Burlesconi's Women: On Fidelity, Monogamy, Sex, & Power

Italy's Prime Minister, Silvio Burlesconi, has been under a lot of fire over his extramarital affairs with and gift-giving to beautiful younger women, and recently for allegedly having sex with an underage prostitute. Italian women are rallying against him and accusing him of demeaning women through his "bad boy" behaviour and "bunga bunga" sex parties.  The protesting women have put up some fabulous signs such as "We Like Sex, Not Bunga Bunga!"

The Burlesconi scandals highlight fascinating contradictions of Western culture, society, assumptions about morality, and also emphasizes the dynamic of how democracy actually instituted monogamy (fact). Italian women declare they 'like sex' but view Burlesconi's conduct towards women as demeaning. Yet, sexuality is intrinsically tied to this view of 'demeaning' and Burlesconi's mistresses are portrayed as victims of his 'predatory lusts' rather than willing agents in their affairs with him. The traditional and popular view of women as the sexually passive victims of male lusts prevails. It would be funny if news stories, rather, portrayed Burlesconi as being a victim of women's overpowering beauty and unable to control himself which is probably closer to the truth.

Bill Clinton escaped his scandals by claiming to have an uncontrollable sexual addiction. I say, if that's the case, then all men must suffer this incurable fact of nature. Should we so admonish men for their natural weaknesses, and should we display women as victims of male lust? Should we curse nature with such public outcries against natural human urges, against the facts of human sexuality? True, instinct can be controlled and these men should know better given their offices, but it's the fact of their offices, of their power, that they have the option to stray outside their marriage beds. I am not condoning the practice, simply stating a fact. And I hardly view women as passive victims. I'm skeptical of the way the media paints mistresses, either publicly scorning them or viewing them as helpless. My view of feminism is that human sexuality, in all its splendour, is precisely what gives women power and plenty of it.

Consider the following hypocrisy: Burlesconi's current wife Veronica Lario was formerly one of Burlesconi's mistresses back in the 80s before marrying him after his subsequent divorce in 1990. Truly, hell hath no fury like a woman's scorn and Lario has incited a serious public shaming of her husband for his flirtations, affairs, and mixing and mingling with underage minors. I truly admire Lario's candor, courage, and lack of mincing words although part of me finds it difficult to be sympathetic to her given that she began her relationship with Burlesconi under dubious circumstances. She knew what she was signing up for, a man with an obvious weakness for women. I am not supporting Burlesconi in crap behavior but I think deeper issues of sexual evolution, politics, religious morality, need to be considered before sending him to the scaffold.

It is a fact of nature that a man who has money and power, essentially resources, will have access to many women and women will willingly gamble their hearts (and sex) for a powerful man, married or not, than for a weak one. Polygamy was the status quo of ancient societies because powerful men would have a monopoly over beautiful young women who would bear their offspring in exchange for his resources and protection. The moral impetus to monogamy was first seen with the establishment of modern democracies. Matt Ridley writes the following in The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature - 

... the long interlude of human polygamy, which began in Babylon nearly four thousand years ago, has largely come to an end in the West. Official concubines became unofficial mistresses, and mistresses became secrets kept from wives. In 1988, political power far from being a ticket to polygamy, was jeopardized by any suggestion of infidelity. Whereas the Chinese emperor Fei-Ti once kept ten thousand women in his harem. Gary Hart, running for the presidency of the most powerful nation on earth, could not even get away with two. 

What happened? Christianity? Hardly. It coexisted with polygamy for centuries and its strictures were as cynically self-interested as any lay man's. Women's rights? They came too late. A Victorian woman had as much or as little say in her husband's affairs as a medieval one. No historian can yet explain what changed, but guesses include the idea that kings came to need internal allies enough that they had to surrender despotic power. Democracy, of a sort, was born. Once monogamous men had a vote against polygamists (and who doesn't want to tear down a competitor, however much he might also want to emulate him?), their fate was sealed.

My Chinese grandmother once told me that when a woman picks a man she should do so wisely. She was frank in noting that if a man is too handsome and has too much money he's "no good" for the fact that he'll have many women on the side. A woman who marries a man of this calibre will have to spend a lifetime defending her prize or be willing to look the other way to his extramarital affairs in order to maintain her marriage. Power and monogamy are rarely bedfellows.

If anyone should nail Burlesconi on anything, corruption is a more substantial place to start, but his affairs with women, similar to the Clinton scandals, are rather trifling. If you're going to send Burlesconi to the scaffold for sex, then send all heterosexual men with him because as one old wise cabbie noted to me earlier this week quite frankly: "My dear, men don't stop looking [at and for women], if they stop looking they're dead. Sex is the most powerful force in the world, my dear. If you are a beautiful woman with a brain you can take down the most powerful men in the world." Fact. Women are not the victims of powerful men, powerful men are victims of beautiful women.