The Wednesday Weigh-In: DSK Sex Party Edition

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Dominique Strauss-Kahn has been back in the news, with a big piece in Sunday’s New York Times reviewing the former IMF managing director and alleged rapist’s public relations strategy in advance of his big November prostitution hearing. The defense? I may be hypersexual, but lust isn’t illegal—or, in New York Mag’s words, “Being Horny Isn’t a Crime.” The Times details a series of lavish sex parties and aggressive, adulterous proposals, which DSK will now cop to as unusual, maybe even kinky, but not problematic. The last year of scandal, DSK seems to imply, isn’t the result of abuse but the distance between his progressive, adventurous appetite and our collective prudishness.

Before breaking down just how ridiculous this argument is for the context, I have to say that I’m unexpectedly on board with aspects of DSK’s sexual theory. I appreciate his distinction between sexual deviance—defined by an ever-changing public morality that has historically marginalized same-sex desire, BDSM, female sexuality, and pretty much anything fun—and nonconsensual sexual harm that necessitates legal restriction. It’s frustrating how often the press conflates scandal and abuse, and, more seriously, our collective inability to distinguish between these two categories allows for the continued criminalization of sex work and some BDSM in the U.S. and “sodomy” in many other countries: When we can’t distinguish between behavior that simply deviates from the assumed mainstream and behavior that violates others’ autonomy, we end up outlawing anything that seems a little “out of step,” to use DSK’s terminology.

Yet while I’m into the acknowledgment of this difference, it seems obvious that DSK and his team are assigning his own behavior to the wrong category. As Jezebel points out, DSK hasn’t been charged with being a gentleman on the street/freak in the bed: He’s been repeatedly accused of rape and harassment, the very kind of violence from which he tries to differentiate his actions. We can all agree that lust isn’t necessarily destructive but still see that a hell of a lot of what he’s doing certainly is, and that much of his behavior is illegal under long-standing anti-rape law and this year’s new sexual harassment legislation, inspired by the “libertine” himself.

Surely, if any of the multiple assault accusations are true—as I’m inclined to believe at least one, if not all, must be—lust is no excuse. Nor would a “high libido defense” explain away DSK’s questionable dismissal and payoff of an employee with whom he’d had an affair. Bloomberg suggests that businesswomen are split on whether they would be willing to join DSK’s new consulting firm given his history, but a couple of ladies who feel tolerably comfortable depending on an alleged rapist and serial harasser for a paycheck don’t negate the concerns of others who don’t. Designating a given individual’s behavior as sexual misconduct doesn’t require a unanimous vote by the Council of All Women Ever.

But even if we focus solely on the French soirees at issue in the November hearings, it is clear from the Times’ account that DSK has pursued potential sexual partners with condemnable force, groping and “demanding sex” despite their vocalized disinterest; while I’m all for celebrating desire, DSK seems to extrapolate from the legality of lust to the admissibility of all possible means to achieve satisfaction. Further, while DSK is right that there’s nothing necessarily abusive about fancy orgies, his defense ignores the potentially dangerous power dynamics of these parties. We don’t have enough information to know if all participants were willing, but Olivia Cattan of Words of Women explained to the Times that the political influence of figures like DSK can serve to coerce female attendees, particularly those working in government.

What do you think of DSK’s defense?  Can we judge DSK’s sex parties with the available information? Does he deserve to be blacklisted from politics? Has our judgment of his adultery affected our perception of his crimes? Is the “harm principle” a legitimate measure for judging sexual behavior? Discuss!