FLASH
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The history of sexual scandals that have involved America over the years...
In these hours, Donald Trump is dealing with another episode of his endless legal saga. In March of last year, the Manhattan district attorney accused the former president of breaking the law by ordering his lawyer Michael Cohen to pay $130,000 to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, who had indicated she was willing to told a tabloid that he had a relationship with the then candidate for President. The whole affair is treated in the financial heart of New York as an economic cause: in fact, the problem here is not the porn star, but the use of Trump Organization funds, later passed off as reimbursement for "fictitious legal advice": too much fictitious and too little legal.
Sex among the Puritans
Trump's case is not the only scandal that has had as its object the private vices of men in power, but it speaks very well of America's relationship with sex, which constantly swings between mania and phobia like a crazy pendulum. To understand Americans' relationship with sex, we must dig deep into the fragile American identity, going back to the Pilgrim Fathers. Puritanism, like Reformed Christianity, was a continuous process of pleasure and eros, reaching the point of sticking its mouth under women's skirts and waists. A cultural panorama perfectly described by Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. But America, from its origins, was a place of contrasts. Brothels were not a faint memory of Europe, and the women in the saloons knew it well: from Chinese women mercilessly exploited by pimps to Euro-American prostitutes, who instead often set up real sex factories.
The geography of sex
Since that moment, sex as a cross and pleasure has accompanied the shift of the border with the change of places. Wherever a handful of men arrived, be they soldiers or miners, women also arrived. However, it was the progressive development of urban America that defined the geography of sex: central places, identified with houses and neighborhoods, became symbols of sexual respect and marital sex within four walls; In the smoky suburbs, however, everything the young Puritans considered dirty was rampant: alcohol, gambling, homosexuality, crime, and of course sex. This too was a limit. But even though feminists supported marriage with the concept of "sexual slavery," the liberation of sexual freedom was still too hot a topic to raise before the Civil War. The demands of people of color gave shoulder to those feminists who sought, in similar language, to win emancipation from the slavery of marriage.
The war, the sixties and the revolution of customs
The American twentieth century opened with great opportunities, not just for women. American attitudes toward sex are also influenced by circles. The topic was also cleaned up in the newspapers, despite the fact that the police were constantly investigating these prominent, middle-class conventioneers, often connected to the underworld. After all, sodomy was a crime: and the established order had yet to be restored. But World War II changed everything: women were left alone at home, while their husbands fought in Europe and the Pacific. Faced with the possibility of death, everyone consoled themselves as best they could. There will be many marriages of young people that will break out at the end of the conflict. And it is precisely one of these very young women left at home who will become the symbol of America's relationship with sex: Marilyn Monroe. Little girl marked by life, precocious, blonde American. The saint and the "distributed", the one that everyone loved and that no one knew how to love. At the same time, she herself was a victim of the pendulum between sex mania and phobia, so much so that it ended up in a game much bigger than Hollywood, danced in an undignified way between the two Kennedy brothers. And when the myth of Marilyn is in some way a sign of this dichotomy, it is evidenced by the fact that even today the American public remains more passionate about the clean details than the investigation of the death of the great diva.
From the scandalous seventies to today
The 1970s restricted clothing, but expanded the concept of "sex" to any kind of practice: singles clubs spread like wildfire, as did gay clubs. Playboy and Penthouse became consumer goods like movie tickets or make-up. But they were not relegated to the half-hidden shelves of newsstands, but appeared in plain sight as pop products (Playboy, among other things, always featured an insert with interviews with exponents of international politics). Against this background, it is women who achieve an epochal sexual conquest: in 1973 the Roe vs. Wade decision provided the necessary protection to guarantee the right to abortion, which has been dismantled in the last two years. In the 1980s, the sexual revolution was defeated by the tragedy of AIDS, which first cast a stigma on the gay community, then unleashed a wave of widespread sexophobia and moralizing hysteria.
Ironically, the American nineties were identified with a sex scandal, none other than in the White House, right under President Bill Clinton's desk. In the meantime, almost no one defended the dignity of Monica Leëinsky, crucified as a modern Salome. A mess so bad it almost cost him a perjury conviction.
But what is sex to Americans today? In an increasingly messy country, sex today is being overtaken by a wave of moral rigorism that is increasingly restricting the rights of women (think abortion or access to contraception) and those of the LGBT+ community. Without forgetting the "gender" phobia, which qualifies any initiative aimed at the sentimental and sexual education of young people as indoctrination. On the other hand, a series of scandals that have brought abuse and harassment into the spotlight of news and justice, such as the #metoo movement. In between, one of the world's leading economies and a superpower that records the highest rate of teenage pregnancies. /Adapted "Pamphlet" from "Inside Over"
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