Ah! Perfect! This is exactly the article I'd have requested if The New Yorker had asked me What can we write for you?
I could go looking for this material myself and grope at amateur psychoanalysis, but I found this, by Lizzie Widdicombe. How absolutely pleasing to just sit back and read (and react):
[J]ust a year ago, much of blue-state America was lusting after Governor Andrew Cuomo... The erotic interest was documented in a Jezebel article—“Help, I Think I’m in Love with Andrew Cuomo???”... The term “Cuomosexual” was popularized in a song called “Andy,” by the comedian Randy Rainbow, set to the tune of “Sandy,” from the musical “Grease”....Celebrities such as Ellen DeGeneres and Trevor Noah announced their Cuomosexuality.....
... I contacted Virginia Goldner, a psychoanalyst... “He was radiating an erotized masculinity that has within it hostility and a little tenderness,” she said. “That combination of soft and hard—mostly hard, but also soft—is what so many women crave in some way,” she said.
She called it the “retrosexual part of us”—the part that was raised with the image of a “big, square” daddy/lover figure, even if we’ve never actually had one.... The harasser enjoys creating sexual tension in the workplace, but what he really likes is the psychological torment....
She quoted Henry Kissinger, noting that power is an aphrodisiac. That’s true, but it’s really “the sensation of power relative to powerlessness,” she said—power over someone else....
“We can still love those dimensions of masculinity, and ask ourselves, What are they? And how do they get corrupted?”
Yes, let's think deeply — and not just about Cuomo — about why we respond at a sexual level to displays of power. And don't start with denying that there's anything sexual about your response to power.
A bit from the Jezebel article, linked above, which is from March 2020:
Cuomo isn’t holding me hostage so much as coronavirus is, but he is the only one telling me what to do, where I can and cannot go (anywhere), who I can and cannot see (everyone), who I can and cannot listen to (President Trump, Bill de Blasio), what I can and cannot eat (anything but pasta).... [W]hen I stream his presser... I feel comforted. I feel alive. I feel protected. I feel... butterflies....
Suddenly, everyone loves Andrew Cuomo. Ben Smith, the New York Times’s new media columnist, wrote a column this week headlined “Andrew Cuomo is the Control Freak We All Need Right Now.”...
Andrew Cuomo, Dear Leader, will take care of me. He loves me. He is the only one who is here for me. He will help me get through this.
Now, that is partly satirical, but it is a confession that control feels sexually exciting — that dictators are loved.
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37 comments:
Every woman adores a Fascist, the boot in the face, the brute, brute heart of a brute like Cuomo.
I suspect that the media's portrayal of all this helped drive the hysteria. I've known single guys who'd wear wedding bands when they hit the bars because it helped them score. Apparently if women think that you are taken that makes you more desirable, because you come "pre-approved," so to speak. The media's fawning coverage of Cuomo gave the impression that women already approved of him, and that led more women to suddenly find him attractive.
I'll defer to writer Nina Burleigh, who, as a writer for the NY Times a few years back gave us this view of the psychology involved. Burleigh regarding Bill Clinton's groping/raping abilities: "I would be happy to give him a blowjob just to thank him for keeping abortion legal. I think American women should be lining up with their Presidential kneepads on to show their gratitude for keeping the theocracy off our backs.”
These are the words spoken by a true believer of the secular religion. Flash forward a few years to Trump and Cuomo, and now to Biden and you have an expanded, more powerfully controlling secular religion that has spread to every corner of our power centers, media, schools, and many corporations. The practitioners want to be controlled, they want to be told what to do, they desire it, and some even find it sexy coming from the right person- usually a man.
Because in the end, say what you will, women love masculine men. Beta Boys are fine for making your latte, but when crunch comes to your life, who you gonna call?
Hint: Not a Conservative. Not a Republican. Even if they have testicles the size of a Buick and soft eyes like a panda. It has to be someone on the left, wearing pants, with a dick. Someone believably tough, but talking to you like he cares. Bill Clinton. Andrew Cuomo. (Sorry, Barack is more like the guy making your latte.)
I'll say it again- we are all so easy. Both the Left and the Right. We are all too easy.
One of the great dangers to American democracy is the apparent need of Democrats to idolize and fall in love with their politicians and other public leaders. I comprehend their need but don’t understand it. I do not like almost all politicians personally and only support politicians for their policies. Thus, Trump never bothered me personally because I always knew he was an obnoxious New Yorker. But I agree with his policies. I believe most Trump supporters are the same, but some who never followed politics before Trump seem to believe that he personally embodies the policies and they would go away without him. That’s not me. But the Democrat idolatry is very susceptible to being manipulated and creating a personal need. It started with FDR, then Camelot Kennedy, Bubba Clinton, and creased pants Obama. We need to distrust politicians and judge them on what they do and not what they say. We should know this from early history. It was the loquacious Alcibiades, a duplicitous and generally untrustworthy man who convinced the Athenians to attack Sicily, a disastrous move that cost Athens greatly. Ultimately, Athens learned to banish even war heroes if they were too influential on voters. America should take heed.
The desire to worship strong leader is unseemly.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the huge bestseller:
50 shades of Grey.
Semi-porn (or not semi-?) with normalization of BDSM.
There is also the non-sexual reality of choice fatigue - where many normal folks are happier being told "this is the only way", so they don't need to do the hard work of thinking and deciding what is the best way for them. Not just in sexual pleasure ways but even what to eat, what to wear, where to work, what to do.
Whenever some way is the "only way", it liberates one from responsibility of choosing.
Children are free from responsibility, but thus constrained in what they're allowed to choose.
Adults are free to act, but fully responsible for their choices.
Lots of folks, maybe most, want both the freedom to act AND the freedom from responsibility.
The QED of Kissinger's dictum was his dating Jill St. John at a time when she was considered one of the most beautiful women in the world. Absolute power absolutely corrupts the libido.
If Thomas Williams doesn't get his sex worker funding restored he might have to break down and run for office.
I question whether any of this embarrassing nonsense was ever real, as opposed to just media salesmanship. Democrats needed someone prominent to be the anti-Trump, and Cuomo came with a pre-existing set of connections to CNN. There weren't any policy positions they could highlight (killing grandma, spurning the hospital ship, SALT tax subsidies for the rich), and the left is trained to think in terms of sexuality and sexual identity anyway, so there's suddenly a spate of articles telling Democratic women that they need to support him because he's hot. I'd be surprised if many women ever actually did, though.
The mention of being told what to eat reminds me of the scene in the movie "The Secretary" where the secretary calls her boss/lover/dom from a dinner party to get instructions on what she is allowed to eat.
I have often been called a Nazi, and, although it is unfair, I don't let it bother me. I don't let it bother me for one simple reason. No one has ever had a fantasy about being tied to a bed and sexually ravished by someone dressed as a liberal.
P.J. O'Rourke
The soft/hard personality thing might be related to a Bond like identification. In times of uncertainty the women want a James Bond type.
What triggered the Bond reference was remembering the story of Cuomo's nipples. Then I remembered Bond villain Scaramanga, from "The Man with the Golden Gun" (1974) had three nipples. Never underestimate the subconscious.
The word is about,
there's something evolving,
Whatever may come,
the world keeps revolving...
They say the next big thing is here,
That the revolution's near,
But to me it seems quite clear
That's it's all just a little bit of history repeating.
The newspapers shout a new style is growing,
But it don't know if it's coming or going,
Deep down they felt that way about Trump, I suspect, and the thought was just too much for them. Hence the hysterical reaction.
I mean, if you're going to lust, choose a politically correct object.
To be attractive, it has to be power that's "on my side", so to speak, not just power. I watched a Cuomo presser back in the early Covid days and liked him but I knew he'd told prolifers like me to get out of New York so I knew any power he had would be used against me. So I felt he was a danger - and not a sexy danger. I would call it a "Harvey Weinstein danger" or a Vladimir Lenin danger. And now when I read of him suddenly grabbing lefty women in his office and making it plain that they wouldn't get anywhere in NY government unless they put up with it and when I think how angry and helpless they must have felt watching him on TV and seeing how attractive he seemed and when I think how they felt knowing that lefty women around the country were "falling in love" and so wouldn't listen if the office women complained - well, to me the guy seems so mean and sly that strange lines appear in his face showing underlying piggishness.
Following up on the golden gun reference... there's a video of Governor Cuomo at some kind of dinner party ordering a sausage for a woman reporter, not sitting at his table. When she receives the ordered sausage she comes over to the governor's table and... ok, why don't you look at the video link below for your selves... there's more going on that i can't possibly do justice describing it here. Written descriptions of events often overlook stuff others might find more interesting.
link to video
"but it’s really “the sensation of power relative to powerlessness,” she said—power over someone else...."
For several years, I had the pleasure of working for the President & COO of a multi-billion dollar corporation. I am really just plain old Skippy, but in the eyes of the company's employees, I was an extension of my boss.
I remember going to the office of a very attractive female employee because I was there on behalf of my boss in order to ask her to do something for he needed. The immediate look of fear on the woman's face when I entered her office was amazing and to my surprise, my immediate reaction was, "Damn is that ever hot!" And this from someone who years earlier had coached countless women gymnasts from all over the world -- a lot of them quite attractive -- without ever experiencing even a remotely similar response.
They say for woman that power is an aphrodisiac, but it is for the powerful as well.
Bravo Bob! Excellent quippage!
Yancey Ward said...
Every woman adores a Fascist, the boot in the face, the brute, brute heart of a brute like Cuomo.
My reaction to Cuomo is to cross my legs and flip my taser to "on."
I am amazed and appalled at how many men think that women have a deep-seated desire to be controlled/raped/overpowered/dominated. I only ever hear men saying it, I have never heard a woman desire it. It is projection in it's ugliest form. If I hear a man suggest such a horrific thing, I can only imagine that he is the one who desires to commit such abominations. No woman of any conviction desires such atrocities. Any man who believes she does is living in a distorted and evil fantasy of his own making. Good women want partnership. We want to be a part of the process of decision making, of policy, of success, of growth. We want to be heard and treated fairly and kindly.
To be fair, there are women who do ugly things. I wouldn't dare to speak for ALL women. I also don't want certain women to believe they speak for all of us either. And I most certainly don't want men to think they can speak for us without knowing our actual desires!
Thankfully, there are MANY good men whom I admire and respect greatly. I'm incredibly grateful to know so many. I would hope that the evil desires of a few never overshadow the goodness of so many, both men and women.
This seems a good case for the application of an evolutionary lens:
Will a powerful man be better able to protect/support offspring and will they have a better chance of surviving/reproducing?
If so, the trait in question (attraction to powerful men) will be favoured and will tend to increase in the population (women, in this case) over time.
A truly strong leader can be sexy AND he can keep his lips, hands, tongue, trash-talk, urges, sexual ego, sausages, and his penis to himself.
I give Obama credit.
with the take-down of Cuomo - his own doing - I sense a disturbance in the force. Perhaps the Bill Clinton exhaustion? Take Cuomo out now, before the left are forced down that road again... but with the man in an even more powerful position.
Ellen Degeneres used to be likable. She's just another leftwing-D pimp.
While I've always disliked Cuomo (both) I give no credence to a psychoanalyst's diagnosis of an unmet subject, see Dr. Lee's diagnosis President Trump.
I remember being stunned by the infatuation with Cuomo. I've never been attracted to controlling men.
It may just be me, but Andrew Cuomo always came across as a closeted gay to me. There was the political marriage with only one pregnancy before the wife ran off with a polo player. His father and brother had multiple children. The there's the Bess Myerson vibe of Sandra Lee. My husband and I worked out a scenario where his acting like he thinks hetero men act resulted in things going wrong. It's not like he actually penetrated any of these women.
As for the cuomosexual stuff, I think the media ladies made it up.
Men, frustrated on the dating front--and possibly incels--aren't going to take a lesson from this, are they?
Cyndi. Do you have another explanation for the phenomenon? IMO, it's way overblown by people who get paid to get attention. Would that be it?
BG wrote:
My reaction to Cuomo is to cross my legs and flip my taser to "on."
A better response than putting ones head in an oven.
"Cyndi. Do you have another explanation for the phenomenon? IMO, it's way overblown by people who get paid to get attention. Would that be it?"
Richard Aubrey, I was actually responding to commenters here who think women want to be dominated. I am flummoxed by the behavior highlighted by media. I do think it's sensationalism used to draw readers and create overblown drama. So yes, I think people are being paid to hype up bad behavior. I also believe it normalizes and increases said behavior. However, I still believe there are a majority of good people in the world who would never dream of behaving in such base ways. I wish we could talk more about that so that more people aspired to goodness. I would like to see more accountability for those who focus on the negatives. But until people stop paying for it, it will continue to be the dominant news.
"Cyndi. Do you have another explanation for the phenomenon? IMO, it's way overblown by people who get paid to get attention. Would that be it?"
I was actually responding to commenters on this post who seem to think women want to be dominated. But yes, I do think people are paid to get attention, whether they're acting out or reporting on it, and I think it normalizes bad behavior. I would like to see less of it. I believe the majority of people are good. I'd like to see that better reflected in the media.
It's was always cringeworthy nonsense in service of more and more Trump hatred because that was all the Media and Left -- and especially outlets like Jezebel and morons like Randy Rainbow -- believed was required to properly display their anti-Trump bona fides. Meanwhile, everything Cuomo was praised for at the time by these same people with respect to NY's COVID response proved to be a complete lie.
Regarding Lem's comment with the sausage video ... his daughter(!) is sitting right next to him too! What a psychopath!
LOL, Cyndi. I read all the comments, and only my first one even resembles what you described, and I note for record I was quoting, with a small edit at the end, a woman.
I think deckhand_dreams is right that women prefer powerful men. Some times this spills over to a desire to be dominated. Not always, maybe not even often, and hardly ever to be admitted (thus, Cyndi) but enough to support a not insignificant fantasy industry.
There was more than a hint of "desire to be dominated" in the encomiums to Cuomo's telling people what to do during our year of COVID.
@Cyndi, some women certainly do want to be dominated, because what else explains the success of the “Fifty Shades” phenomenon? Back when the trilogy was flying off the bookshelves I picked up a copy in the local bookstore (now closed, dammit) and read a couple pages; I’m certain it wasn’t the quality of the writing. And it was not males grabbing those books and heading off to the cash register.
But that’s not the kind of woman that makes the best wife.
Dominant and dominating are not synonymous. A strong, confident, competent leader gets men to want to follow him, and often women desiting him. His behavior needn't be dominatong for that to occur.
I think, as in so many ways, the Left, adrift from traditional sexual roles, behavior, and expectations, are incapable of seeing the distinction, and thus get all twisted up on controlling behaviors, rather than leading and guiding ones.
I'd note that there's a difference between the fantasy of domination and actual domination. I suspect the number of people of either sex who desire the reality of domination is vanishingly small.
In the fantasy of domination nothing happens that is not actually desired. In the reality of domination any horrible thing can happen.
@Big Mike says, "And it was not males grabbing those books and heading off to the cash register."
So true, we'd grab a book and head off somewhere else entirely.
My wife watches and reads all kinds of crap featuring relationships between strong men and women, but it's all heteronormative stuff with masterful male protags, whether they're human or not (vampires, werewolves, etc.).
The harsh sanction against sexually-charged bossing (extending far below the Weinstein-Cuomo threshold) is what women collectively advocate, because they recognize that they'll keep putting themselves willingly in that semi-consensual position, or lose out to those who do.
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