Summary: Part one of a two-part post. Gender assumptions interfere with… and sometimes outright blind.. our understanding of heterosexual infidelity.
Echidne of the Snakes on an article about Tiger Woods and “why men cheat.” She points out that numerically speaking for heterosexual men to cheat there sort of have to be heterosexual women cheating too.
I guess the question of why people cheat isn’t as interesting as the question why men cheat, especially men who are rich and famous and can have as many girlfriends as they wish, right? That’s the hook in the story, my dear reader.
But the hook only works as long as those girlfriends are viewed in the abstract, in the way we’d discuss fast cars or expensive wines, the other kinds of things rich guys can have which poor guys only dream about. Women get objectified in that view, though, and if you step away from the objectification you end up with a story about why people cheat.
I think Echidne really nicely articulates the problem of gendered assumptions: it’s enough to know that men cheat because, the assumption goes, only men exercise sexual agency. Similarly it’s unnecessary ever to examine who exactly they might be cheating with. Or why.
The dominant paradigm has it all wrapped up. To explore further would only rock the boat.
Of course I think it’s always a great time to rock that particular boat.
Both of them, actually, since not only would it be a good idea to critically examine our assumptions about women’s agency (in cheating and otherwise) it’s not like our assumptions about men are exactly anchored in bedrock either. Discuss! Research!
