Weiner Round-Up

[Trigger warning for sexual harassment.]

There was some more news over the weekend regarding Rep. Anthony Weiner:

— Weiner confirmed he had been corresponding with a 17-year-old high school girl, though he, the girl, and her parents say that the private communications were "neither explicit nor indecent."

— More pictures of Weiner were made public, some of which use what is reportedly the Congressional gym as a backdrop. There are suggestions that this constitutes a misappropriation of Congressional resources, which is a stretch. Having phone sex on a Congressional line is a misuse of publicly-funded resources. Taking pictures of oneself in the Congressional gym, which one later sends to someone else, is not. Stupid, yes. Criminal, no.

— Weiner is refusing to resign, despite increasing calls for his resignation, most of which are not for the right reasons. Lumping everything he did into some generic term like "inappropriate" conflates consensual sexual activity with nonconsensual sexual activity, as if it's just as bad to cheat as to sexually harass, and tacitly finds him guilty of ethics violations before there has been an investigation. Worse yet, implying that he is mentally ill and thus unfit to serve in the US Congress is problematic for a whole lot of reasons. If Weiner personally feels he needs treatment, that's one thing. But the "you need help" pile-on from other Democrats is appalling.

— The White House weighs in, helpfully describing Weiner's behavior as "inappropriate."

— I also want to briefly address this idea, which I've seen in quite a few places, that Weiner didn't intend to harass Gennette Cordova; that he, instead, merely sent the image to the wrong person. This explanation is offered as though it somehow negates the fact that he sexually harassed her. Um, no. Even if she was not the intended recipient, she was the actual recipient.

Sex crimes are not defined by the perpetrator's intent. Someone who flashes a passerby doesn't get to say, "Whoops, I meant to flash someone else," if their crime is reported.

Further, I'm not sure whence this explanation even came, since Weiner has not, anywhere that I've seen, called sending Cordova the picture "an accident," but has called it "a joke." It is, I fear, a "joke" he has played many more times than we are even aware.