Battle of the Sexes Over Sex

"This is why we need more women in politics," my friend Virginia Randall was saying yesterday. "Did Ella Grasso ever have to stand up on the podium and admit she paid for a rent boy? Or Bella Abzug?"

Uh, no. Kind of disturbing just to think about. But as women and men discussed L'Affair Spitzer yesterday — every waking moment — the differences between men and women kept getting more pronounced.

It's not just that female politicians have so few sex scandals to their name. (Actually, I can't think of any.) It's that when females even think about political sex scandals, they react differently. In the case of Mr. Spitzer, most women think: "Scum."

Most men think: "Dumb."

"Look, getting sex outside your marriage is kind of like a requirement for a politician," Manhattan publicist Peter Shankman said. "It's what you do. But we have 2,000 cameras on us every day and we're not famous. How could he not expect to get caught?"

Spoken like a guy. Mr. Shankman even went on to add, "I'm not passing judgment."

Of course not. Why judge a married man who cheats on his wife with prostitutes?

A comment posted below a Wall Street Journal article titled, "After Years of Support, What To Do When a Spouse Disappoints," sounded as if the guy thought the headline referred to a disappointing wife.

"He was just bonking anonymous prostitutes once in a while," the poetic soul signing himself "SD Dad" wrote. "It was an affair of the flesh but not of the heart. I think things like that can be more easily understood/forgiven."

Maybe — if it happened once, at a dental products convention in Atlantic City. But when the guy has been doing it for years? To the point where he leaves deposits for the next time, texts the madam like a middle school kid in math class, and has his women shipped ahead C.O.D.?. (And by the way, Long Islander Sandra Beckwith asks, "What are the girls in D.C. — chopped liver? Couldn't he have employed local talent? Was it BYOH night at the Mayflower?") Anyway, when it gets to that point, you have to listen to what women are saying.

"I think guys are idiots," Rachel Weingarten, author of "Career and Corporate Cool," said. "I don't know a woman alive who would consider a sex scandal that could affect her life or her family."

In addition to being a snake, the governor strikes Ms. Weingarten as incomprehensibly profligate. "Maybe because as a woman, I'm a really good shopper. That $5,000 price tag …,"she said.

It's like a guy who buys a $20 bag of potato chips. How much crispier can they be?

"There's probably a sizeable percentage of men who are wondering that," Ms. Randall said.

Voila the male/female divide again. Guys are dying of curiosity. Women know that all it really takes to turn on a man is — metaphorically speaking — a 12-ounce bag of Utz. Even the unsalted kind. Guys just like chips.

In fact, it is just that lust for "chips" that makes men more willing to see the governor as a regular fella. "He was just thinking with his ...," they say indulgently, and then they come up with a cute word, like "winkie." But you never hear anyone say, "I was thinking with my g-spot."

No, for women, sex and love are still pretty much linked. That's why it's harder for us to forgive the governor, no matter how supposedly unemotional his encounters.

"You had to go and just — you know, pay for it somewhere, and now your whole family is going to be humiliated for their whole life?" mother of two Marla Sherman said. "Wasn't life good enough?"

Most of us women are wondering that right now. Of course, that's because we're thinking with our heads.

lskenazy@yahoo.com