Elizabeth Edwards is sexist.
She says that “women need to have respect for other women,” but what she means is that they need to respect each other’s property rights — as in, women should not touch that which belongs to another woman. As in, their husbands. This point of view turns men into objects, and women into people whose behavior is determined by gender. It’s a sexist notion, and Elizabeth Edwards needs to be called on it.
Edwards is mad – really mad – at Rielle Hunter (the unnamed other woman in her new book, Resilience), who had an affair with her husband, 2008 Presidential candidate John Edwards, then Democratic Senator from North Carolina.
As a betrayed wife, Edwards is entitled to vent, although I think that doing it publicly is doing her dignity no favors. But her self-serving assumptions about how people should behave are oppressive.
“There is no excuse to do this,” she told Oprah on May 7. ”You can’t just knock on that door and say, ‘you’re out, I’m in.’ If you admire that life, you can’t just take it. Build your own.” Edwards then called Hunter “pathetic.” (Watch some of the video and see photos of the interview here.)
But who’s pathetic? In her book, Edwards describes the beginning of Hunter’s affair with her husband as follows:
“Without my knowing, a woman who spotted my husband one afternoon in the restaurant bar of the hotel in which he was staying hung around outside the hotel for a couple of hours until he returned from a dinner and introduced herself by saying, ‘You are so hot.’” That, at least, is how John described it to her, so in her mind, it must be true. (That he lied about the length of the affair even as he was telling her this didn’t seem to mitigate this statement’s truthfulness for her.)
Edwards’ incomplete strides towards healing, her emasculating attitude to the man she claims she loves, her disregard for her children’s embarrassment while hawking this tell-all, and her venomous bitterness against Hunter are less interesting to me than what her assumptions say about the times, and how they’ve gone on a-changin’. Demonizing the Scarlet Cougar is just a part of it.
What she’s really talking about is the outdated, Boomer-era, first-wave-of-Feminism construct known as “Sisterhood.”
Our Bodies, Ourselves notwithstanding, there is no such thing as Sisterhood. There never was. Just because the person next to you has a uterus doesn’t mean she has your back.
Edwards is 59. First-wave. Disappointed, disillusioned, and entitled. She worked as a lawyer, retiring after her teenage son died tragically in 1996, but most of her life has been about John. She retains some of the ideals of the Aquarian Age (without, needless to say, the laidback love-in approach to sexuality). She stuck with John and promoted him for president (for president! For the top role in the land! A man whose moral compass, not to mention his zipper, is sent flying downward from the utterance of four mere, albeit cheesy words!) because he believed in the Right Things.
Hunter is 45. She’s Gen-X (two years younger than Douglas Coupland, who wrote the book that gave us that term). For her, equal rights and opportunity for women would be a given, not a goal. One could see her goal-oriented approach to life and sex as a triumph of that first wave of Feminism—she’s going for what she wants and thinks she deserves.
Just like a man.
Blaming the Other Woman is not a uniquely Boomer trait, but believing in this Sisterhood concept is. A comment on one news article said women like Hunter “give women a bad name.” What does that even mean? Is there anything anybody could do to “give men a bad name?” Can you imagine a man deciding not to “hit that” out of loyalty to a husband he’s never met? He might refrain for lots of other reasons, but not out of “brotherhood.” Even writing it feels silly.
A married man who doesn’t want to cheat won’t cheat, no matter how appealing or available the woman. It takes effort to cheat—a room needs to be entered, clothes taken off, zippers pulled down, condom put on (well, maybe not; Hunter did have a baby whose paternity is as yet undetermined)—there’s lots of time in there to remember, “oh wait! I don’t actually want to do this!” And continuing an affair for years takes even more effort than that.
Edwards talks about Hunter as if she’s a malign force—”I don’t know anyone like that”—not just another woman with a sex drive, drawn to the man she loves for any number of possible reasons. Where’s the Sisterhood there?
There’s no question that Edwards has suffered through some genuinely hard times. Her son Wade died in a jeep accident just a few weeks after being honored at the White House as a Finalist in a national essay contest. She is a mother of three children, two of whom are pretty young, and she has incurable breast cancer. Her husband told her a partial truth before telling the real one—as if he were ripping a band-aid off her in teeny-tiny stages for over a year. That has to hurt. I have compassion for her. What I lack is admiration.
As someone closer to Hunter’s age than Edwards’, I’m really, really disappointed in Edwards’ discourse here, because I am a Feminist, and Feminism will never be real until we stop blaming women for the things men do. Hunter, harlot or not, didn’t betray Edwards. It was John who lied that the affair was a one-night stand. It was John who knew just how deeply an affair would hurt her. Hunter slept with her husband, but it was John who broke her heart.
Edwards told Oprah she doesn’t understand why her husband responded to Hunter’s come-on—and she was sure if you asked him, he wouldn’t understand it either. Oh, come on. John Edwards responded because he wanted to. He found Rielle sexy, and went for it. Repeatedly. I love men, and I understand a loving woman’s impulse to make excuses for them. They have an endearing simplicity about them at times. They seem so helpless. So easy to out-argue. So at the mercy of their appetites.
Yeah, but. They run the world. We let them off the hook. Ever since Adam first told the Lord that it was the woman who tempted him (an excuse He didn’t buy, by the way), women have been taking too big a share of the rap. Nobody made Adam nibble. By turning her anger at Hunter, Edwards enables men to keep on keeping on. It’s not John Edwards’ cheating that disgusts me, it’s his cowardly-ass half-truths. His ongoing fraud made a fool of two women. For all we know, it’s still doing so.
Feminism will never be real so long as we think having a vagina predetermines our moral values. Until we believe that each woman is as individual as each man, it never will be.
Let’s say goodbye to Sisterhood.
Gwen Orel is a cultural critic based in New York.
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I always thought Elizabeth Edwards should have been the one to have had the torrid love affair. She so deserved the fun.
While I understand your point, if Hunter approached him, isn’t it her problem first? Both of them betrayed Elizabeth Edwards. She knew he was married — it is her problem that she let him screw around with her. Yes he is a jerk here, but she is just as much of a problem as he is, and E. Edwards should have been able to say no. I am not absolving him (nor is E. Edwards) but she has every right to say anything she wants about Hunter. After all, she IS the wounded party here.
I so agree with this blog! What a twisted thinker EE is or perhaps she is not thinking. Like when she went to extreme medical means to have children after losing a son. Why did she need to do that? I mean, she still had children. She needed more in an overpopulated world? It’s a sad thing to lose a son but she would never be able to replace him anyway. And guess what – all that hormone therapy caused her cancer. Sorry Elizabeth you may be a smart woman but all this just seems selfish to me!
Let’s all remember that EE has a book to sell. So, yeah, she’s selfish, but she’s also being more … provocative in order to get some extra book sales.
I have to say that I think the concept of faithfulness and fidelity has gotten strange to me. Fidelity, from the Latin fidelis, used to mean a steadfast allegiance. It used to mean a loyal allegiance. Not “don’t have sex or kiss other people.”
Don’t get me wrong, I think JE is pond scum for a number of reasons, but not for the reason that he dipped his wick. A truly faithful husband would have not met her at the Beverly Hilton where paparazzi hang out, for instance. He brought shame on the marriage by not protecting his affair from prying eyes. But he’s a trial lawyer and can’t help but do everything in public.
Tina, I agree with the sentiment, but I think sex was probably the lastthing on Elizabeth’s mind. She deserves a fast recovery and a book deal.
You make some interesting points but Gwen, you can’t judge. I don’t have cancer and I’m not leaving my children much earlier than expected. She has to do what she has to do and for where she is at the moment. Bottom line, she has to make sense of things. Sisterhood is of her time – not yours. Remember her age. I’m not sure why she wrote the book except to remind people she’s a person, too – not a martyr, but a person. John was wrong, wrong wrong and I have no respect for Hunter.
As a North Carolinian, I was embarrassed and disappointed with Edwards. Now, I am feeling the same about his wife. She has taken what is at root an extremely private matter and not only dragged it into the open but holding it up for all to see. I guess this is HER 15 minutes.
John is a public figure. He is a man who had power (or the semblance therein). Women are attracted to this. Some will be out front enough to ask. Hunter is such a woman. Certainly what she asked for was simply and purely wrong and she was wrong to pursue him. However, in the end, it is HIS responsibility to uphold his vows. As much as it is wrong for Hunter to pursue a married man, she had made no promises to anyone. He had. He betrayed his wife. Hunter was under no obligation (other than the implied but unenforceable social contract)to not go after this man.
Why did he do this? The simple truth is, because he could. The pursuit of power has often had, at its core, sex. Men who were powerful and rich could have their pick of sexual partners. In some societies, polygamy was a sign of wealth and power. A harem was also. All through history powerful men have had sex where wedded vows meant little except the consolidation of property (human and real) on an ownership basis.
The rules changed. JFk dallied and everyone looked the other way. FDR, DDE, etc. all had things going on outside of their marriages and it was overlooked. Women were chattel, after all. When women became equal, in law and society, this type of behavior became less acceptable. Gary Hart helped change the rules by challenging the press. Clinton knew the rules had changed but presumably thought the changes didn’t really apply to him. Spitzer knew better than most what was at stake and did it anyway.
So, men are stupid when the little head is in charge: Conceded. However, Elizabeth Edwards is wallowing in the same mire which has sucked so many down in the past. She is blaming the outsider who tempted her spouse. Why? Because she wants to think “if this woman had not come along and done this, all would be well!” It needs to be the fault of an outsider to keep her from destroying them all. She doesn’t want to face the facts. If she does, then she has to question every move he has made over the last thirty years. As angry as she is right now, she doesn’t want to face the thought of what might have been going on under her nose for years.
Most marriages do not survive the loss of a child. Maybe theirs didn’t.
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