Now I’m getting worried. Limbaugh characterized lefties, and he got it right.
You know what the magic word, the only thing that matters in American sexual mores today is? One thing. You can do anything, the left will promote and understand and tolerate anything, as long as there is one element. Do you know what it is? Consent. If there is consent on both or all three or all four, however many are involved in the sex act, it’s perfectly fine. Whatever it is. But if the left ever senses and smells that there’s no consent in part of the equation then here come the rape police. But consent is the magic key to the left.
Holy crap. I had to peek outside to see if it is raining blood or a trumpet was sounding or chariots were descending out of the sky, because that actually is the magic key. If two willing, unimpaired adults consent to a behavior that does no harm to others, I’m not going to complain, much less try to stop them. It doesn’t have to be sexual, either. If my wife and I agree to have lutefisk for dinner tonight, here in the privacy of my home, we may do so. If she says “NO!”, I don’t get to compel her.
That’s how it works. That’s what we’ve always been saying is how it works.
Does the right think that a lack of consent in a sex act is OK? Because that’s not a slur I would have considered fair, but Limbaugh is implying that yes, in the right wing universe, consent is not a reasonable requirement for sex.
This is like the “Are we the baddies?” skit minus the realization.
He almost got it. So close, yet so far.
Now if only people could be forced to have “approved” relations would rwnj’s be happy then?
“in the right wing universe, consent is not a reasonable requirement for sex.”
Of course, because how is consent said in Goat?
Well, since that’s two years old, you know the Apocalypse has happened already.
Am I being oversensitive, or does Limbaugh think that’s a bad thing?
I’m pretty sure they’re just called “police.”
One year, sorry.
Yeah this is old. I heard the audio, just imagine him saying all that with contempt in his voice. He very much gets across what his audience is supposed to think. That society will soon collapse if we allow this consent idea to spread.
I suspect that he does. As long as the sex act is sanctioned by the Magic Man in the Sky, lack of consent is not relevant. On the other hand, presence of consent does not help you if you want to perform a sex act that Magic Man in the Sky does not like.
I think he is skating around the idea, without coming out and actually saying it, that some “acts” are intrinsically evil and should be forbidden even if there is consent. Like anal sex between consenting adults. Or maybe just between two consenting men?
This is indeed a defining difference between much (almost all?) of the “right” and most (all?) of the “left”.
It seems to me that he’s slamming the left not necessarily because they *require* consent, rather because that’s the *only* factor. That the left isn’t considering how some imagined sky daddy might feel about their utilization of genitalia.
Almost as stupid, of course.
Am I giving the grand blowhard too much credit in my interpretation?
Not only does Limbaugh seem to imply that consent shouldn’t be part of the equation, he also implies that there are sex acts which should be banned even when there is consent. That he really feels this way would not surprise me at all. He comes across as having a very skewed Old Testament sense of morality (and morality should really be put in scare quotes in that context).
I’m sure the idea of taking consent seriously makes a lot of sex tourists nervous.
I would not be surprised if he considers† “consent” to mean something like what a “slave”, “wife”, “congregation”, “child”, “employee”, and so on, do by existing. Those are the sort of people who exist to confirm his superior greatness. They have no reason to say anything, just do what he says and wants. Then go quietly away until next time.
Ergo, “the left’s” insistence on consent on both sides means he is not superior, not great, but a slave. Or
a wifefemale. Or an altar-boy. Or so on…† And, possibly, what he believes his followers believe, or fantasize about. Or at least the ones he can con yet more money from.
I can’t speak for “the left”, but this sounds exactly correct to me. Do what you want with whom you want, as long as everyone involved wants it. It’s incriminating that “the right” clearly disagrees. At least he’s clear about being pro-rape. Anti-choice is more encompassing than forced-birth.
I see his emphasis is on the “you can do anything” if there’s consent more than the question of consent or not consent. He cites things, namely more than two people, that many in his audience consider not OK regardless of consent. He doesn’t mention same sex relations, but I’m sure he would include that. Those things and a host of others are never OK to his audience even if there is consent.
Rush Limbaugh doesn’t think. He reacts.
I believe what he is saying is the liberals are hypocrites with a double standard. We like to believe we are all progressive and enlightened about a sexual acceptance of gay and polyamory and trans and furniture chairs and all that kooky stuff, but we’ll turn around and be just as judgemental and puritanical when we want to be, because we have a legal loophole in the word “consent”. With that we can go on self-righteous \witchhunts against college athletes, corporate executives, Donald Trump and anyone else we don’t like for their heterosexual picadillos just because it isn’t technically “consent”.
Had he actually *thought*… lack of consent is … rape. That is black and white.
…..
Anyway, I guess it’s some technical database glitch that this post from over a year ago got given a current date? I searched for the original but couldn’t find it.
This just goes to show that it’s not that they don’t understand our point of view, they simply don’t agree. Because they’re scum.
I don’t think this is necessarily a left vs right issue. Ayn Rand, for instance, could not logically object to any consensual sexual act. It’s intrinsically about whether morals derive from human desires and nature or from the will of God.
IDK know if he’d call it hypocrisy, he seems to be just complaining that we have a) ludicrously strong emphasis on consent and, perhaps more importantly, b) alarming lack of respect for any other “decency” ie. sexual normativity.
Some other comments have already hinted at this rationale, but I think the best explanation can be found in Libby Anne’s excellent article, “A Tale of Two Boxes, Contrasting Sexual Ethics”: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2012/08/a-tale-of-two-boxes-contrastin-sexual-ethics.html
So not only do these two world views see different sexual behaviors as ok or not ok, but they even LABEL the boxes completely differently.
So Limbaugh thinks that progressives are basically reaching INTO the “forbidden” box and slapping a “consent” sticker onto those behaviors, and he’s arguing, “But they’re still in the forbidden box!!”
He doesn’t realize that we don’t even have the same boxes.
that expressed attitude from the chief dittohead really highlights one of the major aspects of the current right wing political party. With all their waving the flag of freedom and government is the problem they really want to tell people what to do and when to do it. When they should be supporting the Constitution they are in fact anti-democratic. Very strange contradiction between their expressed ideals and principles and their reactions and as here their expressed reactions.
uncle frogy
Limbaugh’s goal is to somehow smear the concept of consent enough to make it irrelevant to what he sees as a leftist political condemnation of rape. To him, “consent” to a sexual act is as irrelevant and inappropriate as it would be to require explicit permission for every act of checking in hockey or tackling in football. As soon as you sign up for the game by agreeing to go on a date (or even being a female within grabbing range of a good old randy hetero male), you’re already as good as being under a sports league contract. What we might call rape or assault, he’d call normal life, just part of the game.
His tactic is to tie “consent” to the use of the phrase “consenting adult” as a common part of the vocabulary of Gay Lib back in the ’70’s. I vividly recall hearing people at that time defend legal sanctions against homosexuality, even claiming that such state-enforced repression and tyranny was a social necessity, and would continue to be so even if it were not part of God’s Universal Truth. To these people, “consent” only made it worse, as it meant that there were two irredeemable criminals involved instead of only one.
And the argument actually worked, in that it was a cause of concern to some otherwise quite liberal people. I recall a late evening discussion (probably about 1975) with my university chancellor and his wife (for whom I worked as a research assistant) after everyone else had left a party at their house. The chancellor had never met and knowingly talked to a “self-admitted” (remember that term?) homosexual, and was truly surprised when I told him that, no, homosexuals didn’t normally rape each other, and that rejection and non-consent were a big turn-off, not an aphrodisiac.
In the scientific and academic community, I don’t see many truly homophobic people in real life any more (except in news about our government leadership), but they still exist as part of Limbaugh’s (and Trump’s) fan base. It’s no surprise at all that those baskets of deplorables would continue to dismiss the notion of consent from their moral dictionary.
BTW — There was a novel with that as the title — Consenting Adult by Laura Z. Hobson, 1975 “her most explosive novel since Gentleman’s Agreement”. I still have the book in my library; I should re-read it to see how it holds up after 42 years. In that era, stories about gay people were required to involve at least one suicide, and as I recall this one was no exception. The “explosive” difference was probably that not all the gay characters died of self-hatred and societal rejection.
I recently had a Randian libertarian tell me that abortion is wrong and women and assorted people with uteri should just be responsible.
@aziraphale, #19:
In her writings, she does not very strenuously object to non-consensual sex either. Or, at best, sex where it’s very unclear whether consent was given, and uncertain whether it would have mattered either way.
aziraphale #19
According to Andy Schaffly’s Conservapedia, Ayn Rand had “Hollywood Values” so, therefore, wasn’t a “true conservative.”
“Consent” is superfluous, according to Rash, if a man wants it, he must get it. Consent is “ok”, the Lefties put too much emphasis on it and can get all tied up in trying to get all participants to give consent. Time waster.Got more important things to do than plead for consent. Who cares, they’ll like the result regardless of consent so why spend time on?
#FLUSHRUSH
As usual, Libby Anne nails it (hat tip to BradC for the link).
To the “religious” portion of the right, consent is simply irrelevant to sexual mores. Morality is deontological: God says it, therefore it is right. He happens to say (quoth they) that buttsecks is bad, and incest, and rape (but only of married women), so they’re bad. He condones married sex, so it’s OK. If he said that married people can only have sex on Tuesdays, and only during Lent, then that would be the rule. If he said gay sex was OK, but only when performed under running water, then gay shower sex would be fine, but gay bedroom sex would be a sin. Since God is non-committal about sex with underage girls, the morality of that is fuzzy. Marital rape, as everyone here knows, is a topic of debate. Christians generally recognize that there’s something hinky about it — but it’s not forbidden, so maybe it’s OK sometimes? Like if a wife is just unreasonable in her refusal to put out? Maybe? But certainly “not ideal”…
Consent is simply irrelevant.
Limbaugh is a serial adulterer, and it’s doubtful that he’s any more Christian than Trump, but conservatives of his ilk seem infected with the same deontological bent. Morality is a collection of traditions — which conservatives are all about conserving! — so things traditionally frowned on are bad, even if consensual, and things traditionally accepted are OK, even if pretty damn rapey.
So it totally resonates with me that he would comment on “consent” like a miner encountering a toucan in Alaska: it’s a strange and unusual beast. All he can do is point and laugh at its strangeness.
Seeing as people are bringing up Ayn Rand and sex, here’s my favourite tale of the time Rand cursed a guy’s dick.
http://the-toast.net/2016/02/11/ayn-rand-once-cursed-a-guys-dick-so-bad-he-moved-across-the-country/
Of course he doesn’t like consent. He doesn’t like anything that requires him to treat women like they’re actually human.
Yes.
In other words, Evil Cannot Comprehend Good.
In fact, this would be a perfect example for that article except, well…
What you have to understand is that to Pigfuckers, “rape” is a property crime.
A Masked Avenger @28
That’s what this is all about. Conservative Christians don’t adhere to any coherent set of underlying ethical principles. It’s all a bunch of ad hoc, arcane religious doctrine. For people like us, the morality of something is determined by whether it does harm to people. For people like Limbaugh, what they consider moral has nothing to do with whether or not it has negative consequences. All that matters is if they’re following the arbitrary rules they think their God made.
Emergence:
Right. But in practice we fail to appreciate the implications.
For example, we think that proving X wasn’t consensual means we’ve proven that X was immoral, if not a crime. They literally don’t understand that. You might as well say their car is red, expecting them to conclude that IT’S immoral. To them, non sequitur.
We sometimes go to the other extreme and suggest that they prefer non-consensual sex, but for the most part that’s also a lie. They’re more likely to commit sexual offenses because they don’t realize that boundary matters, not because they recognize it and get off on crossing it. This justifies nothing of course. We can’t identify the solution if we misidentify the problem though.
A Masked Avenger @34
So how do we get these people to realize that violating people’s sexual boundaries is wrong? Where do you start a conversation on consent with someone who thinks that men have the right to rape their wives?