Yesterday, we published the anonymous account of a young man from Philadelphia who had a naked sleepover with Delaware GOP senatorial candidate Christine O’Donnell three years ago. Some people did not like that! Here’s why we’d do it again.
The reaction to the O’Donnell story was fairly unanimous: The New York Times’ David Carr called it “skeevy” and “scuzzy”; TBD’s Amanda Hess called it “degrading” and “misogynist”; and the National Organization for Women accused us of “public sexual harassment.” Andrew Sullivan found it to be a “cowardly, brutal and misogynist invasion of privacy,” while O’Donnell’s campaign called it “slander” and labeled us “classless Coons goons,” falsely claiming that we were doing the bidding of her Democratic opponent, Chris Coons. (O’Donnell did not dispute any of the story’s particulars.) The Coons campaign, meanwhile, called it “despicable.”
Three general lines of argument have emerged attacking the post: 1) Politicians’ intimate sexual encounters—or at least this intimate sexual encounter—ought to be off-limits; 2) O’Donnell is a woman, and publishing accounts of her sexual behavior amounts to sexist “slut-shaming”; and 3) Nothing in the account we published directly contradicts O’Donnell’s public stances.
What’s missing from most of the criticism is this essential bit of context: Christine O’Donnell is seeking federal office based in part on her self-generated, and carefully tended, image as a sexually chaste woman. She lies about who she is; she tells that lie in service of an attempt to impose her private sexual values on her fellow citizens; and she’s running for Senate. We thought information documenting that lie—that O’Donnell does not live a chaste life as she defines the word, and in fact hops into bed, naked and drunk, with men that she’s just met—was of interest to our readers.
Much of the criticism leveled against us is based on the premise that we think hopping into bed, naked and drunk, with men or women whenever one wants is “slutty,” and that therefore our publication of Anonymous’ story was intended to diminish O’Donnell on those terms. Any reader of this site ought to rather quickly gather that we are in fact avid supporters of hopping into bed, naked and drunk, with men or women that one has just met.
Our problem with O’Donnell—and the reason that the information we published about her is relevant—is that she has repeatedly described herself and her beliefs in terms that suggest that there is something wrong with hopping into bed, naked and drunk, with a man or woman whom one has just met. So that fact that she behaves that way, while publicly condemning similar behavior, in the context of an attempt to win a seat in the United States Senate, is a story we thought people might like to know about. We also thought it would get us lots of clicks and money and attention. But we thought it would get us clicks and money and attention because it was exposing her lies.
…..
Well, here’s what Christine O’Donnell thinks about abstinence and virginity, per a 1998 essay in a right-wing journal:
As Christians, virginity is not even our goal. Purity and holiness are our calling in Christ. In Philippians 3:14 when the apostle Paul urges us to “press toward the goal” he is not calling us to push the limits as long as we don’t cross the line. He continues to assure us that it is a prize, a great reward, to live as Christ calls us to live.
[snip]
I know many physical virgins who are not sexually pure. I know many virgins who are into pornography or who are “doing everything but” with their boyfriends. On the flip side, I know many non-virgins who live beautiful, holy, pure lives through the power of Christ’s blood.
Well, we certainly know one virgin—or revirginated virgin—who is not “pure.” Or maybe she is. Maybe in light of the above, Christine O’Donnell’s definition of purity, of chastity, of living “through the power of Christ’s blood” comports, in her mind, with her behavior on Halloween three years ago, when she got drunk, sought after the affections of a man she barely knew, asked him to take her home, took off all her clothes, and got into bed with him. If so, it’s a strange (and kind of interesting!) definition of chastity, one that is directly at odds with O’Donnell’s carefully crafted public image, and one that we thought people ought to know about. (Also: The irony of the “she didn’t do it” argument is the implication that if she had done it, then that would be a story. But also you’re not supposed to talk about ladies having sex and it’s all very private and you monsters!)
“Slut-shaming” is telling women that if they indulge their sexual desires they are impure. It’s telling them that if they view pornography, there is something wrong with them. Christine O’Donnell seeks to “shame” “sluts” on an hourly basis. Worse, she believes people who hop into bed with people they barely know who happen to be of the same sex suffer from an “identity disorder” and are “deviants.” She has repeatedly chosen, of her own volition, to make it her business to condemn the private sexual behaviors of millions of men and women who believe, or behave, differently than she does. She’s of course free to do so. But when it turns out that her own private sexual behavior doesn’t measure up to her public rhetoric—that she “push[es] the limits” without crossing the line as opposed to “living through the power of Christ’s blood”—it deserves to be noted. And the argument that someone’s private life shouldn’t be the object of public attention isn’t really available to someone who has manufactured a political and pseudo-celebrity career out of publicly casting judgment on the private behavior of others.
