The Deep Resentment of Having to Think About It: Rush Limbaugh and Sandra Fluke
by zunguzungu
“A popular exercise among High School creative writing teachers in America is to ask students to imagine they have been transformed, for a day, into someone of the opposite sex, and describe what that day might be like. The results, apparently, are uncannily uniform. The girls all write long and detailed essays that clearly show they have spent a great deal of time thinking about the subject. Half of the boys usually refuse to write the essay entirely. Those who do make it clear they have not the slightest conception what being a teenage girl might be like, and deeply resent having to think about it.”
—David Graeber, “Beyond Power/Knowledge: An Exploration of power, ignorance and stupidity”
This is a small point, but still worth making: Rush Limbaugh didn’t attack Sandra Fluke because of her or anyone else’s sexual behavior. Given his personal history — and his more general ideological proclivities — it’s fair to say that he is vigorously protective of behaviors which are, as a function of what they are, fundamentally dependent on women who behave precisely in the manner of the straw-woman he is attacking. That’s not what this is about. Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a “slut” because she asserted her right to speak publicly about and make publicly thinkable a set of experiences and problems that he has a very direct and personal interest in excluding from public space
The broader ideological question which Congress was ostensibly discussing — the question of whether a religious institution can object to covering forms of medical care on the basis of religious belief — is also a red herring. Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity neither know, nor care, about the intricate and unstable conjunction of government, insurance, and medicine that might make this a tricky debate if grown-ups were ever to debate it. And the fact that Limbaugh doesn’t even understand how female contraception works doesn’t diminish his rhetorical position a whit. On the contrary, he is defending precisely his right not to know how it works (or what things like Ovarian Cysts are), and the right of those for and to whom he speaks to be similarly ignorant. He is defending his right for that to be a woman’s problem, one which he (and a “we” constituted in his image, as his public) doesn’t need to be concerned. And so he needs to attack Sandra Fluke, personally, all the more because she wasn’t even going to talk about herself. By speaking on behalf of “women,” she threatened to render “women” a member of the body politic. Slut-shaming her — making it about her, personally — changes the subject from a generalizable woman’s public concern to a specific set of personal desires (which he can then moralize about, and use to silence her).
Rush Limbaugh attacked Sandra Fluke, in short, because her voice threatens to reconstitute the nature of the American public: if she were heard — if the specificity of woman’s health were publicly speakable in the hallowed halls of Congress — then we could no longer pretend that this is simply an abstract and legalistic question of “religion,” “government,” and “medicine.” It would suddenly be apparent that the female public and the male public actually have different interests and concerns when it comes to issues like sex and contraception, that contraception means something different to people with different reproductive organs. The fact that (heterosexual) men’s enjoyment of consequence-free sex is dependent on the privilege of those consequences being borne by someone else might become thinkable, if those “someone else’s” had a public platform to speak about it.
This, after all, is why “privilege” is so importantly different from power or bigotry: privilege must remain ignorant of itself, because it’s the right to enjoy benefits which you aren’t even aware that others get denied. And in this sense, while Rush was and is indirectly policing the boundaries of where and how a woman’s reproductive organs come to be of public concern — and real human suffering is indeed at stake — it’s the boundaries of whose concern gets to be publicly voiced and heard that concerns him, who gets to be heard when the public debates itself (as it inevitably will when we start talking about things like religious freedom and the state). And this is also why it’s not surprising that Rick Santorum wants nothing to do with what Limbaugh is doing, precisely because Limbaugh is simply taking Santorum’s own position to its logical conclusion. Santorum needs people to overlook the reductio ad absurdum Limbaugh represent — to misunderstand it so that they can still think he might represent them — but Limbaugh is in the business of policing the boundaries between “us” and “them,” of describing “them” in shameful terms which expel them from the public that “we” see ourselves as part of. The more bitter and contested this expulsion can be made to be, the more effectively he plays his role as culture warrior.
In fact, because it’s the function of a right wing talk “radio personality” like Limbaugh to embody and give voice to a particular set of political considerations — so that it becomes a “personality” — he only has the legitimacy he has, as public voice, to the extent that voices like Fluke’s can be made to lack legitimacy. She becomes a complicating and problematic presence for him because he needs things to seem satisfyingly simple. So she must be excluded, de-personned, rendered a type (“slut”) instead of a subjectivity. And it’s to the extent that we need him to do that work for us — to enable our privilege — that we’ll continue to take him seriously, and he’ll continue to have an audience: we choose to listen to him because it gives us permission not to listen to her.
In once sense, then, Ta-Nehisi Coates is completely right to see this as a “normalization of cruelty”: one can only be cruel to those whose pain one is socially shielded from feeling, whose suffering one is categorically ignorant of. Rush is defending the privilege of being ignorant of her pain, since the pain of a woman with Ovarian Cysts becomes invisible as the consequences of contraception get read exclusively in terms of personal morality. But in a much more direct sense, he’s policing the discourse so that she doesn’t get to talk about it, so that she can’t make his cruelty visible. And in this sense, it only works to the extent that it doesn’t register as either normal or cruel. When whatever consequences a public policy has are seen to be borne by the individual in question because of her own actions, they aren’t normal (since they’re a special punishment for her behavior) and they can’t be seen to be cruel (since she did it to herself). Personalizing it makes the pain become invisible, and its cause.
For this reason, I want to echo what Melissa McEwan observed about Barack Obama’s characteristically careful response to the imbroglio: exactly the way Mitt Romney refused to answer questions about it (reportedly walking away from the reporter who asked him), there is very little to praise in his private phone call of support. McEwan:
As a personal gesture, it was extraordinary. [But, our President] who still has not given a single address dedicated to the issue of reproductive rights, who failed to mention reproductive rights in his State of the Union address, and who cannot even bring himself to include reproductive rights in his Women’s History Month proclamation, instead calls Sandra Fluke to thank her “for speaking out about the concerns of American women,” because he evidently has not considered the many ways in which treating the feminist/womanist fight for reproductive rights as “woman’s work” is some fucked-up irony.
Limbaugh’s attacks might be personally damaging and personal in their invective, but this issue is not personal to Sandra Fluke. Indeed, since making it personal is precisely Limbaugh’s objective, the fact that the President is content that it remain an issue personal to her is precisely the opposite of what an ally would do. For while the president might have reached out to Fluke, what has he done for the nameless friend that Sandra Fluke was actually advocating for, or for the many women whose health is actually at risk?
zunguzungu 
Brilliant. I hadn’t thought of it that way. Thanks.
Really well done.
This is well done, and necessary, but goes off the rails at the end. In what sense does the president’s thanking her ”for speaking out about the concerns of American women” mean that he is “content that it remain an issue personal to her”? He didn’t thank her for speaking out about “her” concerns, but the concerns of exactly half of the people in the nation. And a personal phone call from the president accompanied by a high-profile press treatment of said phone call is a fairly powerful *public* statement.
Don’t you get it? This is Aaron’s M.O.:
He’s the one male who is sufficiently sensitive to speak to this issue/for women. Obama must be acting in bad faith to silence Fluke, all evidence to the contrary be damned.
In the same way, Aaron is the one white man well-read and wise enough to speak for Africa and call out the wrong-headedness of every critic with whom he is oh so similar.
Seriously though, how the hell does he get that Obama wants this to “remain an issue personal to her” from a (public) phone call in which he thanks her “speaking out about the concerns of American women?” Fucking wack.
Michael,
We might just disagree on this. But to spell it out a bit more, I see Obama making a very publicly private phone call to her — publicizing its private nature by the fact that others are permitted to report what he said, but we don’t hear it because it was private — and Carney’s statement to the press only reiterates this framing:
“the kinds of personal attacks that have been directed her way have been inappropriate…The fact that our political discourse has been debased in many ways is bad enough. It’s even worse when it is directed at a private citizen who is simply expressing her views about public policy.”
That emphatic distinction that she’s a private citizen being attacked by public discourse plays into Limbaugh’s framing, and that’s important to me, especially in the context of this piece. Obama is not the villain, exactly; my point is that he shouldn’t get to play the white knight either. The phrase “very little to praise in his private phone call of support” is the key one, for me. A president who had real interest in taking this issue on would speak to the issue, not the person, and he’s been scrupulously careful about that (this is not surprising, but, again, we shouldn’t praise him for what he isn’t doing). Making a phone call to someone who Rush is sliming is a nice-guy thing to do — as is policing the “appropriateness” of Rush’s behavior — but I see it as pretty different from anything I’d call a powerful public statement on the issue itself. Moreover, given that the GOP is leading an all-fronts assault on women’s reproductive rights to such an extent that *contraception* is apparently now on the table (and seriously, that’s dark ages stuff), the fact that Obama is happy to be no more than the not-insane candidate on the issue is what I said about it, a thing in which I find very little to praise. He’s basically a moderate conservative on social issues, and that’s a hell of a lot better than 13th century Santorum, but it still isn’t good.
Aaron (I’m not sure why I can’t reply to your reply directly),
As I see it, though, the only reason we’re having this debate at all is because the Obama administration has mandated (a) that all Americans be insured and (b) that all insurance cover contraception without co-pay. That seems like pretty laudable stuff, to me. We may be having a debate on the issue that is a decades-long throwback, but only because Obama has moved to make important advances on access to contraception in the first place.
Oh, and Anonymous,
I’ll only point out that Rush Limbaugh at least has the courage to make his personal attacks in his own name.
Thoughtful piece. I think most offensive to me about this whole exchange has been that Rush Limbaugh equates asking contraception to be covered with no co-pay to asking to be paid to have sex. So having sex in such a way that does not cost something to the woman (either becoming pregnant or paying to prevent becoming pregnant) amounts to prostitution. This takes the “not thinking about it” up a notch since women are told that if they do think about sex such that they want to be freed from its costs to them (so that they don’t have to think about it) then they are prostituting themselves. Prostitutes are prostitutes because their bodies are considered available to men. Rush has distorted the conversation to suppose that Sandra Fluke in her effort to have access to contraception is really just making herself more available to men.
Adriel Trott, wrote in part: “I think most offensive to me about this whole exchange has been that Rush Limbaugh equates asking contraception to be covered with no co-pay to asking to be paid to have sex.”
What’s offensive is that someone else must pay for the use of contraception that SHE will use when she WANTS to have sex, and IMHO ain’t right.
Because heaven forbid if she wants to avoid an expensive pregnancy and a child that neither she nor her partner are ready to care for? What’s offensive is that men, and our society, expect women to carry the entire burden of sexual responsibility and are unwilling to assist in contributing to that responsibility. Even if it’s something as minor as chipping into a larger insurance fund (which she pays into as well) to pay for birth control (which is much cheaper than a child). IMHO, I hope you were paying for at least half of the birth control that your partner uses before you spouted that sexist nonsense.
After all these years, it is unspeakably offensive to read this kind of spew. How can a person of the male persuasion–one who is old enough to read and write–be so blind to his own place in humanity? Louis Calabro, do you live in chastity in cave? Do you have sex with anyone but your hand or another man? Because if you have ever had sex with a woman you are a part of what you filthily seem to consider a transaction.
Thanks for this wonderful piece! I wrote something on Friess, the Issa hearing, and birth control last week, before Rush Limbaugh’s additions:
http://swimandglitter.wordpress.com/2012/02/25/yes-mr-friess-american-women-are-preoccupied-by-sex/
As always, a pleasure to read your nuanced take on the issues. I’m linking this back to my post.
-Katie
Agreed, a brilliant exposure of how the apparatus works. My question now is how do we put this knowledge to work? How do we pull down the fences that insulate privilege from the knowledge of pain? How can we capitalize on the way audiences are persuaded to privatize the debates and go after the messenger, rather than confronting their own exclusion of the public arena? How do we make this apply as well to “healthcare sluts” that crowd emergency rooms; or, “work-slavery sluts” who think they should have a living wage; or even those “First-Amendment sluts” who litter our parks and want to keep shouting after closing time? In short, what strategies come out of this to turn the tables on the practice of attacking the victims and shredding the consequences of silence and their self-protective invectives? How do you play this card between Limbaugh’s mouth and his microphone?
My only quibble with this post is the idea that Limbaugh followed Santorum out onto that limb we’re trying to cut off. Limbaugh’s been out there for 15 years or more; Santorum is the evidence that Limbaugh’s moved the overton window so far that we may need a new porch.
[…] Source: https://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2012/03/03/the-deep-resentment-of-having-to-think-about-it-rush-limb… […]
So well done, Aaron. In the spirit of disrupting the privilege of ignorance about the suffering of women, I’d just like to add to the representation Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). PCOS is a complicated disorder, like many hormonal disorders that oral contraceptives treat. It does not necessarily imply the presence ovarian cysts but does suggest an increased risk of something even more serious if left untreated: cancer. Although ovaries are perhaps a persuasive image to conjure up because—as the roughly female equivalent of testicles—cysts on them would reasonably imply pain, I’d like to help expand the portrayal of women’s suffering from a component of her female parts to her totality, to her friends, to her family. PCOS is a multifaceted syndrome. A woman diagnosed with PCOS is presented with a picture that extends beyond cysts to include, among many other issues, a potentially increased risk of mortality. The risk of endometrial cancer is thought to be higher in untreated PCOS due to unopposed estrogen—a common denominator for women with the syndrome—on the lining of the uterus. Birth control essentially eliminates the increased risk. Imagine you are diagnosed with PCOS, or say, another hormonal disorder like endometriosis. You are told that over the long term, you are at increased risk of endometrial or ovarian cancer, respectively, and that oral contraceptives *extremely* effectively reduce this risk. (If you have pain, yes, they treat that too.) Now reconsider what it means for health insurance not to cover the treatment.
Thank you, Aaron. Please keep your incisive posts on this topic coming.
If you’re looking to buy these arlietcs make it way easier.
(comment regarding what the anonymous author would do if he were female for a day deleted by ZZ)
Thanks for the thought-provoking post. It prompted this from me: http://bit.ly/zv3cco
Insightful analysis of Limbaugh’s psychological strategy. So, he tells his listeners that the enemy-du-jour is at fault for their own problems, so good and normal people don’t need to bother feeling empathy for them. His entire business strategy is to give people an excuse to not have to think about other people’s problems.
The book ‘The Road Less Traveled By’ defines evil as “the willingness to hurt others to avoid your own necessary pain”. It looks to me like Limbaugh is literally selling evil, in the form of rationalizations for people to avoid the pain of empathy. Each one is a carefully constructed Frankensteinian monster made of pieces of emotional and pseudo-rational argument stitched together so that before a listener can realize the flaws in one, he’s distracted them with another. I wonder if he’s doing it consciously, or is just so pained by his own repressed empathy that he invents these arguments for himself and then shares them.
I think that makes Limbaugh either the Sauron or the Gollum of politics, respectively.
It’s stupid. To suggest that denying public financing for contraception is equivalent to denying insurance coverage for ovarian cysts is very misleading.
Nobody suggested that Fluke should be unable to get coverage for a medical treatment for ovarian cysts (even if that treatment consists of contraceptive drugs). But she has no right to insist that we pay for her recreational drugs.
Richard: Birth control pills are used to treat ovarian cysts. You are confused, but utterly sure of your own rightness. This behavior has a name.
Birth control is basic health care for over half the population. It’s a basic health care need for approximately 40 years of almost evey single woman’s life. That you feel sex is “recreational” has nothing to do with facts. Your “moral” viewpoint has no place in a discussion of basic health care needs. Your desire to control what women do speaks volumes about whom you consider worthy of health care and whom you do not.
In addition to the above, the argument has nothing to do with public funding. The argument is that employers who are required to have health insurance for their employees should have policies that cover contraception. As health insurance is a private enterprise and the coverage of contraception is negligible (more contraception = fewer babies, fewer cases of ovarian cysts, & fewer cases of ovarian and uterine cancers), the health insurance companies see it as a deal.
There are no tax dollars or public funding involved.
To add to your discussion of Obama, as far as I can see, while Limbaugh and Obama talked about Fluke’s body, reputation, and personal feelings, Fluke talked about the issue, only briefly making reference to how much a strain out-of-pocket costs would be to a student “like her.” She talked about the issue, they talked about her person.
I disagree about Obama. He is, after all, the one whose policy will make reproductive health care mandatory with no co-pay. And to imply his “characteristically careful” response as something negative is ill-conceived, in my opinion. I want a careful president who gets things done, and he has. The wrong word from a president can have enormous consequences since he wields an even larger megaphone than the idiot Limbaugh and his ilk. I appreciate Obama for his thoughtful nature.
And I think he was probably as surprised as anyone, at least initially, that women’s reproductive health care needed the reinforcement as it apparently does. If he steps in too forcefully, how do you know the right will not become even more entrenched in their position? By doing what he’s done, he’s more likely to get public opinion on his side, which is what needs to happen. Obama handled it extremely well as far as I’m concerned. From day one he’s been faced with almost unprecedented challenges in this age of the fifteen second news cycle and he’s dealt with all the hate and vitriol with a grace and equanimity that’s as unprecedented as the obstructionism he’s faced. And slowly but surely, shit is getting done.
I think analyzing in the depths that we do somehow runs the risk legitimizing the subject actions. What Limbaugh did in the public air space was simply not acceptable and no matter what the psycological or political reason for it should be stricken from our discourse. Good and evil can not be equally debated and given equal validity as an acceptable form.
[…] from the childhood while the good, patient girls are not sexist at all. See, for example, the following story: A popular exercise among High School creative writing teachers in America is to ask students to […]
The linked post says
And yet they enjoy outlandish imaginings of superheroes. Also of interstellar battles. Also video games consisting of tunnels and guns. Very impractical, that last one. I mean, where are the bathrooms?
I think imagining that a lack of imagination can explain a blind spot in boys that applies rather specifically to girls requires reexamination.
Most essays on this subject, as this one does, continue to sidestep the greater point, which is: women have the right to have as much as sex as we want to, with as many or as few people as we want to. Framing this in grave terms about “Ovarian Cysts” (really, no need for initial caps) glosses right over the fact that sex and sexuality are defined by hetereosexual men. Rush Limbaugh has the privilege of not having to care about women’s reproductive health issues; men have the privilege of not considering women at all when discussing sex and sexuality.
After all, had Ms. Fluke gotten up before Congress and said, “I like to have sex. I want to have sex as often as I can, and I don’t want to get pregnant from it,” we’d be having an entirely different conversation, wouldn’t we? But since she was a “good” woman who was discussing birth control – birth control! – from the point of view of alternate usage, shes’s being defended from all corners.
Sorry – “Guest” was me.
thanks for putting that out there. i doubt seriously men would take all of this so lightly if we simply stopped having sex until they bought a clue.
I agree with you about women’s right to enjoy sex (and plenty of it) without fear of pregnancy. Well and rightly said. I also think it’s important to extend this rationale so as to fully expose the misogyny of the anti-contraception argument. For women, there are not two separate conversations: one about sex and another about physical health consequences. These are now and have always been the same conversation, taken to its logical conclusion. Sex without birth control means risk of pregnancy for women but not men, and thereby a real risk of maternal mortality (which, incidentally, has doubled in the past 20 years in the U.S.) for women, but not men. It is a privilege to be able to not think about the connection. Anyone arguing against birth control is arguing that women—but not men—should be at increased risk of illness and death. They are arguing for inequality in many ways (indeed, including sexual pleasure), but also for inequality its most vicious, and visceral form.
As recounted in Jill Lepore’s “Birthright,” when Margaret Sanger was brought to court in 1917, she “hoped to argue that the law preventing the distribution of contraception was unconstitutional: exposing women, against their will, to the danger of dying in childbirth violated a woman’s right to life. But the judge ruled that no woman had ‘the right to copulate with a feeling of security that there will be no resulting conception.’ In other words, if a woman wasn’t willing to die in childbirth, she shouldn’t have sex.” (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/11/14/111114fa_fact_lepore?currentPage=1)
No, ovarian cysts and cancer need not be capitalized, and perhaps Women’s Sexual Pleasure should. But it we would be remiss not to name all of the above, no matter the case (no pun). The extremes occur and with increasing frequency for female-bodied people, as sexism is further entrenched in this country. The consequences of lack of birth control necessarily extend directly from sexual oppression of, to the Disproportionate death of women. And much more, but no less.
I agree up until the very end. The contraception debate started when Obama mandated that employers cover contraceptives. His policies are clearly pro-women’s health. What more do you want? He doesn’t have to wrap himself in Betty Friedan to support women.
I think Obama’s reaction to Limbaugh/Fluke should be seen as an application of the proverb “never interrupt your enemy while he is making a mistake”. For Republicans who want to maintain their appeal to independents, the best strategy for supporting the Blunt amendment is to wrap it in bromides about religious freedom. Limbaugh’s attack on Fluke replaced that frame with one that is much more favorable to Democrats, i.e., “Republicans are cruel to women”. From a crass political point of view, if Obama had redirected the discussion to a debate on whether free birth-control pills are good on the grounds of policy, he would have done the Republicans a favor.
[…] Nice Analysis of Rush vs. Fluke: A great post at ZunguZungu about Rush Limbaugh’s rantings about Sandra Fluke. The post starts out with a quote from […]
Would rush have spoken of her this way if she were married and wanted her birth control covered?
[…] commentary on Rush Limbaugh and reasons behind personalizing his attack on Sandra […]
[…] I’ve been working on this post, off and on, I see Zunguzungu has made some of the same points. “He is defending his [privilege] for that to be a woman’s […]
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[…] read this post by Aaron Bady that puts this essay into action: The Deep Resentment of Having to Think About It: Rush Limbaugh and Sandra Fluke Like this:LikeBe the first to like this […]
[…] read A Theology of Liberation). The powerful do not want to give up their power and certainly don’t want to think about the consequences of their power. And as long as we keep arguing at the level of consciously held […]
[…] read A Theology of Liberation). The powerful do not want to give up their power and certainly don’t want to think about the consequences of their power. And as long as we keep arguing at the level of consciously held […]