I had to admit that I also felt a certain skepticism about Ivana's improbable transformation-and her too-casual dismissal of her earlier, non-heroic, non-struggling-divorcee self. "In the '80s we were all a little crazy!" Like many others, I couldn't shake the thought that her stance as a feminist-type working mother might be a ploy cynically calculated to dispute Donald's charge of cohabitation.
Despite the legalities, which make Trump v. Trump's outcome unpredictable, and Donald's own behavior, which makes the binding clauses in their divorce look lopsidedly unfair, I was bothered by another issue: the law's own ambivalence towards today's supposedly newly sanctioned cohabitation and other sexual freedoms.
In the same papers in which Ivana's lawyer denounces Donald for trying to force Ivana back into an outdated chastity belt, he twice uses the antiquated word "paramour" in citing rulings on cohabitation. The quaint delicacy of that word, referring to a lover but suggesting disapproval of the illicit nature of such a relationship, is painfully familiar. So was the lawyers' delicate skirting around the issue of "sexual intimacy" in their talk of cooking, travel, and clothes discretely kept in guest rooms. They date back to the same years when traditional family values ruled-and men could galavant like Donald, but women had no power at all.
