evenly divided along lines of ethnic tribal loyalties taking credence
over Ms Nafissatou Diallo credibility which has been tarnished by her
own inconsistencies in her own telling of the sordid tale of what
allegedly took place in DKS' s $3,000 per night hotel suite.
http://www.signandsight.com/features/2161.html
30/08/2011
Lubricious puritanism
The alliance of US feminists and the religious Right in the DSK
affair. By Pascal Bruckner
A few years ago we spent our family holiday on a beach in Florida. My
daughter, two years old at the time, wanted to remove her swimsuit
when she came out of the water, it was bothering her. Very soon a
certain agitation started gathering among the other holiday makers who
were sending us embarrassed looks. A few minutes later a sturdy
sheriff appeared, armed to the teeth with an arsenal big enough to
destroy a whole city, and barked at us that we would have to pay a
fine if some clothes weren't put on the little girl right away. She
however took this for a game and started running. We ran after her and
the sheriff after us. We managed to catch her in a fit of laughter but
the uniformed colossus was not amused. In the land of Uncle Sam,
nudity is prohibited on the beach, even for toddlers.
America obviously has a problem with sex that stems from its
protestant heritage, but it also wants to teach the world a lesson.
It's not enough though to describe the country as puritanical because
what governs here is a twisted puritanism which, after the sexual
revolution, talks the language of free love and coexists with a
flourishing porn industry. What we have here is lubricious puritanism:
what, after all, was the point of the Clinton or Strauss-Kahn affair?
To condemn eroticism all the better to talk about it, savouring the
saucy details over weeks and months to evoke fellatio, sperm and
genitals with false indignation. The obscene jubilation with which
Kenneth Thomson called forth the bruised vagina of his client
Nafissatou Diallo, speaks volumes. People say that in the case of Bill
Clinton he was punished more for his lies than the affair with the
White House intern. This is obviously not the case because George Bush
lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, an infinitely more
serious deceit, for which he was never prosecuted. Had he had an
affair with his assistant he would have been condemned to the galleys,
tied to the wheel and whipped. But blood crimes, it seems, weigh less
than adultery.
The media establishment across the Atlantic, which is so keen to
condemn France through one of its representatives, seems to have
already forgotten the torture in Abu Ghraib: clusters of naked men
piled on top of one another or forced to masturbate on the orders of
Sergeant Lynndie England and a string of her subordinates (women in
power are no better than men, we know this since the Nazi era).
Torture exists everywhere, even in democratic countries, but only a
country so afflicted by its own sexuality could dream up such abuse.
Astonishing too that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, who were
suspected of corruption and inciting violent interrogation, were never
pursued after 2008 by a justice system which is now so eager to punish
even the most trifling amorous crimes.
To punish France for Iraq, for Roman Polanski, for the laws against
the veil and the niqab, this recalcitrant nation which clings to its
dissolute mores, to bring it back into line – this is the real reason
behind the DSK affair, at a time when America has hit rock bottom and
is looking for scapegoats to blame for its fall. One of a thousand
examples? In the reputable magazine Newsweek on 29 July the journalist
Joan Buck outlined to her readers the archaic nature of French
sexuality: among the barbaric Gauls women journalists sleep with all
the politicians, for the fun of it or to keep their sources happy, the
droit de cuissage (the right to deflower any maiden) is an
institution, offices are service stations where secretaries are
expected to cater to their bosses every need if they want to hold onto
their jobs, all people of the female sex are "sluts" and the country
is permanently oscillating between the Marquis de Sade and Simone de
Beauvoir.
We pinch ourselves, are we seeing things? No we're not reading an
issue of Pravda from the Cold War. It's distressing that in France so
much of the media, so many great minds were paralysed by the
circumstances and called upon the nation to repent without first
carrying out even a semblance of serious research. The nation has
raised monsters at its breast, we must expiate the machismo in our
genes.
Indeed the US has given rise to a phenomenon which has no parallel in
Europe: a coalition of feminism and the Republican, ultra-conservatism
of the Right. These two powers have united in the name of different
interests, to put a lid on the freedoms won in the '60s and '70s. This
is why so many feminist intellectuals, such as Frenchbashing
specialist Joan Scot, have become all-out propaganda organs for the US
Department of State, on a mission to promote the American Way of Life
urbi et orbi. This explains the atmosphere of McCarthyist moralism
surrounding all amorous exchanges and which has been alarming to more
lucid Americans for some time.
Back in the early '90s – under the threat of immediate dismissal –
strict regulations were issued to foreign male professors at the
universities: never receive a female student in a closed room without
recording the conversation, never enter an elevator alone with a
female student and never enter a relationship with a female faculty
member, even if she is a consenting adult. In the commercial
workplace, too, working relations were subjected to a number of rules:
tight-fitting clothes, suggestive talk and inappropriate remarks
should be avoided and there should be no intimate relationships with
colleagues unless they end in marriage. You may recall the University
of Ohio at the beginning of the '90s where, with the backing of the
leading feminist organisation of the time, plans were hatched to
introduce a charta for intimate relationship between students. Every
step in the process of getting to know one another more closely –
touching breasts or not, removing tops and so on – was to be agreed on
in writing beforehand and registered with an authority figure.
Thankfully the suggestion was abandoned. But this crazed codex is the
lot of a panicked society with no culture of love, which wants the
desire police to watch over everything.
What's this all about? Redoubling the condemnation of pleasure and
criminalising the heterosexual act: every man a potential rapist,
every woman a possible victim. The compliment is the first stage of
harassment, the flirt a step towards rape, gallantry a euphemism for
predatory intent. The flesh is weak, desire dangerous. DSK has been
acquitted but he remains guilty, his status is his offence: male,
white, rich and European, for which read decadent. He is bound to be a
compulsive aggressor. But it is not only the politicians who are
persecuted in the US by media indiscretions (the two last victims of
this hunt were Democratic congressman Anthony Wiener, found guilty of
having posted photos of his manly assets to women online via Twitter,
and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who fathered an illegitimate child with his
housekeeper). Every American can be brought before the democratic
inquisition. In France an adulterous affair meets with disapproval; in
America, with condemnation. It is more than a lapse, it is an offence
that merits judicial punishment and psychiatric treatment. Some
support groups for men and women who have been cheated on compare the
trauma that follows such escapades with 9/11. Marital treason is
equated with national treason, it violates the pact that binds the
nation. On the East Coast there is a daily morning TV show which
reports cases of marital infidelity, combining the exposure of the
unfaithful with the humiliation of the betrayed, and brandishing DNA
tests of the children as evidence.
Let's be clear about this: rape is a crime on both sides of the
Atlantic and the criminalisation of sexual harassment is progress.
Tensions between men and women remain both here and over there even
after emancipation and they come to a head every now and then. But
while the coexistence of the sexes in the USA frequently seems to
border on war, with wakeful lawyers hovering on the sidelines to empty
the pockets of estranged spouses, Roman Europe seems to better
protected from this scourge by an age-old culture of dialogue and
tolerance of human weakness. France understands the conflict of the
heart, it understands that desire is impure and can be civilised only
with this knowledge. In the USA by contrast sexuality is a means by
which one citizen can take ownership of another. Private life
disappears, the imperative of transparency leads to the triumph of
hypocrisy and to the surveillance of all by every individual.
If in the case of Strauss-Kahn it transpires that the plaintiff did
not tell the truth, the disastrous consequences will be the that the
real victims will be disqualified, under suspicion of lying or
venality. Neither the media nor the justice system emerge superior
from this affair, even if the District Attorney Cyrus Vance was at
least honest enough to admit the evidence was scanty. There is no
reason to hope that the big East Coast media companies, who lynched
the former IMF director before he had been sentenced, will offer their
apologies now that the case is closed. French tourists watch your
backs when you fly across the Atlantic: if you should ever be seized
by the desire to couple with one or other of the locals, make sure you
get official permission first: your partner of choice, male or female,
should confirm in writing that you have been allowed to enjoy their
body. We can learn much from our American friends, but not when it
comes to the art of love.
*
Pascal Bruckner, born in 1948, is one of the leading French nouveaux
philosophes. He studied philosophy at the Sorbonne under Roland
Barthes. His works include "The Temptation of Innocence - Living in
the Age of Entitlement" (Algora Publishing, 2000), "The Tears of the
White Man: Compassion As Contempt" (The Free Press, 1986) "The Divine
Child: A Novel of Prenatal Rebellion" (Little Brown & Co, 1994) Evil
Angels (Grove Press, 1987)
This article originally appeared in Le Monde.
Translation: lp
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