If she's telling the truth he was way out of line on that one.
yes, i agree.
the distinction i am making is that this isn't a comparable situation than if he were to, say, whip it out at a bar and throw it down on the table. while it might not be pleasant and would certainly be inappropriate to receive an unsolicited email of someone's goodies, it's quite a different situation than if the same thing were to happen in real life, in real time. the point i am making is that one can easily ignore/delete said emails, whereas in person, it's a different story.
Just because some were doesn't give him the right to think that any and all were.
yes, i agree. in this situation if this woman's account is true.
but how great is this crime? it's creepy and weird, sure, but was someone actually harmed? is a photo of male genitalia that shocking?
and these are some broader thoughts before i totally walk away from this thread and not meant at you .... but, again, i've said i think Weiner should step down or something, and it's too bad because i enjoyed how well he was able to verbally smack down Fox and their bullshit. i think his behavior was at times inappropriate, and certainly
colossally stupid. but i don't think that consensual sexual messaging between adults -- which often involves the exchange of photographs and highly sexual language -- is all that different from looking at online pornography, especially when these two adults will never meet up in real life.
and maybe this is me, but i perhaps have a greater tolerance for sexual shortcomings and failures because i know what it's like to be discriminated against for falling short of some perceived standard out there. i get very uncomfortable with sexual sanctimony, especially because it almost always seems to be perpetrated by people who have the darkest secrets to hide. i am also a firm believer in sexual egalitarianism and believe women have the right and ability to "fuck like men" (so to speak) should they so desire, but what comes with that comes the full responsibility of sexuality (protection from disease, responsibility for your own feelings as well as others, that your orgasm is your own responsibility). so i reflexively dig my heels in when a situation like this is painted as some drooling, predatory man is preying upon innocent women who are so transfixed by his power that they're helpless to do anything but succumb to his digital penis, or find that image so traumatic that they have to explain their total discomfort and total surprise that the conversation went this way. let's not forget: it was Monica Lewinsky who snapped her thong at Bill Clinton. should Clinton have known better and acted accordingly being in a position of power? absolutely. but Monica is not some poor little thing who was preyed upon by a dirty old man. that was a consensual affair between two adults that was initially instigated by the female.
and i am also sympathetic to men in general. part of my sexual egalitarianism is also understanding real, quantifiable differences between men and women. that's why i brought up testosterone earlier and why i use the examples of transgendered female-to-males who are often shocked at the power of the hormone in their bodies. i think many men find monogamy a challenge, crave sexual variety, all while being in a happy marriage to women they love. and because they love their spouses they control their urges and act accordingly and follow their vows. but it's not like sexual desire actually goes away, and one of the big seductions of the internet is that it gives you virtual variety, a virtual stream of endless partners, and enables you to engage in what amounts to virtual interactive pornography done in the comfort of your home/hotel room/home office that remains fantasy and keeps you from actually cheating or actually bringing an STD home.
this is why i think the Weiner "scandal" falls far short of every other actual scandal involving actual sex. i think it is worse for Elliot Spitzer to meet call girls in hotel rooms at the Mayflower and try to get away with not using a condom. i think it is worse for Gov. Sanford to say he's "hiking the Appalachian Trail" and is actually cavorting on a beach with some Argentinian. i think it is worse for Bill Clinton to receive a blow job in his office, but not actually "complete." or for Larry Craig -- hater of homosexuals -- trying to blow an undercover cop in the MSP bathroom. and, as i said before, i think we're falling into a sexual double standard. all these men are suffering from the same case of horniness, but Weiner's is much more 21st century, and we're pathologizing it as particularly weird and gross because it didn't involve actual fucking. because a real man would at least have the decency to claim his rightful random vagina.
in a nutshell, how anyone can excuse Clinton but call Weiner something worse is beyond me.