Lusty Ruling Ladies

Not like we haven’t been deluged with the whole Spitzer scandal, but I thought this post by Judith Shulevitz at Slate’s XX Factor really summed up many of my thoughts at the public airing of the proverbial dirty laundry. First, let me state, that I think Spitzer was right to step down from office. Not because I think all philandering politicans should do so, but because it would have been impossible for him to get anything done as a such a reformist governor with such blatant hypocrisy in his near past. Can you imagine the shit show? Spitzer: “This act is critical to modernize New York’s current abortion laws…” Peanut Gallery: “Why guv’nor, you knocked up a prostitute lately?” Etc. But, I really don’t feel that the public has the need or right to morally or personally judge a politician’s personal sex life, as long as that sex life doesn’t get in the way of his political work.

A post by Courtney at Feministing soon after the scandal broke asked whether it would be better to have a woman in office, i.e. would we be better off with Hillary than Obama in light of the fact that men just can’t seem to keep it in their pants? This sort of reaction left an terribly bad taste in my mouth. It seemed to create two categories in life:

A. Promiscuous boys who will be boys

B. Virtuous, moralistic ladies

Hmm, sound familiar, all ye Victorianites? Judith at XX Factor summed up part of this argument and made the completely worthwhile point that maybe women shouldn’t be so concerned with male politicians’ sex lives when we need to work on bolstering abortion rights, economic equality in the workplace, national day care, etc. etc.

I’m not saying there aren’t lessons to be learned from this. Namely, that we should look into the institution of prostitution in America and how it’s regulated–a point I need to do more reading on. On the one hand, I think it makes sense complete sense to have it regulated; on the other hand, do we really want the police regulating prostitution? I just can’t imagine that ending well for the girls.

And as a reminder, one gender is not essentially more prone to sexual scandal or promiscuity than another. Assuming so is what we call essentialization; it can lead to other bad things, such as assuming that women are inherently more suited to the humanities than the sciences; or that women are the natural caregivers. What we may have is one gender more prone to getting elected to a place of public power, another issue we should focus on instead of sexual scandal.

I’d like to start a list of some Lusty Ruling Laaaadies. Here’s a few to begin:

Catherine the Great
Elizabeth I
Margaret Thatcher (just kidding… I think… though I have heard of a Thatcher/Reagan flirtation…hmmm…)

Any other additions to the Lusty Ruling Ladies list?