Where Are the “Unbrotherly” Men?
By: Em Unravelling
Tags: Women, Relationships, Society, Gender Equality, Feminism

When I cheated on my husband, I also cheated on my family. I treated those blameless, beloved people extremely badly, either overtly or by negligent and selfish default. I have never hidden from that at all. The fact that I was given any chance at all to repair these relationships still seems miraculous to me and the work I have put into that repair has been consistent.

Do you know who else had a terrible time in that awful year? My lover’s wife. And his teenage daughters. For them, too, this was not the first time that they'd lived through the aftermath of an affair. He’d cheated on them before, which is something I had not known until the end of my own involvement with him. In the case of my lover’s wife, her obvious immediate trauma was overlaid with an extra dose of sickening deja-vu.

In the aftermath of the affair, one of the frequent accusations leveled at me was my lack of “sisterly” consideration for my lover’s wife during the time that I had been cheating. I was told, often, that I had let the feminist side down by enabling such poor treatment of another woman. I’d colluded with her husband in treating her badly. She might not have been my friend, but as a woman, I have a sisterly duty to other women, and I had breached that.

On an academic level, I don’t disagree with this perspective. Of course, if all women simply refused to become involved with married men — or they ended their involvement when they discovered the truth — then married men would not be able to cheat. That’s basic and it’s obvious.

Where, though, was the similar opprobrium toward my former lover for his lack of “brotherly consideration” for my husband? I don’t recall anyone suggesting that for a moment. Not once. If I dared to suggest that this particular path was not a one-way street, I was invariably scoffed at. “That’s different. It’s between you and your husband.” I heard that many times.

Yes, it was. And by that metric, my lover’s cheating was between him and his wife. Surely? What was the difference?

This morning, I was scrolling through the Instagram stories of the highly popular “LaLaLaLetMeExplain” account — a generally brilliant, no-nonsense account that I adore and highly respect. Layla, who runs the blog and the Instagram account, was directing a public message to a woman who, in essence, had asked whether her lover would ever leave his wife for her. And she said this:

“Enabling him is…a vile thing to do…I’m never going to not be clear about how horrible it is for women to f*ck over other women in this way.”

Again, I don’t disagree. It is a horrible thing to participate in actions that allow someone else to be hurt. I am deeply ashamed that this is something I have done in my life and of course I feel bad about it. But for me, as a woman, I was expected by outsiders to feel an extra layer of shame that was never draped across my male lover. And this is simply not fair.

Women get the benefit of the ethical doubt. There is a positive bias toward women in terms of expected “goodness”. This has been established by countless studies. And while it sounds like a good thing — who wouldn’t want to be thought of, by default, as more morally sound? — the net effect is that when we slip up, we women are expected to pay a higher price.

And who’s demanding that higher price? Often, it’s our “sisters”. It is other women. Even the ones who claim to be the most feminist.

We are punished harder. By each other.

I really don't know why I’m surprised. In my youth, boys were studs when they slept with lots of people while girls, despite the influence of 90s “ladette” culture, were still seen as slutty if they did the same. When, as a teenager, one of my friends’ fathers left the matrimonial home and set up shop with a new partner (which happened fairly often, in fact), no eyebrows lifted at all. But when a friend’s mother did similar, she was viewed as a shocking example of nearly inhuman cruelty; she was shunned by everyone she knew, including my friend himself.