I know it’s kind of silly to get annoyed by Rush Limbaugh at this point. The man has been making his living by pissing people off for years, so pretty much anything that comes out of his mouth is designed specifically and only to do just that. He’s held to no standard of decency or logic whatsoever. I know this. But still, sometimes… UGH. Rush Limbaugh, UGH.
Supposedly there’s an Italian study out there somewhere that claims a 10 percent shrinkage in the size of penises over the past 50 years (after about thirty seconds of intense online research, I can’t find the original study [just this mention in a slideshow of “Weird Science”], so I’m going to go ahead and assume this info wasn’t gleaned from the most thorough of methods… that’s fair, right?). Ok, so I guess that sucks if you’re a guy who’s worried about the size of his penis. In my opinion, far too much energy is expended on this topic, so I won’t go into how silly it is, or I’d be expending more. Suffice it to say that ten percent on average of the whole entire human population is, of course, statistically significant, but since most of us haven’t been having sex with new generations for more than half a century, it’s all quite relative and nobody has probably noticed the difference where it counts. (Also, who was cataloging worldwide penis size in 1962? Was it Kinsey? I guess it was Kinsey. And he was thorough.) So who cares? Men obsessed with the size of their dicks, and trying to blame what they see as their deficiency on others.
Like Rush Limbaugh. Whereas the study in question hypothesizes that pollution, stress, and smoking might have effected schlong size globally, Rush Limbaugh is blaming it on… feminism. Or, more specifically, “feminazis.” Because… whatever. Something about him being a pompous ass willing to say anything to get headlines written with his name in them. Yuck.
Because obviously the power of women’s magic dick-shrinking brains is taking effect. Because women want men with… smaller… cocks? Wait. What? No they don’t. Just feminists, apparently. Because feminists are all about aggrandizing the female and destroying the male, making everything terrible for men so that women can take over everything and use men as just sex toys (in which case we’d probably enjoy larger penises, Rush, by the by, cause I know they say size doesn’t matter, but I know plenty of women with preferences). “Feminism,” you see, is code for “anti-masculinism.” We just chose to call it feminism to be assholes about it.
Seriously, it annoys me when people say that they’re “not feminist” because they believe in gender equality, not one gender being better than another. I get that, from a semantic standpoint, and I agree with the idea behind it. But it annoys me because the point of real feminism, the kind of feminism most of the women you know can get behind, is still gender equality. We’re just so far from it, with the scales so largely still tipped toward men, that the term “feminist” still applies. We have to be on the side of getting women, who are 51% of the population, more of what they are entitled to, before we can move past the term “feminism.” (And don’t tell me we’re almost there–yes there are lots and lots of ways that the scales aren’t tipped toward men anymore, and plenty of ways that they’re tipped toward women, but pretending that the entire system upon which most of the world functions at its most basic levels isn’t still weighted toward men is ludicrous. It’s like saying that because minorities have equal legal rights that suddenly the system no longer favors white people. It’s just not true. There is still a massive amount of work to be done in both race and gender relations.) I’m not saying that the term itself isn’t inherently flawed–it may be. It does place the interests of the female above those of anyone else, which is problematic. But to turn yourself off to an entire philosophical movement whose aim IS to bring people of all genders, races, creeds, religions, etc. together on the basis that your gender shouldn’t effect your standing in the world just because it uses a word that favors the gender that’s been trod upon by most imperial cultures for most of our history as a species? That’s ridiculous. Feminism isn’t trying to hurt anybody. It’s trying to make things better for everyone. At least, my feminism sure as shit is.
And when we turn our backs on it, it’s easier for blowhards like Rush Limbaugh to say ridiculous shit about it. Not that I’d expect him to say anything that’s not ridiculous, or shit, but still. Fuck that guy. If I did have evil witchy mind-powers given to me by the secret cult of demonic feminists (who I’d assume bathe in menstrual blood while sacrificing male babies to their dark goddesses), I’d use them on him, all right. But judging from how reactionary he is to this whole penis-shrinking thing, I’d guess not much work remains to be done.
Anyway. I’ve given too much time and energy to this stupidness already. I’m off to the woods for the weekend! Who knows, maybe I’ll meet some of my feminist sisters and we can nab some period blood to drink from our femi-chalices.