The Desexualization of the American Public Sphere

Merely a few days before his election as governor of California, on October 7, 2003, Arnold Schwarzenegger was exposed, first in the Los Angeles Times and then throughout the media, nationally and internationally, as a brutal “groper� — at best a cad, at worst a sexual harasser. There was something distinctly familiar about this story. Ever since accusations of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas had been aired in October 1991, a few days before the Senate vote on his nomination as an associate justice of the Supreme Court, such revelations had become a hallmark of the public sphere in the United States. Henceforth, sexual indiscretions were not to be met with media discretion: from Bob Packwood to Bill Clinton, the private conduct of (mostly male) politicians was considered publicly relevant, even significant. Throughout the 1990s, sexual politics was thus part and parcel of politics — as American, so to speak, as apple pie. Sex mattered.

Not any more. The point is not simply that Schwarzenegger was elected governor, despite the allegations. After all, both Clarence Thomas and Bill Clinton survived the sexual scandals they were engulfed in: the former was soon confirmed and joined the Supreme Court, and the latter won the 1998 midterm elections and then his Senate trial. More fundamentally, such accusations did not seem to matter any longer in 2003. “Gropergate� turned out not to be a scandal — barely a ripple in the media frenzy surrounding the movie star’s campaign. The stories against Schwarzenegger had been out for years, but the press had not bothered to revive them until the last moment. Polls were to confirm that voters hardly cared. The allegations did not influence them, whether they had made up their minds before or after their surfacing. Finally, in the aftermath of the election, the accusations did not in the least weaken the new governor — if anything, their instantaneous vanishing into oblivion may have encouraged his triumphant display of masculinity. This is even more remarkable if we consider that the candidate all but admitted the truth of the accusations when acknowledging that he had “behaved badly sometimes.� This was no he said/she said situation — as had been the case for a decade. The question was not “Is this really true?� but rather “Do we really care?� Not “What happened?� but rather “So what?�