I sometimes wonder who Rush Limbaugh is speaking to anymore, but the evidence suggests someone tunes in. I wonder how many think it’s a comedy show, sort of a political version of an old Andrew Dice-Clay routine. (Remember him? No? Well, there’s hope after all.)
In the wake of Rush’s remarks about Sandra Fluke he has been losing sponsors, a few Republican politicians have been condemning him, and everyone seems to want to keep as far from him as possible. No one but a few academics are talking about this in historical terms, though, and I think that’s a mistake. Because this is so typically male-dominant behavior, the kind that feminists— the ones Rush has had it in for lo these past decades— point to when describing cultural oppression that someone should be raising a banner and saying “See? This is what we’re talking about!”
Here’s a conversation. I’ve scripted it, but it is based on reality, and if we’re honest we have all heard something like this.
“What do you do for a living?”
“I’m a fundraiser for an NGO. We operate in twelve developing nations trying to implement grass roots reforms in education.”
“Wow, that sounds really interesting. How do you get work like that?”
“Well, after I earned my Masters from Stanford, I went into private sector work for a big agro firm. Part of what I did there was coordinate large scale testing of new cultivation methods in order to improve yield per acre in a variety of conditions. At first I was pretty hands-on with the researchers, but more and more I took over the actual negotiations, which meant a lot of PR work.”
“You traveled a lot?”
“Oh, I’ve been to China, Japan, Indonesia, India, plus a good part of the EU.”
“Must have been a lot of language barriers.”
“Some, but I speak Chinese, French, German, Spanish, and a bit of Urdu.”
“Sounds like a full-time job. Do you do anything for fun?”
“Oh, sure. I really like climbing and whenever I get the chance I do whitewater canoeing. I also play piano, but to really unwind I cook. I did a semester at a culinary institute, so…”
“Your husband must like that.”
“Oh, I’m not married.”
“Too bad.”
“Not really. Maybe someday, but right now I just don’t have time for a full-time relationship.”
(Significant pause.)Â “Is there anyone special in your life?”
“There are a couple of men I see fairly often, but most of the time it’s just casual dating.”
“Hmm.” Goes away thinking: slut.
A joke? Unfortunately not. Seems sometimes no matter what a woman does professionally or otherwise, no matter what her achievements might be, if she is in any way nonmonogamous, for many people that’s the only thing that matters. Whore, slut, garbage, trash, scum. More than one penis gets in there by her choice, everything else is worthless.
But with a man? The more successful professionally, the more it seems expected that he has had a string of “conquests.” It’s part of the perks that come with virile masculinity.
Yes, I know this is not a universally held attitude, but it is the majority default reaction, so the more thoughtful “good for the goose, good for the gander” attitude does not hold sway. We pander to the concept of the Man Who Lays Many. It’s cool, whether we like to admit it or not. We feel sorry for the male virgin and we have a variety of labels for him that are not particularly nice, the number one being Loser. (Yes, Loser appends to many other traits, but even the millionaire computer geek who can’t get laid is seen as pathetic. Money’s nice, but come on! And then there’s the second-tier attitudes toward men who use prostitutes: “You have to buy it? Jees!”)
The double standard, in other words, is not only alive and well, it’s stormed into the party and is wrecking the buffet.
There are many causes of this, it does not emerge from any one source—if it did, we might be able to do something about it more effectively—but all sources have one thing in common—fear. It’s not that men fear women as such. They fear being irrelevant, and at the end of the day success with women, especially passive, noncompetitive women, is balm to the savaged ego of many men. To have women compete directly or even (gasp!) exercise the right to indulge their sexuality the way men do (or are supposed to) is an intolerable threat.
This is sexual politics 101 and why we have to go over this again after the Sixties and Seventies baffles me. Unless the lesson simply didn’t matter.
There has been a growing tsunami of reaction since the Women’s Movement broke down the walls into what had been seen as an exclusively male domain. It has washed up on the beach now and into the halls of power where it is being made a Cause by men who, try as they might to spin it some other way, just can’t stand having women live independent lives.
So, yes, this whole nonsense over contraception is nothing less than an attempt to put women back in “their place” and people like Rush Limbaugh seem to think there is traction and resonance in labeling women sluts because they have sex “any time they want.” Of course, what is implicit in that “any time they want” is that they can say No any time they want.
And that’s probably what bothers the Rush Limbaughs the most.
