TeaAs the swords of the king’s army prepared to descend on the necks of the rebels of Paris, the hand of God was raised: subjects, diarists Pierre L’Estoile Entered, hailed the fanatical priest who stabbed Henry III in the stomach in 1589. The enraged subject declared the king a “bugger, a ***, son of a tyrant”. Previously infamous for his excesses with Venetian courtesans such as Veronica Franco, Henry III was later said to have surrounded himself with jewels and paint. mignons Or handsome youths “blasphemers, who commit adultery and follow the king everywhere.”
The sacrosanct, real responsibility for the rebellion of 1589 lay with one woman: Queen-mother Catherine de Medici, remembered today as a great patron of the arts, was decried as a virgin and sexual vampire who Had made his son impotent.
Even as the world contemplates the extraordinary spectacle former US President Donald Trump is trying to create hush-money payment For porn star Stormy Daniels, one important element hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves. For the first time in modern political history, a man is being maligned for a sex scandal. centered around humor shape and size Trump’s penis his fatand his loss of taste,
Changes in the gender narrative are at least as consequential as wars and economic revolutions. The patriarchy has been one of the most important forces in maintaining the world order, and maybe, just maybe, it is crumbling.
A large number of possible explanations exist for the historically-exceptional disappearance of Eve and the Serpent in the Trump narrative. At the end of the last decade, the risk of Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein Feminist movements active against abuse by powerful men. The rise of social media helped bypass the editorial gatekeeping that protected the elite. Liberals in the media, long derided by Trump, may be getting their moment of vengeance.
private over public state
American politics in the 18th and 19th centuries was not without sexual misconduct. Federalist politicians “attacked” former President Thomas Jeffersoncongo harem,” while William Henry Harrison was accused of seducing a teenage girl. John Quincy Adams, the sixth president, was even alleged to have used a sex-worker fall into the trap Emperor Alexander of Russia. Defamatory newspaper articles and defamatory speeches were the stuff of politics. Like many religious societies, the Americans believed that just politics should be entrusted to moral leaders, John Summers observes,
The tremendous influx of women into the workforce in the late 19th century has led some to say that powerful men should not be protected by sexual double standards. Teenager Madeline Pollard successfully sued politician William Breckinridge, Journalist Patricia Millard Writes to renege on his promise to marry.
However, from the beginning of the 20th century, the organized press colluded with political and financial power to keep personal scandals out of the public domain. The affairs of Presidents Warren Harding, Franklin Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower were widely known—but they only came to light decades after their deaths.
President John Kennedy’s sex life, again, remained largely unknown to the public. In a brilliant essay, Journalist Caitlin Flanagan points to the tragic effect the Kennedy affairs had on First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. Born to an alcoholic, the wife of an adulterer and then an abusively-controlling tycoon, Jacqueline lived a life “at the mercy of the afflicted”. melania trump can explain her disdain for her husband’s behavior; Jacqueline Kennedy could not.
The media-politician nexus was occasionally broken: Arkansas Congressman Wilbur Mills stopped his car and stripper Fannie Fox jumped out of it into a fountain in 1974. former senator from colorado gary hart In 1987 the presidential campaign was undermined by allegations of infidelity. Although the reputation of American activist Donna Rice, he notes, was also destroyed in the process.
macho-man way of politics
Leslie Smith’s work Modern American points to the existence of a macho-masculinity card on sex scandals, which gives absolution to the men involved – even among morally straight Evangelical audiences. Figures such as Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, and Arnold Schwarzenegger represent a type of masculinity now sometimes referred to as toxic, and then just as upright and virile. To this, we can add the likable scoundrel and the clever-but-amusing violent entrepreneur-president.
Monica Lewinsky was cast as a naive but sexy sirensThere is little examination of the question of the power relationship between him and former President Bill Clinton. For the most part, Clinton sidestepped the issue Apologizing to his nation and family, but not to his young staff. Explanation, Lewinsky later revealed In a biography, there were devastating personal effects.
Evangelicalism and white nationalism, Smith suggests, have been powerful carriers of an ideology that casts the nation as a childlike family in need of protection by a masculine father. Politicians who felt compelled to apologize for their actions—think john edwards Or Anthony WeinerRidiculed as an inadequate example of manhood.
Like their counterparts in America, European leaders of the time enjoyed similar immunity. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was alleged to have hired sex-workers and was inclined to give showgirls what was known as bunga-banga parties for his powerful guests – became like a folk hero. To his working class supporters, scholar Alessandra Gribaldo observesThe use of money and power to subjugate women was an aspirational ideal.
The mass-media moral outrage directed at the United Kingdom’s former War Secretary John Profumo paled in comparison to the abuse directed at the sex workers with whom he had been involved. Christine Keeler and Mandy Rhys-Davies, barely out of their teens and from mixed backgrounds, dismissed as call girls, journalists Sarah Hughes notes.
wall crack?
The gaze on Trump is notably different. Of course, the age of violent men is not behind us, but it seems that for criminals it comes with a cost. Last year, the Liberal Democratic Party Heavyweight Takeru Yoshikawa An underage college student was thrown out of her seat in the Japanese parliament after being taken out for drinks and then given 40,000 yen in cash. MLA Hiranao Honda Forced to resign after saying, “I’m not over 50, but if I had sex with a 14-year-old girl, even if it was consensual, I would be arrested. That’s weird.” “
Long forced into silence, women in Japan have been organizing to push back against sexual harassment in the workplace and during job interviews. Thisanka Siripala reports, The news isn’t equally good everywhere – former Finnish prime minister Sanna Marin was unlikely to be followed if she were male, as Van Badham writes—but change is becoming evident.
Certainly totalitarian regimes do not embarrass political leaders in this way. tennis star peng shui She disappeared from the public eye when she accused former Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli of sexual harassment. After calling out powerful men for sexual harassment or misconduct, women’s rights activists have been removed from social media and sometimes detained. Leonid Slutsky, head of the State Duma’s foreign affairs committee, was cleared of charges of harassing several female journalists.
Sex scandals, the story of Henry III tells us, date back long before the age of the mass media and its discreet elements have proved durable. Although the excesses of empresses, kings and popes irritated elite contemporary commentators, Historian Michael Farquhar reminds us, they acquired political significance only when violations of cultural norms were attributed to damage to the body politic. Henry IV redeemed the monarchy in France by continually womanizing and fathering six illegitimate children.
Finally, as the Trump case shows, there may be a crack in the iron fortress of patriarchy, within which lies toxic masculinity. His fall could mean a seismic change for the world order itself.
The writer is National Security Editor with ThePrint. He tweeted @praveenswami. Thoughts are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)