The XX Factor: Slate women blog about politics, etc...

More Psych 101

Re: Our speculation on what Spitzer was thinking. The New York Times has a story today about how Spitzer as governor supported sex-crime legislation to toughen penalties for the men patronizing prostitutes, a bill he signed, we now know, while he was in the frequent-patronizer program at Emperors' Club. This reminds me of a story I read years ago about men who were arrested having homosexual sex in a park, many of whom wore wedding rings and had baby carriers in the back seats of their cars. A sociologist who interviewed these men said most strenuously denied being gay. This was not about sex, they said, they definitely weren't gay—it was simply a matter of stress relief. I wonder if this level of self-delusion applies to Spitzer. I'm guessing that, yes, on one level he actually knew he was having sex, but that another part of him said this wasn't sex the way Bill Clinton tried to have sex with every female he saw, and this wasn't sex the way some guys emotionally betray their wives and get into affairs with women at the office. What he was doing was so totally cut off from the rest of his life that he could convince himself it was just something a "f--king steamroller" has to do sometimes to blow off, ah, steam.