Huma Abedin announced yesterday that she is separating from husband Anthony Weiner following a new string of allegations that he'd been sending sexually charged messages to other women. And, as is the way with social media, onlookers immediately started tweeting their opinions on the situation — specifically, their support and sympathy for Abedin.
"You are a powerful role model for women everywhere," one Twitter user wrote. Another tweeted, "Sad for @HumaAbedin who's such a powerful woman & stuck with her husband time & time again, but this isn't surprising." While these reactions appear to come from a well-meaning place, one woman, Sarah Milstein, took to Twitter yesterday to point out why we shouldn't blindly praise Abedin for her decision.
"Hello, people — especially feminists — cheering Huma's leaving Anthony: This was a win for normative, not progressive, relationship values," Milstein began. She then wrote that, as public as their separation may seem, "we don't know their lives. Maybe she felt betrayed and fed up. But maybe they had an arrangement, maybe she LIKED his antics. We can't know."
The real problem, Milstein argued, is the extent to which Abedin and Weiner have had to hash out their marital issues in public: "It's totally possible that the intense pressure on them to act like a conventional hetero couple was a bigger factor than the sexting."
We couldn't have said it better ourselves. Traditional thinking around relationships and infidelity holds that you should absolutely leave a partner who cheats — end of story. Milstein's tweets remind us that it's unfair to judge another couple's relationship by a set of expectations that might not align with the boundaries they've set for themselves. So with that, we'll let Milstein drop the mic on the public dissection of Abedin and Weiner's split. Read Milstein's tweets below.
Hello, people--especially feminists--cheering Huma's leaving Anthony: This was a win for normative, not progressive, relationship values
— Sarah Milstein (@SarahM) August 29, 2016
We don't know their lives. Maybe she felt betrayed and fed up. But maybe they had an arrangement, maybe she LIKED his antics. We can't know
— Sarah Milstein (@SarahM) August 29, 2016
It's totally possible that the intense pressure on them to act like a conventional hetero couple was a bigger factor than the sexting
— Sarah Milstein (@SarahM) August 29, 2016
The idea that he was necessarily betraying her comes from mainstream media (and thinking). And it's conservative media who have dogged him
— Sarah Milstein (@SarahM) August 29, 2016
When we're championing a breakup pursued by the NYPost and right-facing media, we ought to check ourselves
— Sarah Milstein (@SarahM) August 29, 2016
Maybe she was unhappy with him. But she's humiliated only if we create the moral landscape that says she must be
— Sarah Milstein (@SarahM) August 29, 2016
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