greenhouse attempts to place the Anthony Weiner/Huma Abedin drama in the context of the great political tradition of "marriages of convenience." From Eleanor Roosevelt - whose husband was in love with her secretary - through Hill, plenty of intelligent women have chosen to stand by their men for reasons that may have been more real politik than real love. According to Emily, we should accept these marriages as absolutely fine.
On the surface, I don't disagree. Everyone is entitled to their own expectations. What bothers me, however, is holding up Abedin's marriage as an example of necessary or even desirable compromise, when in fact we have no evidence to support that theory. In making her point about political marriages, Greenhouse cites a historical tradition in which women, pretty much universally, enjoyed less power than men when it came to setting terms in their relationships. Even today, among equally successful men and women, it quickly becomes apparent that men still have more leeway, and women - particularly those who are ambitious and who want to be involved with equally ambitious mates - have more trouble.
"What would be so wrong with addressing the possibility of different kinds of marriage, and different sexual mores?," asks author Emily Greenhouse. There's nothing wrong with that! Plenty of couples might have marriages where one or the other sexts randoms on the Internet, and no one really cares. (On a sliding scale of the great sexual behaviors of history, with 1 being Paul Newman's absolute fidelity and 10 being Catherine the Great & her horse, Anthony Weiner's inability to sort his DMs from his Tweets, or to download Snapchat, is barely a tepid 2.)
But the weakness in Greenhouse's argument - and its inherent (and possibly unintended) sexist implications appear in her chief example: Eleanor and FDR. Greenhouse writes that when confronted with her husband's infidelity with her social secretary, Eleanor was shattered but she made the best of it.
This is not a couple navigating new sexual mores - it is a couple in which one and/or both partners did not feel empowered enough to end the marriage (indeed, Eleanor considered divorce but FDR convinced her otherwise). In Eleanor's case, she chose to stay married - but what were her options? Divorce would have ended her husband's career, but would it really have had a less stigmatizing effect on hers? She told FDR that their physical relationship was over and became an activist. Her marriage sounds less like a happy decision and more like a very constrained optimization.
Even in the case of modern women like Hillary and Huma - do they prefer marriages in which their husbands embarrass them with these infidelities? Or do they accept the infidelities because they want to "marry a politician...a partner whose livelihood depends on courtship"? In every one of the couples Greenhouse mentions, the woman is the one who accepts her husband's extramarital affairs. He never accepts hers (although this reverse situation happens plenty in real life, esp among couples who are actually "addressing the possibility of different kinds of marriage.") In these political marriages, women suffer the constraints, but men enjoy the optimization.
At the end of the day, unless Huma is willing to speak up about her open marriage, I find Greenhouse's parallel self-serving and unconvincing. Accepting infidelity in powerful men - and politicians - as part of the "deal" only reinforces the idea that men and women can be held to different standards of behavior. Arguing that men like Weiner must be unfaithful because their careers "depend on courtship" may address a sad pattern of behavior, but from a normative perspective, it's a bit of a dodge.
Accepting a man's infidelities, covering up his lies, defending him in print and on the road, and giving a weak and tragic press conference about your "family" are justifiably hard sells as acts of feminism, and seem much more like the same raw deal that the wives of (flawed, but) powerful men have accepted since time immemorial. If this is the marriage that Huma wants, she has every right to it. I wish her a long life. But let's not hold up this couple as an example of new "sexual mores" - especially when they themselves have offered no such defense.
On the surface, I don't disagree. Everyone is entitled to their own expectations. What bothers me, however, is holding up Abedin's marriage as an example of necessary or even desirable compromise, when in fact we have no evidence to support that theory. In making her point about political marriages, Greenhouse cites a historical tradition in which women, pretty much universally, enjoyed less power than men when it came to setting terms in their relationships. Even today, among equally successful men and women, it quickly becomes apparent that men still have more leeway, and women - particularly those who are ambitious and who want to be involved with equally ambitious mates - have more trouble.
"What would be so wrong with addressing the possibility of different kinds of marriage, and different sexual mores?," asks author Emily Greenhouse. There's nothing wrong with that! Plenty of couples might have marriages where one or the other sexts randoms on the Internet, and no one really cares. (On a sliding scale of the great sexual behaviors of history, with 1 being Paul Newman's absolute fidelity and 10 being Catherine the Great & her horse, Anthony Weiner's inability to sort his DMs from his Tweets, or to download Snapchat, is barely a tepid 2.)
But the weakness in Greenhouse's argument - and its inherent (and possibly unintended) sexist implications appear in her chief example: Eleanor and FDR. Greenhouse writes that when confronted with her husband's infidelity with her social secretary, Eleanor was shattered but she made the best of it.
This is not a couple navigating new sexual mores - it is a couple in which one and/or both partners did not feel empowered enough to end the marriage (indeed, Eleanor considered divorce but FDR convinced her otherwise). In Eleanor's case, she chose to stay married - but what were her options? Divorce would have ended her husband's career, but would it really have had a less stigmatizing effect on hers? She told FDR that their physical relationship was over and became an activist. Her marriage sounds less like a happy decision and more like a very constrained optimization.
Even in the case of modern women like Hillary and Huma - do they prefer marriages in which their husbands embarrass them with these infidelities? Or do they accept the infidelities because they want to "marry a politician...a partner whose livelihood depends on courtship"? In every one of the couples Greenhouse mentions, the woman is the one who accepts her husband's extramarital affairs. He never accepts hers (although this reverse situation happens plenty in real life, esp among couples who are actually "addressing the possibility of different kinds of marriage.") In these political marriages, women suffer the constraints, but men enjoy the optimization.
At the end of the day, unless Huma is willing to speak up about her open marriage, I find Greenhouse's parallel self-serving and unconvincing. Accepting infidelity in powerful men - and politicians - as part of the "deal" only reinforces the idea that men and women can be held to different standards of behavior. Arguing that men like Weiner must be unfaithful because their careers "depend on courtship" may address a sad pattern of behavior, but from a normative perspective, it's a bit of a dodge.
Accepting a man's infidelities, covering up his lies, defending him in print and on the road, and giving a weak and tragic press conference about your "family" are justifiably hard sells as acts of feminism, and seem much more like the same raw deal that the wives of (flawed, but) powerful men have accepted since time immemorial. If this is the marriage that Huma wants, she has every right to it. I wish her a long life. But let's not hold up this couple as an example of new "sexual mores" - especially when they themselves have offered no such defense.
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