Weiner Update

[Trigger warning for sexual harassment; rape culture.]

So, yesterday, one of the women with whom Rep. Anthony Weiner had exchanged emails, Ginger Lee, held a press conference during which she said that Weiner "repeatedly tried to turn the conversation into sexual banter."

Lee, from La Vergne, Tenn., said the pair exchanged about 100 emails between March and June, but said she never received photos from Weiner and never sent him any. She said she followed him on Twitter because she liked his stance on Planned Parenthood funding and health care, and that he repeatedly tried to turn the conversation into sexual banter.

"My package and I are not going to beg," Weiner emailed at one point, according to [Lee's attorney, Gloria Allred]. Another email said "I have wardrobe demands too -- I need to highlight my package."

"I did not reciprocate," Lee said Wednesday.

Please note that we are supposed to assume that Lee is an opportunistic liar because she is a former porn star and a stripper, and we're definitely not supposed to consider the possibility that Weiner figured she'd be axiomatically receptive to his sexual overtures because of her vocation—because, in a culture in which all women are assumed to exist in a perpetual state of consent unless they say no, women in sex work are assumed to not even have the right to say no.

Anyway. This is, at minimum, more smoke around the Weiner didn't give a fuck about consent fire.

Reportedly, Weiner has started telling friends and colleagues that he plans to resign. And among the several regrets I had upon reading that news, despite my agreement with the decision, is this: That his resignation will go down as a man badgered out of Congress by enemies and prudes, and not as the fair consequences for a person who abused his position and ignored consent to harass women who believed in him.

UPDATE: Weiner has scheduled a press conference in New York for 2pm ET. He has reportedly informed House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi of his decision to resign.