W

hen men go astray in matters of love and lust, it's expected. It's only natural, many believe. But there are a whole different set of rules for women, whether she is the spurned wife or the other woman.

Golfer Tiger Woods is in the rough amid the sex scandal that has embroiled him and his family. He has lost lucrative endorsements, which will make a dent for sure in his multimillion-dollar fortune. More resounding perhaps is the tarnishing of his previously squeaky-clean image.

The media pounced on the fact that this Tiger who once burned so bright as the epitome of the successful sportsman and family man harbored some dirty secrets. It just goes to show, the pundits wrote, that scrape the polished surface and Woods is still a mere mortal of a man who can succumb to the temptations of the flesh.

He is now one of the club of famous (and not so famous men) beguiled and bedazzled and brought to their knees by lust. But like the many who have been caught with their pants down, Woods, who is now in a monthlong counseling session, will eventually be able to pull them back up and start all over again. In fact, his macho cred as one of the boys will have been bolstered through his transgressions.

He can take comfort in the resurrection of onetime "men behaving badly" public figures. Bill Clinton has reinvented himself as a humanitarian figure, interceding to save journalists in peril and heatedly defending the woman he, from many accounts, betrayed repeatedly.

His sexual peccadilloes, if not forgotten, have at least been pushed to the back burners of the public consciousness by time and PR spinners, the telltale stains of Monica Lewinsky's little blue dress whitewashed from memory.

Tennis player Boris Becker has gone on to a successful career as a TV commentator and sports entrepreneur, despite a five-minute tryst in a London restaurant broom cupboard with a woman whose name he did not know, resulting in an illegitimate child and the bitter end of his marriage.

Becker wrote in his autobiography of the incident, explaining it as a momentary straying - a brief biological release, nothing more - brought on by a disappointing loss at Wimbledon and a fight with his wife. Like the victors in war who get to write history, he, as a man of power, got to set the record straight with his version of events and his own realities.

It has been the case throughout history, with kings getting to have their cake and eat it. "*The* royal mistress . offers irresistible delights to a lecherous monarch," writes Eleanor Herman in Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry and Revenge (William Morrow, 2004).

"The entreaties of his anguished family, the bishop's admonitions, his own sense of royal sin and guilt, are useless against the mistress' enticements ."

With men absolved of blame for their actions - it's natural, it's physical - and it's the women who are left to take the blame, for they at least should have known better. The mistresses of bygone eras, despite serving at the king's pleasure and being showered with royal favors, were considered nothing more than whores by his subjects and courtiers, Herman writes. Today's Madame de Pompadours are likely to be the subject of an intensive background check by gossip journalists to ascertain their moral character (although then-mistress Camilla Parker-Bowles was once reportedly bombarded with bread rolls by shoppers).

Psychologist Ratih Ibrahim says that because of men's elevated status in patriarchal societies, women are blamed for adultery, both among their immediate communities and in the media.

"When infidelity occurs, the one who is the source of the wrong, who has been the temptress, is the woman," says the head of the Personal Growth center. "Women are supposed to be the guardians of purity and morality."

The temptresses, the women of ill repute, the husband stealers, are contrasted with the madonna-like stoic wife standing by her man, whether it was the poker-faced Hillary Rodham Clinton at the height of the Lewinsky scandal, Elin Woods or, here at home, the wife of Antasari Azhar, who has dutifully defended her husband amid lurid allegations.

It is left for the women to fight it out over their man. A few years ago, even mainstream news was dominated by the juicy m*nage a trois of a former president's son who remarried a younger entertainer; she was ripped to shreds in the press as grasping and ruthless, while the long-suffering wife was depicted as almost saint-like in comparison. Standing above the fray, unscathed by the barbs of public opinion, was the man in the center.

Even then, Ratih says, the wife also receives blame.

"She is considered to be unable to service her husband properly, cannot satisfy him, that she's bad in bed, not beautiful enough, too fat and many other things that are unfair and very shallow. It's as though the sacredness of marriage counts for nothing, and sex and sexual drive are the measure of everything, including someone's worth."

Sometimes, though, women don't play by the defined rules, from Barbara Becker, who walked out on Boris, Elizabeth Hurley, who called it quits with Hugh Grant after his vehicular misdemeanor on Sunset Boulevard or Princess Diana, who famously decided that three in a marriage wasn't company. In film, the character of Alex, the one-night-stand who wouldn't be ignored in 1987's Fatal Attraction, was "a figure designed to send men rushing off to their shrinks, aquiver with sexual paranoia," David Anson wrote in Newsweek. "What Freddy or Jason is to horny teens, Alex may become to the yuppie male contemplating an extramarital affair."

The consequences are even more damning when it is a married woman who commits adultery and is left to wear the scarlet letter of public disapproval. Singer Krisdayanti's divaesque image has been battered by her rumored affair with a married man; former husband Anang Hermansyah released a condemnatory reproof in song, while her own release seems to have got little airplay.

In Ireland, the 60-year-old wife of Northern Ireland's First Minister Peter Robinson has been shamed by an affair with a 19-year-old man.

Her cinematic namesake, from 1967's The Graduate, also had an affair with a younger man, but she eventually returns to being the conventional wife who tries to force her daughter to marry for security, not love.

That is not to say that men are the fall guys for everything that is wrong in relationships or infidelity. It takes two to tango, and people - men and women, heterosexual and homosexual - make their own realities and justifications for their actions and mistakes.

Yet it's also true that the rules we operate by continue to favor the victors in patriarchal societies, whether it's our inner tsk-tsking at the rumored "other woman" or somehow unconsciously justifying the gang-rape of a woman as her being in the wrong place at the wrong time (Aceh), as though her unwitting choices were responsible for the terrible fate she suffered.

Societies don't change overnight, and neither do the rules or stereotypes that have been set down over centuries. But Ratih believes that by being more aware and facing up to the realities around us, the double standard that still persists today - in our own views and in the media - can be changed to a fairer standard that we all operate by, regardless of gender.

"Public figures have an important role to play in shaping the right attitudes and behavior in society," she says. "The media also must play an important part in familiarizing the public with this issue. Just imagine how the stereotypes become more prevalent in society when the mass media exposes adultery of public figures, while using arguments that tend to rationalize and justify the cheating by putting all the blame on the woman."

She adds that unconsciously those views become accepted by the public.