Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon nails one big problem with big political sex scandals

...one wonders why, when straight Republican politicians are caught with their pants down, anyone thinks they owe the world an apology.  Apologies are hypocritical.  Their stance is clear—-straight men get to have all the sex they want with all the women they want.  It’s not straight male sexuality, in any of its manifestations, that’s bringing down society.  It’s women having sex without being punished repeatedly for it

She said it here.

I occasionally ding Amanda for snarking so snarkily that she makes what she’s mocking sound reasonable and (yikes!) eternally true. In this case, though, it really is true: the flip side of the conservative dictum that “boys will be boys” is that men — us superior bastions of plenary patriarchal pride — have the ethics, morals, and impulse control of four-year-olds. So everything we do “wrong” is women’s fault anyway, thus leaving us utterly blameless and free of any burden of actually growing up.

That doesn’t mean men can’t, won’t, or don’t grow up. It just means there’s absolutely no demand nor expectation that we do so. And given people’s tendency to rise to but rarely beyond what’s expected of us?

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And not to go all meta here or anything but one wonders what the natural contours of propriety would be if men weren’t taught we were institutionally blameless and women weren’t taught by example to endlessly scrutinize themselves not only for their own missteps but for everyone elses.