Unknowability

I have no idea if the public babe-in-the-woods routine of Jim McGreevy’s wife was, in fact, false. But the story does remind me that I’m always a little puzzled by confident assertions (I don’t mean to single out that particular post, just using it as an illustration) about how families will be affected by someone’s bad actions or what the bad actor’s wife should do about it. None of us, unless they knew them, has any idea what Silda Wall knew or what she should do or whether it would be best for their daughters if she took them back to North Carolina. She seems to be an extremely smart person and I trust her to make her own judgments. The idea that people think they can know about the relationships of total strangers is bizarre.

And this has always been a locus of unfair commentary about Hillary Clinton. She’s been frequently attacked — mostly by people who are indifferent or hostile towards feminism — as a betrayer of feminism for staying with her husband. And, of course, had she left she would have been roundly attacked by many of these people as selfish, cold, unforgiving, etc. etc. had she left. You can never win, especially if you’re a woman. Which is why minding one’s own goddamned business about how consenting adults conduct their own relationships is generally a sound principle.