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Limbaugh's Expectation-Setting Philosophy For Men: If You Need A Friend, Buy a Dog; If You Want a Partner...

Mon, 2010-02-01 13:23 — figleaf

Via DailyKos’s Bill In Portland Maine, last December Media Matters came up with a fascinating example of… oh, let’s call it patriarchal modeling the Two Rules of Desire, channeled this time by Rush Limbaugh

From the November 30 broadcast of Premiere Radio Networks’ The Rush Limbaugh Show:

LIMBAUGH: My cat — here’s how you can get fooled. My cat comes to me when she wants to be fed. I have learned this. I accept it for what it is. Many people in my position would think my cat’s coming to me because she loves me. Well, she likes me, and she is attached, but she comes to me when she wants to be fed. And after I feed her — guess what — she’s off to wherever she wants to be in the house, until the next time she gets hungry. She’s smart enough to know she can’t feed herself. She’s actually a very smart cat. She gets loved. She gets adoration. She gets petted. She gets fed. And she doesn’t have to do anything for it, which is why I say this cat’s taught me more about women, than anything my whole life. But we put voices in their mouths.

Read the quote in context here.

In other words Limbaugh’s basically recommending that men bring Gordon Gekko’s alienation home to bed with them. The way he does. Because, he’s saying, and simultaneously intolerable and inconceivable for a woman to have sexual desire, and it’s simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable for a man to be sexually desired, women’s interest in men is limited to how well they’re fed. And, I guess, that men are interested in women only for pussy.

Mon, 2010-02-01 16:20 — Sara C (not verified) #permalink

Actually, he appears to be suggesting that women are small furry animals with brains the size of clementines. Having seen actual women, I suspect he’s wrong about this.

He’s also completely devaluing women’s contributions even in the standard patriarchal model. Apparently he assumes men cook their own food, do their own laundry, clean their own houses, assume full care of their own children, etc. etc. while also holding down a full time job, while their wives do nothing.

Mon, 2010-02-01 17:28 — Nightfall (not verified) #permalink

You have to remember that Rush Limbaugh is very wealthy, lives in a mansion, and has household staff to do those things for him. And considering that he is obese and has a rude, overbearing personality, I’m not even sure what would attract women to him beyond his money and fame. So the cat metaphor is probably valid – but only for his own relationships.

Mon, 2010-02-01 20:58 — Red (not verified) #permalink
Actually everything Limbaugh is saying is pretty much old wine in new bottles. The equation of women with animals in general or with cats in particular has a long history with misogynists. As for the implication that women are motivated by money rather than love, “have it easy” and never really worked for anything, and always feign affection….....Name one thing he’s implied that Warren Farrell and all the other MRAs (miffed rageful asses) haven’t been saying since at least the late 70’s. The only difference is that with the right winged media getting nastier, and nastier, and nastier, they increasingly take a complete gloves off and no-pretense of civility or baseline human decency, and will say these things more directly, rather than just implying them, or saying them to certain selected audiences.
Mon, 2010-02-01 22:22 — Nightfall (not verified) #permalink

I don’t think it’s that simple. There’s a long history of people being equated with animals in a derogatory manner, period. Sure, a woman may be a cat, cow, fox, bitch, wasp, sow, shrew, etc. But on the other hand, a man can be a wolf, ape, snake, swine, weasel, toad, goat, worm, etc. And there are some gender-neutral ones as well, like chicken or vulture. And this is hardly limited to English; languages all over the world do this.

Mon, 2010-02-01 21:41 — Holly Pervocracy (not verified) #permalink

Gosh. This is one of those things that’s barely worth of analysis; it’s just straight up hatred, and there’s not misconceptions or biases in it so much as hatred. And, like “Jews secretly rule the world,” it’s one of those pieces of hatred that makes me almost wish it was true.

It’s pretty weird that he’s married (and that he has a cat…) if he really thinks like this, though. If you’ve figured out the scam, geez, why still buy into it?

Mon, 2010-02-01 23:03 — Plymouth (not verified) #permalink

Figleaf, it seems to me your so married to that “no sex class” analogy that you’re trying to shoehorn it into everything in sight. It doesn’t fit here. Not even a little bit. What he’s saying is that women only feign affection when they want something. There’s no limits on what that something might be. He starts off with food but then goes on to say the cat gets other things out of the deal like affection and love. It’s true that cats don’t ask their humans for sex but that’s just called the limits of the analogy.

Now some of my friends are picking up this “no sex class” thing too and it is really pissing me off.

Tue, 2010-02-02 00:21 — tlt (not verified) #permalink

I think the Two Rules/No-sex class thing still works here.

According to Limbaugh a woman no more wants to have sex with you (if you’re a man) than your cat does. The cat comes to him, when he/she wants something. Women come around when they want something (bought or done for/given to them) but this “something” is, of course, never sex. Women, like the cat, want affection (maybe being cuddled or petted, but nothing beyond that) and love (in the form of security, admiration, being fed and sheltered).

Because he’s SOOOO smart, Rush has worked out that the cat doesn’t actually care about him, but uses him only for what he/she can get from him. In the same way, a woman couldn’t possibly hang around with a man just because he’s who he is. And she certainly couldn’t want to have sex with him. It must necessarily be in the service of getting something (money, gifts, jewelry, etc) from him.

But, like Holly said, if he thinks he’s got this all figured out, WHY is he married? Better yet, why does his wife stay married to him if she knows how little he thinks of her? Yeesh.

Tue, 2010-02-02 05:15 — Me (not verified) #permalink

It’s not according to him “a woman no more wants to have sex with you (if you’re a man) than your cat does”, it’s according to your understanding of his words. He meant that woman can get from him whatever she wants whenever she wants if he wants to give it.
And I think this is why he is still married, “better yet, why does his wife stay married to him”

Tue, 2010-02-02 18:12 — tlt (not verified) #permalink

I don’t disagree. I think he meant both. The cat ( like, in his estimation, a woman) doesn’t care much about him beyond the extent to which it can get what it wants from him. As far as the cat/woman is concerned, food/shelter, money/jewelry, etc. provided by someone else is just as good as that provided by him. She/it will only stick around as long as she/it is profiting from the something-for-nothing arrangement.

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