Mark Anthony, in his oration for the murdered Julius Caesar in Shakespeare’s play, observes: “The evil that men do lives after them.” Indeed, in our supercharged world, evil lives with its perpetrator, tearing him down while still in his prime. Anthony’s musing would bring a grim smile to the faces of many men; none grimmer, perhaps, than that of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former head of the International Monetary Fund, former presidential hope of France’s Socialist Party, and – given the success that the more modest Francois Hollande had in beating Nicolas Sarkozy – a former future president of France.
In an interview given to the weekly Le Point earlier this month, the former and future world statesman complained that he was the victim of a “manhunt” but added that he had been “naïve” and “out of step with French society.” Cleared of sexually assaulting a maid in New York, he still faces charges of being part of a prostitution ring in which fraudulently acquired money was used to pay the women. He denies them, calling the accusations absurd. All he did, he says, was to go to sex parties in which many people – including many distinguished people –took part. He has never denied he was a swinger himself. Reportedly, he told his wife, Annie Sinclair, before their marriage 20 years ago: “Don’t marry me, I’m an incorrigible skirt-chaser!” Ms. Sinclair, indulgent of faults for which she had been warned, stood by him for months but left him this summer.
He says he was never a rapist, though a journalist, Tristane Banon, who sought an interview with him in 2002, alleges he tried to rape her and threatened a civil suit against him.
Strauss-Kahn implies he is guilty only of misreading French public opinion, with more than a suggestion that he is being judged by a bunch of hypocrites who do, or wish to do, what he does.
But it’s more than that. He’s being judged against a modern, feminist view that power – economic, social, political – remains deeply unequal between men and women, and that sexual power is thus also unequal.
