High Infidelity

Or at least higher infidelity in 2006 than in 1991, says the New York Times . The noticeable shifts came in men and women over 60 and those under 35. One could say many things about the findings, but I was struck by the tone of a few sentences. One, in the print edition, summarized the article:

“More people are cheating, new studies find, and younger women appear to be catching up with men.”

Another did the same, but in the body of the piece:

“Notably, women appear to be closing the adultery gap: younger women appear to be cheating on their spouses nearly as often as men.”

Notice the language. It’s not that women are as unfaithful as men or that women’s infidelity is rising; it’s that women are “closing the adultery gap” and “catching up with men,” the same language you use when talking about women achieving parity with men in the classroom, workplace, etc.

Tara Parker-Pope, the author of the article, and the researchers taking these surveys make it clear that they do not support infidelity, and there’s no reason to think that they do. But her choice of phrasing makes me think of the feminists who want, for example, to create feminist pornography—the ones who, instead of proposing virtue for both sexes, seek to give women equal opportunity for vice.

Again, I don’t think that that’s the intended message of Parker-Pope or the researchers, but it is striking to see the facts of adultery described in terms of women finally catching up to men.