A
male
age
30-35,
no nonsense Aidan
writes:IT’s been the story that hasn’t gone away all week. Ashley Madison sent journalists in to a spin trying to access the 9.7 gb of data leaked on to the internet, trying to find any public figures who may be embroiled in the scandal. Suspicious spouses have been trying to get at it, to find out whether their other half has been up to no good. Relate has been rather busy taking calls from scorned women, and the Daily Mail this week reported on the first British case of divorce proceedings being started as a result.What has really fascinated me this week, however, is quite how many commentators and callers on radio phone-ins have been utterly convinced that Ashley Madison customers deserved this. They have bought, it seems, fully in to the narrative trotted out by the so-called Impact Team behind the hack, which claims it is trying to teach people a lesson. If, however, one strips out the technology and the cleverness of it all, this is without question a criminal act and an act of theft. It’s the high-tech equivalent of smashing the office windows in and stealing the client files. Heaven knows whether the releasing of credit card information will lead to some of the Ashley Madison customers falling victim to credit card fraud. Do they really deserve this invasion of their privacy, this risk to their safety and financial security? Would you go up to a cheat on the train and steal his wallet? Where does it end? Yes, cheating is wrong, but what exactly is so morally satisfying about the employment of one evil in an apparent attempt to expose another?The most laughable part of all this is that people are acting like there is a new class of person to condemn. Cheating was around long before Ashley Madison; before and after the introduction of dedicated infidelity sites, married men (and a few women) were using dating sites to pursue so-called ‘discrete fun.’ I’ve seen dozens of such married men on sites that specifically prohibit anyone who isn’t single joining: one even tried to make contact with me and ask for my phone number. Society has never had to create enabling infrastructure for those willing to cheat and to cover it up: they’ve always found ways to do it. Ashley Madison hackers have simply targeted a small number of a much larger population, by picking on a single website. The moral indignation has been completely out of all proportion. Not only that, but we have decided purely on the basis of the means they used to cheat, that some cheats have forfeited any entitlement to privacy.Next, we are told that this is a good thing for the unsuspecting spouses and partners. Oh really? I doubt there is a good way to find out that your partner has been cheating, but surely there are marginally better and considerably worse ways? Public humiliation on the web, I would guess, is probably one of the worst. Whilst many self-righteously delight in the exposing of scandalous cheats and revel in their humiliation, nobody seems to have any compassion for the partners. It is sanctimonious and misguided to think that telling some-one the truth is always for their good, regardless of the means employed and how devastating the impact on them. Discovering an affair is absolutely devastating. You question everything: why wasn’t I enough? Did I do something wrong? Was I a fool for believing we were in love with each other? How will we break it to the kids? Am I not desirable anymore?For all the talk of empowerment and equality, men and women who discover cheating by their partners become, in that moment, fragile and vulnerable. They don’t straightforwardly see that they have been wronged, but become overwhelmed by their own inadequacies. They know their lives may never be the same again, and that their family may be about to be ripped apart. How hollow a comfort, then, to have the gossip-peddlers, happily married, the smugly single, the religious moralisers and the excitable hackers, to cheerily tell you that it’s for your own good and that you deserved to know. No, in truth, the ugly shadow of self-righteousness and vengeance is very, very wrong, and has been the driving force behind all this far more than has the good of the victims – the scorned and the cheaters.Moral crusades generally arise as a protective response to uncomfortable truths. If we demonise them, they won’t look and sound like us and so we won’t have to question ourselves. In truth, it is the methods rather than their wandering eyes that make Ashley Madison’s customers unusual. The fact is, our animal nature means we are not programmed to be monogamous; we choose it as a society because a loving, committed relationship meets our emotional, spiritual and sexual needs and forms a unit capable of supporting stable families. What this means is that we are programmed to be tempted. I do not believe that there are ever excuses for cheating or that it can be justified, but we shouldn’t pretend that there aren’t reasons why people make this bad choice. Having been a relationships advisor for this amazing website for 4 years, I know that people feel driven to looking elsewhere for many reasons: escape from a conflict-filled relationship, feeling sexually frustrated, having psychological issues with commitment, falling out of love but loving the partner and so misguidedly trying to avoid coming clean, being secretly gay or bisexual, and sometimes just being arrogant and thinking you can get away with it. The point I’m making is that cheats aren’t all bad, nor will they always be cheats. They may even feel terrible about what they’re doing. It is surely better to encourage them to stop, to come clean if necessary, to try and understand why they’re cheating and to either walk away honourably from their relationship or focus their efforts on rebuilding it? In such emotionally-charged scenarios, there is no substitute for a case by case exploration. What a partner or a cheat should do depends on so many factors, and every story has to be unpicked. I hate cheating as much as the Ashley Madison hackers and those who praise them claim to do. That doesn’t mean I hate people who cheat, or think any emotional weakness on the part of their wronged spouse is to be held in contempt and trampled on, so long as I can congratulate myself on telling the truth. I really wish people would stop praising this criminal act, not only because breaking the law shouldn’t be defended, but because this public humiliation is no solution to anything. What’s the next moral offence that society will decide warrants your right to privacy, security and basic respect going out of the window? I hate cheating, but not as much as a failure to forgive.
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female
reader, janniepeg  +, writes (23 August 2015):
 I think data stealing is a criminal act, but I still wouldn't feel sorry for people being exposed. If it weren't for the Impact Team, someone else would have done it. Wronged spouses also don't have to forgive cheaters. It's empowering if they could, but sometimes it's not about willingness but the ability to forgive and forget. Cheaters need to know that the internet could never be a discreet place anymore. If they have the guts to cheat they'd better have the guts to own up to it also. Using a governmental username is defamation.
Cheating is not a crime as bad as identity theft or robbery, but cheating should not be made easy so that people feel they deserve privacy and respect for what they are doing which would hurt their spouse. I think more wronged husbands and wives would be happy about the leak more than sad about it.
If there's a reason it's hard to forgive cheaters, that's because the animal nature you are talking about is in both faithful and unfaithful people, and both sexes too. We are not pretending or are ignorant why people choose to cheat. We all feel boredom and frustration at times and it is our value systems that stop us. I do think a positive thing that comes out of this is that people would think twice about cheating. If they still have to cheat then at least don't let their companies be affected. Go to a bar and be anonymous.
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