Tanya Sweeney: Ashley Madison has been unfairly vilified

The way some media outlets are spinning it, extramarital sex didn’t really exist before the advent of technology. Or to put even more specific co-ordinates on it, since the creation of Ashley Madison.

If you aren’t familiar with the website that facilitates sexual relations between married people (tagline: “Life is short. Have an affair”), you’ve at least been spared last week’s turgid, unrelenting glut of news stories in which a number of the site’s users have been revealed by dint of a data hack and subsequent leak.

Wave after wave of minor celebrities, politicians and businessmen faced the ignominy of being identified as users of the website. In some particularly unsavoury cases, their sexual preferences – presumably inputted under the assumption that the particulars wouldn't surface – were laid bare. While they sweated and squirmed, the public enjoyed what is best described as a week of gleeful mirth. It really was striking: the schadenfreude, the moralising, the sing-song refrain of "naughty, naughty" hanging in the air.

News stories like these take on a heightened flavour of theatre through the prism of social media, serving as entertainment-mill grist. No one seemed much bothered that lives were fractured, careers toppled and souls sprained, but then, when it comes to putting people in Twitter or Facebook’s stocks, no one ever really does. We have reached peak sex-shaming.

A rather disturbing narrative surfaced this week in the think pieces that followed the news story. The main gist: Ashley Madison’s users, the majority of whom are male, are too spineless to conduct a full-blown affair or too stingy to hire a sex worker. With too much choice on offer and sex readily available on tap, men have become Neanderthals, and both marriage and the dating game have taken an almighty dropkick because of it. Some men are stupid, greedy and oversexed, only wanting to have affairs because they can, or they’re “not getting what they need at home”.

Meanwhile, some women are naive, sexually withholding and trusting (unless they are Ashley Madison users, in which case they’re the lowest of the low and an affront to their entire gender). Then again, the language around extramarital sex has always been loaded with judgment: “cheat”, “stray”, “play away from home”. None of it takes into account the myriad reasons why people choose to have sex with someone they are not married to.

A third way

A woman I know once embarked on an affair with a married man. She resisted his advances for years, until he assured her that he and his wife were living separate lives, and co-habited simply for the sake of their teenage children. Whether this was fanciful fiction or not was hard to tell. I’d never thought about an instance in which a marriage can’t or won’t move forward with either a separation or a reconciliation. Sometimes “working through it” is too big an ask. It might do everyone good if we stopped pretending otherwise.

Anyway, this non-couple enjoyed a rather beautiful, soulful and tender romance, conducted mainly via email and text. These were not furtive emails sent under cover of darkness, designed to bolster the ego; they were florid, heady and overblown. Both parties were getting just what they needed from the encounter: an unorthodox but nourishing kind of companionship. And, depending on what way you want to look at it, everyone emerged with nary a scratch. All very Bridges of Madison County. And it's just one example that cheating is never a monochrome scenario. Like life, it's complicated and rarely one-size-fits-all.

Preserving marriages

Ashley Madison’s Canadian founder, Noel Biderman, has long adopted an altruistic party line about his site, suggesting that because many members are in sexless marriages but don’t actually want to leave their spouses, the company “preserves more marriages than we break up”.

But I've watched enough Eastenders to know that this isn't always the case. I've felt the sting of humiliation, the dropkick to the ego when someone admits to an infidelity. They say "I kissed someone", but all you hear is "you're not good enough", or "I am weak", or "I am selfish" or "I don't care". All of it is true and untrue in its own way.

Sometimes the siren song of an ego boost, of the delicious taste of risk or excitement, is too much to withstand. Yet there is a difference between a mistake or a momentary lapse in judgment, and a way of life.

Some years ago, I created an Ashley Madison account in order to write an investigative piece about the site. Within five clicks, I had encountered two married acquaintances. At the time there were 3,000 Irish users on the site (now, the figure reportedly runs to about 115,000). Given the odds of bumping into a familiar face, I found their decision to use the site myopic at best, foolhardy at worst. Yet on Ashley Madison, it’s possible to “shop” for a partner that’s a perfect sexual fit – and really, what’s not to like about that? Members can choose from a menu of proclivities and preferences: among them are good personal hygiene, body piercings, seeking a sugar baby/daddy, natural breasts, has a secret love nest, aggressive/take charge nature, hopeless romantic, shopping for sexy clothes, “I like to cross-dress” and “I enjoy being a father figure”.

All the fun of a sexual supermarket sweep, but still. There are several reasons one might embark on an extramarital affair, and having a broadband connection really isn’t one. Humans are in control of their bodies, whether they make the “right” choice or not. Ashley Madison, Tinder and the like simply act as a conduit for a spark that already exists. Hate the game and if you must, hate the player. But let’s not hate the lightning rod.