Misogyny on the left

Amanda Fortini:

If there was any question that a stubborn strain of old-school sexism persists in Obama's America, one has only to look at certain leaders of what the right wing loves to call the "liberal media" but which is sounding and acting, recently, more like the frat-house media. There, like a virus hiding in the body before, perhaps, staging a comeback, misogyny has found a place to lurk almost undetected, at least by the usually sharp eyes of progressive feminists.

Examine the symptoms of this infection, beginning with David Letterman's comments (widely noted but insufficiently analyzed) about Sarah Palin "buying makeup at Bloomingdale's to update her slutty flight attendant look," as well as his joke about Palin's teenage daughter: "Sarah Palin went to a Yankees Game yesterday … during the seventh inning stretch, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez." (Letterman insists he was talking about her 18-year-old daughter, Bristol, who actually had been, well, knocked up, not her 14-year-old, Willow, the daughter who attended the game.) A week before these remarks aired, there was an uglier outbreak of the contagion in the pages of Playboy -- never a bastion of egalitarian forward thinking, but still -- where writer Guy Cimbalo published a list of 10 conservative women he'd like to "hate fuck," a term that various observers interpreted as rough sex, sex tinged by rage, or rape. (Gabe Winant wrote for Broadsheet about the "Hate Fuck" story, which has since been yanked by Playboy.) Worse than the violence of the general sentiment was the graphic specificity of the "Hate Fuck Rating" appended to each woman -- a list that included Michelle Malkin, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Dana Perino and Laura Ingraham. On Hasslebeck: "You'd be better served sucking off Regis Philbin." On Malkin: "Worse than fucking Eva Braun."

Both cases were met with a tepid response from the left. Though Letterman apologized on Wednesday’s show (see video below), his tone was mock-serious, and his audience chuckled along.

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Asking why it is that liberal women do not often take liberal men to task for these attitudes is well worthwhile. Maybe we don't want to appear shrill and humorless, unable to take a joke. Or maybe it's thought that conservative women are too ideologically reprehensible to merit a defense. But to challenge this kind of sexist talk is not the same thing as agreeing with a woman's politics. If the left is allowed to remain a refuge for this sort of misogyny, if this virus in the body politic is allowed to flourish, then it is likely only a matter of time before it is once again directed at liberal women who are threatening in some way, as happened to Hillary Clinton. Call Pamela Geller racist for her anti-Islamic views, but leave her "top-heavy frame" aside.

For too long the left has confused insult with logic. Much of the material in their blogs is aimed at insulting conservatives, so it is not surprising that they would try to insult conservative women with sexist taunts. It is a reflection of their hatred and lack of respect. It is also not funny unless you are one of the haters.