Cheating does not merit cancellation

Andrew Huberman infidelity brouhaha

Andrew Huberman did not invent infidelity. You might think so, after reading last month's New York Magazine feature on the famous science and lifestyle podcaster's dating life. But no, he is a run of the mill philanderer, when it comes down to it. He had (at least) five girlfriends around the country before they all found out, according to reporting by feature writer Kerry Howley. Usually, a cheating scandal is over the moment all parties become cognizant — and then life moves on for the shamed or broken hearted. Huberman wasn't even married. There's not much to see here, unless you look away from the man himself, toward a small group of women vigorously performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation on the MeToo movement in Huberman's shadow.

Huberman's licentiousness is unappealing and he may be a jerk. But let's call this attempted takedown what it is: gossip as salacious as the lurid descriptors some women breathlessly use for Huberman's beard and muscles. “Huberman is a stiff, jacked 48-year-old associate professor,” wrote Howley, who couldn't stop herself — in her 9,000-word hit piece, need I remind you — from giving Huberman the Adonis treatment with her diction.

There's a maxim in contemporary heterosexual dating: that 99 per cent of women are chasing one per cent of men. And within that meagre one per cent, Huberman — famous, intelligent, wealthy, handsome — has the charisma to make the rest of the one per cent appear as chaff in comparison. Any woman dating Huberman must be wilfully blind to expect the man to be an easy catch, or a devoted monogamist.

Huberman didn't commit a crime, as far as we know. The women he dated haven't accused him of any, though one believes she has a sexually transmitted infection as a result, according to Howley. If true, that's bad — but it is also in no way a novel consequence of this singular male's misdeeds. Huberman's infidelity carries the same risks that the practice has always carried. His response to the attempted razing has been minimal: some unnamed spokesperson denied nearly everything.

If we wholesale cancelled every adulterous man whose lies came to light, I fear that our hospitals would shut down for lack of physicians, our courts for lack of lawyers, and our banks for lack of financiers. We'd need to prepare a sad farewell game for the NBA. And hockey — we'd have to drop the final puck there, too.

So why come after Huberman? What makes him a target for this public shaming and apparent attempt at cancellation? There are clues in Howley's piece. She noted that while he might have too few women on his show, he is “solicitous and deferential” toward them. Which suggests, ironically, that she believes women should be treated differently than men — and that Huberman's tendency to do this indicates that he should be a good egg.

Huberman also spoke about the patriarchy. Sort of. He at least had a podcast guest describe “patriarchal messaging” to his audience, which is apparently sufficient to hoodwink a gaggle of women into believing that you are an honourable man. Howley described Huberman as “less concerned about patriarchy” in his private life. He allegedly told several of his girlfriends that his preferred relationship structure involves one man having numerous monogamous women at his beck and call. He called himself a “love addict.” One of the girlfriends said she had the mere “impression” that they were dating exclusively.

HUBERMAN DIDN'T COMMIT A CRIME, AS FAR AS WE KNOW.

How any of these women felt betrayed by Huberman is the most astounding part of the story. If a man waxes about the patriarchy, that is an enormous red flag. Similarly, if a man puts on an air of deference simply because of your female sex, he probably doesn't view you as an equal. Women fall for these tricks all the time — no one makes it out of the dating scene unscathed — but we learn from it.

Toward the end of Howley's saga (and I'm imagining at the behest of her editor) she drops her first rational proposition: that maybe Huberman's personal life is irrelevant. But Howley is not committed to any such rationality; she continues: “The people who definitively find the space between fantasy and reality to be a problem are women who fell for a podcaster ... It is here, in the false belief of two minds in synchronicity and exploration, that deception leads to harm. They fear it will lead to more.” Who does Howley think she is, to assign herself as the arbiter of which personal indiscretions warrant a very public, professional cancellation? We've been here before, and it didn't end well.

The excesses of the MeToo movement — rightly or wrongly — hurt women by tarnishing our credibility, which we need, fiercely, to come forward with legitimate rape or abuse claims. This is not to say that a reckoning wasn't overdue at the outset of the movement; it's only to say that MeToo got messy and hijacked by bad actors who enabled falsehoods to spread, and crimes to go unpunished.

You cannot conflate the seriousness of rape with bad behaviour, insist women are incapable of lying, violate the Magna Carta principle of due process — and then expect justice to flourish. MeToo was untenable in 2017 and remains so today. Huberman's ex-girlfriends need to let it die. Call it, please. It's over.