Joanna Schroeder responds to Tom Matlack about Mimi Alford’s confession of an affair with JFK.
“It’s complicated.”
It’s my favorite phrase when talking about human behavior and relationships.
Mimi Alford’s confession of an affair with JFK is everywhere this week, including The Guardian and The New York Times, and after reading about it I became fascinated with the process of confession. Who do we confess for? For ourselves, to make ourselves feel better? For the other people in our lives, so they can know the truth? In this case, the “other people” are the American people, those who’ve idolized and even deified president Kennedy.
I emailed Tom Matlack with a link to the article for his Good Feed Blog and said, “think about how our idea of a hero changes when we learn more about them.” He resisted this story, for all the reasons he details in his blog post about the Alford/JFK confession, and asked me, basically, why is Alford just saying this now?
My answer: “It’s complicated.”
I will leave it to an expert to explain theories on why people confess when they do. Rob Brown, whose piece about the disclosure of abuse shares with us insights about how survivors live every day, probably every hour if not every minute, trying to weigh the pain of keeping the secret inside, against the fear of people knowing the truth about what happened to them.
And I imagine that’s how Mimi Alford felt. I can’t say whether JFK raped her based upon details given about her being plied with daiquiris and losing her virginity to him after having just met him that same day. But I can speak to what I believe is an incredible imbalance of power. First, he was her boss. Second, he was someone she and her parents and nearly everyone she knew idolized. He was the sexiest man alive. She was an intoxicated 19 year old. As far as consent, it’s hard to say that any consent she could’ve given would meet our standards of what’s acceptable today.
Did she desire him? Probably. Did she plan on losing her virginity to him? Almost certainly not. Did she say “no”? We’ll never know for sure. But to her own admittance, a romantic affair continued nearly until his death.
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Tom and I agree on most of the above, but what haunts me about Tom’s blog post is this line:
“I can see how JFK didn’t act appropriately. But by saying she has no regrets, the former intern is complicit in the affair.”
In a time when female sexuality was both demonized and put on a pedestal, when virginity was one of the most valuable aspects of a woman, when women had very little sexual agency, perhaps Alford had to romanticize the loss of her virginity to survive the pain of what may have been a less-than-consensual interaction. I am against labeling anyone a “victim” if they don’t identify themselves as such, but it’s easy to see how a relationship with this much of a power imbalance was improper, at best.
But in knowing she was going to be shamed for it (her own husband told her to never speak of it again), perhaps her best survival method was to remember that whole time as a whirlwind of sexy, exciting romance. Never mind the age difference, the power imbalance, the fact that a superior at the White House gave a minor alcohol; never mind that her “lover” is known to have had many other mistresses as well as a wife and children.
Saying that not regretting something somehow makes us complicit in that act is a dramatic oversimplification of how we, as human beings, view our pasts. I, personally, have few regrets. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but I truly regret almost none of them.
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When I was 17 years old, barely younger than Mimi Alford, I went to the Senior prom of one of my friend’s brothers. He was the nicest guy, but I didn’t feel a big spark for him. While at that prom, I agreed to dance with one of his classmates who was awfully cute, in that bad-boy sorta way. The bad-boy leaned in and kissed me, right in front of my date—and I didn’t pull away. My date was devastated, and spent the rest of the night in resigned quietness.
I felt terrible, but for some reason I had this complicated feeling like if the sexy bad-boy was willing to “gift” me with this kiss, I shouldn’t—or maybe couldn’t—resist. I felt terrible, I mean I felt sick about it. But there was an incredibly important lesson in it for me, which eventually grew into the foundation of my sexual agency: I am in control of my sexuality. My “no” is as powerful as my “yes”. So do I regret kissing the bad-boy the night of the nice guy’s prom? Well, it’s complicated. I regret having hurt the nice guy, I regret having looked like such an asshole. But I don’t regret the lesson I learned. I only regret that I learned it at the expense of the feelings of a kind, smart 18 year-old boy.
This relates back to Alford in that perhaps she doesn’t regret it because it is such an important part of the fabric of her life. It doesn’t necessarily mean that she doesn’t look back and wish she—or the President, who was a grown man who should’ve known and done better—had made a different choice. Perhaps it simply means that she doesn’t wish her life had been any different.
The diversions, pit stops, wrecks, and wrong turns on the road to where we eventually find happiness are crucial parts of our complicated journeys. Sometimes it feels like regretting those mistakes would minimize their importance on the maps of our histories.
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photo: msnbc
About Joanna Schroeder
“First, he was her boss. Second, he was someone she and her parents and nearly everyone she knew idolized. He was the sexiest man alive. She was an intoxicated 19 year old. As far as consent, it’s hard to say that any consent she could’ve given would meet our standards of what’s acceptable today.”
When people say something like this it starts me thinking about _men’s_ consent in our society.
Considering the sheer amount of social pressure on men to have sex, to view women as not only their only appropriate sexual outlet but their only appropriate outlet for all of their touch needs, to see having sex with women as an inherent part of their sexual identity thus an inherent part of their membership in the human race…
Considering all of these social and psychological pressures can any man actually consent to sex in this society?
Really? Are you saying that JFK was having non-consensual sex?
Can ANYONE have consensual sex? Are the only men having consensual sex gay men? Wow.
Or is this an extrapolation of me saying that giving alcohol to a minor (or having one of your employees do it) and then having sex with her on your wife’s bed was inappropriate at the least, if not unacceptable?
I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry right now.
But aside from my reaction to the post above, great piece. Regret is a complicated little feeling. Are there things I wish I had done differently in my life? Sure. Do I regret the lessons I’ve learned from it? No, I don’t.
As for why now? Because secrets become stones in our hearts. Sometimes in order to get the ground clear, ready for new growth, you’ve got to clean up the field. I find the story truly sad.
Apparently the secret did come out. It came out to everybody that should have mattered, like her husband. The field should have already been cleared away. Why does she feel the need to tell everybody else now? Could it have been a book deal?
I guarantee you that she would’ve had a book deal any year she wanted to tell that story after, say 1980, though I’m certain before as well.
“I slept with JFK when I was 19 and an intern” is an easy sell. I’m certain this isn’t the first opportunity she had.
She could have also went public without the book deal, but I guess the money helped.
You are talking about a person who could cheat on their fiancé, who I’m assuming they love, for several months with a married man and not regret it. That’s not the most moral or empathic person.
Exactly, but we’re supposed to accept everything this woman says as gospel truth, even though she cannot prove her claims. Gee, I wonder why she would confe$$ now? If she had written this book a few years ago, when Powers, Garemekian and others were still alive, she would have had to prove her claims, something she cannot do. I don’t believe her at all, and I think she’s disgusting.
I’m saying that when we start talking about this kind of social pressure:
“Second, he was someone she and her parents and nearly everyone she knew idolized. He was the sexiest man alive.”
If you can consider him being ‘sexy’ and ‘idolized’ as coercive pressure, then yeah, I do think parallels between her situation and the situation of the _average_ man and the _average_ woman can be drawn due to the social and psychological pressure there is on men to say ‘yes’ to sex with women.
Further this:
“But in knowing she was going to be shamed for it (her own husband told her to never speak of it again)”
She cheated on her fiancé! Now it’s shaming for him to say ‘don’t talk about the fact you cheated on me again’?
The fact is that she was acting like a fucking asshole. It’s not some sort of patriarchal slut shaming for someone who loves you to say ‘wow, let’s put you acting like an asshole to me behind us and not speak of it again.’ It’s just normal, sympathetic, _human_ behaviour.
If you had a fiancé and he cheated on you, would you hold yourself to the standard of behaviour that you’re holding this woman’s husband to? Would you consider it vile to ‘shame’ him for his behaviour by telling him not to talk about it again?
“Second, he was someone she and her parents and nearly everyone she knew idolized. He was the sexiest man alive.”
I thought that was an odd statement too. I just didn’t know how to respond.
Who’s saying she did something perfect? That she was innocent? The power advantage was with him. No matter what, he was her *boss* and the leader of the free world. I don’t say it was rape, but I say that it was an unequal power balance.
Anyone watch Californication? Season 4, I think, made me quit watching it. The bald agent guy has been out of work forever, is divorced, broke, heartbroken, can’t get laid… Finally gets a job working under Kathleen Turner. Thinks his luck is turning around.
She sexually harasses the hell out of him. Sure, he’s no angel, but she literally almost rapes him. He NEEDS this job, he knows it. NOBODY wants to hire him, and he knows he needs to sleep with her to keep his job. She says he could say “no” but she pursues him until he submits.
Here we are supposed to laugh. Haha, a guy is sexually harassed? Impossible! Right? Men will fuck anything, right? No, it’s disgusting. Not because she’s not as hot as she was in the 80s, but because although he consents, he has *no other choice* in his mind. No matter how much she insists he does have a choice, he doesn’t.
That’s where sexual harassment comes in. That’s why it’s unethical, and sometimes lawsuit-worthy.
In this case, if anything, it was sexual harassment. I don’t care if she blew eight hundred guys willingly before or after that, he *asked her to blow someone in his office*!! WTF?!
I’m going to take a breather and hope that my example of something similar happening to a guy might allow you guys to see that sexual harassment may not be rape, but it is deeply *wrong*. Clinton, Kennedy, I don’t care. Man on woman, woman on man, same-sex, trans-sex, I don’t give a F, the power imbalance is there.
It actually makes me sad that people can’t see this.
But the two scenarios are not comparable. Is there any indication that she couldn’t survive without her job? Or that she wouldn’t _have a job_ if she didn’t comply?
At the time I imagine her fiancé would have picked up the financial slack if she needed it(considering there was considerably more pressure for him to full fill the provider role back then) and probably would gladly if she explained to him why.
Yes, it is sexual harassment. But the scenario you’re posting sounds more like survival sex. I.e. If I don’t have sex I can’t survive. That is bordering on rape, IMHO. (If not walking right into it.) And since it’s played as ‘just desserts for the manwhore’ it’s probably a good dose of overt slut-shaming too.
Besides, what I’m pulling out isn’t the scenario itself, which is problematic due to power differentials, yes… it’s your statement about ‘sexiness’ and ‘idolatry’ making sexual consent problematic.
Why stop with this one woman if you’re going to posit that? Why not look at the differential between men and women in terms of sexual desirability, choice-power, and socialization? Men are socialized not to say no to women. If women were socialized, instead, to see their very sexual identities rooted in always saying yes to men, hell to see their membership in the human race based on how much sex they get from men, wouldn’t you find _their_ consent problematic under those circumstances?
This is a tangent from what you’re talking about, yes, but I think it’s a valuable concept to consider.
Surely the threshold for sexual harassment has to be more than just a higher-powered person flirting with a lower-powered person that leads to consensual sex, doesn’t it? In your Californication example, the guy who was harassed sounds like it happened for a long time before he submitted, and then it was only to keep his job. That doesn’t sound anything like the story Mimi Alford tells. She tells the story of a groupie attracted by a powerful man desiring her, not of a powerful man threatening her professionally unless she accepted his advances. I’m not even troubled that he was her “boss”, because I don’t picture White House interns reporting directly to the President, and she doesn’t describe a pattern of unwanted attention a la Kathleen Turner in Californication.
No, the power imbalance alone doesn’t make it harassment. If it did, every first lady ever has been harassed, because they’ve never come close to matching the power of their husbands. Unless you’re reading from a different excerpt, he did not ask her to blow someone in his office (which we’d presume to be oval in shape). The story describes it happening once at the pool, and once in “a room”. While I don’t see much reason to quibble with her interpretation of “take care of” since her blowjob was willingly accepted, it’s also plausible to me that she jumped to that conclusion without ruling out others. He suggested “take care of”, not “go blow him”. What would have happened if she’d gone over and given a shoulder massage? We’ll never know, because she went right to the blowing and no one minded.
If any if this were a story about Motley Crue or KISS (wrong decade, I know, but I’m trying to think of famously lascivious bands), would it still be sexual harassment? I don’t think so. I think it would be recognized for the groupie tale it was. I agree that sexual harassment is wrong, and even that this affair was wrong on many levels, but I haven’t read or heard anything yet that makes it sound like even borderline sexual harassment. She accepted his advances so they continued. That’s not harassment.
I’m not going to get into the power imbalance thing. Anyone who understands office politics should know that an executive of a company can exert great influence on a low or mid level manager. Even if they can’t directly fire you, they can impact your upward mobility within an organization.
Are you saying that no one can date anyone in a lower position within a company or only someone lower within the direct change of command? The asking out of a date is defacto sexual harassment whether the advance was welcomed or not or that the subordinate has any responsibility to say no. I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you. I’m just trying to understand your position. It’s not so much a question of what sexual harassment law is, but what you think it should be.
Good point, and I’ll sheepishly admit my point about interns not reporting directly to the President was a weak point. I’m sure the President could make a White House intern’s life difficult or get them fired even without being their direct supervisor or day-to-day boss. However, having the power to do so is not evidence of having done so, and nothing I’ve seen of Mimi Alford’s account so far suggests that kind of thing happened to her.
I think the question about what sexual harassment should be was directed at Joanna, but I wanted to own up to my weak point. In case the question was for me, though, I don’t think dating (or asking out) someone lower down the chain of command is automatically harassment, or should be considered as such by law.
It was directed to Joanna, but everyone is welcome. I agree with the assessment that there was no sexual harassment in JFK’s case based in current law. For it to be sexual harassment it has to be both sexual and unwanted. I don’t know that it was unwanted based on what she said. My feeling is that she felt greater status from the attention of the most powerful, sexiest, and possibly most desired man
of his time.
“I was so pleased with myself at being chosen by the President that I didn’t feel self-conscious at all about wearing the same clothes at work two days in a row.
If my office mates noticed, I didn’t care. I felt invulnerable, as if I were cloaked with the President’s power.”
Can a relationship arise out of an act of sexual harassment or rape? I suppose it’s possible, but I’m more inclined to believe that there was some sexual attraction there to begin with. I think she chooses not to recognize it or at the minimum chooses to downplay it because good girls don’t.
I’m still interested in seeing Joanna’s take on sexual harrassment.
I do know that if the sexes were reversed and you were talking about a young man having sex with the most attractive and beautiful woman in the world who had come on to him…. you would not be talking about how much choice the young man had to refuse.
How do you know?
In her own words Mimi Alford’s account of what happened describes a willing participant, not someone who was raped, coerced, or even harassed. She also does not describe being “plied with daiquiris”; she described being offered “a daiquiri” and accepting. The drinking age in DC back then was 18, so she was both legal to drink, and at 19, not a minor even if the drinking age had been 21.
I don’t think this affair was defensible on grounds of appropriateness or respectability, but it sounds entirely consensual. The worst part of the story IMO was when Kennedy told her to “take care” of Dave Powers, which she did (orally), and his brother Teddy (a year later), which she didn’t. However, even that part did not involve being forced, and as the second incident showed, she could have refused. She does not express any fears of retribution or that her job was on the line if she rebuffed any sexual advances. (It’s possible the excerpt linked above leaves out such concerns, but they would be a surprise in light of this part of the story and how attracted she was to the attention of a powerful man.)
She acted like a groupie, but instead of granting sexual favors to rock stars, she was granting them – voluntarily – to the President, well aware of his family status. Like many groupies, she talks about being so enthralled she could barely resist, but nothing about her story sounds non-consensual. Also like many groupies, she has now written a book about it. I’m not angry at her and I don’t think she’s lying, but I only see it as a groupie story, not an abuse of power story or sexual assault.
Haven’t read the book, but I concur. Kennedy was one hell of an AMOG and as such, took what was freely offered. I’m sure asked, or assumed he had consent, but if he was the “sexiest man alive,” I’m pretty sure (based on women having a sex drive, just like men, or that’s what they keep telling us), most women wouldn’t say no.
As for what David Bryon said above, I totally agree. I.e. “I do know that if the sexes were reversed and you were talking about a young man having sex with the most attractive and beautiful woman in the world who had come on to him…. you would not be talking about how much choice the young man had to refuse.”
A comedian once criticized Bill Clinton not for using his status as President to get women, but rather for the quality of women he chose to get.
Ya know what?
If men continue to rate ‘quality’ in women based solely on looks, they sorta deserve what they get.
This is from someone who is about as wholehearted a supporter of men’s rights as is possible.
It was a comedian who said it. I can’t remember who, but I’ll admit to laughing. I will say that if someone is only going after women for sex and not a deeper relationship as we suspect happened then aside from lack of STDs, looks is probably one of the only other concerns.
As for me, the trait I find most appealing in a woman is kindness, then intelligence. Beauty is high on the list, but you know what’s strange. I could not be physically attracted to a woman, find her to be kind and engaging and eventually I start to find myself physically attracted to her. A female friend put it this way. When you start to care about someone, you don’t see them the same way.
If she was 19, back in those days, the legal drinking age was 18 for girls, 21 for boys.
Back in those days, when I was 19 years old, I had a year of military service under my belt on an isolated military base with over 7,000 men and less than 100 women.
Back in those days I had a father who taught me to respect myself and not allow myself to be “used” in any way. Back in those days I was spunky, intelligent and too ornery to be “used”. I was WAAAY too smart and responsible.
Somehow the “poor, dumb, helpless beguiled 19 year old infantalized child” is falling flat with me.
Only NOWDAYS can a woman float a story like with, make herself look like brainless infant at a legally ADULT age and expect something other than derision.
“In a time when female sexuality was both demonized and put on a pedestal, when virginity was one of the most valuable aspects of a woman, when women had very little sexual agency, perhaps Alford had to romanticize the loss of her virginity to survive the pain of what may have been a less-than-consensual interaction. I am against labeling anyone a “victim” if they don’t identify themselves as such, but it’s easy to see how a relationship with this much of a power imbalance was improper, at best.”
This is a terribly annoying phenomenon – women not accepting responsibility for their actions or those of members of the gender. She was “overpowered into consent”. I have this chemical in me called testosterone that “overpowers” me into consent all the time. I’m helpless before it.
More like she was disappointed in the “pain” of having sex with a rich powerful man not paying off.
I’m from that era, and women routinely bragged about sleeping with rich, powerful older men, just as they still seek out rich, powerful older men to this day.
I’m DYING to hear Monica Lewinsky’s “story” decades from now, after Bill Clinton is long passed and can’t refute any of it. We’ve already got the “23 year old helpless infant” established. Wonder what the new “women as blameless victim” angle will be 30 years from now.
Making foolish choices, messing up, acting like an ass, and the like are part of being human, and more importantly, part of growing up. We all did it, do it, or will do it at some point in our lives. There are no saints, as far as I can tell. The big question in my mind is why we, as a society or as a species, seem so fixated on judging others for their mistakes.
Of course, there are those actions that truly cause harm to others, and those who act in such ways ought to be held to some account, both to make what restitution may be possible, and to learn not to make such harmful choices in the future. But there seems to be some inner need to judge, to condemn, and to punish those whose actions we do not agree with.
Whatever happened between Alford and Kennedy is past history. What’s more, it’s their personal past history, and would have remained so had Ms Alford not made her revelation. As to her motives for doing so, only she can say. Motives are complicated, and sometimes we don’t even see all of what drives our own actions, our own choices. All the speculation long after the fact about possible rape, power imbalances, privilege, and what was or wasn’t appropriate really are pretty meaningless. But oh, we do love to spin our wheels! We love to judge.
Sometimes, when people make unwise decisions and mess up, it isn’t a big deal, much less a crime. Sometimes it’s a lesson, and sometimes it’s just an interesting story, a memory you can share in your old age. Must we really be so quick to judge? Wouldn’t the world we inhabit together be a better one if we cut each other a generous portion of slack with regards to our weaknesses, our lapses, and our flaws? If nobody cries foul, if nobody claims to be a victim, can we not live and let live?
We are fixated on judging others because it’s how we keep up normative behaviour in the social group. It’s a useful adaptation run amok in the modern world. Back in the good ‘ol days on the savannah, the concepts of “freedom” and “society” as we know them, almost certainly did not exist. An I have little doubt that the judgment made of others behaviours in the hunter gatherer group were adaptive and not life suffocating like they are today. All the same, our evolved responses are just retarded in this day and age.
For example, I’m quite sure that prostitution was readily accepted back in the day, 200,000 years ago. However, it didn’t look like prostitution. There was no “pimp” and there was no money. But sure as hell there was the exchange of SOMETHING for sex. I have no doubt. It even happens in other organisms as different from us as fiddler crabs. The voluntary exhcange of goods (and I’m reasonably sure that sex with females was always a good for males) is a hallmark of our species. That the exchange of sex for food, protection, status, support or what-have-you, is now somehow a wrong is a modern thing. Back in the day, I rather doubt it was the wrong it is seen to be today. Of this I have no doubt.
“I’m reasonably sure that sex with females was always a good for males”
If it is, most males of every species sure are fussy about it.
Stallions often prefer mares with specific coat colours; bulls need to be ‘teased’ by adolescent bulls to do the deed, and biologists are busy hiding reports of female animals in season *begging* male animals to service them.
What we know about sexuality is bullshit.
Apparently a lot of middle aged school female school teachers believe that to be the case, as well as the “she’s too pretty for prison” Judges.
My father always referred to it as “rewriting history”. He warned me that while it looked like the “party girls” were having all the fun, one day they would come to be ashamed and regretful and “rewrite history” to obfuscate their embarassing past and become harsh critics of the current crop of young women or “pillars of the church”.
I notice my father was wrong about VERY few things.
I would have a LOT more respect for this “revelation” if she came out and admitted she was a slutty party girl and participate in slut walks to promote respect for sluts than go the “19 year old women are brainless blow up dolls” route.
Maybe JFK slipped her a roofie.
Was the drinking age in DC 21 at the time? I was under the impression the drinking age laws were nationalised only with Reagan?
I found conflicting evidence against what Marcus is saying about it being 18 in DC then… It looked to me on two different sites that it was 21 years old that year. But I could be wrong, I mean, it’s the Internet.
My source was Wikipedia, but I won’t pretend that’s an infallible source. If it was 21, that would make it a case of underage drinking, but being 19 would still not qualify her as a minor, or below the age of consent (unless those numbers have changed a lot).
Perhaps the confusion is because there are two ages. Beer and wine were 18, while fortified wine and spirits were 21.
It was 21 for men 18 for women in most states because the theory at the time was women matured faster than men.
What an amusing concept, eh?
“Women’s equality” was responsible for changing the drinking age to 21 for both genders, a big disappointment for men hoping it would be lowered to 18.
With the new era of female infantalism, changing the drinking age to 31 for woman would probably be a step in the right direction since only drunk men can give legal consent or be legally responsible.
Steve. “We” didn’t write the book. Not our fault it came out.
Problem is, there are many issues in this case which, in other circumstances, feminists would find troubling. Booze. Age difference. Power differential. Lying to one’s SO.
But, JFK being who he was–was pictured to be, and a democrat–none of this stuff matters. In this case.
We’re also assuming that her version is the truth. I was inclined to believe her until you said that she wrote a book. I am no longer sure.
You’re forgetting the “children don’t lie” axiom.
Women aren’t responsible or mature enough to accept adulthood, therefore they are perpetual children, and children don’t lie.
…and the world would be a better place if they ran it.