Landesman: Why Are Right Wing Women So Hot? The Lust That Dare Not Speak Its Name

My secret lust for right-wing women

“I envy men of the right — their sexual lives are not constrained by the rules of sexual correctness we lefties are expected to live by.”

For The Spectator.uk, Cosmo Landesman writes: Not long ago I was out drinking with a group of friends and we started playing the If-You-Had-To game. The idea is to present players with two people they would never want to sleep with — and then make them choose which they’d sleep with. Here are some of the fiendish alternatives I had to face: Imelda Marcos or Wallace Simpson? Ayn Rand or Yoko Ono? Gertrude Stein or Virginia Woolf?

“Sorry, comrades, but when it comes to the bedroom I’ll have to vote Tory.”

Then one joker said: Theresa May or Jemima Khan? Everyone laughed at this no-contest choice. Everyone except me. How could I tell them the ugly truth: I’d prefer a night of passion with right-wing Theresa over lefty Jemima any day of the week.

Theresa May or Jemima Khan? Photo: Getty

But then I belong to that small, deviant group of liberal-lefty-pro-feminist men who find conservative/right-wing women super sexy. In an age when anything goes — at least in terms of sexual pleasure — ours is a lust that dare not speak its name.

[On progressivism ruining sex: “Well, it ruins everything, you know” — Glenn Reynolds].

I know this because later that evening, I turned to one of the group and confessed my secret longing for the likes of Theresa May, Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin — ideally all at once. I thought my fantasy night of passion would be received with sympathy and understanding. After all, this friend of mine pays a woman in Earls Court to put him on a rack and do things you don’t want to read about. He just looked at me and said: ‘You’re sick!’

I can just hear the chorus of left-wing women complaining that, here we go again — judging women in politics by their looks! Well, actually, looks have nothing to do with it. By that criteria, I should be swooning over Jemima instead of drooling over Mrs May. So no, this is not about looks; it’s about the sexiness of a certain mindset and sensibility. What is the appeal of right-wing women to men like me? After all, left-wing men are not supposed to sleep with such women. (We’re meant to find their political convictions too repulsive for that sort of thing.) But politics is rooted in tribalism and dark emotions, as much as reason. To lefty men of my persuasion, right-wing women are the Other; alluring because they are so exotic; exciting because they’re so forbidden.

I envy men of the right — their sexual lives are not constrained by the rules of sexual correctness we lefties are expected to live by. For us, playful S&M can pose all sorts of perplexing questions about class, power and gender that they never have to worry about. The left-wing drama critic Ken Tynan once had a conflict between his commitment to bottom-spanking and his commitment to civil rights when the woman he paid to indulge his passion for S&M turned out to be black. Tynan, like a good champagne socialist, chose pleasure over principle…(read more) The Spectator

My secret lust for right-wing women » The Spectator.

This article first appeared in the print edition of The Spectator magazine, dated 19 July 2014

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