I was whipping myself up some mashed potatoes for dinner when my mom tossed the Philadelphia Daily News on the countertop and started reading. "Pathetic," she murmered, reading the headline.
I turn from my potatoes. "What?"
Bonus Babe! the front headline declares in big bold letters. A picture of a blond, equipped with tiara and beauty queen sash, smiles next to the sub-headline: Grand Jury: Top Aide's Lover Did little In Her 29G State Job--And Got A 7G Bump.
I laugh. "Is this really worthy of front page news?"
"Apparently she had a job for doing pretty much nothing," my mom says, disgust coloring her tone.
[Now, don't get me wrong. My mother pretty much kicked ass in her life--she was a single mom as the age of 19, used out her credit card buying groceries, had no college education, and was generally looked down on as a bottom feeder. However, she was not what everyone thought--she refused to go into welfare, made sure I was always provided for, and worked her ass off to get where she is now. She now has a high paying job in the car industry, is so skilled at what she does that she has three job promotions waiting for her, and is so proficient in this job that people are utterly astonished when she says she has no degree. She often gets into debates with me, to help me form my own opinions and goals, and is pretty much an awesome mom. So she's the last person I would expect to be looking down on someone.]
"She slept with the boss-- that happens," I say, pouring milk in my potatoes. "Although it's kind of annoying me their blaming her."
"She was the one who didn't do her job. That'd be like if I showed up drunk to work; I'd get in trouble too."
"Yeah, but if it happened twenty times, someone should talk to your boss and be like, 'All right, what's up with this?' It's really dumb that she's being blamed for everything--shouldn't someone look at the other side of it? Her boss let her pretty much run wild, so long as she has sex with him. She's not the only villain in this fairytale."
If a secretary sleeps with her boss, it is automatically her fault. How dare she? She should have constraint--she's a whore, she doesn't do her job, she's a temptress, who, with a flick of a wrist and a drop of her underwear, she won't be in trouble.
What about the boss?
He's the one who is paying her to do nothing, just because she sleeps with him. Why isn't anyone looking at him, pointing a finger and going, "Nu-uh-uh!" Why is it only her fault, when it takes two to do a horizontal tango?
Consider the fact that this 'Bonus Babe' technically didn't do anything wrong. Morally? Sure, if you want to think like that. Personally I don't think she really did anything all that wrong-- she had the audacity to have sex with her boss. Professionally, I think it's an unspoken rule that relationships between co-workers aren't exactly encouraged. But morally wrong? Not really. Legally wrong? Not that I know of.
So why is Miss Bonus Babe getting all the blame?
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Well, you could envision a continuum of blame...
At one end she manipulated the guy as a toy using her wiles
In the middle is a completely mutual relationship between two consenting who are emotionally honest with one another.
At the other end is a man who used his position of power of the worker to coerced her to performs sex as a requirement of promotion or job retention and while he was doing that he really did not care if she worked her job.
See, now you just look at the situation on the continuum and assign some level of blame.
it's always the woman's fault.
it's the same when a married man cheats. even though it was the man who had broken a commitment, people tend to put most of the blame on the other woman. she's the "homewrecker", "whore", "temptress", "she manipulated him", blah, blah, blah...
toozdae...
Some guys out there are dogs. Come on now, we know this. Women know this, men know this, some guys sleep around.
In regards to when a married person cheats... I would say that if a person sleep with a person knowing they are in a committed relationship they are not to blame, the cheater would have would have searched out someone else to cheat with, but we defiantly learn something about the other person's morality.