How Power Corrupts: Dominique, Arnold et al

[dynasaw]

A View From U.K.

Men in power inhabit a culture of male entitlement that enables caddishness.

"Why, your average voting citizen asks, would someone who has given his entire life over to striving for power risk everything for some fleeting sexual experience? Why, especially, do those men who fancy themselves not just political but moral leaders so readily make exceptions for their own peccadilloes?

Most of us will never know, because most of us aren't wealthy members of an elite class who have been pampered into forgetting that you can't have whatever you want whenever you want it. For most of us, cleaning our own houses, cooking our own food and having to fly coach provides a daily dose of humility – which can be a helpful thing to keep in mind when sexual temptations present themselves.

To make it even worse, even the more liberal-minded male politicians not only have this kind of class pampering, but they also tend to live in a world where women are easy to take for granted. For many a male politician, women appear to exist for the purpose of making your life more pleasant and your ambitions easier to realise. It's not just that women are more likely to fetch your food, fluff your pillows and organise your life while you sit around talking politics and strategy in male-dominated groups of strategists and advisers. It's also that your wife has been demoted from a partner to your top cheerleader, expected to compromise her principles and ambitions so you can attain power. . .there are two camps of egotistical politicians who cheat so stupidly, and the two should not be conflated: those who value consent and those who treat women like sex toys they can grab at, with little regard for what the women in question feel on the subject. Men like Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich are cheating cads, but they, as far as we all know, draw the line at violence against women. Unfortunately, when you build up a culture of overwhelming male entitlement such as politicians live in, you can't expect all of them to understand that, while cheating and lying is bad, harassing and assaulting is exponentially worse."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/may/17/arnold-schwarzenegger-dominique-strauss-kahn