Never Meet Your Heroes'... Wives
From Andrew Huberman and Carl Sagan to Einstein and Gandhi - why isn't treating women well a standard for our heroes?
Last year The New Yorker published an 8,000 word tell-all article about popular self-help podcaster Andrew Huberman.
As an associate professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, Huberman hosts the #1 health podcast in the world and the third largest podcast in the world according to Spotify.
The week before this article came out, three separate friends recommended three different podcast episodes of his to me.
He’s popular for a reason. He is earnest, humble, and willing to learn. Huberman comes across as a good guy, dedicated to helping people optimize their lives and their health.
However, the New Yorker article revealed that Huberman’s obsessive pursuit of excellence does not extend to how he treats the women in his life.
Sarah, Huberman’s former partner, started growing suspicious when she contracted a sexually transmitted disease while the couple were going through IVF treatments to start a family together five years into their relationship.
A brief look through his texts concluded he was indeed being unfaithful.
Slowly it came out that he was having a long-term affair not just with one other woman, but with four other women. Each agreed to unprotected sex with him because Andrew convinced them they were in an exclusive relationship.
The five women eventually began a text thread sharing screenshots and receipts with one another. Very often they discovered they had slept with him on the same day. Once when Sarah was out of town, Andrew flew his Texas girlfriend in to stay with him at his and Sarah’s house, then left her alone for a day and a half while he was with one of his LA girlfriends.
The girls also reported that the longer the relationship went, the more aggressive Andrew became, often going on yelling rampages for days at a time.
Once Andrew made Sarah write out a list of her “bad choices” in having a kid with her ex and read it out loud to him. He told her that being with her was like “bobbing for apples in feces.”
He told his girlfriend Mary that “that what he wanted was a woman who was submissive, who he could slap in the ass in public, and who would be crawling on the floor for him when he got home.”
So.
What has happened since this eye-opening article came out? Did people stop listening? Has his podcast dipped in ratings? Were his speaking engagements canceled?
While there has been a lot of buzz around the New Yorker article, it does not seem to have had much of an effect on Huberman’s career. His podcast has not dipped from its Top 10 spot on both Spotify and Apple, and he headlined the INBOUND conference as a keynote speaker last week.
The question I would like to pose in this article is…. should it? Should how Huberman treats women affect his hero status? His success?
It is not hard to find those who think a man’s private life, including how he treats women, should have nothing to do with his career or his success.
An article from The Verge entitled “Huberman fans aren’t leaving the show behind” includes a quote from listener Victoria who says,
“There are so many people who benefit from the podcast.... His personal flaws are not my business.”
In a reddit thread entitled “Andrew Huberman canceled cancel culture” Rlan5 says,
“Life is good folks, the days of hit pieces (that may or may not be true) ruining careers is over. Good news, especially because this BS has NOTHING to do with what his career!”
In an article from the Guardian entitled “Andrew Huberman is accused of lying to women he dates. Does it matter to his millions of listeners?” includes the following quote from podcaster Lex Fridman,
“It’s heartbreaking to see a hit-piece written about my friend Andrew Huberman… Hit-piece attacks like this are simply trash click-bait journalism desperately clinging on to relevance. Andrew should be celebrated. Period. His podcast has helped millions of people (including me) lead healthier lives. Keep going brother.”
Andrew should be celebrated. Period.
If their net effect is positive, who the hell cares how they treat women?
What do we think about this?
Let’s zoom out and examine our answer to this question historically. I’m going to focus on three heroes: Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein and Carl Sagan.
Specifically let’s examine these questions:
Do we care how our heroes treat women?
Do we even KNOW how they treat women?
Why don’t we know?
Should we care?
Does the way they treated women detract from their impact on the world?
Armed with these questions, let’s take on a lesser known perspective of these historical heroes- that of their wives.
Mahatma Gandhi’s wife Kasturba Gandhi
Imagine. Your name is Kasturba. You marry your husband when you are 14 years old. When your second child is a newborn, your husband leaves to go study law for three and a half years in London. You are left alone to take care of yourself, an infant, a toddler and your husband’s newly widowed mother. You are 19 years old.
When he returns you soon become pregnant again. Your husband leaves for South Africa to practice law while your third child is a newborn. Three years later you move to South Africa away from every one you know. You have your fourth child in South Africa.
When you are 37 years old, your husband publishes his intention to never have sex again without consulting you. He frequently demonizes sex and admonishes everyone to do the same. He cuts off his female followers’ hair to make them less sexually appealing. He consistently publishes his thoughts on rape, blaming the women who are raped rather than the men who rape. He wrote, “I have always held that it is physically impossible to violate a woman against her will.”1 He labeled women who used contraceptives as whores.2
In the ashrams your husband builds, he separates men and women, but frequently set up tests of chastity for himself where he bathes and sleeps with naked women, whom he forbade from having sex with their husbands. Many take issue with this and leave his ashrams.
You join your husband in his activism work and you are both imprisoned. While in jail you contract pneumonia. You are offered penicillin, but your husband refuses the medicine on your behalf. You die from pneumonia in jail.
After your death, your husband sets up more celibacy tests for himself sleeping with a many naked teenage girls, including his great niece Manu.
After his assassination, those wanting to ensure his lasting impact of Indian resistance to British rule orchestrate an effort to scrub his quotes on women and sex in order to legitimize his fight for India’s freedom. His great niece Manu was specifically forbidden from ever publishing anything about him.3
Albert Einstein’s wife Mileva Marić
Your name is Mileva. You are a brilliant mathematician and scientist. In high school, you leave your family in Austria because you obtain special permission to attend a prestigious all-male school in Zagreb. In college you are the only female in your co-hort at Zurich Polytechnic, where you meet your future husband Albert. You consistently out-score both your husband and your fellow students on exams.
You marry Albert. In the first four years together, Albert refers to his work as “our” work since you studied all the same things and work side by side together.
But as your husband’s career takes off, he stops referring to it as “our” work, claiming it’s “his” work. You are never credited in any publication. Your contributions to your husband’s publications will go entirely unknown until a trove of your letters and correspondence was discovered in 1986.4
He is almost never home as he travels the majority of the time. Upon returning home for a stretch he writes a letter to you outlining his expectations of you writing,
“You will make sure:
1. that my clothes and laundry are kept in good order;
2. that I will receive my three meals regularly in my room;
3. that my bedroom and study are kept neat, and especially that my desk is left for my use only…
You will obey the following points in your relations with me:
1. you will not expect any intimacy from me, nor will you reproach me in any way;
2. you will stop talking to me if I request it;
3. you will leave my bedroom or study immediately without protest if I request it.”5
Before writing this letter, Albert began a well-known affair with his first cousin Elsa. This affair lasted the last four years of your marriage and Albert married Elsa three months after your divorce was finalized.
You leave with your two sons back to Switzerland, after which Albert is an almost entirely absent father saying, “I am not a family man. I want my peace.”6
While married to Elsa, Albert has numerous well-documented affairs.
Albert told his friend whose husband was unfaithful that it is natural for men to have affairs and that she should support her husband’s adultery writing, “You should be able to respond to his sins with a smile.”7
Diagnosed with schizophrenia, your youngest son Eduard spends three decades of his life in an asylum where he died at age 55. His father visited him there only one time.
Carl Sagan’s wives Lynn Margulis and Linda Salzman
Your name is Lynn. You are an evolutionary biologist. You fundamentally framed our current understanding of symbiosis in evolution. Discover magazine named you one of the 50 most important women in science.
You married Carl Sagan while you were getting your undergrad. He would come to inspire millions pushing them beyond a nihilistic atheism into awe and wonder for our universe and the beauty that underlies its laws.
While your husband identified as a feminist, in your marriage, he was abusive. He hit you. Of the hitting you would later say,
“My sister got furious when she found out. But I used to protect him—I would never tell. I wouldn’t! I was a good person; I [didn’t] believe a good person [would] tell things like that.”
You and Carl have two children together. While they are young you are busy trying to finish your PhD. Despite your career, your husband insists you do all of the housework, cooking and childcare singlehandedly so he may be free to advance his career.
You divorce after seven years of marriage.
Linda Salzman
Your name is Linda. You are an artist, musician and writer, but when you marry Carl Sagan and have a child together, he insists you sacrifice your career to cook, clean and watch your child.
The book Carl Sagan, A Life says,
“While Sagan’s fame soared, his marriage deteriorated. He and Linda fought over his absences, his refusal to do housework, his indifference to her wish to transcend housewifery. According to Lynda Obst, Sagan believed that Linda’s role in life was to cook and clean for him so that he could focus on science.”
Carl became engaged to another woman Ann, after talking on the phone to her one time while still married to you. He leaves you to marry Ann whom he calls the love of his life.
These are three examples, but we could list dozens more in every single genre of hero:
Political: only three (three!) of our 46 US presidents DON’T have infidelity accusations against them.
Civil Rights: Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr, Frederick Douglass all have histories of infidelity and treating their wives poorly.
Poets/Thinkers: Rilke, Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung (you guys, Jung is a mess).
Artists: Picasso, Rodin, Monet, even Bob Ross has a history of domestic abuse and cheating on his wives.
Authors: Mark Twain, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Charles Dickens, Dr. Suess, Thoreau all have horrid histories of abusing women.
Religious: the Dalai Lama, Confucius, Buddha, lets not even get started on world yoga leaders.
Musicians: Elvis, all of the Beatles, Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson. Musicians have maybe the darkest timeline in terms of how they treat women.
Comedians: Bill Cosby, Louis CK, Chevy Chase, and was John Mulaney’s horrid treatment of his wife crushing to anyone else?
(I could seriously write SO many essays diving into the specifics of all of this- please let me know if you are interested!)
It seems that not only is respecting women NOT a requirement for our heroes- mistreating women seems to go hand-in-hand with gaining power.
Do we care?
Having naked girls in his bed doesn’t detract from Gandhi’s very real impact on non-violently curtailing British colonial rule in India. Being an absent unfaithful husband and father doesn’t erase Einstein’s numerous scientific discoveries and advances. And being a domestic abuser didn’t stop Carl Sagan’s words from inspiring me in my quest to be awed by the universe.
Even so, why don’t we even know how they treated women? Our kids have the faces of these presidents, scientists and artists plastered all over their classrooms without ever hearing the slightest whisper of their abuse of women. Why DON’T we know?
Do we know how our society’s heroes treat women? Do we care? Should we? Why or why not? Does our heroes’ treatment of women detract from their success? Should it?
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*This article was originally published April 21, 2024
I’ve been thinking about this. I think if a man is yelling or abusing a woman, his political opinions are obsolete. Maybe he’s a good scientist but his opinions about people and how they should be cared for are void. You cannot have one without the other. Patriarchy is personal and political. To care for a woman is to care for humanity.
I think the answer to your question is that it wasn’t important to the people who decided these men were heroes. We cannot deny their influence in their given fields, but most folk want their heroes to be unblemished. The women they abused on their way to fame are merely collateral damage, not important, but the uncomfortable truth is that men cannot achieve anything without women, even if it’s a nanny to look after their children.
I read this book https://www.wbg.org.uk/article/who-cooked-adam-smiths-dinner-a-review/
I think male heroes need to be seen as flawed as any ordinary people are.
And, yes, please, more of the same plus the women who made history (Marie Curie, Florence Nightingale and others and who supported them. What did they sacrifice to be successful?)