What Rush Limbaugh's Language Says About Women in our Culture

For days now the blogosphere and every media outlet has been raging with debate over the import of Rush Limbaugh's remarks on Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown law student, who was belatedly allowed to testify about the need for women to have access to contraception at Catholic institutions like hers.

For some this is a matter of "civil" versus "rude" discourse, and certainly Rush Limbaugh has tried to portray his remarks as a matter of "not the best" word choice. Now that's an understatement. But it is not a very convincing argument coming from a man who has been an agent provocateur for the far right ever since he went on the air, and who always chooses his words carefully for maximum shock value.

But this time, Rush's words have cost him far more than negative publicity; his loss of sponsors is at 34 and counting, and some stations have dropped his program altogether.

If he imagined that his vicious rhetoric would fire up his conservative (male) base and then blow over, he underestimated the reactions of women across the political spectrum.

Initially, Republican presidential candidates like Romney and Santorum rushed to play Pontius Pilate as they washed their hands of all responsibility for what Limbaugh said. Romney's response was characteristically faint-hearted: "Ill just say this, which is, it's not the language I would have used," while Santorum issued a blanket denial: "I don't believe it is my job as someone running for office to comment on every talk show host or any talk show host or anybody else out there on the right."

But women would have none of it. Petitions, emails, phone calls have all poured out on behalf of Ms. Fluke and against Mr. Limbaugh, and advertisers, pundits, and politicians paid attention.

The most disturbing aspect of Mr. Limbaugh's "speech" is that it underscores the tendency of our culture to sexualize women, particularly when they enter the public sphere. Women who appear in public fora are constantly scrutinized for what they wear, how they cut their hair, and whether or not their tone is too "strident," all signs of "femininity" that they are expected to comply with, whether they want to or not.

In Ms. Fluke's case, she could have been single and celibate, married, a lesbian, or a woman living with a male partner. None of this should have had the least bearing on the content of her testimony or how it was received.

But when a woman participates in public discourse, particularly when she is the sole woman testifying, her sexuality becomes part of the public exchange, and it is almost impossible for her to insulate herself or her words from this perception.

It's no accident that our culture still thinks of sexually active women as "sluts" and sexually active men as "studs." When an insurance plan covers Viagra, we don't say that as a society we are "paying" men to have sex, but it is all to easy to castigate the woman who uses birth control as a "prostitute," in part because female sexuality that is not directed towards reproduction still elicits a deep-seated anxiety in our culture.

Rick Santorum is more honest than many conservatives when he argues that sex should only take place within the institution of marriage, and with an intention to reproduce. From this perspective, women who have sex to become mothers are held up as icons, whereas women who have sex for pleasure are "sluts," "bitches," and "hos."

Whether or not they share Santorum's strict religious code, too many Americans still think it's okay for men to have sex without any moral opprobrium attached to it, while the simple idea of a sexuality active woman is morally suspect.

When the birth control pill first came on the market in the 1960s, many worried that it would free women to have sex with anyone without the fear of becoming pregnant, just like men.

Now fifty years later, as a culture, we still exhibit ambivalence and anxiety over the relationship between female sexuality and contraception. When women have access to contraception, they have a choice about if and when to become a mother, and that freedom evokes an almost atavistic cultural fear about the freedom this gives them.

The persistance of this cultural fantasy about contraception unleashing "girls gone wild" comes through loud and clear in Limbaugh's ranting. Having labeled Sandra Fluke a "slut" and a "prostitute," he is off and running with his own pornographic fantasy, demanding that she post videos of herself having sex and claiming that "she's having so much sex it's amazing she can still walk." (A full list of Limbaugh's insults has been recorded by The Washington Post.)

The disgust and anger that so many women expressed over Limbaugh's speech demonstrates once and for all that women are determined to fight any attempt to turn back the clock on their reproductive rights. Nor will they be frightened off the public stage when men try to silence them with sexually demeaning labels.

But I'm still waiting for the day when a woman can engage in public discourse without fear of some guy trying to undermine her words by speculating about her sex life.

Other conservative pundits have tried to frame the controversy as a matter of "free speech" with about as much success as they had trying to spin the initial debate over contraceptive coverage as a matter of "religious liberty." When you have a well-known public figure with an audience numbering in the millions, it's difficult to argue that his words don't carry much louder than the testimony of a private citizen at a Congressional hearing.