Thursday, October 28, 2010

The irrelevance of Gawker's attempt to shame Christine O'Donnell

I get that hypocrisy in our elected officials is an important thing to take note of, and I'm all for calling people out on it, but... Gawker's little "expose" on Christine O'Donnell did not do that.  True, she's totally a joke of a politician, and we know that she had sex back in college, so her current anti-pre-marital sex attitude seems a little do as a say not as I did-- the exact kind of attitude that gets parents to lose their children's respect-- but Gawker's piece is just-- not serving any real and legitimate purpose.

The piece says its about a one-night-stand, but all the details it actually gives are that he managed to get her clothing off, they didn't have sex, and she was aggressive about pursuing some kisses earlier in the evening.  Oh, and that she was utterly WASTED.  She made it clear she wasn't going to have sex.  That checks with her political positions, so that doesn't fall into the realm of important hypocrisy.  She wanted to do some making our and kissing.  Ok, but has she said that kissing isn't ok?  If she has-- which, ok, wouldn't shock me-- it isn't something I've heard about.  So again, not seeing hypocrisy.  Her clothes came off-- ok, I can see why that's problematic with the family values set-- but there is absolutely no reason to detail the state of her pubic hair.  That's utterly irrelevant, and exists only as a salacious detail-- plus, who really cares what her pubic hair is like?  Are they really trying to shame someone for not waxing?  I've been in women's locker rooms, and I can tell you that, while widespread, being hairless isn't as universal as some people make it out to be.  Also, theres' a curious lack of detail regarding how the underwear got off of the utterly wasted woman-- did she take it off?  Did he?   I'd honestly be curious to see what her recollection of the night was, especially since the anonymous author does represent her as being drunker than he, and since once they were in bed, his early and repeated descriptions of her as aggressive ended.

So, what's the take away?  She was aggressive about making out, but adamant about not having sex and seemed sexually inexperienced.  I don't see how this is an important expose on hypocrisy.  All I see is an attempt to embarrass her.  Quite frankly, her politics do a good enough job of that on their own-- and this just makes me think poorly of Gawker, for trying to use previous legal drunken sexual actions to shame her.

3 comments:

Alcibiades said...

I tend to think that anything from college should be considered out of bounds for political discourse.

Alcibiades said...

Oh, it was only three years ago, but there was actual sex while in college. I agree though that there's nothing really there.

Obsidian said...

Hello Amanda,
Got wind of your blog by way of Ferdinand Bardamu's In Mala Fide blog. Hoping to read more of your work and that you'll checkout a bit of mine - I wrote a bit for the Spearhead, but I like to think of myself as an at least somewhat reasonable guy. An MRA per se? Not quite - but I am quite sympathetic to their views.

ANyway, holla back

The Obsidian