The bad news: The wife of Wisconsin State Sen. Randy Hopper (R), one of the 8 GOP senators being targeted for removal, is signing the petition to get him recalled.
The good news: Sen. Hopper has moved out of his house and in with a 25 year-old mistress, so his "wife" likely will soon be his "ex-wife". Because otherwise, that'd be really embarrassing.
At what point does the 25-year-old stop being a "mistress" and start being a "girlfriend"? Moving in with her seems to be a good candidate for a bright-line test there.
ReplyDeleteTraditionally, a woman having sex with a married man was called his mistress, not his girlfriend, because so long as he was married, she had an illicit relationship with him. So moving in with her doesn't make her a girlfriend; no longer being married does. But my personal preference is that women not be called "mistresses" unless they're being financially supported by the man with whom they're having sex, basically as a quid pro quo.
ReplyDelete*Very* traditionally, any woman having sex with any man who wasn't her husband might be called his mistress; hence the description of the married Anna Karenina as the mistress of the unmarried Vronsky. However, in social circles where premarital sex has become the norm, that use of the term seems likely to create confusion.