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16/05/2011

L'argent et les femmes

According to Le Monde on Sunday afternoon, after Dominique Strauss-Kahn's arrest in NY on charges on rape, DSK, the potential (not any more!) future leader of the French left, has two weaknesses: money and women.

Some days, most days, I'm glad I'm no longer live in France because of shit like this. Some days, I wish I was still there so I could spend more time kicking the arses of bastards who write and think that stuff. As it is, I'm limited to virtual arse-kicking.

So let's have it. We, women, are not a weakness. We are not a treat that you can become addicted to, or that you need somehow to resist. We are not displayed, as in a shop window, to tempt you into having sex with us. In fact, if you're an old ugly bastard like DSK, we'd, very frankly, rather iron our tits than have sex with you.

Oh, but they say, French women are not like that. They're attracted to power. 

Listen, busters - I know there's many of you out there who think like that - I'm a French woman. And I know power is not really, of itself, an aphrodisiac. It can be, in the right circumstances, with someone attractive, some very clear rules, and a safe word. But when someone like DSK thinks he's getting laid by people who are not his wife because he's powerful, I think he seriously misunderstands the chain of causation that leads from his position at the head of the IMF to the women in his bed. Basically there's two ways in which it works.

1) As a powerful man, he has many people at his beck and call. If a woman says no to him, she can either be raped and no one will say anything, or lose her job, and no one will say anything.

2) In some very rare cases, a woman may choose to sleep with an ugly bastard because he may help advance her career. But, before we get all judgy here, I would like to exert some caution: it's often unclear whether a woman who sleeps with someone and sees her career move forward as a result really had any choice at all. The alternative may well have been what I describe in (1).

As to all those people who believe that,  like Assange, DSK was set up by bankers who want to keep the left out of their money - that's neither here nor there.
What, to my mind, is rather disgusting, is that these men were aware of DSK's 'weakness', i.e. his propensity to indulge in sexual harassment and rape, and only chose to use it when their money was threatened.

Am I under any illusions that the bankers and right wing politicians are less likely than the men on the left to abuse women? Certainly not. I reckon they go to the same orgies - the only difference being that when the orgy is over the right-wing men go to church and the lefties go home to cook with their wives.

Conclusion: there's way too many bastards out there who think that women are treats they can consume, with only one scruple: that having too many is bad for their political diet. So let's not be surprised if they don't stop dishing out sexist policies that disadvantage women in all aspects of life, any time soon.

6 comments:

Megzer1992 said...

Great clinical dissection of some of the coverage of this x

Looking for Blue Sky said...

Sorry that comment is in my daughter's name, apologies. I'm sure she would agree anyway.

indigowildmermaid said...

I love your writing, Sandrine. More or less exactly what I feel and would have blogged, if I was as organised as you and t'other sister. While I think her privacy should be respected at this time, I'm hugely curious about the type of woman Anne Sinclair must be, to be married to a man so powerless to control his seductory impulses and allegedly his physical sexual ones too. God knows I wouldn't be able to hack it.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for this writing. If you have the time and energy, write Le Monde. It's ridiculous.

Sandrine said...

Thanks Blue Sky! Hi Blue Sky's daughter!(Your mother writes some lovely stuff about you by the way!)
Thanks also to the improbably named sea creature. I've had a look at Anne Sinclair's blog. She seems like an intelligent enough woman. I don't know why she puts up with it but it seems to be something people do, esp. in political circles. Their life, their shit. But it's spilling over a bit with the rape and all.
Erin - why don't you have a cool pseudonym? I won't write to Le Monde. I'll wait till my blog becomes so famous that we have even more readers than le Monde. Any minute, now.

Anonymous said...

I don't know how to do a synonym, either cool or uncool!

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