What's the feminist take on affairs?

[Feathered]

Do you think a woman who has an affair with a married man can be a feminist?
Does it depend on circumstance?
If the woman stays with the man whilst he is living "a double life" for an extended period of time? If he has children etc?
It's a complicated question, I know. There will be lots of different scenarios.
I'd be really interested in finding out what people think.

I think affairs are unfeminist in a similar way to porn- because they promote a view of women as objects for the use of men

My take on that is to say affairs are conducted by women (her cheating on own husband or with married man) for the purpose of her own sexual gratification.

Porn, however is to do with money exchanging hands so some, a small percentage of women will benefit financially and sexually but there is a huge market for exploitation there, where women simply lose out and only men gain.

Do agree with the rest of your post though powershower

The Feminist view examines and deconstructs social and legal attitudes toward affairs and infidelity in general. Men have insisted for many many years that they are not by nature monogamous, while women are, and therefore all the systems men put in place judge the actions of men and women based on that underlying myth.

I suppose I feel that the difference between it being about feminism (rather than another political movement) is that it is not only betraying the wife but it is also condoning the behaviour of the husband, who is putting a woman - his wife - in a vulnerable and unpleasant position. It degrades that woman. If the affair is prolonged then that degradation is extended.
It's interesting that you see the wife as the person who is degraded. Why is that?

It's a feminist issue because women often seem to get blamed for affairs (even if the woman is otherwise unattached).

This!

There was a horrendous case of this narrative going public a few years ago here in Switzerland: a corporate CEO committed suicide, and the story - according to much of the public discourse - went about like so (with only minute amounts of hyperbole for the sake of brevity):

[Deceased] was a very happy and successful man. Wife, kids, home, car ... basically bliss. The he met young Jezebel [the OW], who led him astray and estranged him from his happy family life - which made him so sad that he eventually saw no other way out than to end it all.

With a heavy dose of morally, albeit not legally, the poor man may have been killed by the evil temptress.

This was one of the defining moments in my own understanding of misogyny and I've seldom been so taken aback by the appalling attitudes of people I knew and regarded as generally sane up to that point.

As for the general point: no, I don't think having an affair with a married man is anti-feminist as such. It's more of an interpersonal than a class level issue. I also don't buy into the solidarity line of reasoning - but then that's because I'm not remotely convinced that marriage and the nuclear family are particularly good ideas for women to start with. Yes, marriage might be a bit of a legal safety net in some respects, but then, I'd also really rather not break a leg than having to rely on the fact that I've got great accident insurance.

I think affairs are unfeminist in a similar way to porn- because they promote a view of women as objects for the use of men- "his bit on the side" "his piece" "his latest bit of skirt" "son cinq à sept" - as if the female affair partner is an accessory like a new set of golf clubs.

That's one trope, another is the husband stealing woman who is clearly much less passive. Or the wronged woman.

There are a variety because there are all kinds of situations affairs spring from. I'd not say that they reduce women as a whole to one particular type of thing.

i don't think affairs are anything like porn and the examples given "bit on the side" etc is a rather misogynistic take on it.

I'm really perplexed by the comment that the wife who is cheated on is "degraded" - how does the poor conduct of 2 other people degrade her? Who sees her as "degraded"? If anyone is degraded surely it's the cheat.

If anything isn't that the role a cheated husband might play? There's no female equivalent of cuckold.

I think by degraded it meant how the cheating spouse is treating her. As less important and as less of a person than himself.

Re the porn comparison...hmm perhaps you are right...I guess the female affair partner can't help sometimes being viewed as an accessory when she is actually doing it for her own gratification, gets the "deal" she wants and doesn't get gaslit and strung along with the "I'll leave my wife for you over the next rainbow" promises. (Obviously not all female affair partners are desperate for the man to dump his wife and live happily ever after with them...some might be happy having their part time lover/shag...but it's still being complicit in a lie. It's not an ethically produced shag, usually- another woman has to be lied to for the shag to happen).

I think the notion of them sisterhood' is too often used as a stick to beat woman with, in the name of feminism, when it actually isn't very feminist.

To me feminism isn't about supporting, agreeing with, liking all women. It is about ending inequality between men and women.

So affairs aren't in themselves a feminist issue, but the language and consequences around them are.

It should be equally as acceptable/unacceptable for a married woman and man to have an affair.

It should be equally as acceptable/unacceptable to me the other man or woman.

How acceptable/unacceptable these things are, to me, are moral issue. As long as their is equality in the opinions and treatment of these individuals then I don't think an actual affair is a feminist issue.

I guess the female affair partner can't help sometimes being viewed as an accessory when she is actually doing it for her own gratification,

I'm not sure this is a feminist thing so much as a human nature thing. People often see others as a sort of supporting role in their own life, or from their own perspective. The man in an affair, or his wife, might see the woman as mainly an accessory, but then she, or her family, might look at it from the opposite perspective.

powershoweronthehour - "I think affairs are unfeminist in a similar way to porn- because they promote a view of women as objects for the use of men- "his bit on the side" "his piece" "his latest bit of skirt" "son cinq à sept" - as if the female affair partner is an accessory like a new set of golf clubs."

I find this a very strange take. As if the OW has no agency.

The descriptions you give are views of the OW, not of women in general. They would not apply to wives, for example.

Who promotes those views of the OW? They sound archetypal "male gaze".

Feathered - in your OP you posit an affair involving a married man and a woman:

"Do you think a woman who has an affair with a married man can be a feminist?"

There seems to be an assumption that:

a) the man is married to a woman

b) the woman involved in the affair is single.

Would the woman be any more or less a feminist if:

a) the man was married to another man?

b) the woman was married

• to a man?
• to another women?

c) the woman had an affair with a woman who was married

• to a man?
• to another woman?

If "feminism" were relevant in one scenario (circumstance) then it should surely be relevant in all possible situations?

I absolutely think that a woman who has an affair with a married man is behaving in a very unfeminist way. She knows that she is doing the cruelest thing she can do to another woman--violating her private life and quite possibly shattering her family. It is a cruel act that will hurt and disempower another woman that simply does not have to be done.

She knows that she is doing the cruelest thing she can do to another woman--violating her private life and quite possibly shattering her family.

I think this is a bit of a slippery slope, to be honest. Having been on the receiving end of cheating, to be frank: it was shit and painful and I was hurt and angry - but it was by no means the cruelest thing anyone has ever done to me.

What would the implications be for other woman-on-woman world shattering scenarios? Is it unfeminist for me in my role as a female executive to fire a female employee because this may cause her hardship? What if I fire a man whose wife is a SAHM and this makes her family's world shatter? What if I'm a lesbian and break my partner's heart because this relationship doesn't work for me anymore? Is it unfeminist for me not to stay in a miserable situation? And so on ...

I don't like this way of thinking. It really does elevate the "sisterhood" to a stick with which to beat women in all sorts of scenarios!

I really can't get excited about this as a feminist issue at all. It's about 2 people doing something consensual. If a man who is married to a woman and has an affair with a man it's not a feminist issue even though the hurt to the wife is the same as if it were a woman? A lesbian who has an affair with a woman married to a woman is extra bad. The married lesbian deserves more scrutiny 'unsisterly' than a man who does the same?

Comparisons to porn etc are ridiculous.

Genetic conversations about the way women who have affairs are painted etc while men are just left to get on with it are valid. I would say that women who have affairs get more blame than men. Which is rooted in society ongoing desire to blame women for everything and remove the spotlight from men. According to many posters though, these women deserve more condemnation not less, and still no focus on the men.

It's a nope from me.

Feminism is about class analysis.

It's not about singling out women whose actions you don't agree with and saying 'you're not a feminist'.

Anyone got that quote about feminism being for all women even ones who do this you don't like?

I wouldn't have an affair because I love my partner. But if single wouldn't have a relationship with a married man as I feel it is wrong. Part of that is because i feel enabling a man to check out of his marriage or family life and have casual sex is supporting the patriarchy. It enables men to use women for domestic purposes and raise his family while also having sex with who they want. So overall is bad for women. I feel like that's not overall a popular opinion. That women should be able to do what they want.

So yeah less about the woman and more about what it means for men. For example I struggle with stripping. Not for the women who do it but like it gives men what they want and supports their negative attitude to women. So it is a feminist issue. But affairs are on the men not the women.

Affairs are on both. And not a measure of whether individual women get to be in the feminist 'club' or not.

The pertinent conversation is around how our family lives are structured and how men are facilitated in so many ways to do what they want and women get the blame whatever happens.

Which comes back to patriarchal religions, different 'spheres', women as gatekeepers of sex, women placed as protectors of 'morals' in society etc etc etc

Maybe we romanticise marriage too much; expecting too much from it? I'm always a bit taken aback by the numbers of women who still dream of big, fairy tale weddings with all of the trimmings..."the best day of their lives" and so on....

Strictly speaking, & certainly traditionally, a marriage was a contractual agreement between two parties, or two families, or two communities ( and in the past a contractual agreement in which the woman was effectively considered property). Marriage was/is more about continuity and stability and the creation of an economic & family unit, than about love and romance - as we now tend to see it, and expect from it.

A love affair is an affair of the heart, not a contractual agreement, and the heart does not follow rules, it follows its own calling. I'm sure most of us have fallen in love and/or had crushes while in a committed relationship with another...whether we act on those feelings is a different matter. Personally, i've always managed to fall in love with unobtainable people/out of limits, or in more recent years, I've developed love affairs with certain cities ( Rome, for example).

A love affair ( not just a sexual fling) makes you feel alive, vibrant.....one sees only the best in the lover...how they match you perfectly...it is irresistible, consuming, maybe even obsessive.....and then it eventually burns itself out.

I was hitching through France once, in my late teens...and I ended up on the mediterranean coast, working on the restoration of a boat that belonged to a couple. A man and a woman. They were both married to other people( and each had children with their spouse) but this was their joint project. they came out to the boat for a weekend every so often and met up with friends of their relationship.

One evening the woman went home to her family, and the man apologised to me for not making a pass at me one evening, after we'd been out to dinner with their friends. He thought I''d be offended if he didn't. What a relief!

Cheating is potentially a feminist issue in that the language, blame and victimhood that results has seriously sexism undertones. But I don't believe that an OW is necessarily anti feminist. Sure, it makes her a not particularly nice person because she is engaging in activity that is, by most standards, morally wrong, but that's got nothing to do with feminism.

However, the way OWs are blamed and the language used to describe them (tart, whore, bitch etc) are all anti-feminist. The fact that men so often carry on with their lives while the OW has hers torn apart. Similarly, post break up, the man who had the affair is so often better off financially due to deep systemic sexist issues in our society.

I also had never thought about this but this comment from a pp really also resonates with me:

None of these systemic issues are down to the individual OW. Though actually I think I would argue that a second wife who encourages her new husband to welch on his obligations to his first wife and children is anti-feminist, because at that point she's choosing to support a political/institutional framework which allows women to be shafted.

Personally, i've always managed to fall in love with unobtainable people/out of limits, or in more recent years, I've developed love affairs with certain cities ( Rome, for example)

I mean with people who you just can't have, for whatever reason.....the intensity of feeling captures something in you...feels irresistible..the person features in your dreams and in your waking thoughts. Likewise the place/the city.....

Thanks for all your responses.

I am the wife that has been left; the question was phrased as it was to reflect my situation.

He's the boss. She's twenty years younger than him. He secretly rented a flat which they lived in for two years before he told me he was leaving. I didn't know about her. It has been his secret, which he still doesn't admit. We have three children. Two have medical issues, so I am in the (I feel slightly ashamed) SAHM camp. I am very angry and hurt and coming to terms with the fact that he was abusive towards me and my children. Coercive control. Narcissistic abuse. Emotional neglect. I am an intelligent woman and I've let this happen. I have only recently given any thought to his girlfriend, because my focus has been on his cruelty. Recently she has been in my head. I'm trying to make sense of it all. She has colluded with him (This is where I feel degraded) She has known that he was lying to me and that he had children that he wasn't (and isn't) seeing. I find it hard to understand and I am trying to get my head around the whole issue. I want to understand how someone behaves like that for so long. That's where my feminism question came from . . . hours of cogitating. My middle-of-the-night wondering was "how can a woman do that to another woman? How can she want to be with a man who would do that?" She will have been with my husband for nearly three years, at least, and she has never met our children.
Thanks for the comments helping me think this through. I'm trying to bring up my children to understand that if you are in a relationship with someone and you are unhappy then you should leave, but you do it in a way that is with grace and dignity and compassion. For your ex partner and for your children.
Ultimately, she has made a massive mistake. She's chosen a very difficult path.

I'm sorry you're in this situation but it's your husband who is the utter shit. You've fallen into the classic trap of blaming the OW. Same old same old!

I feel for you and your children, OP. Your husband is a shit, and this other woman is too; she may well be very young and stupid, but that just makes her a stupid shit.

I doubt if someone so selfish would call herself a feminist, as feminism involves standing up for other women too.