This may well be the case. Sexting appeals to many people precisely because it provides a relief from the burdens of being known that intimacy can create. I say this as a married man who cherishes the risk-free freedom that online flirting can create. I am, while I play this game, the rascal of my dreams. There is conquest, coquetry, intensity––all without threatening the love I feel for my spouse. And there is an almost literary ability to project myself into fantasies I would never want to act upon. Clearly many women appreciate this outlet as much as I do, since they participate in it. But have any of Weiner’s critics actually tried sexting? Presumably not. They are a veritable scout troupe of probity––or perhaps they have never learned to use a webcam.

The herd mentality is particularly strong when it comes to sexual conduct, and those who indulge in a disgraced practice seldom have the courage––or the opportunity––to speak up. How many people who enjoy pornography have said so? When was the last time you read a defense of an unorthodox marriage? (Bear in mind that nearly half of all married people, surveys tell us, will depart from monogamy at some point.) My generation has loosened the restrictions we grew up with by allowing for same-sex unions and single parenthood, only to contract them as tightly as our sphincters will allow when it comes to the medium that breaks most decisively with our past: the internet. It’s on the new, the peculiarly 21st-century aspect of this scandal, that Weiner’s critics have focused their most intense ire and mockery.

His injudicious screen name, Carlos Danger, has made him an even more tempting target. But no one creates an online alias because it is dignified. There is usually something grandiose about a virtual identity. Those who relish taunting Weiner for letting his imagination run riot clearly don’t understand that hyperbole is the coin of the virtual realm. Beneath their gleeful contempt one can sense ignorance and uneasiness before this brave new web and the options it makes possible.

In the Elvis era, many respectable adults worried about the impact of “jungle music” on the souls of the young. These elders couldn’t imagine that rock n’ roll was an antidote to repression. Might the same be true of online flirting? Or have we come to the point where we can’t imagine that sex exists for pleasure, not just the promotion of intimacy? This is the world of choice and variation that feminism has ushered in. If the middle-aged don’t like it, they have no one to blame but their younger selves.

Not every critic of sexting has forgotten the ‘60s. Gloria Steinem is no fan of Weiner, but her grounding in radical feminism prompts her to raise a less obvious issue. “Just imagine if there were a woman who had photographed her pubic area and sent it out on the phone,” Steinem says. “Would she be a candidate?” Indeed, the requirement that female politicians repress their sexuality is a nasty remnant of sexism. Hillary Clinton, if she is ever to become president, must present herself as a woman without a libido, a kind of virgin queen to a husband who differs from Henry VIII only in his mercy for his consorts.