O’Donnell kiss and tell turns off Gawker readers

Christine O'Donnell has denounced as "sexist" an account of the night three years ago that she apparently slept with a 25-year-old man, posted anonymously on the gossip site Gawker.

The unflattering story, published yesterday, paints the Republican senatorial candidate for Delaware as a predatory "cougar".

Yet despite the temptation to use the mini-scandal to further deride O'Donnell (already the butt of jokes because of her "I am not a witch" claim and her anti-masturbation stance) it looks as though Gawker is the big loser here.

'Anonymous' claims that O'Donnell turned up at his flat in Philadelphia on the night of Halloween 2007. O'Donnell was the niece of the writer's landlady and had met Anonymous and his flatmate three months earlier when they were signing the lease.

O'Donnell, "who'd clearly been drinking", asked if she and her friend could come into the apartment to change into their Halloween costumes because they didn't want to wake her aunt.

Anonymous agreed to the request and later was persuaded along with his flatmate to join O'Donnell, who had changed into her ladybird costume, and her friend for a night on the tiles.

"It really didn't take very long for Christine to make her move," writes Anonymous. He says she leaned in for a kiss soon after they arrived at the first bar. O'Donnell admitted to Anonymous that she had not even been to her aunt's apartment and that she had intended to make a move on him ever since meeting him three months before.

O'Donnell, now 41, would have been 38 at the time. "I don't think I'd heard the word 'cougar' yet at that point," writes Anonymous, "but that's probably what I'd call her."

They went back to the apartment and proceedings quickly moved to the bedroom.

"I won't get into the nitty-gritty details of what happened between the sheets that evening," writes Anonymous, before going on to tell Gawker's readers that "there were signs that she wasn't very experienced sexually" and when her underwear came off, "I immediately noticed that the waxing trend had completely passed her by".

At which point, according to Anonymous, O'Donnell informed him she was a "virgin" - actually she's what the US Christian right terms a "born again virgin" - and intended to stay that way. "I said goodnight, rolled over, and went to sleep," he writes.

Quite what the Tea Party favourite was up to - assuming there is any truth in Anonymous's report - is open to debate. But, so far at least, the kiss-and-tell looks like discrediting Gawker rather than O'Donnell.

Despite being overwhelmingly Democratic, the site's liberal readers have been particularly turned off about the details of O'Donnell's waxing policy. One commenter questions quite how experienced Anonymous is sexually if he is turned off by pubic hair on a woman.

Gawker is also taken to task for allowing the writer to post anonymously, misleadingly using the phrase "one-night stand" in the page title, and lowering the tone of a political debate.

O'Donnell's camp has hit back with a statement saying: "This story is just another example of the sexism and slander that female candidates are forced to deal with."

Her press team has also persuaded the National Organisation for Women to denounce the article, saying: "Sexist, misogynist attacks against women have no place in the electoral process, regardless of a particular candidate's political ideology." ·