One of Jessica Cutler's ex-lovers is suing her for blogging in explicit detail about their affair. Jessica, you might remember, is the young lady who set Washington atwitter two years ago when the blog in which she detailed every aspect of her sex life suddenly hit the front page. Naturally, the idea that a 20-something woman was sleeping with five or six men in rotation, some of whom were married, shocked our virgin society; Jessica was punished with a lucrative book deal and the men she was tupping discovered that if you would suffer terribly if everyone knew you were doing something, you might want to resist doing it. I know that's very very difficult to do – but her lovers were in rather visible professional positions, which brings with it an additional overhead of watching one's behavior.
Anyway. He's not alleging libel or contesting that her account of their brief but apparently raunchy affair isn't true. Instead the suit is for breach of privacy, claiming the blog:
He filed the suit last year and according to the MSNBC article linked above, a trial date has yet to be set.
But it's been on my mind because of its potential to set a precedent. You're naive if you think a young woman isn't going to talk to her friends – and a wider circle than you might think – about her sex life, so if your affair is a 'secret' you really need to consider whether you can trust her and all her friends to keep their purty mouths shut (right, Mr. Clinton?). Now that everyone can publish, the question mirrors the ones that Napster raised years ago can half a million sharers a month be considered "just a circle of friends"?
I'm blogging from the airport and have about 10 minutes so I'll just leave it at this: what if you can be sued for blogging your sex life? Where is the balance between privacy and expression? It's hard for me to believe that Jessica's ex has a chance, considering that he did indeed have sex with her and no one remembers his name anyway.
Lawsuits aren't the answer, IMHO, but can we trust each other to respect privacy even when we're angry, or hurt, or high on the energy of being pretend-famous on the internet? Do we need to disclose to each other during our pre-sex conversations about condoms and STIs and birth control that we also blog?
You might have noticed that the boyfriend doesn't appear in Sex Drive very often. That's not because I have nothing to say, but because he's a very (very, sigh) private person, and we both knew from the start that it was going to be a boundary we would have to discuss, more than once. So far, it hasn't inhibited the column too much not to bring him into it; but I also have a little list that I come back to from time to time, and there may be a day when he cruises across a column he is going to wish he hadn't. Which will make an interesting story in itself, so you see how I am torn?
Rambling now, and scrambling to pack up and board. Am interested in your take on this complex topic!
